From Reuters – describing the report of lower profits:
Companies reporting declining profits outnumbered companies posting higher profits for the sixth straight quarter. However, the rate at which profits are shrinking is slowing.
Ok, does anyone want to challenge me and claim that the last sentence would have been included if a Republican were President?
In response to “Ham-Gate“:
…the contract in question purchased 760,000 pounds of ham for $1.191 million, at a cost of approximately $1.50 per pound…
Last time my father-in-law bought a ham (he does most of our grocery shopping), it was 79 cents a pound. This is a new era in government? Can’t even get a discount on ham?
We made one heck of a huge mistake in November, my fellow Americans:
The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its once-upbeat predictions about the economy and today’s bleak landscape.
The administration’s annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama’s budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress.
The release of the update—usually scheduled for mid-July—has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town Aug. 7 on its summer recess.
The administration is pressing for votes before then on its $1 trillion health care initiative, which lawmakers are arguing over how to finance.
Anyone who defends this Administration is digging himself ever deeper in to the “sucker” hole – Obama knows his numbers are all screwed up, that his Obamacare can’t be paid for, but he wants to hide the budget numbers until after the vote…so that the numbers won’t show that passing Obamacare is national economic suicide.
Here’s the real problem – the greatest nation in human history has an inexperienced, cowardly socialist for a President…his VP is even more of an idiot, and the leaders of the House and Senate are partisan hacks. We’re stuck hoping that, some how, Clinton and Gates can keep things up on the rails until we can vote Obama and his Democrats out.
Its going to be a very, very long four years.
Here on the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing, it is appropriate that some people are debating the pros and cons of the space program.
My view is that space exploration does offer us great opportunities to expand our knowledge and to develope new technologies – on the other hand, its rather a burden which we seem to have to keep up on lest some nation over take us in space power. The “space race” of the 60′s was to get to the Moon before the Russians did; now its a race to get back to the Moon before the Chinese do. And then on to various near Earth asteroids and then Mars and beyond. I used to be a lot more enthused about this than I am now – I do wish we could just leave it to private enterprise to do whatever it wishes with space, if there’s any market for it at all. But such is not to be.
If we are to do it, then we should do it “all in”. Whatever the cost is, we should carefully plan it out so that NASA can know with precision not just what it will have in 2010, but in 2020 and 2050. Missions to the Moon, Mars and further out aren’t just planned on a note book with a pencil. They take a great deal of time and a massive amount of preparation. Give NASA a budget and then tell them to get us there, where ever “there” turns out to be.
What do you think?
To touch upon reality:
When he saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” – Matthew 5:1-12
Roger Kimbal lays in to the eulogies of the late Walter Cronkite, and Michael Jackson:
First Michael Jackson and now this. A little over a week ago, I was captive in a local car repair shop for over two hours as one absurdity after the next dribbled out from the non-stop television coverage of Michael Jackson’s funeral. A phalanx of commentators paused to reflect solemnly on Jackson’s manifold contributions to the world of pedophilia–er, I mean, to the world of pop culture.
It is possible, I’m told, for a kind-hearted person to experience pity when contemplating the wreck that was Michael Jackson’s life. But could anyone really take him seriously as an cultural figure? (His place as a cultural symptom raises a different question.) I found nausea competed heartily with irritation as the assembled news casters marshaled superlative after superlative to describe the career of someone whose entire life was a monument to voracious commercial exploitation, on the one hand, and artistic nullity fired by unstopped narcissism, on the other.
Now, apparently, we are going to be treated to the same cloacal cataract of sentimentality about Walter Cronkite. One had to have a heart of stone, said Oscar Wilde, [to] not laugh at Dickens’ account of the death of “Little Nell.” Similarly, one has to have a cast iron stomach to withstand the adulation accumulating around the name of Walter Cronkite in the aftermath of his death at 92 last week. “Hero, role model, friend” ran a typical headline. Almost all of the scores, nay, hundreds of stories about Cronkite that have appeared in the last few days solemnly cite a poll that denominated that homely, mustachioed news reader “The most trusted man in America.”
The truth is that both Cronkite and Jackson were trivial historical figures – people who will be utterly forgotten in half a century’s time. We are agog over them now because we are a society which desperately wants both lies and titillation. Cronkite gave us lies, Jackson gave us titillation and thus upon their deaths, we are bereft. We prefer lies because truth is hard, we want titillation because it allows us to pretend we’re not as bad as we are. All of us can say that we’re at least not as bad as Jackson, and we want that smooth-voiced lie because it gets us off the hook; as long as the lie is playing in our ear, we don’t have to confront reality.
