Sunday, January 26, 2014

Friday, January 24, 2014

ALWAYS WONDERED HOW HONG KONG BECAME SO SUCCESSFUL. ALL THANKS TO JOHN COWPERTHWAITE, NO LESS. Explains a lot.

IMPORTANT INTERVIEW

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

THIS IS AN INCOMPLETE LIST OF REASONS TO DISLIKE OBAMA:

In a wide-ranging interview with the New Yorker, President Obama characteristically saw fit to cast aspersions on those who disagree with him. Obama told David Remnick:

There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who really just dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President.

Now it’s true that Obama went on to say that there are many voters, both black and white, who give him the benefit of the doubt on account of his race. What this indicates is a man who sees everything in terms of race. Or put another way, Obama views the world in black and white.

As I write this, it is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. My dislike of President Obama isn’t a matter of the color of his skin, but rather because of the content of his character or lack thereof.

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I dislike President Obama because of hispetulance. What other President would tell the opposition party in his first meeting with them, “I won. I’m the president,”? What other President would intervene in a local matter and declare that its police department had “acted stupidly” while admitting he did not have all the facts? What other President would make the Dalai Lama leave the White House through a side entrance with a big pile of garbage awaiting him? What other President would tell the Prime Minister of Israel to let himself out of the White House? What other President would unceremoniously return a bust of Sir Winston Churchill to the British? What other President would while traveling abroad describe his country as “arrogant, derisive and dismissive?”

I dislike President Obama because of his prickly disposition. For most of his public life, President Obama has faced a media which fawns over him. But when a TV reporter from Dallas would not bow before Obama and had the temerity to question him about his margin of defeat in Texas in the 2008 election, the President tersely told the reporter to let him finish his answers in the future. Our President is also quick to challenge those he believes are questioning his patriotism, but has no qualms about questioning the patriotism of others as he did with those in Congress who demanded to be consulted about our mission to Libya in 2011.

I dislike President Obama for his lack of humility, unlimited capacity to overestimate his capabilities, and delusions of grandeur. Obama believes he knows more about Judaism than any of his predecessors including John Adams and James Madison, both of whom read Hebrew. Yet such a boast is consistent with someone who thinks he is a better speechwriter than his speechwriter or a better political director than his political director; consistent with someone who thinks he can play on LeBron James’s level; consistent with someone who likens his plight to that of Gandhi and Nelson Mandela and consistent with someone who likens his presidency to that of Lincoln, FDR, and LBJ.

I dislike President Obama for his disingenuous disposition. It has been nearly three years since Obama told Americans to talk to each other “in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.” Obama, however, gave himself and those working for his re-election a waiver from this edict. When Stephanie Cutter, his deputy campaign manager (now a co-host for CNN’s new version of Crossfire), suggested that Mitt Romney had committed a felony concerning his departure from Bain Capital, Obama not only didn’t condemn Cutter’s statement but called it “entirely appropriate.”

So it’s not surprising that President Obama considered it “entirely appropriate” for Latino voters to “punish our enemies” before the 2010 mid-term elections and the following year considered it “entirely appropriate” to say that Republicans want Americans to have “dirtier air, dirtier water” and “less people with health insurance.” Well, with the way Obamacare has been implemented there will be fewer people with health insurance.

Having mentioned Obamacare, I dislike President Obama because of his dishonesty. Now I should mention I thought Obama’s honesty was questionable when he claimed he had no idea Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a man he knew for 20 years, presided at his wedding with Michelle and baptized his children, held anti-American views. Alas, a majority of Americans were prepared to give Obama the benefit of the doubt in 2008 over Reverend Wright. A majority of Americans were also prepared to give Obama the benefit of the doubt in 2012 when he repeatedly declared, “If you like your health insurance plan, you can keep it.”

Well, in the 120 or so days since the implementation of Obamacare, millions of Americans have found out the hard way that they cannot keep the health insurance that they like. If the employer mandate is not delayed again this year then millions more will join their ranks. Over the past 120 or so days, more Americans have come to dislike Obama, including many who voted for him not once, but twice. Late last November, CNN/ORC International released a poll indicating that 53% of Americans do not believe Obama to be honest and trustworthy while 56% of Americans believe that Obama is not someone to be admired. These numbers represented an all-time low for President Obama. None of this has anything do to with Obama’s race.

