Liberalism At Work: Get Ready For $50 Light Bulbs (And No, I’m NOT Kidding)

Remember those nifty little  incandescent light bulbs?  They actually worked.  Democrats HATE things that actually work.  So they banned them.

Their claim was that within a few years “green technology” would work its magic and we’d have better energy-saving alternatives in no time.

Well, the ban Democrats imposed will soon go into effect.  And now you can choose between a CFL light bulb laden with incredibly poisonous mercury, or an LED bulb that a) doesn’t actually produce light (which really should kind of be the whole purpose of a light bulb, shouldn’t it?) and b) are shockingly expensive.

I think about the idiocy of making an “environmentally-friendly” “green light bulb” out of mercury – one of the most deadly environmental poisons in the world – and I have to laugh.  But as amazingly stupid as that is, it is EXACTLY what liberals do as a matter of routine.  Think of the additive MTBE  goverment forced oil companies to add to gasoline to clean the air; it had one tiny unforeseen effect of poisoning the ground water.  Who but a liberal could possibly be that stupid?  Then there’s the whole ethanol thing, where we are literally burning food as fuel even as we face food shortages and people are starving.  Again, liberals love to depict themselves as the ones who “care.”  But they don’t actually give one freaking damn about the people they falsely claim to care about.  There was the government-imposed ban on DDT due to what we now know to have been totally bogus pseudo-leftwing-“science,” which has caused more than 30 million people to die who didn’t have to.  Then of course there is the whole global warming hoax where leftwing ideologues were paid huge grant money awards to hype a nonexistent disaster.  And the leftist bureaucrats who paid them that grant money are hoping to get trillions and trillions of dollars in forced economic redistribution as their reward.  And it really doesn’t matter that Mother Earth keeps giving global warming alarmists the very, very, VERY cold shoulder.

Putting liberals in charge of the environment is as stupid as, well, putting liberals in charge of anything.

Here’s what you win for having voted for Democrats in 2006 and allowing them to take control of both the House and the Senate (in addition to the financial implosion that resulted from their policies):

100-Watt LED Bulbs Set To Enter Market
Posted on: Tuesday, 17 May 2011, 09:53 CDT

With 100 watt light bulbs soon to be extinct, manufacturers are set to release an equivalent wattage of LED bulb to replace them, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

In 2007, Congress passed a law mandating that bulbs producing 100 watts worth of light meet certain efficiency goals starting in 2012. The basic design of the incandescent bulb has not changed much in the last century and wastes most of its energy as heat, especially the higher-wattage variety.

The LED bulbs will cost about $50 each and will likely go on sale next year, after the government ban takes effect.

Creating good alternatives to 100-watt bulbs has proven challenging to the lighting industry. The new bulbs have to fit into fixtures designed for older technology.

Compact fluorescents are an obvious replacement, but have flaws. Containing a small amount of toxic mercury vapor which is released if they break or are improperly thrown away, they are technically a health hazard and very few people dispose of them properly. Brighter models are bulky and may not fit in existing fixtures.

Hmmm.  Pay $50 for a light bulb or sit in the dark while you freeze thanks to Democrat’s equally stupid energy policies???

Or there’s a third option: another Republican tidal wave that will allow conservatives to overturn this brain-dead ban.

I’ve been forced to buy some of these “green” bulbs.  They were advertised to last so many tens of times longer.  That turned out to be just as big of a load of crap as just about every other Democrat promise I’ve heard.

Jobless Claims Rise ‘Unexpectedly’: Don’t Make This A Drinking Game Or You’ll Die

The mainstream media have made sure the word of the 2nd decade of the 21st century will be “unexpected.”  With “unexpectedly the top adverb.

I liked Indylindy’s take on the following story best:

Silly people, don’t you know the whole nation was healed last night? Who gives a damn if we have jobs?

We have Barry. /sarc

From Reuters:

Instant View: Jobless claims jump most in 6 months
NEW YORK | Thu Jan 13, 2011 9:03am EST

(Reuters) – U.S. jobless claims jumped unexpectedly last week to their highest level since October, suggesting the labor market is still in a rut despite signs of improvement in the economy.