Think about it – “and that’s the way it was”…as if the events of the day – complex events involving masses of people and untold preliminary events – could have been described, even in a cursory manner, in a half hour news cast. It was Cronkite – a man of limited experience and no discernible military knowledge – who pronounced our effort in Vietnam a failure right after the enemy has suffered a crushing defeat in the Tet Offensive…and yet, years later, when he was close to retirement, he was rated in a poll as the most trusted man in America. What for? Because he looked like your uncle and he was on TV and, of course, back in those days there was no blogoshere or talk radio to point out the nakedness of the Emperor.
Michael Jackson’s musical genius – yeah, right: we listen to Mozart and he’s more two centuries in his grave…who will listen to “I’m Bad” even 50 years from now? I can assure everyone that if any of our civilization survives a thousand years from now, they’ll still listen to Mozart. Michael Jackson was a freak show, and we lapped it up and cast aspersions upon him and used him (as one of dozens) to hang on to our sins so we could pretend we hadn’t any.
In Michael Jackson’s sad life and Walter Cronkite’s un-earned glory is the commentary on what is wrong with us. We must free ourselves from lies and start to deal with things as they are, and ourselves as we are.
Some centrist House Democrats have reached out to Republicans to explore breaking with their party leadership on healthcare and crafting a reform bill with the rival GOP, one congressman claimed Saturday.
Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) asserted that an “interesting development” is taking place underway that, if true, could effectively remove Democratic leadership from the driver’s seat on healthcare reform legislation in the House.
“There’s an interesting development occurring behind the scenes, wherein moderate Democrats — so-called “Blue Dog” Democrats — and business-friendly new Democrats are actually starting to have conversations with us to build a coalition from the center outward, to actually really come up with substantive and well-founded healthcare reform,” Boustany said during an appearance on Fox News. “And that’s the only way to do this.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders have moved quickly to pass a preliminary version of healthcare legislation before the August recess in Congress.
And that is part of the reason Obama, Pelosi and Reid want it done so fast – to prevent just such opposition from gaining cohesion and popular traction.
Remember, the Democrat House majority is gained by the Democrats getting centrist and conservative Democrats to win in GOP and GOP-leaning districts in 2006 and 2008 (their Senate majority is less dependent upon this, but at least 7 of the 60 Democrats are such). Such a tactic is great for getting you the committee chairmanships and getting the left all atwitter about an alleged leftward surge of the electorate, but it has the drawback of filling up your caucus with people who daren’t go along with the party leadership on most issues. Right now, these center and conservative Democrats are facing a 2010 mid-term with no anti-GOP wave at their backs and the headwinds of an increasingly toxic Democrat brand-name coupled with increasingly unpopular Obama Administration policies.
Truth be told, most of these center and conservative Democrats would have run as GOPers had there (a) been an open GOP seat to run in and (b) if the GOP brand hadn’t been so badly knocked down by the GOP Congressional spending binge. This, by the way, argues very strongly for term limits – it just does so many wonderful things: prevents the creation of “Congressman-for-Life” members; allows there to be frequent “change” without the necessity of changing the party registration of the office-holder; periodically provides a whole, new crop of Congresscritters the lobbyists haven’t figured out how to bribe, etc, etc, etc., but I digress. These center and right Democrats can fall on their swords, back Obamacare, etc and then lose very badly in 2010 – or, they can buck their party and have at least a 50/50 shot at making it through. I think they’ll buck, and buck rather hard.
What this means for the GOP is that we have the materials right in front of us to rebuild a center/right majority in the House – to effectively shut down the Obama/Pelosi/Reid socialist steam roller. We should take this opportunity, and add to it the opportunity to put up libertarian candidates of a fiscal conservative/judicial restraint variety in moderate Democrat districts, and pick off a couple score of their seats, just as they did with a lot of ours. The future looks bright – provided we can just slow down Obamunism until 2010…even at the start of the year, it will be too late, because even Democrats in relatively safe seats won’t want to go to the mat for socialism at that point.
Remember the name. Do not just go about your business as if nothing is happening out there in the world.
This hero is being held prisoner by our most deadly enemies – if we cannot effect his release, he faces torture and murder. He’s giving his all for us, and we can at least give him a thought, and a prayer.