Indeed, why should anyone dislike Obama because of his race when there are so many other good reasons to dislike him?

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Sunday, January 19 2014

IN A NUTSHELL WHY DEMOCRATS DO BETTER THAN REPUBLICANS WITH CORRUPTION:

BLUE STATE BLUES: WHY DEMOCRATS ARE 'BETTER' AT CORRUPTION

by JOEL B. POLLAK 17 Jan 2014 233POST A COMMENT

This story begins with the first bailout the Tea Party ever stopped.

In May 2010, I helped the Illinois Tea Party organize a demonstration on LaSalle Street in downtown Chicago outside the offices of Shorebank, which was about to be bailed out by the federal government and Wall Street's biggest banks. The bank was meant to have been closed down already by the FDIC, given its staggering spiral of bad debts, but the day of reckoning had been delayed while its friends in the White House and on Capitol Hill tried to find a way to save it.

Those friends included Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), whom I challenged in the 2010 election, and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL). They tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the State of Illinois to bail out the bank. They tried using their contacts in the White House--the president and first lady had been neighbors to Shorebank executives--to forestall the bank's collapse. Andhrough FDIC chair Sheila Bair, they called the same big banks they were browbeating in Congress--including Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan--to bail out their precious Shorebank.

It might have happened. But the Tea Party protest gained some local media attention, and the interest of former Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who demanded answers as to whether, and how, the Obama White House was protecting Shorebank. Republicans asked the FDIC inspector general to investigate, and the Treasury and Federal Reserve began backing away. The bank was shut down and taxpayers took over its bad assets--but its managers were permitted to buy the good ones, reopening as Urban Partnership Bank.

The FDIC inspector general concluded, incredibly, that there had not been inappropriate political influence--that the Wall Street banks agreed to help, for instance because they "believed in ShoreBank's mission and they did not feel pressure to invest as a result of the FDIC chairman's calls."

That is a joke: the banks are required to "believe" in banks like Shorebank due to the Community Reinvestment Act, as well as by the daily bullying of politicians and the thuggish tactics of far-left groups like the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America.

Now, the FDIC is suing Shorebank for $73 million over its bad loans. Yet it is not suing Shorebank's directors. Rather, it is suing the lowly loan officers. That is "a highly unusual omission," notes Steve Daniels of Crain's, "as board members have been sued in all but one of the 70-plus FDIC suits filed since July 2010."

The FDIC claims that Shorebank's board members did not actually approve the loans. But that's not what the loan officers say. And so the question of the cozy relationships between the directors and the government has arisen once again.

Initially, I found the Shorebank scandal interesting because Schakowsky's husband, Robert Creamer, had used Shorebank as part of a check-kiting scheme that he used to fund his left-wing organizing operations. He eventually went to federal prison for several months in 2006-7, where he began work on the political manifesto that laid the foundations for selling Obamacare to the public after an anticipated "progressive" presidential win in 2008 (“To win we must not just generate understanding, but emotion—fear, revulsion, anger, disgust”).

After he left prison, Creamer was hired by the Obama campaign to train its volunteers and continues to play a role in Democrat strategy on issues such as immigration reform, as well as in political campaigns around the country. There was no evidence of any quid pro quo in Creamer's dealings with Shorebank--a point he stressed to me when I met Schakowsky for a debate held by the League of Women Voters. Yet Schakowsky's personal interest in the fate of Shorebank--which was not the only troubled community bank around--remains a mystery.

While Shorebank cost the FDIC half a billion dollars, the scandal was largely overlooked, save by the Tea Party and a few journalists--notably Steve Daniels of Crain's and Becky Yerak of the Chicago Tribune.

Democrats often excel at making such scandals disappear. The IRS scandal is a case in point: the Obama administration assigned an Obama donor to lead the internal investigation, and has now rewritten the rules governing 501(c)4 non-profit groups so that many of the abuses by the IRS in the past would be legal in the future--and forgotten.

In contrast, subpoenas have been issued in New Jersey to investigate lane closures on the George Washington Bridge that members of Gov. Chris Christie's staff are alleged to have ordered as a form of political retaliation against a local Democrat mayor who would not endorse the governor's re-election.

If true, the allegations are grave. Yet they are no worse than what the Obama administration has done--not just in the IRS scandal but as a matter of routine practice, as when it shut down open-air national monuments last fall to hurt Republicans.