The U.S. trade deficit narrowed unexpectedly in November as exports climbed to the highest level in more than two years, government data showed on Thursday.

U.S. producer prices rose more than expected in December as energy and food costs surged while underlying inflation remained subdued, highlighting a divergence that complicates the outlook for monetary policy.

KEY POINTS: * The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits rose to 445,000 from an upwardly revised reading of 410,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said. * It was the biggest one-week jump in about six months, confounding analyst forecasts for a small drop to 405,000. * A Labor Department official noted the rebound occurred following the holidays, which may have hindered reporting of new claims and created a backlog. * The trade gap dipped to $38.3 billion from $38.4 billion in October, the Commerce Department reported. * Analysts surveyed before the report had expected the November trade deficit to widen slightly to $40.5 billion from October’s originally reported $38.7 billion. * November’s deficit was the lowest since January 2010. * Prices at the wholesale level climbed 1.1 percent after a 0.8 percent rise in November, the Labor Department said. * Economists had been looking for a repeat of that 0.8 percent advance in December. * Inflation excluding food and energy, however, rose just 0.2 percent, in line with forecasts. That left the year-on-year gain in core producer prices at 1.3 percent, just below analyst estimates.

If you are playing a drinking game using the word “unexpectedly” please stop immediately.  Because your liver will never last the final two years of the Obama presidency.

“U.S. jobless claims jumped unexpectedly…“

Drink…

And yes, I mean your Kool Aid has been spiked.

Another factor that isn’t getting anywhere nearly enough media coverage is inflation.  As the economy continues to falter under Obama’s failed policies, those unemployed people are facing higher and higher food and fuel prices.

Conservatives were saying throughout the 2008 campaign that “hope and change” were never concretely defined.  Well, two years into Obama, you get to see what “hope” and “change” looks like.  Still liking it?

If you voted for Obama, you deserve to starve in the dark and cold.  It’s those poor suckers who opposed his regime who are now suffering its effects anyway that I pity.

Democrats and mainstream media “journalists” continue to “blame Bush” for the fact that the unemployment rate increased 34.2% from when Bush left office under Obama’s watch.  Their demagogic “Don’t blame us for our policies” rhetoric reminds one of the old communist Soviet Union, whose miserable agricultural performance was attributed to 72 years of bad weather.

The mainstream media has no intention whatsoever of being objective or honest when it comes to covering the results of Obama’s economic policies.  When Republicans are running things, even good news is depicted as bad news, with stories about fears of what could happen, but whenever a Democrat is in charge, even the very worst news must be wrapped in some sort of positive context.

The “unexpected” is “expectedly unexpected” once you learn the constant bait-and-switch games the media plays to the Democrat White House’s fiddling tune.

Last month, when there would have been your usual Christmas hiring.  But the media didn’t point out that the unemployment rate reflected 1) a very temporary blip due to phenomena such as Christmas hiring followed by New Years layoffs, and 2) the even more frightening fact that the rate was mostly impacted by people who were so discouraged they’d stopped looking for work:

But the job growth fell short of expectations based on a strengthening economy. And the drop in unemployment was partly because people stopped looking for work. […]

But other factors can affect the unemployment rate, at least temporarily. One key reason for the drop was that the government no longer counts people as unemployed when they stop looking for work.

But the only thing that mattered to most mainstream media organizations was that that way-too-close-to-10% number went down from 9.7% to 9.4%.  And that favored Obama.  So they went out and sang songs of rejoicing about it.

It would have been quite easy to put a Republican spin on that employment story of December: Republicans win the biggest victory since 1928, and all of a sudden the unemployment rate takes a huge drop as businesses realize that there will be somebody to stop a president and Democrat Party out to destroy businesses.  But I’m not like the mainstream media: I don’t delete any of my stories, and people actually hold me responsible in comments.  And I held off on pimping the good job numbers because I was pretty sure that the “good” unemployment statistic was nothing more than a temporary blip that was being pimped by liberals.

