Category Archives: Politics & News

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Change

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FaceTwitSpace has a Universal Healthcare Poll running this week. As of this writing, over 107,148 other people have voted on the question, “Are you in favor of a Government run healthcare system.”

My vote was ‘Hell, No!’

This Health Care argument has nothing to do with health. After all, all the people who will vote on it will not be covered by it.

It’s about the money. And power.

If you can drive the private insurers and private providers out of the market, whatever is left controls who lives and who dies. If you have private insurance, you can change insurers if you don’t like your coverage. If the government says “You must have insurance and you must get it from us,” they put you in jail if you change insurers.

That’s Change We Can Believe In.

If you can drive the private insurers and private providers out of the market, TWO TRILLION more dollars end up in Washington. Each and every year. Except next year when it will be more. And the year after when it will be more still more.

Trillion.

That’s Change We Can Believe In.

President Obama told the nation Wednesday night that we must “change the health care system to reduce the costs and restore the economy.” That is exactly correct. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama did not say another word about reducing the cost of service or restoring the economy; he spent his news conference time on changing the health care system to one run by Uncle Sam’s bureaucrats instead of one run by insurance bureaucrats. That doesn’t fix the problem. It just changes its location. Two trillion more dollars change hands from the private sector to go to Washington. That is exactly wrong.

That’s Change We CAN’T Believe In.

Pundits have said that new Administration’s need to stack accomplishments during the first 100 days is the reason for the rush to ObamaCare. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is critical that the Administration fast track Universal Health Care through immediately, just as they did the “Stimulus Pack” and the theft of the auto industry and their concessionist international diplomacy and the bank bailout that somehow forgot to make any mortgage money available and the 100 days/100 press conferences.

Why is it critical? Because even Congress would rebel if they actually read the bills.

That’s No Change At All.

Guest Post: George on Buggered. Really Really Buggered.

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This column responds to
Bugged. Really Really Bugged.
posted July 13. The author calls it
“purely, ideologically speculative
and opinion by Mr Poleczech.“

I have to come back here to discuss the real issue — I am persuaded that the real issue is neither about religion nor about civil rights.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is strongly opposed to same-sex marriage; and that conservative stance is directly contra to the political stance of the Democratic Party. That fact has to gall party leaders who do everything possible to woo homosexuals to the Democrat side–and keep them there.

You can well bet that Rev. Lee made his pro-gay marriage proclamation after consultation with top party leaders and with a promise of $trong $upport. If we could follow the money trail it would lead us right to my next paragraph:

This whole thing has everything to do with patching a rift in the Democratic Party by bringing that faction (the negro voting bloc) fully into the fold by supporting one of the party’s biggest priorities: placating the homosexual community.

Reverend Lee did his part by bringing it to the forefront and forcing a vote where negro Democrats will have to stand on one side of the line or the other. Either they are pro gay or not. There will be no line straddling.

Of course, the party will be relying on the ancillary support of liberal republicans and wide-eyed moderates, who would be the last to suspect disingenuous intentions by an organization of “Faith”. These helpers will gasp and take an immediate 90 degree turn and tackle the seemingly obvious — but fake — reason for all the ado. These helpers will, of course, come out on the side of homosexual civil rights with a denunciation of religious beliefs — adding additional props, when all the while the Party of Roosevelt and LBJ can stand by with a pious expression and click its tongue at those who might still have the balls to stand in opposition.

So. it’s all about solidifying the Democratic party. Nothing else.

 — George Poleczech

Independence Day

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Here’s a revolutionary idea.

Independence Day commemorates our declaration of independence from the King of England. The revolution officially began two days earlier when the Second Continental Congress approved the legal separation of the American colonies from Great Britain, a resolution proposed by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia in June. After voting for independence on June 2, Congress debated and revised the Declaration itself for two days and approved it on July 4.

In the centuries since, only the current Congress has moved with anywhere near the speed, since the current Congress has passed trillions of dollars of spending on millions of pages of bills in less than 100 days.

The Declaration of Independence fits on one page.

In Peoria just one hundred fifty-five years ago Rep. Abraham Lincoln said,

Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a “sacred right of self-government.” … Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. … Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it.

Lincoln spoke of the enslavement of persons. Today our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust by a government that would enslave We the People, taking more and more of our rights and our land and our life’s blood to its own purpose.

Two hundred thirty-one years ago today, General George Washington marked July 4 with a double ration of rum and an artillery salute for the soldiers who fought off the foreign monarchy that did enslave us. Now it is time to mark July 4 with a double ration of electoral salute to those who would be the modern monarchy of government.


