The Failure of Obamunism

A good article to read on Obama’s fiscal irresponsibility, but this one line tells the tale:

For each of Obama’s years in office, the deficit is projected to be larger than any year during Bush’s terms.

Obama promised us fiscal responsibility.

I Have a Nightmare

Well, actually, I don’t – but David Kahane, speaking for liberals, has one (or, actually, quite a lot of them) over at NRO.

Side Note

Just to clarify, I don’t want anyone to die. Well, at least not quickly. Well, unless lingering in pain would be terrible, then you might want to die quickly. But, then again, we’re mostly Christians over here, so we’re cool with uniting our suffering with those of Christ on the Cross, so it might be good to live for a while, even in pain. Anyways, I don’t want you to die. No, not you, either. Look, seriously, I’m ok with people not dying. I can even say I’m 100% in favor of everyone continuing to walk around…

Thank you.

Democrats Pay Off Their Corporate Fat Cats

Eventually, we hope that rank and file liberals will realize that their leaders are akin to the leaders of the old USSR – talk a great socialist game, but live a very rich, privileged life…and they take care of their own:

Sen. Barbara Boxer’s climate bill set to be released today contains a provision that will compensate General Electric quite nicely for its lobbying and media efforts promoting climate legislation.

Section 821(c) requires that, by December 12, 2012, the EPA set standards for greenhouse gas emissions from “new aircraft and new engines used in new aircraft.”

General Electric is the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial and military jet engines, a business worth about $12 billion in annual revenues.

So the Boxer bill would compel airlines and the military, when purchasing new aircraft and new aircraft engines, to purchase more expensive “green” engines made by GE, according to standards set by the current and GE-lobbied Obama administration.

Keep in mind that GE CEO Jeff Immelt is member of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Council.

And Immelt’s MSM outfits might as well be part of the White House press office. Getting the picture, liberals? You’ve been taken for a ride – and taken for suckers. No surprise, because you are…did you really think that filthy rich, never-earned-a-penny people like Boxer, Pelosi, Kerry, Rockefeller, (the late) Ted Kennedy, etc would ever in a million years risk their own wealth and position? Or the wealth and position of their friends and donors?

Wake up.

Live in Nevada? Ever Want to Meet Me?

Well, here’s your chance.

And if you ever want to discuss/rant/chat amiably about the 2010 Nevada Senate race…here ya go.

Wednesday Open Thread

Have fun with this one – don’t feed the trolls!

Phrase of the Day

The hardest task:

Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self. – St. Francis of Assisi

Anyone Want to Live Here Forever?

The cowardly continue their search for the Fountain of Youth:

Who would have thought it? The quest for eternal life, or at least prolonged youthfulness, has now migrated from the outer fringes of alternative medicine to the halls of Harvard Medical School.

At a conference on aging held here last week, the medical school’s dean, Jeffrey Flier, was to be seen greeting participants who ranged from members of the 120 club (they intend to live at least that long) to devotees of very low calorie diets…

…“In five or six or seven years,” said Christoph Westphal, Sirtris’s other co-founder, “there will be drugs that prolong longevity.”

But neither Dr. Sinclair nor Dr. Westphal was the most optimistic person at the conference. That status belonged to the English gerontologist Aubrey de Grey, who sports a beard so luxuriant that it is hard to see if he is wearing a tie. His goal is “negligible senescence.”

Some attendees were so convinced of the virtues of less food that they have begun severe diets of various kinds. Cynthia Kenyon, of the University of California, San Francisco, said she had gone on a low-carb diet in 2002 after finding that food with even 2 percent sugar reduced the lifespan of the laboratory roundworms she studies. “Basically I try to steer clear of desserts and starches, though I do eat chocolate,” she said.

Her willowy figure makes her look at least a decade younger than her age. But a practitioner of more severe caloric restriction who was at the conference looked gaunt and a little frail.

Eat right, exercise, die anyway. Go for it – get a 1,000 year life span, if you like…what are you going to do with it? Just live and live and live…but to what purpose? Even the smartest scientist, I think, won’t get you a billion years of life…and even if he did, you’d still die because the universe, as it is, is doomed. Believe in God or believe in pure materialism, this world is gonna die. Now, believers hold that a new world will replace it – the life of the world to come. And the cost of living for ages? Being very boring – have to watch what you eat with great care, exercise with great diligence, avoid all risks…in short, live by not living.

No, thanks; I’ll keep my three score year and ten; four score if I’m a strong man. That is plenty enough for me on this world. One of my regrets in this life is that I didn’t manage to get my dad that last scotch he wanted…and one of the last things he said to me was, “I’m ready to go home”. He drained the cup of this life to the last drop, and then was ready to let it go – as a believer, of course, I hold that he’s quite a lot better off than I am now…but even if he wasn’t a believer, what would be the point of clinging to life here on earth? No matter what you do, your life here will never be that perfection you want…why stay for ages in a place you can never be fully happy with? Believe or don’t believe – its still better to exit after a reasonable amount of time.