‘You Better Not Be Praying Over There, Grandma,’ Big Brother Obama Says

God damn America.  God damn America.  God damn America.  God damn America.  GOD DAMN AMERICA:

Via Publius Forum:

Big Brother says elderly visitors to federally funded meals at a Georgia senior citizen’s center aren’t allowed to pray to that absurd, dangerous Christian God of theirs. Obama’s Big Brother government contends that since it has paid for their meals the government has the right to slam its iron boot heel down on the necks of those seasoned citizens that dare to engage in such an apostasy toward the state.  Seem absurd? Well it is but that is what happens when the feds roll into town and begin to hand out money. They feel the right to dictate what everyone is allowed or not allowed to do and in the case of Port Wentworth’s Ed Young Senior Citizens Center near Savannah that is to tell these old folks that they are not allowed to pray before a meal.

There are federal “guidelines” to observe, after all and the federal government’s rules say none of that ridiculous Christian stuff will go on if the feds supply even a penny of funding. Old folks that want to pray are banned from doing so and if they don’t like it, why they can go hungry because the new Uncle Sam is a crusader against religion.

Well, at least one religion, anyway.

You see, while Obama’s federal government is ever ready to get tough with Georgia’s elderly and to put a stop to all that praying nonsense, it is also the same government that at federal expense is installing ritual footbaths in airports and universities to mollify Muslims. Not only that but the same federal government sees no reason to stop bombers from easily boarding planes so that they can make an escape to a foreign nation after a failed attempt to kill untold hundreds of Americans. But damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead to prevent those dangerous old folks in the middle of Georgia from daring to pray to that subversive Christian God!

The nerve of those elderly Americans daring to observe their Christian cultural heritage, a heritage that helped build this country. It’s an outrage, don’t you think? So, it’s freedom from religion as far as Obama’s government is concerned. I mean these old folks are probably as dangerous to the state as can be! Thank Gaia that Obama is quashing their subversive activities.

Praise be it to the state, thanks be to The One, and pass the potatoes. The Obammessiah shall provide all our wants. But, remind me… has he walked on water yet?

How did it come to this?

It wasn’t always this way.  Look how we got our start toward greatness from the most desperate of beginnings:

What is this painting about?

The picture you see here was painted to recall that winter of 1777-78, at the lowest, most hopeless and discouraging time in our revolutionary war. For the struggling Americans had been defeated by the mighty British army in battle after battle, and were fast losing all hope. It was at such a time that General Washington humbly beseeched his God for the strength and the resolution to endure…  The Prayer at Valley Forge” was painted to serve the cause of liberty, to remind Americans of the deep spiritual roots of our beloved country, to recall a place of cold, and pain and sacrifice, to pay tribute to the tall and lonely man who alone held the struggling nation together, General Washington, driven to his knees there in the bitter snows of Valley Forge.

And now the president of God damn America won’t even allow senior citizens to thank their God for their meal.

I wrote an article the night Obama took the election.  I wouldn’t change a word of it: “Obama Wins!  God Damn America!”

Obama said he’d transform America.  And he has.  Now it’s a country where American high school boys can’t wear the colors of the American flag in a public high school even as hundreds of Latinos wear the colors of the Mexican flag all around them.  Now it’s a country where senior citizens can’t pray in the name of Jesus while public money is used to erect Muslim footbaths.  Now it’s a country that seeks a “regime change” in Israel, a country that seeks to strip nuclear weapons from Israel, even as Obama praised the “robust debate” that led to the sham Ahmadinejad victory and meekly allows Iran to develop nuclear weapons.  Now it’s a country in which Barack Obama pisses away $862 billion dollars and only 6% of the American people think it did any good.  Now it’s a country in which an increase in unemployment to 9.9% and an increase in the broader U-6 Unemployment rate is “very encouraging.”

God damn America is a place where wrong is right, and right is wrong.

It certainly isn’t a place where a defeated and desperate general – driven to his knees in the midst of a losing war against an empire so powerful that the sun never set on it – would be able to pray a prayer that would rock the world.  That’s not the kind of “change” that would be tolerated today.

‘Give Us Free Healthcare’; ‘You OWE us America’; We Will Shoot More Police

The media that demonized peaceful tea parties and focused on liberal plants seemed to somehow miss this Latino protester:

“Give Us Free Health Care.”

“Give Us Free Jobs.”

“Give Us Free House[s].”

