There are many lessons to be learned from the riots in Greece. The obvious lesson is it is much easier to hand out government largess in good times than it is to take it away in bad times. But there is another less obvious lesson that we should keep in mind as the Democrats punish oil companies and push for high speed rails.
Our freedom depends on free travel…free as in no restrictions. The unions in Greece have gone on strike. Image a majority of Americans depended on trains to get to work. The strike by train operators would effect business and individuals who were just trying to provide for the families. Trains make the people dependent on union workers.
That’s a place I hope to never be.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Labor and Unions on June 30th, 2011
President Obama and the Democrats say the we could have a catastrophe if the debt ceiling is not raised. With an emergency on hand, the President called a press conference yesterday to whine that the Republicans weren’t “leading”.
Now think back to 2008…when we really did have a financial emergency. President Bush went right to work. He sat down with leaders from both parties, he listened and he persuaded. In the end, he got TARP passed in a very short time.
Now you may have not liked TARP, but you can’t say that Bush didn’t show leadership. Bush knew how to lead. Obama can’t even fake it.
In the 70′s, the population bomb was liberal scare of the moment. Kind of like “global warming” is today. I once saw John Lennon tell Dick Cavett that over population wasn’t a problem, so this revelation (if true) doesn’t really surprise me.
John Lennon was a closet Republican, who felt a little embarrassed by his former radicalism, at the time of his death – according to the tragic Beatles star’s last personal assistant.
What is even more appalling is that Bachman’s error wasn’t even that bad.
She was in Waterloo, Iowa when she invoked the Duke, who was born 3 hours away.
How could she be so stupid? Any fool could see how that serious error was highlighted while the Commander and Chief not realizing a medal of honor winner was dead was ignored.
You know, it’s … we’re ready, you know. Our children, you know, could care less about what we’re doing. We work hard to do that. Fortunately, we have help from the media. I have to say this: I’m very grateful for the support and kindness that we’ve gotten. People have respected their privacy and in that way, I think, you know, no matter what people may feel about my husband’s policies or what have you, they care about children and that’s been good to see.
Today, George Stephanopoulos warned Michelle Bachman:
I think one of the most impressive things that people find in your background is the fact that you and your husband have helped raise 23 foster children and I know you want to shield them but are they prepared and are you prepared for the loss of privacy that comes with the president campaign? And is that something you are concerned about for them?
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society — the farmers, mechanics, and laborers — who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.
Andrew Jackson
In 1835, Andrew Jackson paid off the entire national debt.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in President,Quotes on June 28th, 2011
The Environmental Working Group has put out a list of fruits and vegetables called the “Dirty Dozen” that have the highest levels if pesticide residue. They are trying to scare you into buying organic products.
As always, a group dedicated to saving the environment will not only cost you more money if you listen to them, but they will hurt the environment.
How did I get there?
According to Sam Vance (who has a food science degree from Ohio State), you would have to eat 133,951 servings of celery per day for the pesticide residue to harm you…and that is the worst case scenario. The other items on the list are a slightly more dangerous, but that’s a pretty low hurdle.
Organic foods are more expensive than the mass distributed alternatives. (Aren’t all foods organic?) So I think it is safe to say that avoiding these trace toxins will cost you more money…but hurt the environment?
Yes, it would hurt the environment if everyone switched to Organic foods. For one, organic farms get far less yield per acre than traditional farms. Less yield means more land is required to grow the same amount of food. In addition to the extra land use is the extra fuel required to grow it. It takes more diesel to plow more land, and for all you global warming nuts…more waste means more methane. Methane contributes far more to global warming than does the non-pollutant carbon dioxide.
So if traces of pesticides worry you, feel free to buy organic foods, but spare me the lecture on how you are saving the Earth.
Apparently, President Obama has a new, lofty opinion of himself after the Bin Laden raid which he so bravely watched on TV.
In the first two years of Obama’s presidency, his top aides had grown accustomed to a process in which Obama drew out and explored the views of his full team and searched for a consensus — decision by ballot, some called it.