I see a future – supposing Our Lord doesn’t return for some centuries, yet – where normal people will live to be, say, 100 (given the more common advances in health care) while a select group of doubters will fretfully cling on to life at great cost and great pain, just because they can’t bear the thought of not being here tomorrow…that they might have to go away from here, and not matter any longer on this earth.

FHA: The Next Bear Stearns/Fannie/Freddie

For all of those who think that we’re on the cusp of economic recovery:

…The agency (FHA) acknowledged this month that a new but still undisclosed HUD audit has found that FHA’s cash reserve fund is rapidly depleting and may drop below its Congressionally mandated 2% of insurance liabilities by the end of the year.

At a 50 to 1 leverage ratio, the FHA will soon have a smaller capital cushion than did investment bank Bear Stearns on the eve of its crash. Its loan delinquency rate (more than 30 days late in payments) is now above 14%, or from two to three times higher than on conventional mortgages. Its cash reserve ratio has fallen by more than two-thirds in three years.

The reason for this financial deterioration is that FHA is underwriting record numbers of high-risk mortgages. Between 2006 and the end of next year, FHA’s insurance portfolio will have expanded to $1 trillion from $410 billion. Today nearly one in four new mortgages carries an FHA guarantee, up from one in 50 in 2006.

And this bonanza of sub-prime (because that’s what it is) underwriting has been happening as the economy gets worse and housing prices drop! The only thing which can save FHA from a collapse is if housing prices start to rise in California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida. As an aside, there’s a house a few miles from mine for sale…2800 sq feet, big lot, very nice pool…a bit run down by the foreclosed former residents, but nothing a bit of spackle and paint can’t cure. Its listed for $138,000.00. My house is 2,200 sq feet on small lot with no pool…I bought it for $396,000.00 in 2005. Think housing prices in Vegas are on the mend?

Its all going to come flying apart, sooner or later – and I suspect sooner than later, but I could be wrong. Main thing: don’t buy the upcoming Obama/MSM (I know, same/same) mantra about recovery we’re about to get over the next few months. Its bogus.

Is ACORN Responsible for "Senator" Franken?

Hmmm…

Did ACORN chicanery elect Al Franken? That’s the import of this tactfully phrased Minneapolis Star Tribune column.** Franken won by 312 votes. ACORN claimed to have registered 48,000 new Minnesota voters. If just 1% were ineligible but cast ballots, or had ballots cast for them illegally, and survived the recount process … that’s 480 votes, almost certainly overwhelmingly cast for Franken. … Maybe in pristine Minnesota even ACORN is clean. If so, the state would apparently be an outlier. …

And that is the point, dear liberals – no one thinks that ACORN created millions of votes to overwhelmingly win…but by their fraud, they can create just enough votes to allow a Democrat to win in a squeeker. That is how voter fraud works, ya know? Oh. I didn’t realize. Sorry, I thought everyone knew that. Well, lets take a look at this:

In 1948, Texas Governor Coke Stevenson ran for a U.S. Senate seat against Texas Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson:

“Early indications were that Congressman Johnson had lost. Six days later, however, Precinct 13 in the border town of Alice, Texas, showed a very interesting result. Exactly 203 people had voted at the last minute — in the order they were listed on the tax rolls — and 202 of them had voted for Johnson.

Trying to manufacture a lot of votes to turn a big loser in to a winner is (a) nearly impossible and (b) might spark a revolution. But when its really, really close…as long as you have the guts to try, officials who are willing to be complicit or at least turn a blind eye, and an MSM which is on your side, it can be done. Democrats have always done this – and I mean going back to the foundations of the party in the early 19th century. Ask anyone of an old, Irish-Catholic family and you’ll get some stories…

Democrats did this in Washington State in 2004, attempted it in Florida in 2000 and, very likely, pulled it off again in Minnesota in 2008. It seems there were many tens of thousands – and perhaps hundreds of thousands – more votes than voters in Minnesota in 2008. Almost certainly, fraud was perpetrated and while it might have just run up Obama’s big win, it seems to have been just enough to pull Franken over the finish line.

This is why we need to have stricter controls on voting – picture IDs, period purging of the rolls (preferably every 4th year), heavy (life terms?) penalties for voter fraud…even if its just telling someone to go out and get fraudulent registrations. The only legitimacy our government has is because of the voters – if the vote becomes tainted and people lose faith in the democratic system, then its all over for the American republic. Voter fraud is, in many respects, treason – and it should be treated as such.

UPDATE: Yes, should I ever be in a position to do so, I’ll try to have the 2008 Minnesota result looked in to.