Category Archives: Democrats

Updated: SOTU 2010 Excerpted (Full Text)

In case you’re biting your nails in anticipation, here are some excerpts from BO’s State of The Union Address, courtesy of CNN:

Obama: “We face big and difficult challenges. And what the American people hope — what they deserve — is for all of us, Democrats and Republicans, to work through our differences; to overcome the numbing weight of our politics. For while the people who sent us here have different backgrounds and different stories and different beliefs, the anxieties they face are the same. The aspirations they hold are shared. A job that pays the bill. A chance to get ahead. Most of all, the ability to give their children a better life.

You know what else they share? They share a stubborn resilience in the face of adversity. After one of the most difficult years in our history, they remain busy building cars and teaching kids; starting businesses and going back to school. They are coaching Little League and helping their neighbors. As one woman wrote to me, “We are strained but hopeful, struggling but encouraged.”

It is because of this spirit — this great decency and great strength — that I have never been more hopeful about America’s future than I am tonight. Despite our hardships, our union is strong. We do not give up. We do not quit. We don’t allow fear or division to break our spirit. In this new decade, it’s time the American people get a government that matches their decency; that embodies their strength. And tonight, I’d like to talk about how together, we can deliver on that promise.

…

By the time I’m finished speaking tonight, more Americans will have lost their health insurance. Millions will lose it this year. Our deficit will grow. Premiums will go up. Co-pays will go up. Patients will be denied the care they need. Small business owners will continue to drop coverage altogether. I will not walk away from these Americans. And neither should the people in this chamber.

…

Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, it’s time for something new. Let’s try common sense. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt. Let’s meet our responsibility to the people who sent us here.

To do that, we have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of dollars right now. We face a deficit of trust — deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years. To close that credibility gap we must take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; and to give our people the government they deserve.

That’s what I came to Washington to do. That’s why — for the first time in history — my administration posts our White House visitors online. And that’s why we’ve excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions.

But we cannot stop there. It’s time to require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress. And it’s time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office. Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign companies — to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.

I’m also calling on Congress to continue down the path of earmark reform. You have trimmed some of this spending and embraced some meaningful change. But restoring the public trust demands more. For example, some members of Congress post some earmark requests online. Tonight, I’m calling on Congress to publish all earmark requests on a single Web site before there’s a vote so that the American people can see how their money is being spent.”

Update: The full text is HERE. Discuss among yourselves.

Updated: Dumb As They Come

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Democrats, Journalism, Law, Pop-Culture, Republicans

Among the many dumb things Republicans have given us (read “GOP and Man at Yale”) is a brand of tease “journalism” headed by Hannah Giles, a well-connected, monosyllabic, Town-Hall tartlet, who partook in an ACORN-exposing (tush-wagging) operation. Her partner (he played the pimp) was James O’Keefe, who, it transpires, is even dumber than Hannah.

A recent headline on Nola.com blares:

“ACORN ‘gotcha’ man arrested in attempt to tamper with Mary Landrieu’s office phones. James O’Keefe … a conservative activist who last year posed as a pimp to target the community-organizing group ACORN, is one of four people arrested by the FBI and accused of trying to interfere with phones at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in New Orleans.”

O’Keefe and his pals are “charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purposes of committing a felony.”

Phone tapping or something.

The little pischer O’Keefe had given “a speech to the Pelican Institute for Public Policy, a libertarian group in New Orleans,” which seems to be standing by him.

While the ACORN fun lasted, Andrew Breitbart put O’Keefe up as some sort of editor on his Big This/Big That websites, and appeared with him and Hannah on all the Republican TV shows. Now Big Breitbart is distancing himself from his protege. I guess AB has some sense of how fascistic and fickle American law and culture can be (you can go to jail for a long time for non-offenses; and become the toast of the town for major offenses). Here’s the interview he hastened to give to Hugh Hewitt.

Update (Jan. 27): “A lawyer for one of the men said outside the courthouse that his clients may have the product of ‘poor judgment’ and that he didn’t intend to commit a crime; lawyers for other defendants could not immediately be reached for comment.”

This defense attorney is right, of course, but the American legal system, which Republicans (like this intrepid contingent of guerrilla journalists) are forever striving to make less constitutional, will fight to keep these idiots under its jurisdiction. It’s reflexive.

Updated: Tax Credits = Social Engineering (Tax Talk)

Barack Obama, Democrats, Economy, Political Economy, Taxation

H. L. Mencken called elections “a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” As he ramps-up for an election season, BO proves once again that he has perfected the art of robbing Peter to pay Paul. The president’s next gambit is “tax credits” for the middle class.

These are “subsidies disguised as tax cuts. In other words, they are spending in the form of direct transfers from the treasury to individuals, except that they are administered by the tax authorities rather than the agencies usually responsible for welfare.”

