Category Archives: Politics & News

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Liberals, The Dumbest Creatures On The Planet

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This is too too good not to share.

“My favorite bit is the one where Chris Matthews, who I believe takes himself seriously as a journalist, declares: ‘“I hate that even-handed, so-called objective journalism. You know, you can’’t say something isn’t true if it’’s true…’.”

James Delingpole makes the point that The science is settled: US liberals really are the dumbest creatures on the planet. He also something this writer has said time and time again: there is real science and there is political science. Our liberal friends don’t know the difference.

As Mark Twain taught us more than a century ago,

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
“It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

I Was Right

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Again. The Obamanation announced it will release 30 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserves and has another 30 million barrels pledged by our energy partners. Two million barrels per day for a month. And they can do it again next month and the month after if prices don’t drop enough.

It is to “make up for Libyan oil,” administration officials say.

Bwahahahahahahahahah hah ha. And hah.

It’s not a hail Mary to jumpstart the economy.

It’s not to fill in the gaps in our oil supply. There is plenty of oil.

It’s not even to ease the summer driving season.

But it is to drive speculators out of the market. See, if the price at the pump drops for 90 days, the third quarter Cost of Living calculations look flat again.

At the beginning of June, I said the Obamanation would try to get gas prices down to $2.47/gallon for July, August, and September, the “window” for Social Security’s 2012 COLA calculations. Artificial Cost of Living Adjustments are a free tax on the back of American seniors and the gummint needs more money. Way to go, Mr. Obama.

State v. Local Control

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New Florida Gov. Rick Scott vetoed $615 million in line items in a $69 BILLION state budget this month. Less than 1%. He also signed House Bill 7207 into law.

Them as whose oxen were gored are up in arms.

State Rep. Ron Saunders (D-Monroe County) has bemoaned the fact that the state Department of Community Affairs “which played a major role in making sure Monroe County governments adhere to Area of Critical State Concern mandates” is among the bovines “gutted.” See, House Bill 7207, the redesignated “Community Planning Act” essentially dismantles the D.C.A. by moving that agency’s duties to a new Division of Community Development.

Meanwhile, Gov. Scott came to the Keys for his first time as governor but I didn’t see him despite the fact that he stayed at a Marathon motel and spoke at the Marathon High School graduation.

Florida is bigger than many third world nations in land area, population, residential income, and tax revenue. Come to think of it, Florida is bigger than many European nations in all of the above.

To put that in perspective, the Florida $3 billion budget deficit is bigger than Vermont’s entire state budget.

Gov. Scott had made the Community Planning Act one of his priorities because oversight of development in the Keys should be handled locally rather than through Tallahassee.

“I believe in local government… It’s closer to the people,” he told the Keynoter. “I just don’t believe we ought to be running these things at the state level. I think that we ought to have local control of things. Each community needs to decide what they want to do in their community.”

Looking back to Vermont, local control is more than a buzzword.

Local control is on the lips of Town Selectmen, of voters at Town Meetings, of the 290 school superintendents serving Vermont’s 251 Towns.

New North Puffin Selectman Tom Tom Ripley summed it up, “We figure the one-size-fits-all solutions we get from the County or the State or the Feds or the One-World-Government fall well short of just letting our cities and towns muddle through our local issues.” Tom is North Puffin’s best known garbage man in a state where garbage collection is private enterprise and pretty much everyone with a pickup truck can be a trash hauler.

Indeed, Vermont has essentially no County government at all, relying on local boards to oversee our governmental needs from animal control to zoning.

On paper, local control looks as if it would be more expensive than the consolidated services available from the state or the Feds. After all 290 school superintendents just have to cost more for the 92,431 enrolled students than, say, a couple of dozen, right?

Right?

Of course, right. We know that banks gobbled up their neighbors and airlines swallowed their competitors to save us money. Of course, Judge Harold H. Greene broke up AT&T to, um, save us money, too.

There are other costs to government. A Facebook group “Abused Land Owners of Monroe County Florida Want Justice” reminds us that all is not right in Paradise. A familiar headline reads, “FBI investigates Florida political corruption in Capitol.” And Time Magazine reported that exclusive Palm Beach County, once the Kennedys’ winter playground, “has begun to rival Miami as the Sunshine State’s capital of corruption and political mischief.”