“Give Us Free Food.”

“No Taxes.”

“You OWE Us America!”

“We will Shoot More Police In Arizona Until We Get Free!”

Kind of makes your jaw drop, but at least he’s honest.  It’s exactly what this crowd wants; they’re just mostly too smart to admit it.

The left tried to organize bogus plants to demonize the tea party movement.  That’s just the kind of hostile-to-truth demagogic vermin they are.  And tea party protesters made sure to point out the plants bearing irrational and hateful signs.

Nobody at the Pro-Illegal Immigration rallies seemed to feel the need to distance themselves from this quivering pile of slime, though.  He’s the real deal.

What we have is an accurate and honest statement of anti-Arizona law values, in a single nutjob I mean nutshell.

But that’s hardly the only blatantly obvious example of open-borders pro-illegal immigration Latino protest.  Check out this video of a Latino high school teacher who was a featured speaker at a protest at UCLA:

Quote:

“We are revolutionary Mexican organization here. We understand that this is not just about Mexico. It’s about a global struggle against imperialism and capitalism… At the forefront of this revolutionary movement is La Raza. We will no longer fall for these lies called borders.”

“La Raza” means “The Race.”  As in the REAL racists in the Arizona law situation.  You can go ahead and support this racist communist clown who wants to bring the greatest nation in the history of the planet down to ruin.  Or you can stand with the people of Arizona who are beyond fed up with this crap.

Let’s not forget to give Barack Obama honorable mention in all of this garbage.  Him and his Marxist, racist, anti-American, “God-damn-America!” preacher Jeremiah Wright were at the forefront of it.

Update, May 15: I corrected an error (that Ron Gochez is a Santee High School teacher speaking at a UCLA rally rather than a UCLA professor).  But I have more to offer about Ron Gochez.  His remarks continue on their violent and seditious path with this:

This lunatic who still teaches public high school students calls police “apes of repression,” calls Los Angeles “occupied territories of Mexico,” and speaks frequently of revolution and racism.

Update, June 30, 2010: There’s a new death-threatening outrage from the pro-illegal immigration side that you might also want to consider.  In that article, I also deal with just how totally out-of-control the border situation truly is.

Bush Katrina Economy Obama Haiti Economy

Yesterday on ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos substitute host Jake Tapper interviewed Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.  Bush could not have been more gracious in praising Obama’s relief efforts.

In other words, he didn’t try to do to Obama what Obama and the Democrats so viciously did to him.

And I couldn’t help but wonder: if Democrats believed their own crap about Bush and Katrina, why on earth would they be asking George Bush to lead an effort for Haitian relief now?

It has now been six days since the earthquake that destroyed Haiti.  Obama promised an unprecedented massive effort to provide emergency relief.

Has it been organized well?

From USA Today:

WASHINGTON — The U.S. relief effort after the Haiti earthquake started too slowly and cautiously, says a retired general who led the military relief effort on the Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

“The next morning after the earthquake, as a military man of 37 years service, I assumed … there would be airplanes delivering aid, not troops, but aid,” said retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who coordinated military operations after disaster struck the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005. “What we saw instead was discussion about, ‘Well we’ve got to send an assessment team in to see what the needs are.’ And anytime I hear that, my head turns red.”

The problem, Honore told USA TODAY, is that the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, instead of the military, take the lead in international disaster response.

“I was a little frustrated to hear that USAID was the lead agency,” he said. “I respect them, but they’re not a rapid deployment unit.”

USAID immediately dispatched an assessment team and search-and-rescue teams, but there has still not been widespread distribution of food or water, three days after the Haiti earthquake.

Let’s file that as a ‘no’.

Very little in the way of actual lifesaving supplies had gone out as of the time of that article.  Has that situation improved?

Yesterday, ABC’s Tapper pointed out:

“But it’s five days later, and still a lot of the relief effort, a lot of the aid has not gotten to the people who need it most.”

An exchange between Tapper and Raddatz:

So how about it, Martha? Is the relief effort getting to those who need it most?

RADDATZ: Well, we actually went with a convoy, one truckload of supplies yesterday. We arrived really early in the morning, expecting to track this truck, come back, and go out with another truck. It took us five-and-a-half hours to get these supplies where they were needed.