Social engineering is what tax credits are, as they target certain constituencies to the determinant of other, less politically powerful ones. Basically, “taxpayers can receive a raft of tax credits if they engage in various government-specified activities.”

You need very few brains to err on the side of growth and usher in, “lower tax rates for everybody.”

Update (Jan. 26): The familiar demand that I abandon a discussion on tax policy because I stand for abolishing the 16th, “The Number of The Beast,” is a position I’ve denounced again and again. This is what goes for libertarianism in many quarters; you sit on the fence, make nothing but tinny, tedious, purely theoretical arguments, and congratulate yourself on retaining your political purity. To repeat, this is nothing but sloth. It’s also boring, foolish and uppity without being superior.

Yes, taxation is immoral and naturally illicit. And yes, tax policy needs to be debated among the handful of intellectually curious, clever, engaged individuals, and yes, the fact that one wishes to see a return to natural justice does not preclude a pragmatic support for, say, a flat, low tax. Let the poor set the rate.

Updated: Obama Goes Getto On America (But Easy On Himself)

Barack Obama, Bush, Democrats, Healthcare, Politics, Republicans

HERE’S “what this bum thinks of America,” writes Larry Auster, and manages to capture the cretinous petulance of Obama’s response, at a town hall meeting in Ohio today, to the building resentment:

“… he is still ensconced in his little world, his little gnostic bubble, where reality is supposed to bend to his desires no matter how harmful and irrational they may be, and if it doesn’t, it’s other people’s fault–people who do nasty, ‘ugly’ things, people who ‘scare the bejesus out of everybody,’ people who ‘buzz-sawed’ his beautiful health care bill to smithereens in Massachusetts. Yes, that’s right, he described a peaceful, lawful election in the state of Massachusetts as a ‘buzz saw.’ That’s what this bum thinks of America. All of which is a good sign. It suggests Obama will not adjust to reality, will not ‘grow’ in response to defeat, but will remain a bitter, hostile alien in this country, clinging to his health care bill and his cap and trade, which in turn will make it more and more difficult for him to impose his will on us in any area, and will also make it a reasonable possibility that he will be a one-term messiah. Which is sort of a contradiction in terms, isn’t it?”

Auster rounds off with a Mark Steyn quip (“I’ve never denied that Steyn has his moments,” Larry writes. Ditto.) in response to “Obama’s astounding remark that the reason the voters of Massachusetts chose Republican Scott Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley and thus destroyed the Democratic Party’s revolutionary legislative agenda was that they were angry at eight years of Republican President Bush”:

Presumably, the president isn’t stupid enough actually to believe what he said. But it’s dispiriting to discover he’s stupid enough to think we’re stupid enough to believe it.

Update (Jan. 23): Here is the prepared text of Obama’s “jobs” speech in Elyria, Ohio.”

Précis:

* BO sets the scene by blaming the big banks for this latest bubble created by loose monetary policy and compounded by decades of affirmative-oriented lending policies imposed on banks by government legislation.

* Pats himself on the back for the Recovery Act, bailouts, and nationalization of The Big Three, and for single-handedly averting a Second Great Depression through delirious spending, and by designing functioning, efficient, fair markets (in Obama oratory: “creating the jobs of tomorrow”). Yes, command economics worked in the Soviet Union; it’s working in these United States. Amen, Bro.

* BO then bemoans rising prices. In other words inflation—the increase in the money supply promulgated by the government-owned Federal Reserve’s habit of mucking about with interest rates or plain printing paper. Fiddling with the money supply courtesy of the government-Fed syndicate—and for the purpose of funding, if clandestinely, Big O’s debt—that’s inflation. “The truth is that inflation is caused by government,” observed Ronald Reagan. “It’s caused by government spending more than it takes in, and it will go away just as soon as government stops doing that.”

* Throw into the mix dollops of class warfare and you have a pacified crowd. “[S]ome Americans made huge amounts of money,” blasted BO, “while many others pedaled faster and faster, only to find themselves stuck in the same place.”

Yes, I agree. Do read “Life In The Oink Sector” to find out whose ranks you need to join if you want your wages to rise continuously—up to 50% higher than the average salary out there—never have to fear downsizing; being fired, reprimanded, or worked to the bone, and to retire after 30 years of abusing your “clients” on an annual income of a $100,000. Hint: It’s not the private productive economy.

Remember Lilly Ledbetter (it’s in the speech)! In the little lady’s honor, as Barack reminds us, he unleashed on struggling American businesses armies of strong-arming (and buff-armed, no doubt) Girls Gone Wild, eager for their pound of flesh. Read about it in Barack Against the Boys.)

Shout out for the Obama-expanded SCHIP program, the entitlement plan known as the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

More self-congratulations. Barack leaves.

I’m off to barf.