Increasingly, however, that process has changed, according to a wide group of Obama’s personal friends, informal advisors and top aides interviewed during the spring. In recent months, they say, the president has been relying more heavily on his own instincts and feeling less impelled to seek accord among advisors…read more
Jim Geraghty quips:
Finally, President Obama – author of two memoirs by the age of 45, speaker of the famous argument, “I won,” the man who famously assured his party that they wouldn’t endure a 1994-style shellacking because they had him, the man who gave an iPod of his speeches to the Queen of England, the man who claimed his election would trigger the falling of oceans and the healing of the sick, the man who believed the best candidate to be his chief of staff was himself – has overcome all of that crippling self-doubt…read more
Should we expect more Obamanomics…more Obama-styled social justice…more leading from behind? God help us.
This NY Timees guy says something completely stupid by saying Midwesterners are stupid. Sure…he phrased it as an academic might say it, but that doesn’t make it smart. This affliction seems to be going around, particularly in Washington D.C.
If it’s Kansas, Missouri, no big deal. You know, that’s the dance of the low-sloping foreheads. The middle places, right? …Did I just say that aloud?” – David Carr, NY Times
As I have said for a long time, arrogance and incompetence is a deadly mix.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Liberal Bias on June 27th, 2011
The tea parties started just over 2 years ago. People took to the streets after massive bailouts and outrageous spending. The Tea Party message was simple. Big government and high taxes are a threat to our freedom that we cherish.
Liberals fought back. They took to the air waves (which they pretty much own) to mock the tea partiers. They said taxes had not been raised and that the Tea Parties were thinly veiled racist gatherings.
No. The Tea Partiers saw the writing the wall. They knew massive spending would be followed up with massive tax hikes when the debt was out of control.
Fast forward to the current battle in Washington. Only the most ridiculous lefty argues that we aren’t going broke. Everyone knows the government is out of money and we are on an unsustainable path. Republican (fearing the backlash of the Tea Parties) are holding fast to the idea of cost cuts while maintaining the current tax rates. Democrats aren’t budging. They want to increase revenues by increasing taxes.
Just for the sake of argument…let’s forget that raising tax rates does not mean raising revenue.
It should be pointed out that the Tea Parties were right. They saw it coming. The phrase “tax and spend liberal” can now be replaced with “spend and tax liberals”. That’s what Barack Obama likes to call change.
Did the talking heads who belittled the common folk at the Tea Parties knowingly disparage small government message even though they knew higher taxes would soon be coming…or are the pompous wind bags of the main stream media too dumb to see what was so obvious to everyone else. One thing is for sure. The main stream media won’t go back now and highlight their folly. I guess connecting the dots is what bloggers are for.
Back in 2003, Hillary Clinton scolded the Bush Administration for her perception that they were questioning her patriotism.
I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you’re not patriotic. We should stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration.
The government has released disturbing images trying to get the public to stop smoking. Forget the disturbing images. If you want people to stop, have Joe Biden appeal to their sense of patriotism. Just think how well his “paying taxes is patriotic” line went over.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in photoshopped on June 22nd, 2011
Mara Hvistendahl has written a book, Unnatural Selection, detailing the consequences of sex-selective abortions. Since the late 1970s, 163 million female babies have been aborted by parents seeking sons. Read the Wall Street Journal review.
Nature yields a boy-to-girl ratio of about 105 boys for every 100 girls. The advent of technologies that detect the sex of an unborn baby and the wide spread use of abortion has led to skewed sex ratios around the globe. This messing with nature has yielded many unintended consequences.
Cultures with abnormally high boy to girl ratios tend to be more violent
Girls are often sold into prostitution when the bot to girl ratio is un-natural.
Here’s my favorite
(Ms. Hvistendahl) will use sex-selective abortion as part of a wider war on abortion itself. She believes that something must be done about the purposeful aborting of female babies or it could lead to “feminists’ worst nightmare: a ban on all abortions.”
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Abortion on June 21st, 2011
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