Archive for the 'American Business' Category

i dunno, I am impressed. Glenn doesn’t always come across the right way in his delivery, but this impassioned speech was pretty darn good IMHO….

I’ve personally seen some of my progressive friends throw their own temper-tantrum and lament the filibuster rule in the Senate, openly proclaiming that “since when is 41 greater than 59″ and that the European’s parliamentary system doesn’t suffer from the problems our system does. Blah. Blah. Blah.

Well, Arnold Kling has a pretty good article over at the Library of Economics and Liberty entitled “The Progressive Tantrum“.

A quick taste:

Everyone agrees that the Republicans are just throwing sand in the gears of good government and not offering any ideas. What that means is that they are not offering ideas to enlarge government.

(snip)

My point here is not to champion Republicans. It is not to champion democracy. My point is that the ones throwing the temper tantrum right now are the Progressives. They think that the 2008 election gave them the right to operate like China’s autocracy, and they are lashing out hysterically at those they perceive as preventing them from doing so On the one hand, the villains are a small minority in the Senate. Or maybe the villains are the incoherent majority of the people.

The important point is that Progressives are never wrong.

Kling also has some examples of the Progressives lamentations (from a Thomas Friedman column) that we don’t have more of an authoritarian system that would allow us to bypass this troublesome system our Founders set up:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.

Seriously. Expect more of this, especially as the progressives start to see their greatest opportunity evaporate into a dissipating mist….

Anybody who knows me knows I am HUGE fan of Thomas Jefferson. In fact, I might be his #1 Fan!!! Anyways, I thought this was an interesting take on a popular song from one or two years ago. Besides that, who knew Jefferson could play that mean of a fiddle, plus work the crowd. Nice work on the bass Ben Franklin, BTW..

Hat tip to Ace’s Overnight Thread

I have previously run across various articles stating that before the housing crisis hit, a politician such as President Bush or Senator McCain thought that something was wrong at Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, and that they needed to be reined in. But other than Peter Schiff, I had not heard anyone outside of government saying that anything was wrong with the housing market, the banking industry, or the two government-sponsored enterprises. But now, I’ve learned that repeated warnings came from the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America, and were never taken seriously.

As it pleaded with bank regulators to stop subprime lending abuses, the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America [MICA] pointed out the red flags in analysis from the bank regulators’ own staffers as well as the likes of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, three years before these two Wall Street giants collapsed under the weight of bad mortgage bets.

What did Federal Reserve chairman Benjamin Bernanke have to say while the warnings were coming in?

Despite mounting evidence, Bernanke went on TV in 2005 to say of a housing collapse, “it’s a pretty unlikely possibility,” adding that “fundamentals are strong.” Right before the crash in 2007 the Fed chairman said “the subprime markets seem likely to be contained.”

Bernanke also noted in February 2008: “By later this year, housing will stop being such a big drag directly on GDP” and that “among the largest banks, the capital ratios remain good and I don’t expect any serious problems.”

Didn’t work out that way, did it? Bernanke, who has been appointed to another term, was monumentally wrong, the sad thing being that the warning signs were there, but were not heeded. Read it all.

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” – Thomas Jefferson

That’s right. After much reading, studying, thought, deliberation and careful consideration, I have decided that it is time for me to become more active in politics. No. I’m not ready to run for office, nor do I consider myself to the consummate politician, as I speak my mind too much and I don’t have enough pragmatic bones in my body.

However, I believe that I can help be part of a movement to retake this country from the progressives, of both major political parties, as they try to institute even more nanny state controls and continue to put the final nails in the coffin of our Constitutional system of government.

Just as our Founders believed that government closet to the people would be the most accountable to the people, we must start taking back our local governments and start breaking our fellow citizens of the “What can government do for me” mentality that has come to dominate our politics.

Just as the quote attributed to Andrew Tytler says: Read the rest of this entry »

Side by side comparisons of Bush’s State of the Union, and President Obama’s 2010 SOTU address.

There is something familiar.

Oh. I know. Its empty platitude filled rhetoric from politicians.

Gotcha.

Hat-tip to the Insta-dude...

Unless you’ve been under a rock, and you follow politics, then you are aware of the dust up surrounding the recent U.S. Supreme Court CITIZENS UNITED, APPELLANT v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION decision. It comes complete with President Obama chastising the Justices during his State of the Union, and Justice Alito’s equally firm “Not True”.

Anyways, its causing a big stink on the left right now, pretty much being pushed as an example of what happens when you get a conservative majority on the court and why its important to get the true judicial activists back in charge.