There is a media double standard, but there is more to it than that. The emails (!) allegedly sent by Christie's staff have an amateurish tone, reminiscent of the clumsy tactics of Richard Nixon's team of "Plumbers," whose botched burglary at the Watergate Hotel brought down that administration. It may be that Republicans are simply worse at corruption and abuses of power. Democrats occasionally get caught but seem better at covering their tracks. (Who remembers how close Obama was to Tony Rezko? Who is Tony Rezko, anyway?)

Democrats are the party of government, so they understand it better, at least when it comes to using it for a political self-interest. They know that punishing your enemies is only part of the game: the more important part is rewarding and protecting your friends.

Most know that government is inefficient at achieving anything of use (e.g., Obamacare), but when it comes to spending money and spreading favors, it must be, in the words of David Axelrod, a "well-oiled machine." That is how Democrats govern, and few manage to get into trouble.

Republicans like Christie and Nixon understand the punishment part but not the reward part. Like the leaders of formerly colonized third world countries, when they gain power they cannot help but imitate the old regimes, but seem to reproduce only their worst aspects.

Democrats learn quickly--Obama's best models were Chicago mayors--how to couch self-dealing in the public interest. They still believe, or pretend, there is a difference between "honest graft and dishonest graft." And--best of all--they heap praise on each other for their "service."

It is demonstrably apparent that Democrats love big government because it is their business. This has been the case since Woodrow Wilson's progressive era administration in the teens, and has evolved since, first in the Roosevelt New Deal years, followed by the Johnson War on Poverty years and now with the Obama Administration's socialized healthcare regime. All this is a progression to collectivism and a state run economy that produces equal outcomes and social justice. All this has been tried many times in the past and has always failed to produce the society its proponents seek. To understand why collectivism always fails one must understand the subject of economics. Regrettably there are almost no Democrats (and far too few Republicans, by the way) who are familiar with this subject. Until there are more who are, we are bound to lurch along, reinventing the wheel with the Democrats, pulling back from the abyss occasionally with the Republicans, vacillating between the two ad infinitum.

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Saturday, January 18,2014

THE ABJECT FAILURE OF THE MEDIA TO FULFILL ITS ROLE: Jeff Sessions has become the conscience of the Senate. What he describes here is the takeover of the Senate (and other aspects of the government) by thugs. Had we a media worth a pinch of salt, this story would be trumpeted loud and clear, shaming these people into the shadows. But we don't.gridlockInstead, the media actually blames Republicans for the gridlock in Washington and ignores these procedural steps taken by the Dem leadership that shut down debate and corrupt the system. This Republic is in trouble without a media holding politicians accountable.

17, 2014 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN HARRY REID, SENATE

HOW HARRY REID IS DESTROYING THE SENATE

We often hear that Washington is “broken,” that Congress is “gridlocked,” and so on. While such complaints are usually imprecise and sometimes misguided, the sense that Congress is not functioning as intended is correct. Yesterday Senator Jeff Sessions delivered an important speech in which he decried the decline of the Senate under the leadership of Harry Reid. The extent to which the Senate’s traditions have been undermined to the detriment of all Americans is not generally appreciated, but the issue is a vital one. Senator Sessions said:

The Senate is where the great issues of our time are supposed to be examined, reviewed, and discussed before the whole nation. Yet, in the last few years, we have witnessed the dramatic erosion of Senators’ rights and the dismantling of the open legislative process.

We fund the government through massive omnibus bills that no one has had the time to read or analyze. Senators are stripped of their right to offer amendments. Bills are rushed through under threat of panic, crisis, or shutdown. Secret deals rule the day, and millions of Americans are essentially robbed of their ability to participate in the legislative process.

Under the tenure of Majority Leader Reid, the Senate is rapidly losing its historic role as a great deliberative body. If this continues, America will have lost something very precious.

One of the tactics by which Majority Leader Reid has suppressed Senators’ rights and blocked open debate has been a technique called “filling the tree.” What this means, basically, is that when a bill comes to the floor, the Leader will use his right of first recognition to fill all of the available amendment slots on a bill and block any other Senator from offering amendments. One man stands in the way of his 99 colleagues. But, not alone really. His power exists only as long as his majority concurs and supports his actions. This prevents the body from working its will, it prevents legislation from being improved, and it prevents Senators from being held accountable by their votes on the great issues of the day. That is, of course, why it’s done.

