Don't expect a soft landing.

“You know, I've personally flown over 194 missions and I was shot down on every one. Come to think of it, I've never landed a plane in my life.”

                                                   …..Admiral Benson, Hot Shots, 1991

Sometimes, it is clear that the US congress is giving us flying lessons but has never landed a plane in its life.

I for one believe that every time Congress says we have to do something or the sky will fall, what they suggest is guaranteed to be the exact wrong solution.

Every time they get on TV and smile and say, we reached an agreement…it means that the conservatives have folded and the agreement is exactly what the liberals want.

Every time Pelosi and Reid open their mouths, not only is it a waste of time listening to them, they are stealing a part of your life that you will never get back again.

And now, we can add Boehner and McConnell to the time wasters, the stealers.

Not one of these so-called leaders has ever landed the plane, let alone safely!!

They are Admiral Bensons…pompous fools that do nothing but make promises they have no intention of keeping, give advice they would never follow in their own lives, create crises that they have to fix, and then smugly and sanctimoniously state stuff like…

“It is good that we have got past this debt crisis thing….now we can go back to working hard on the things that matter to Americans…like jobs”…Pelosi (paraphrased)

You have got to be kidding me, right?

And you get the Republican fools standing up and saying stuff like “It is the best we could do!”

Idiots….

And this one…”We only hold half of one third of the government…we could not do more.”

OK…I have heard it all before…the excuses, the deliberate lies, the smiles and the strutting….none of it amounts to a hill of beans compared to the danger these idiots have thrust this country into.

I expect it from the Democrats…no surprises there. But the Republicans have totally sold out under the guise that they could “not do any better”.

Boehner and McConnell strutting around as though they are the smartest people in town do nothing to convince me. They are just third rate clowns who can’t get a serious seat at the clown table controlled by Obama.

Ok...it is easy to be critical without offering any suggestions. We all know this…and Obama has once again proven it can be a winning tactic. All you have to do is get the Republicans to start negotiating with themselves, and they will eventually fold. This is a tactic that the Clown-in-Chief uses regularly (along with blaming the Republicans for doing what HE is actually doing). The Republicans are either too damn stupid or too damn smug to understand what is going on….

…so I will tell them what every conservative knows should have happened.

1. When cut, cap and balance was passed by the House and sent to the senate where it was procedurally dumped, the House should have doubled down.

What I mean by this is that it should have immediately turned around and made the cuts bigger, deeper and sooner and sent the new bill back to the senate inside of 24 hours.

When the senate procedurally dumped that one, the House should have doubled down again, getting specific on cutting the pet projects of Obama.

While it is certainly clear that the Senate would not vote for these bills, it would also become increasingly clear that it was the senate that was not doing it’s job.

2. When Obama held press conferences telling everyone it was the recalcitrant Conservatives who were not willing to negotiate, the House leadership should have stood up and said “Damn right we are not gong to negotiate. We are not going to sell out on what we think is right for this country. We have presented multiple bills to the Senate and they refuse to debate them. We will continue sending bills to the senate, with each one being closer to what we want than the last. When the senate chooses to debate those bills, we will then be able to move forward. Until then, we will continue to stand by what we believe, and what we were elected to do. If that means the debt ceiling remains where it is, so be it.”

What did the Republicans do? They back pedaled every time. They have no damned backbone and shudder at the very thought of having to fight for what they believe…bunch of cowards!

3. While doing 1 and 2 above, they should have been out (in numbers) putting on a strong united face and explaining to the people what would REALLY happen if the debt ceiling was not raise. What would really happen would be a partial government shut-down…and that, by itself, would help to reduce the waste in the Federal Government.

They should have stood up at every available microphone and called Obama out for his lies. They should have used every available mouthpiece to show that the Democrats were playing politics, and not disclosing the truth.

This should have been all about getting the truth out there, not the political hyperbole. If people knew the truth, they would not have been in such a hurry to buy the BS coming from both parties.

4. Obama should have been forced to veto a bill. He should never have been allowed to demand a bill that allows the debt increase to go through to cover the period of time beyond his election. This whole crisis was manufactured. Obama knew back in August of last year that the debt ceiling would be hit by now. He had ample time to get exactly what he wanted through the democratic controlled House and Senate with no problems. So, why did he not do that?

That is simple. Because he wanted to be able to blame Republicans if it all went to hell.