General Keen, the military commander, said that 70,000 bottles of water and 130,000 food rations had been handed out Saturday – four days after the disaster!  70,000 bottles of water for 3.5 MILLION people in need.  They needed 10 million bottles of water a day.

Let’s file that as another big ‘no.’

How many days did Bush get before Democrats hatefully and viciously attacked him?

Well, are they at least providing security for the relief supplies yet to come?

Another exchange during the ABC program between Jake Tapper and Martha Raddatz:

TAPPER: Speaking of chaos, Martha, we keep hearing about reports of sporadic violence. Where is the U.S. military in all this? Are they making attempts to secure the island?

RADDATZ: Absolutely not, Jake. They really aren’t. I keep hearing these numbers. There are about 4,200 American military supporting this mission, but mostly they’re out on the ships. They’re on the cutters. You’ve got the 82nd Airborne, not all of the 82nd Airborne, a brigade, about 3,500 soldiers are here. They’re expected to be here sometime next week. The Marines are not yet here, 2,200 Marines.

Jake Tapper pointed out to the US military commander for the region, General Keen, that:

General Keen, I’d like to go to you first. Martha Raddatz just reported that U.S. troops are not out there securing Haiti, even though there are sporadic outbursts of violence, some of them horrific. We heard a report of — in Petionville, a suburb of Port- au-Prince, a policeman handed over a suspected looter to an angry crowd. They stripped him, beat him, and set him on fire. We’ve also heard that some medical personnel are clearing the area because they don’t feel secure.

Sounds like another rather big ‘no’ vote.

I think I’ve amply proven the case that a week after the Haiti disaster a great deal separates what has been done from what could have been done.  I can’t help but remember how bitterly the left attacked Bush for the same failures following an unprecedented natural disaster.

This is what liberals would be saying about Barack Obama if they weren’t hypocrites: Barack Obama hates black people!!!  Barack Obama is creating a genocide of black people!!!

And Republican elected officials, if they were like Democrats, would be claiming accusing the Obama administration of “ethnic cleansing” in Haiti.

Because that’s how loathsome Democrats rolled just a few years back.  And yes, that’s right: the same Democrats who regard any criticism of Barack Obama as a form of blasphemy.

I was pointing that out last year during the Democrat National Convention when Democrats were STILL demonizing and demagoguing Bush for Hurricane Katrina.

The left ignored the fact that Hurricane Katrina was a supermassive disaster that simply overwhelmed the resources of the federal government regardless of who was in charge of it.  They ignored the fact that Bill Clinton hadn’t prepared New Orleans for such a disaster any better than George Bush did.  They ignored the fact that the heavily Democratic city of New Orleans and state of Louisiana had utterly failed to prepare, when such preparation should have been at the very core of their agenda.  They ignored details such as this:

The vultures of the venomous left are attacking on two fronts, first that the president didn’t do what the incompetent mayor of New Orleans and the pouty governor of Louisiana should have done, and didn’t, in the early hours after Katrina loosed the deluge on the city that care and good judgment forgot. Ray Nagin, the mayor, ordered a “mandatory” evacuation a day late, but kept the city’s 2,000 school buses parked and locked in neat rows when there was still time to take the refugees to higher ground. The bright-yellow buses sit ruined now in four feet of dirty water.

They ignored everything but their ideological agenda and the political axe-to-grind they had in their hands to swing at George Bush with.

And the propagandistic mainstream media helped them do it.

The same media that basically demanded that George Bush push a button and FIX New Orleans have gone out of their way to make excuses for the numerous failures in Haiti under Obama.

What is funny is that it was largely the attacks against Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina that led to the Democrat takeover of the House and the Senate in 2006.

Unemployment was 4.7% when the Democrats took over Congress.  It was 4.7% when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid assumed their respective majority leadership positions.  They have been in control of Congress ever since: and what is unemployment at now?

The Democrat Party/lamestream media narrative is that Bush was responsible for the economic meltdown because it happened during his watch.  There was never once a mention that it happened during Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s watch.  Because that particular narrative doesn’t fit their agenda.