Predictions

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The House passed the Obama energy and climate bill this week.

“There’s a growing awareness that we need to move on energy,” David Axelrod said on NBC’s Meet the Press today. “We’ve been waiting for decades. And this bill will create millions of clean-energy jobs. It will deal with … our dependence on foreign oil, and we have to deal with that. And it deals this deadly pollution and global warming that we have to move on.” He also admitted that “We have not broken the back of the recession” despite the January rush to pass the $787 billion emergency stimulus package.

The bill includes crap and trade as well as extensive taxes on energy use. Investor Warren Buffett called the bill “a huge tax, and there’s no sense calling it anything else … it’s a fairly regressive tax.”

There is every reason to expect the Senate to pass the Obama energy and climate bill this fall.

I predict that gas prices will exceed $6/gallon
immediately after the midterm (2010) elections.

I predict that the prime rate will exceed 12%
immediately after the 2012 elections.

Gone Fishin’ (Part II) – China dot Com

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Readers from last week will recall that Missy and Biff brought their friend Marlin along when they visited South Puffin in April. Marlin is … shadowy. He spends half his time unearthing secrets and the other half living with friends or friends of friends.

While Marlin was off chasing more spies or working on his tan, I spent the weekend with an old friend: the novel Hong Kong by former naval aviator Stephen Coonts. I am not an expert on international affairs, so my take on this story is more personal.

About a decade ago, as much as a nanosecond after Britain lost its lease to the crown colony of Hong Kong, trillions of dollars skipped to china dot com. Even more have followed from companies in which I have invested including General Motors and Rohm & Haas (now a specialty materials division of Dow Chemical). The Haas family got out of the latter in time. So did I.

Mr. Coonts wrote Hong Kong while the China honeymoon was still widespread in the press, just a couple of years after Beijing recrafted the island as the “Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.”

“Pretty good book,” Marlin said. “Back in ’96 I gave Coonts a heads up that there would be a couple of catastrophic bank failures there.”

I know I promised to dump this story, but life imitating art is too too sad to leave alone even if we are poking road kill with a stick.

“Hong Kong,” pages 30-31.
Scene setting: Rip Buckingham is the editor of a Hong Kong newspaper. Saburo Genda is President of the Bank of the Orient in Hong Kong which has closed its doors in the face of a bank run.

“What happened Mr. Genda?” Buckingham asked.

“They killed the bank.”

“They? Who is they?”

“Someone in Japan made a decision, Mr. Buckingham,” Genda said. “I don’t know who or why. The decision was to make the bank fail.”

“Make it fail? You mean allow it to fail.”

“No, sir. When the Finance Ministry seized our Japanese assets, the Ministry forced the bank to close its doors. There was no way it could stay open. They took a course of action that made the failure of the bank inevitable.”

On June 2, one day after filing for bankruptcy, GM announced that it would sell its Hummer line to China dot com. That moved the U.S. Army’s primary ground vehicle production into the hands of a foreign adversary. On June 10, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court cleared the way for Chrysler to sell out to Fiat. Nanjing Automobile Corporation is a China-based, state-owned company. It has significant ties with Fiat.

page 109.
Scene setting: Richard Buckingham owns a media empire based in Australia and is Rip’s father:

Richard Buckingham was patient. “Billy, with the Communists in power,” he said, “nothing in China is worth real money. That’s the lesson the Americans and British and Japanese are going to learn the hard way.”

As of March, 2009, China dot com owned $767.9 Billion in United States Treasury notes. China is the single largest foreign holder of treasury securities.

page 124.
Scene setting: Virgil “Tiger” Cole is an American entrepreneur and the United States consul general in Hong Kong:

“Thirty years ago,” Tiger said, “America’s liberals refused to fight for freedom in Asia — now they’re partners with the propaganda ministry of the Communist government as investors in China.com. Anything for a goddamn buck! Yeah, I’m funding a revolution…”

Marlin had caught a couple of low level “true believers,” two United States citizens spying here in the United States for Cuba. Walter and Gwendolyn Myers had stolen U. S. secrets for more than 30 years. Congress will express righteous indignation. President Obama may even shake his finger at Cuba.

Meanwhile, the Administration has fast tracked the theft of America’s biggest manufacturers.

“What do you call those who steal, then give away the entire country?” Marlin asked last week.

page 35.

“All politicians are sewer rats, not just ours.“

Marlin and Coonts and Pogo wuz right. Some people — like some fish — just stick around a day too long.

Traitors should have a shorter shelf life than fish.

“Despite all my powers, I can’t do anything about the real rats,” Marlin said.