He can now blame Republicans if the credit rating is downgraded (which WILL happen - if not now, in a few months or a year or two - but it WILL happen)…after all, it was them who held up the negotiations…it was their House that passed the bill that caused the downgrade. He can stand up and say that it was a bipartisan agreement and both parties believed it was the best for the country….yadda, yadda, yadda….

None of this would have been hard to do….none of it.

It would have taken some bravery; it would have taken great conviction: it would have taken a desire to win; it would have taken an unrelenting belief that what was happening to this country was it’s own destruction; and it would have taken complete honesty.

Sadly, all of this is lacking in the crop of useless lying cheating politicians in Washington.

I am being somewhat unfair here. There are some who stood up to be counted right to the end. I admire the strength of  Ron Paul, Michelle Bachmann, Tim Scott, Steve King, and the rest of the twenty-two Republicans who had the intelligence, the courage, and the conviction to refuse to vote for raising the debt ceiling.

As for the others? No more need be said.

The next time you take flying lessons, make sure it is from someone who has actually landed a plane. The Congress is full of Admiral Benson’s…and we MUST weed them out.

Stupid is as stupid says…..

……devereaux

I'm mad as hell!

Today is Friday....I thought this week would drag on forever...but finally Friday has arrived and we can all look forward to a weekend filled with sunshine, fluffy clouds, rainbows and puppy dogs. We can climb mountain, surf breaks, smell flowers and eat delicious food at fine restaurants. We have no concerns, and no problems....life is good. Life is fun and on the weekend we can all enjoy the finer things....restaurants, boutiques, fine wines and cigars.

Oooops...I forgot....I suspect none of my readers are actually senators...and therefore do not have the option to enjoy their weekends that way. I noticed that once again Harry lied when he stated that the Senate will work through the weekend until the debt deal is done....he rushed the vote on "cut, cap and balance" today so that the Senators could all rush to their waiting limo's to be whisked away to the airport for the flights home for the weekend. Where, no doubt they will enjoy all the finer things in life that you and I are PAYING for!

Well, I for one, am not a happy camper today.

The Senate has done nothing about this so-called debt crisis. They have not produced a budget in over 800 days...and now the crisis is so deep that they can simply go home early for the weekend. There opinion that the GOP controlled House should do all the work is really starting to wear thin.

And so, today, we hear good news. We hear that Boehner and the White House are in deep negotiations over the debt ceiling. We hear that the figure the administration is now talking about is $3 trillion in cuts. Maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel here?

You must be joking if you think that!

Before I get to my thoughts, I have to ask....does anybody else get concerned when all these negotiations are being conducted behind closed doors? Does anyone else get the impression that when that door closes, the discussions turn to how the parties can spin something so that you and I will never know just how badly we are being screwed? Does anybody else see the GOP and White House getting into bed together to hammer out a deal that is good for them....but for us? Not so good?

What happend to the transparent Government Obama promised? Clearly just another lie....and yet he expects us to believe his nonsense.

I am sick of it. I am sick of the mealy mouthed lilly-livered politicians on both sides who have sold their soul to the devil in the white house because they are too damned scared to do what is right. I am sick of the power hungry pathetic politicians who are happy to fund special projects with my money for the sole purpose of re-election.

I am thrilled that America is waking up and more and more people are taking a cue from the 1976 movie Network.

You surely remember Howard Beale's rant...if not I include it here....

“I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" 

35 years ago and while the problems were slightly different nothing has changed. I guess nobody was mad as hell!

But now we are...and it is time to do something.

OK..so let's look at what the liars leading our country have to say about the debt ceiling.

The latest word is that there is now a deal being discussed that provides for savings of about $3 trillion. I point at the start that this over a ten year period...and that is just crap. $300 billon savings per year does NOTHING to cut spending. It is simply a reduction in the RATE of increase. It is not a cut at all.

And this is how our leaders treat us. They think we are fool and idiots. They think we do not know what shell games they play with us. They think we believe we can win a game of three card Monty...they think their magician skills can keep us confused and trick us.

Well, not while I am here.

Let's look at these "cuts" that are proposed:_

1. Savings from the end of the wars in Iran and Afghanistan - $1 trillion

What? According to Obama we were leaving there anyway. This so called cut assumes we would have continued the war for another 10 years, even though he has made it clear that we will be out i the next year or so. This is just BS and is nothing more than smoke and mirrors designed to make us think the GOP bargained well for cuts before passing the increased debt ceiling.