George Bush called for reform of the housing finance market 17 times in 2008 alone — and Democrats ignored him.  They had been blocking his every effort to prevent disaster ever since Bush first tried to do so beginning in 2003.  At that time, Democrat Barney Frank led the effort to block reform, saying:

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

George Bush and John McCain repeatedly warned that if we didn’t address the situation, we would suffer a financial collapse.

John McCain wrote an urgent letter in 2006 that read:

These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform. For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs—and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO’s report this week does nothing to ease these concerns.

In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay. I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

John McCain signed another letter that ended with these words:

With the fiscal challenges facing us today (deficits, entitlements, pensions and flood insurance), Congress must ask itself who would actually pay this debt if Fannie or Freddie could not?

Substantial testimony calling for improved regulation of the GSEs has been provided to the Senate by the Treasury, Federal Reserve, HUD, GAO, CBO, and others. Congress has the opportunity to recommit itself to the housing mission of the GSEs while at the same time making sure the GSEs operate in a manner that does not expose our financial system, or taxpayers, to unnecessary risk. It is vitally important that Congress take the necessary steps to ensure that these institutions benefit from strong and independent regulatory supervision, operate in a safe and sound manner, and are primarily focused on their statutory mission. More importantly, Congress must ensure that the American taxpayer is protected in the event either GSE should fail. We strongly support an effort to schedule floor time this year to debate GSE regulatory reform.

And they DID fail.  They massively, massively failed.

Only about a month before the whole system crashed, Barney Frank went on the record and said this:

REP. BARNEY FRANK, D-MASS.: “I think this is a case where Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under. They’re not the best investments these days from the long-term standpoint going back. I think they are in good shape going forward.”

They sure were, you fat, miserable, loathsome, obscene, disgusting, slobbering, lying toad.

The top three headlines under the Google search “Fannie Mae collapse”:

Freddie, Fannie Scam Hidden in Broad Daylight

Financial Markets Reeling from Fannie & Freddie Collapse and Evitable Government Bailout

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Too big not to fail

But as our economy exploded along with the boondoggle housing finance market artificially sustained by Fannie and Freddie, the Democrats demagogued the Republicans.  And the lamestream media duly reported it as though it were all the liberal’s-god-socialist-big-government’s truth.

And thus you see how the liberal demagoguery surrounding Hurricane Katrina led to the liberal demagoguery surrounding the economic collapse.

And it just never stops.

The Obama White House has been rather shamelessly politicizing the Haitian earthquake disaster to bolster up its low support.

And even when Obama abandons Haiti to go to Massachusetts to prop up Democrat Martha Coakley’s failing candidacy, Democrats manage to demagogue over Haiti.

Bill Clinton, the Obama-appointed special envoy for Haiti, didn’t bother to go there, but focused on what was far more important: Martha Coakely’s election bid in Massachusetts.

Someone asked Bill Clinton about that, and he said that relief for Haiti and the election of Martha Coalkey in Massachusetts were “just two sides of the same coin.” The blatant and breathtaking politicization is mindboggling!!!

What would the mainstream media be saying about Republican George Bush literally turning his back on a disaster to fly north to Massachusetts to campaign for a Republican – bringing us special envoy to Haiti to do so with him – rather than turn south to deal with the Haiti disaster?  What would these demagogues who deceitfully call themselves “journalists” have said?

Even if you’re a liberal, you’re not stupid enough to realize that the media would have unleashed hell on earth to attack George Bush for such a partisan political act of abandonment.

And that’s what I’m really getting at.  The double standard between treatment of Democrats and Republicans is so massive it is positively unreal.  Obama can screw up every which way and the media will let it pass; Bush could hit a homerun and the media would declare it a foul ball and then attack him for his incredibly poor swing.

Meanwhile, of course, millions of Haitians are suffering, and not getting helped.

Just as millions of Americans are suffering, and not getting helped.

Meanwhile, the news media largely continues to spin the economy positively, even as more jobs were lost under Obama in 2009 than for any president in any year since 194o.