Our Majority Leader has used this tactic—filling the tree—80 times. To put this in perspective, the six previous Majority Leaders filled the tree 49 times—combined. Senator Reid has filled the tree on 30 more occasions than all of the six previous Majority Leaders did cumulatively over their tenures.

In so doing, the Leader denies the citizens of each state their equal representation in the Senate. Majority Leader Reid, in his effort to protect his conference from casting difficult votes—in order to shield his Majority from accountability—has essentially closed the amendment process. He has shut down one of the most important functions that Senators exercise to represent the interests of their constituents.

Recently, this tactic manifested itself in a dramatic way. To the surprise and shock of many, the December spending agreement contained a provision that cut the lifetime pension payments of current and future military retirees—including wounded warriors—by as much as $120,000. I and other Senators had many ideas for how to fix this problem, but we were blocked from offering them by the Majority Leader. I tried to offer an amendment to replace the cuts by closing a fraud loophole used by illegal immigrants (and cited by the Department of the Treasury) to claim billions in free tax credits. But Reid—and all his conference members save one—stood together to block my amendment.

So I would ask my colleagues: Are you comfortable with this? Do you like having to beg and plead for the right to offer an amendment? Do you believe the Senate should operate according to the power of just one man?

The omnibus bill, though it restores pensions for our heroic wounded warriors, leaves more than 90% of the cuts in place. Shouldn’t we be allowed to offer amendments to provide a fair fix for all of our nation’s veterans?

But blocking amendments is only one of the many abuses that have occurred.

The erosion of the Senate has also been front and center in the budgeting process. We are now in our fifth year without adopting a congressional budget resolution. Instead, taxpayer dollars are spent through a series of backroom deals and last-minute negotiations. Then we face a massive omnibus that is rushed to passage without amendment or meaningful review. The American people have no real ability to know what’s in it or hold us, their elected representatives, accountable. This, of course, is the reason it is done this way.

Now, the House and Senate are considering another catch-all omnibus spending bill—one that will spend more than a trillion dollars—with thousands of items of government spending crammed into a single legislative proposal. This bill will be sped through under threat of a government shutdown, with very little debate, and no ability to amend. It is another “pass it to find out what’s in it” moment.

My staff and I have had less than 48 hours to digest this behemoth, but already we’ve found provisions that would not survive if considered under regular order.

How is the process supposed to work? Each year, Congress is supposed to adopt a budget resolution. Then, based on spending levels contained in the budget resolution, individual committees report out authorization bills based on the expertise and experience of the members serving on those committees. Then, the 12 subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee produce appropriations bill for their area of the budget—such as Defense, or Homeland Security, or Agriculture—which are individually considered, debated, and amended on the Senator floor.

This gives each member—and their constituents—a chance to review and analyze each part of the budget and offer suggestions for saving money, improving efficiency, and better serving taxpayers.

But under the tenure of Majority Leader Reid, the budgeting process has been totally mismanaged. We have ceased consideration of appropriations bills altogether, relying more and more on autopilot resolutions and catch-all behemoth spending packages. In fiscal year 2006, for example, every single appropriations bill was debated, amended, and passed in the Senate. In 2013, none were.

In my first year as a Senator, we passed every appropriation bill as we should—we marked up a bill in committee, debated and amended the bill on the floor, went to conference with the House to settle our disagreements, and then sent a bill to the President for his signature. Over time, however, that’s happened less and less frequently to the point where nowadays, we don’t debate appropriation bills at all.

A more ominous development, however, is how the breakdown of the appropriations process in the Senate is now infecting the House of Representatives, and spreading like the plague. In the first year of their majority, the Republican-led House marked up six appropriation bills and sent them to the Senate. The Senate didn’t consider a single one. Last year, the House passed eight appropriation bills and sent them to the Senate. Again the Senate didn’t act. This year, the futility of the House efforts began to show as the House passed only four bills. But why should they? Why should the House expose their members to politically tough votes when they know the Senate won’t?

All of us, both parties, have a responsibility to stop and reverse these trends. It’s in the national interest. It’s the right thing to do. All of us have a responsibility to return to regular order. All of us owe our constituents an open, deliberative process where the great issues of the day are debated in full and open public view. Each Senator must stand and be counted—not hide under the table.