But what caught my eye the most in the dissent, written by Justice Stevens, was this bit of “logic”…

“If taken seriously, our colleagues’ assumption that the identity of a speaker has no relevance to the Government’s ability to regulate political speech would lead to some remarkable conclusions. Such an assumption would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by “Tokyo Rose” during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders. More pertinently, it would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans: To do otherwise, after all, could ” ‘enhance the relative voice’ ” of some ( i.e., humans) over others ( i.e. , nonhumans). Ante, at 33 (quoting Buckley, 424 U. S., at 49). Under the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech.”

Really? If logic has ever been tortured, it has been now, and therefore I must assume that Justice Stevens supports torture. Or something.

Still, its an interesting argument… on the surface anyways. Dig a little deeper and it is not so analogous.

Tokyo Rose was providing aid to the enemy during a time of war, easily an act of treason by trying to sabotage the war effort by attempting to demoralize soldiers and sailors. While I understand that the counter-argument is that now “foreign” companies can give money to campaigns after the ruling (ChinaGate being a better example), the particular act of Tokyo Rose is more of a non-sequitur in this instance…

I wonder if Justice Stevens is aware that Article 88 of the UCMJ would prevent the general officers in his example from saying anything contemptuous concerning the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense, or the Governor of Texas, just to name a few. (Link to Article 88 of the UCMJ here: CLICK!), even contemptuous political speech. Free speech is not exactly “free” in the military. While I know that it isn’t readily enforced (as I’ve heard many times military members disparage Clinton, Bush and Obama during a heated political debate in the office and no one thinks to turn anyone in), it has been before when such speech was made public and by high profile individuals… such as generals..

Another problem I find with his argument is that of “voting” as a matter of “speech”. Why would we need the 15th and 19th amendments if people, regardless of the race or sex, have the freedom of speech, through voting, in the 1st!

Now, I know I’m not an expert in constitutional jurisprudence, nor do I claim to be an expert in platonic logic. However, I have read a book once or twice (Run Dick Run and a Star Wars : A Phantom Menace [LARGE PRINT EDITION} if you must know) in my life, and the Justice’s argument has a hole in the side of it caused by quite a massive iceberg methinks.

Un. Freakin’. Real.

“The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 … so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers,” Obama will say, according to excerpts from his speech at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York.

Obama will say that the additional U.S. forces “will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011,” according to the excerpts released by the White House.

The president has a goal of withdrawing most U.S. forces by the end of his current term, senior administration officials told CNN Tuesday. Obama’s first term ends in a little more than three years.

The President is planning to get those 30,000 troops into theater in six months, which gets his “surge” to full strength around June 2010. The President then plans to begin the withdrawal of American troops in July 2011, with the majority of troops to withdraw by the end of 2012.

They have ONE year to do the job, and the message is loud and clear to the Taliban and Al Qaeda that all they have to do is hold out ONE year, and the U.S. will then declare VICTORY, and then get to enjoy “peace with honor”, much like our experience in Vietnam.

Sigh.

I remember our Veterans, who serve and have served. In particular, I want to thank my grandfather, who served in the Pacific on the USS Storm King during WWII, and my Uncle Martin, who went ashore on D+1 with the 2nd Infantry Division and was wounded four times liberating France from the Germans, and my Uncle OJ, who perished in that same fight taking Hill 192. I thank my father, who as a young man stood guard at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, staring at the Communist Horde across the wall.

May God continue to bless America and our Veterams

“The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep΄s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd
as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. – Abraham Lincoln

Capt. Nick Giglio

Sumter (WLTX) – Officials at Shaw Air Force Base say they believe a pilot whose plane collided with another jet died on impact, and they are now looking to recover his body.

Officials announced their findings at a 10 p.m. Saturday night news conference concerning the disappearance of Captain Nicholas Giglio.

The fighter pilot’s F-16 jet went down Thursday night when it collided with another Shaw jet during a night flying activity off the coast of Charleston.

Investigators say based on evidence, they believe Giglio died during the initial collision.

“Our investigation of the mishap revealed that the mid-air collision itself was traumatic,” said Col. Joe Guastella, Commander of Shaw’s 20th Fighter Wing. “The speed and the geometry of which the aircraft hit breached Captain Giglio’s canopy and the injuries he sustained are almost certainly fatal. He had no opportunity to eject from that aircraft.”

This is the second F-16 pilot this year to die during a training accident, that I know of anyway. This is because what they do is inherently dangerous, in and out of combat. Flying night formation is one of them.

One of my coworkers knew Capt. Giglio and his family. By all accounts, he was an outstanding officer, husband and father. He leaves behind a wife, a child, and an unborn baby.

Requiescat in pace Capt. Giglio. Your sacrifice, and that of your family, will not be forgotten…