Update January 29:

HUMAN TRAFFICKING, FOOD RIOTS AND LACK OF MEDICINE PLAGUE HAITI
John G. Winder , The Cypress Times
Published 01/29/2010 – 10:28 a.m. CST

Mass graves. Tent cities.More than 90% of the nation’s structures damaged or destroyed. No food.Amputees and orphans left to fend for themselves.  Nearly all of the businesses gone.  No employment.  Yet it still gets worse for the people of Haiti.

Haiti’s Prime Ministery, Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN that he is receiving reports of children being stolen and trafficked as slaves, sex slaves and for the purpose of having their organs harvested to be sold.

“There is organ trafficking for children and other persons also, because they need all types of organs,” Bellerive said.

UNICEF is also reporting that children are being taken from hospitals by traffickers.

Had this happened under George Bush, with these results, the lamestream media would be attacking Bush as the most evil man since Hitler and the most incompetent buffoon since God created incompetent buffoons.

Just pointing out the obvious truth.

Pravda Takes A Look At The New Marxist America – And Laughs Hysterically

This piece that appeared in the Russian and formerly communist Pravda is worth a read:

The American Self Immolation, Truly a Sight to See

19.10.2009      Source: Pravda.Ru

As my readers know, I am a fan of economics and of history, as well as politics, a combination that forms some very interesting cycles to research, discuss and argue on. None is so interesting than the death of great nations, for here there is always the self destruction that comes before the final breakups and invasions. As they say: Rome did not fall to the barbarians, all they did was kick in the rotting gates.

It can be safely said, that the last time a great nation destroyed itself through its own hubris and economic folly was the early Soviet Union (though in the end the late Soviet Union still died by the economic hand). Now we get the opportunity to watch the Americans do the exact same thing to themselves. The most amazing thing of course, is that they are just repeating the failed mistakes of the past. One would expect their fellow travelers in suicide, the British, to have spoken up by now, but unfortunately for the British, their education system is now even more of a joke than that of the Americans.

While taking a small breather from mouthing the never ending propaganda of recovery, never mind that every real indicator is pointing to death and destruction, the American Marxists have noticed that the French and Germans are out of recession and that Russia and Italy are heading out at a good clip themselves. Of course these facts have been wrapped up into their mind boggling non stop chant of “recovery” and hope-change-zombification. What is ignored, of course, is that we and the other three great nations all cut our taxes, cut our spending, made life easy for small business…in other words: the exact opposite of the Anglo-Sphere.

That brings us to Cap and Trade. Never in the history of humanity has a more idiotic plan been put forward and sold with bigger lies. Energy is the key stone to any and every economy, be it man power, animal power, wood or coal or nuclear. How else does one power industry that makes human life better (unless of course its making the bombs that end that human life, but that’s a different topic). Never in history, with the exception of the Japanese self imposed isolation in the 1600s, did a government actively force its people away from economic activity and industry.

Even the Soviets never created such idiocy. The great famine of the late 1920s was caused by quite the opposite, as the Soviets collectivized farms to force peasants off of their land and into the big new factories. Of course this had disastrous results. So one must ask, are the powers that be in Washington and London degenerates or satanically evil? Where is the opposition? Where are the Republicans in America and Tories in England?

The unfortunate truth here is: the Republicans and Tories are the Mensheviks to the Democrat and Labour Bolsheviks. In other words, they are the slightly less radical fellow travellers who are to stupid to realize that once their usefulness is done, they will go the very camps they will help send the true opposition to. A more deserving lot was rarely born. Of course half of the useful idiots in the Bolshevik groupings will go to those very same camps.

One express idiocy of Cap and Trade in America will be the approximately additional $.19 per liter of gasoline, which is a rather very large increase in taxation, however indirectly. Of course this will not only hit the American working serfs in the pocket at fuel up, but will hit them in everything they buy and do, as America has almost no real rail to even partially off set the cost of transporting goods.

But how will this work itself out? Very simple and the chain of events has been worked out often enough.

First, the serfs will start to scream at the cost of fueling up and the cost of all their goods. The government, ever anxious not to take responsibility, will single out the petroleum factories and oil companies for gauging the people. They will make demands for them to cut prices, which of course means working for a loss. When plants start to close down or move overseas, they will be called racketeers and saboteurs. Their facilities will be nationalized so that the government can show them how to do things properly. Shortages will follow as will show trials and that’s as long as the USD holds up and foreign nations are still willing to sell oil and gasoline for other than gold, silver and other hard resources.