Mark Steyn has another of his regular entries on demographics over at NRO’s The Corner, and concludes thusly:
…One can be pro- or anti-immigration but, either way, it doesn’t solve a baby bust as severe as Japan’s. Up north, Leonard Stern writes:
A nation that doesn’t replace itself becomes an aging nation, and that’s why economists are terrified. Old people no longer generate wealth, yet they require huge amounts of state support in the form of health care, pensions and other programs…
…If Canada has never really sounded the alarm about the low fertility rate, it’s because we had an antidote — immigration…
Now it turns out that the curative power of immigration was vastly overstated…
…The data show that the only way immigration could offset the declining birth rate is if Canada dismantles border controls and floods the country with well over a half million immigrants a year.
Even then, the government would need to impose rigid “age filters” to ensure that only young people are among the new arrivals.
The transformation of developed societies – either into old folks’ homes (like Japan) or semi-Islamized dystopias (like Amsterdam, Brussels, etc) – will lead, in fact, to emigration. A young German or Japanese circa 2040 will have no reason whatsoever to stay in his native land and have most of his income confiscated in a vain attempt to prop up an unsustainable geriatric welfare system. So many will leave. Where will they go? At one time the obvious answer would have been America – but Good King Barack seems determined to saddle us with the same unaffordable entitlements that have scuttled the rest of the west.
For much of the developed world, the “credit crunch”, the debt burden, and the rest are not part of a cyclical economic downturn but the first manifestations of an existential crisis.
And even immigration – supposing you encouraged it heavily and carefully ensured that only young, healthy, educated people were allowed in – is only a short-term solution as the Third World goes from baby boom to baby bust. Some Developing World nations below replacement-level fertility are: Vietnam, Algeria, China, Iran, Thailand, Cuba, Russia, Ukraine and South Korea. Mexico’s fertility rate is rapidly declining, though it is still a bit over replacement at 2.3 children per woman. India has a lower fertility rate than Israel. As we can see, it doesn’t really matter what sort of government you have nor what sort of cultural background is dominant – fertility rates are on a very, very rapid downward spiral.
Why is this?
Because the Culture of Death has taken the world by the throat. What is the Culture of Death? Well, its most notable manifestations are abortion and euthanasia but it must be kept in mind that these two things are not the disease – they are just a symptom. The disease is the materialist concept of life – that we are mere biological accidents of no great importance and thus our only real concern is our personal happiness. And some times “personal happiness” can really just boil down to “momentary convenience”. In those rapidly shrinking areas of the world where the Culture of Death hasn’t come to maturity the nations most firmly in it’s grip are assiduously exporting death and despair. Only an embrace of the Culture of Life will save us – essentially, turning back towards what God made us to be.
Unless we embrace Life, we’ll die. And don’t think it will be an easy death – it won’t just be the last latte-sipping geezer dropping dead over the final issue of the New York Times. We’ll have societal chaos – complete breakdown as the world starves for lack of people to maintain the infrastructure, and bitter fights over the remaining resources, now that we lack the people to develope any more. And the final nightmare might be a world run by Islamo-fascists, as they have birth rates that are falling at a slightly slower rate than the rest of the world’s – which means there will come a time when they simply have more young men fit to fight than everyone else does, combined.
Now, mea culpa – I, too, jumped on the bandwagon for the Culture of Death. I eschewed marriage and children in favor of selfishness and despair. I can’t undo what I’ve done – but I can (and do) encourage people to do pretty much the opposite of what I did 18-28. Get married; have children – its what we’re made for. We’re healthiest when we join together in permanent union and raise children together. It is the path of sacrifice; of love; of hope – of humanity. You might not have as nice an SUV as the DINKs down the street, but you’ll be happier, healthier and far more human.
And we must, also, undo those legislative, regulatory and judicial actions which have put government on the side of the Culture of Death. China’s “one-child” policy is just a more extreme example of, say, the United States government providing funds for birth control in high school. Its all of a piece – and all of it is an encouragement of death, slow or rapid. Our proper job is to encourage family formation and child-rearing.
Certainly worth looking in to:
A Catalan newspaper is reporting that Honduran authorities have seized computers found in the Presidential Palace belonging to deposed president Mel Zelaya. Taking a page right out of the leftist dictator’s handbook, these computers, according to the news report, contained the official and certified results of the illegal constitutional referendum Zelaya wanted to conduct that never took place. The results of this fraudulent vote was tilted heavily in Zelaya’s favor, ensuring he could go ahead and illegally change the constitution so he could remain in power for as long as he wanted to. ACORN, I’m sure, is taking notes.
This is the man that the OAS, the UN, and the Obama State Department want the Honduran people to reinstall as their leader.
The more we hear of Zelaya, the more it seems that the Honduran democracy struck a blow against a budding tyrant. And it is high time for Obama to rethink his knee-jerk support for Zelaya…and maybe apply a little bit of his non-interference to Honduras.