The democratic process is messy, sometimes contentious, and often difficult. But it is precisely this legislative tug of war, this back and forth, which forges national consensus. While secret deals may keep the trains running on time, they often keep them running in the wrong direction. Secret deals rushed through without public involvement only deepen our divisions, delay progress, increase distrust, and make it harder to achieve the kinds of real reforms the American people have been thirsting for.

Having to cast many votes on tough issues clarifies those issues and the differences. I believe that process, openly conducted, can lay the groundwork for progress. It will clarify facts, and then lead to the finding of common ground. Only through an open legislative process can we create the kind of dialogue, the kind of debate, and ultimately, the kind of change necessary to put this country back on the right track.

A DISHEARTENING AND PESSIMISTIC ANALYSIS THAT UNFORTUNATELY MAKES SENSE. These are perilous times

Thursday, January 16, 2014

MORE LIBERAL CLAPTRAP FROM NYTIMES REPORTER: Charles Blow is better known by some as Charles Blowhard, a NYTimes fixture as a minority member of their all liberal staff. This column by James Taranto is one of his better ones. One question that never seems to be asked when dealing with the subject of irresponsible, out-of-control, young black males is, why don't they find some form of gainful employment somewhere in the system in lieu of turning to drug dealing, petty crime and the like. After all, we have millions of illegal immigrants (undocumented workers as libs prefer they are called) who cross the border and get a start in the economy by tending yards and gardens, working in fast food restaurants, and all other kinds of menial work,gaining all then while certain skills that help them climb the economic ladder. Next stop for many dishwashers is clearing tables, next stop waiting table, next stop managing restaurant. How many times have those who live in California seen this progression? The answer: many. But, we see almost no young black males or females in this progression either, and therein lies then problem. Blame the black race-hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton for preaching "victimhood" and demonizing the system "stacked against the minorities". Blame the Welfare State for creating a culture of dependency and need. Blame the school system for pathetic teachers and policies. And on and on. As long as the opportunity exists for a class of people to make money from this dependency culture by gaming the system with guilt, they will take advantage of the ignorant minorities to enrich themselves. Put every democrat politician in this category as well as the Jacksons and Sharptons and you have the makings of a quite profitable business enterprise. Charles Blowhard and company need to get real.

THE SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE REPORT ON BENGHAZI: Not all that helpful because it misses a very key point, no doubt intentionally. "The report found no evidence of the kind of political coverup that Republicans have long alleged." This astounding sentence from the Washington Post story reporting on the findings by the committee belies every fact long since revealed about the aftermath of the Benghazi attack. To date no news organization has picked up on this claim by Post's reporters, however, it is a spurious claim at best. It has been conclusively demonstrated that 15 minutes into the attack officials on the ground and in Washington knew it was a planned terrorist attack and not a reaction to an anti muslim video, as alleged by Hillary and Obama and Rice in subsequent press outings. This crucial point is essential to prove that Obama and Hillary orchestrated the phony cover up for political reasons. Obama because he was running for reelection at the time on the claim “al Qaeda is defeated and on the run.” Among other phony claims, and Hillary because a planned terrorist attack on the Benghazi facility would expose her irresponsible leadership jeopardizing her credentials as a candidate for POTUS in 2116. Both these cynical, amoral politicians used the phony video story as a cover up for their political reasons. Anyone who does not see and understand this fact is delusional. This article adds to the evidence

BACK TO THE HUMANITIES AND HOW THEY'VE BEEN COOPTED: When the radicals took over in the '60's, the academy went south. Thank you Heather MacDonald for this explanation.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

REALLY??? This item from today's WSJ.

BELTWAY COSTS PULL J.P. MORGAN OUT OF TOP SPOT
$11 billion in annual legal costs, driven by settlements of various government investigations, caused J.P. Morgan to cede its title as the country's most profitable bank to Wells Fargo. But results at both firms suggest a strengthening economy.

My question: how does the profitability of a bank reflect a "strengthening" economy when that very same profitability is engineered by the policy of the FRS. For example: the FED is now paying interest on excess reserve capital which is where all the many not being lent to small businesses and the like stis being parked these days. In effetct the bank borrows from the Fed then redeposits that money at the Fed and makes a tidy profit on it. No loans, no fuss, no muss, just collect cash for not doing anything. Is this the way an economy grows?