2. Savings from interest reductions due to spending cuts and reduced borrowings - $250 billion

Are these idiots insane? Sorry, stupid question. Of course they are. Let's see...we have imaginary spending cuts of $1 trillion that will save us an imaginary interest cost of $250 billion...so lets call that a spending cut!

Maybe they are talking about interest savings on the entire $3 trillion dollar in proposed cuts?

Lets look at that possibility. $250 billion over ten year is about $25 billion a year which represents about a 10% per year cut in interest expense. That makes sense. To cut interest expense next year by 10% would require a retirement of debt of ...oh...about $1.43 trillion. And then, to reach the $250 billion mark over ten years...NO MORE borrowing would happen AT ALL.

SO, yes, it is possible...but wait...isn't the trade-off to this spending cut based on increasing the debt ceiling by around $2.5 trillion over the next 18 months? So where are these interest savings?

There are NONE! This claim is just more lies from the White House. The Budget Office has not calculated these numbers, they are White House estimates designed solely to fool you!

3. Reduction in SS payments of $300 billion over 10 years.

They propose to make this saving by recalculating how SS increases are aligned with inflation. 

Now, this is a tricky one. The government calculated inflation numbers are already designed to understate inflation. (This will be the subject of another post). It is designed to understate inflation so that SS payments do not increase as much as they would if the calculations were real. This reduces government outflows while allowing them to feel good because SS is inflation adjusted. For all you folks on SS, you have been getting screwed for 30 years already and under this plan it is going to get worse.

Can the Government save $30 billion a year this way? Possibly, but given that government calculated inflation is in the low single digits right now, I doubt there is room for reduction so I suspect the White House has assumed an inflation rate much higher than what is currently stated, and worked backwards from that fictitious, imaginary number. (I expect inflation is really in the 10% - 15% range right now, not the 3% range the government touts. Take an honest look at your expenses and see what you think!)

4. Reduction in fraud and waste. - $250 billion

Now this one takes the cake. Since when has an effort to reduce fraud and waste been seen as a cut in spending? 

Mr. President, if you can so easily identify savings as a result of fraud and waste, why have you not done something about it? Why does it become a spending cut to bump up your numbers? You are nothing but a lying deceitful jerk, and are conspiring with politicians of all flavors to destroy this economy!

OK...I have had enough of this...you get the picture.

What I am most angry about is that NO politician is standing up and saying these proposed spending cuts are just BS. Nobody is calling them what they are. Nobody has a pair big enough to state the truth.

Here's an idea. If you want to make a difference, Mr Congressman, demand that the balanced budget begin now. That means we need to see spending cuts of $1.6 trillion in the coming year. And that does not even get to the effort of reducing our borrowing...it simply stops the need for more.

Mr. President, we do not need $400 million programs to solve the problem of "food deserts"..a problem that does not exist. We do not need the food pyramid to be redesigned - ooops. too late, it already has been.

We do not need studies into how gay's penis size impacts their happiness...we do not need studies on teaching Chinese prostitutes to swallow....

We do not need government to tell us what light bulbs to use, what toilets to flush or how much salt to eat..

We need you to do your job, not play golf.

In the immortal words of Edgar Friendly (Demolition Man, 1993)....

" I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think; I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind of guy who likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?" I WANT high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon and butter and BUCKETS of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section. I want to run through the streets naked with green Jell-o all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to, okay, pal? I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiener". ....

If you want a glimpse at the future the progressives offer, take a look at Demolition Man...you will soon open your eyes! The progressive future sucks.

Do not let the progressives, the liberals or the GOP spend YOUR money taking us down this path.

Be the enemy, fight every chance you have. Show their stupidity to everyone you know.

Get mad as hell.

.....devereaux

Let's party like we live in the White House!

Let me get this right.....it is only Tuesday today, right?

With the amount of stupidity seen in the last day or so, I would have sworn we had reached the weekly limit. Just goes to show that there is no limit on stupidity.

At least there is some signs of intelligence with Mitch McConnell clearly laying blame at Obama's feet, and stating that he doubts that the solution can be found for the debt question while this man remains in office. Good stuff. And John Boehner seems to have found a pair too.

But it seems that some in politics think there is no limit on how much debt the nation can carry.

But I digress....

My thoughts today revolve around something far more sinister than the onerous debt this nation carries. However the whole debt question is a very good example of what I find so disturbing.

Here's the thing.