I guess the final answer is really a question: “Do you want the corrupt politician you can see at the Cracked Conch or the one hidden away in Tallahassee controlling how you use your property?”

The Email Lied

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If any other of our presidents had doubled the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?

Dean “Dino” Russell is a roofer here in the middle Keys. Dancing about on roofs all his life has made him the most physically fit man in the Home Depot; it also gives him an overview of life. He is the third-most conservative man I know.

He also likes his role as rouser of rabble.

He sent me another ubiquitous email. You know the kind; it starts with “Did you know?” and ends with “send this to all your friends.”

This one blames President Obama for doubling the national debt — that masterpiece that we as a nation, Dino avers, have spent 220 years building from the original pence that fell out of Alexander Hamilton’s pocket. As an interesting digression, Andrew Jackson had four Secretaries of the Treasury, more than any other U.S. president; Mr. Jackson also paid off the entire public debt in 1835. That was the only time in U.S. history that this country has been debt free.

The email was wrong about Mr. Obama doubling our debt. He hasn’t quite done that. Yet.

I know a lot about public debt partly because I know how to Google but partly because it isn’t rocket science. Debts are like diets. Whether you have a spending problem or an eating problem, when you consume more than you work, somebody gets fat.

Dino’s email made 23 claims about all the bad things Mr. Obama has done from doubling the debt twice to not reading Arizona’s state law on illegal immigrants. The mail says the president joined another country to sue the great state of Arizona. The email called him out for mispronouncing Marine Corps and miscounting the states and not knowing Spanish; for putting 87,000 people out of work by using a forged document and for needing a Teleprompter; for spending “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to go to a play, to pitch the Olympics in Denmark, and to plant a tree on Earth Day; for stealing General Motors from we stockholders and firing the CEO; and making a joke at Special Olympians. He is called cheap for the gifts he gives other heads of state, subservient for bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia, and criminal filling his cabinet with crooks. He apparently won’t help white flood victims in the Midwest and has created 32 Czars.

“Every statement and action in this email is factual and directly attributable to Barrack Hussein Obama,” Dino claims. “Every bumble is a matter of record and completely verifiable.”

Erm, well, no.

The gist of the email was correct. Mr. Obama is sinking the economy. He did nationalize industry and health care. He did steal General Motors from me. He is centralizing power even more. He is almost single-handedly turning the United States of America into the Union of Socialist American States.

But the email got too many facts wrong.

President Reagan doubled the debt Carter left. Bush 41 bumped the debt Reagan left by more than 50% but Clinton did double the debt Reagan left. Bush 43 nearly doubled the debt Clinton left. Bush 43 left a $10 trillion debt against a $15 trillion GDP. Obama admittedly bumped it to $14 trillion against about the same $15 trillion GDP but he ain’t the Lone Ranger.

The email got too many facts wrong about Presidents in general.

We know Mr. Obama didn’t read Arizona’s law. Politicians don’t read laws. Let’s tar the lot of them.

Mexico did file an amicus brief supporting the Obama Administration, not the other way around. Yawn. Let’s worry about the Feds usurping states rights.

Good that Dino didn’t have any problem with George W. Bush’s pronounsations; of course, Mr. Bush knows Spanish.

Many of the 87,000 people affected by the Gulf oil spill are back at work but my wife isn’t and neither are the 15.4 million out-of-work Americans Mr. Obama promised he would help. We should tar him for that but the email didn’t go there.

I use a Teleprompter. So does your favorite soap star but the email didn’t go there. Let’s tar everyone for that, eh?

Every president spends “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to go out of town; it’s the cost we pay to keep them alive until election day but the email didn’t go there.

And so on.

The “facts” ain’t quite what the emailer would like us to believe. That’s too bad because Mr. Obama’s factual performance is so bad for the country that we don’t have to make things up.

“The email tells a story about how atrocious it is in Obamaland,” Dino said. “‘Tis better to lie in a good cause than tell the truth in a bad one.”

That’s the leftist mantra he used to deride. Now both sides believe ideology trumps facts.

It doesn’t.