Obama comes out yesterday and holds his dog and pony show, telling everyone how important it is to raise the debt ceiling. He once again demands that the wealthy pay their fair share. He explains that the middle classes carry too much of the burden and the rich are not. He sounds very reasonable when he says things like...:compromises are necessary, because if both parties do not move closer to each others position, no resolution is possible". (Paraphrased)

He tells everyone how he has moved in his position and will move further if the Republicans will just give up some ground too.

Huh?

This is the man who proposed a budget with a $1.6 trillion deficit for 2012. And NOW he says we have to deal with debt...we have to compromise...we have to work together? (Where does he think the deficit funding will come from?)

This President is the most deceitful, lying piece of crap ever to have sat in the oval office. The nature of politics is that you measure the temperature of the electorate and give them what they want in order to get re-elected. I get it. But in the past this has been largely moderated by the need to do what is right for the Country.

This President has no concern with what is right or wrong for the country. He has no moral compass, and no fear of recrimination. He will say whatever he needs to say to appease the voters. He will do whatever he needs to do to get the next vote. He is a total narcissist, unconcerned about anything but his own self interest.

So...let's have a quick look at what he does.

- he first states his position....very clearly...that as President of the country he has a responsibility to tell the folks what the realities are, but to be careful not to spook them

- he then says that if the debt limit is not increased your children will be unable to eat safe food

- he then attaches safe food to the jets used by corporate America and the wealthy...effectively saying that if they don't pay more for their jets, your kids won't get safe food

Now he is forced to move into a second stage of  his arguments because the first ones were not able to bring about the result he wanted...

- now he tells everyone how wonderful he is and that the republicans now have to move their ideals closer to his

- he blames the republicans for not being able to reach an agreement (notwithstanding the fact that his own party has not reached agreement)

- he develops the sound bytes for the liberal politicians to use...the rich must pay more so that social security payments can be met

- Charlie Rangel suddenly gets religion and asks what Jesus would do

- Harry Reid and Nacy Pelosi get more vocal about the millionaires and billionaires causing the problem

- corporate jets become the solution
(Don't forget that just a few years ago the use of accelerated depreciation rates for corporate jets was encouraged and fully supported by Obama....he now sees them as the perfect foil for his class warfare plans.)

- the threat of unsafe food for your kids was not immediate enough...so now he makes it clear that if the debt limit is not increased, your social security checks will possibly not get mailed...because there may not be enough money in the coffers.

Does this sound like a President who is a leader...who leads from the front, who encourages everybody to keep working through the tough times...who is uplifting, confident, pragmatic and assured of his role?

Or does it sound like a bully, a miscreant who gets what he wants at any cost, who lies, deceives, threatens and uses scare tactics in an attempt to mold his subjects into his way of thinking?

I know I will be accused of crazy talk. I know the left will call me a fool and worse. I know that I risk retaliation from readers by saying this...but I also will continue to expound the truth whatever the cost.

This President is the most insidious and dangerous person ever to be in the White House. He knows that 47% of the population pay NO income taxes. That is the 47% that will vote for him in the next election as long as he continues to promises to take from the wealthier and give to them.

He makes it clear that it is the government's role that everybody has the same opportunities. And gets the same results. Effort is NEVER included in these discussions except with the mandatory "if you work hard you will succeed" crap that he spouts from his mouth. What he means is, if you work hard and succeed, the government will take what you have and give it to the lazy who don't work hard!

This man is evil. I don't know how clearer I can make this. He wants YOUR money  to use to buy the votes and favor of everyone else. He wants your effort, to keep the country moving, so that his lazy constituents can vote for him. He wants the sweat from your brow to pay for the bad choices of the clueless.

As Maggie Thatcher said...socialism is wonderful, until you run out of other peoples money.

Well, that is about where this country is at right now. We have almost run out of other people's money and now have to borrow to stay alive. Sure we can steal some more from the wealthy, but that will not solve the problem...in fact it will make NO difference apart from buying votes from the clueless.

So...let's follow Obama's lead and raise our personal debt limits...and then do it again in 2 years...and again a year later. Let's just live beyond our means, and party like we live in the White House. Let's pay no regard to the concept of saving for the future, paying our bills, matching our expenses with our revenues.

Let's follow the President's lead and use the same responsible fiscal guidelines he uses.

How long do you think you could last that way? A year? Two? Maybe just a few months?

No problem....Obama will send you a check whenever you need one!

Stupid is as stupid says.

......devereaux