When food goes up, and it surely will, as the diesel the farmer uses goes up as well as his fertilizers, the government will scream that the farmers are hording, thus undermining the efforts of the enlightened. There will be confiscations of all feed crops while the farmers will get production quotas to meet or have their land nationalized again. Do not believe me? Look at the people running your governments and ask yourself: would they rather take some one’s land or admit that they screwed up and ruined everything? After a point, only the corporate farms will remain, food by oligarch, just a like the factory farms. There will be plenty of dissidents to work them.

This will of course spread from industry to industry and within a rather short order, you will be living the new fractional dream, that is a fraction of what you have now. But on the bright side, for once, your children, working for government/oligarch run joint ventures, will be able to compete adequately with the Chinese, to feed the demands of Europe and Latin America. But that will take at least a generation or two first along with a cultural revolution or two.

The article points out that European countries such as France, Germany, and Italy are exiting their recessions.  And its true.  They’ve pulled out of the downturn.

It’s also true that Europe rejected their failed liberal and socialist policies in a huge sweeping wave of conservatism to set up the above.

Where has our messiah led us?

Obama’s massive deficits – larger in just 9 months than George Bush accumulated his entire 8 years in office – dwarf anything seen since World War II.  That’s real bad, because during WWII, the United States had a manufacturing base that dwarfs what we have today, and it was Americans rather than Chinese who held that debt.  Furthermore, our WWII debt was temporary, and we quickly reduced it, whereas out current debt is skyrocketing faster and faster and faster, with no end in sight.  By 2019, we will be paying more than $800 billion a year just in interest payments.

Unemployment has increased from 7.4% to 9.8% under Obama.  And if we consider the U-6 rate measuring total unemployed as a percentage of the civilian labor force (which was how unemployment was calculated until the Clinton administration changed it in 1994), we’re actually at 17% unemployment.  And it isn’t over yet.  Respected analyst Meredith Whitney – who  nailed the prediction of the 2009 credit crash – sees unemployment rising to 13% (which would be 22.5% by the U-6 rate):

Unemployment is likely to rise to 13 percent or higher and will weigh on the economy for several years, countering government efforts to stabilize the banking industry, analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC.

The United States is lagging behind other countries in high and rising unemployment.  Why is that?

Our dollar is in crisis.  Moody’s today warned that our AAA credit rating is in jeopardy unless we abandon massive deficit spending ways that Obama clearly has absolutely no intention of abandoning.  And many of the key countries on the planet are planning to cut the U.S. dollar out of the economic future, which will dramatically undermine U.S. influence and power.

As a result of the fact that Obama – in spite of all his massive spending – failed to deal with the mortgage crisis at the heart of the economic crash, we are about to see yet another huge wave of mortgage defaults.  And we’re just now truly beginning to see a horrifying emptying of our office space.

In spite of the media’s determination that everything is really getting better and better, we somehow just keep getting hit with “unexpected” bad economic news.  Go figure.

I suppose we can view the mainstream media propaganda as helpful: at least they’re supplying us with a blindfold while we hurtle headlong toward the cliffs.

Biofuel Liberals Are Killing People

The news in Ethiopia isn’t good:

UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. humanitarian office said Monday that food shortages in Ethiopia have reached alarming levels following widespread drought in the country.

Relief organizations are grappling with a “considerable shortage of supplies,” with the U.N. World Food Program in need of $136 million for its operation in the Horn of Africa nation, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said.

Why are relief organizations grappling with such a “considerable shortage of supplies”?  Because, as an Economist article titled, “Cheap no more” puts it:

Rising incomes in Asia and ethanol subsidies in America have put an end to a long era of falling food prices

Senate Cafeteria: Democrat Incompetence in Microcosm

If a government-run cafeteria bleeds the red ink of cost overruns year after year, why on earth should anyone but the craziest, stupidest of fools believe that they can successfully run the health care system which represents over 1/6th of the economy?

For that matter, if the Democrat-controlled Senate can’t run a cafeteria, why on earth should anyone trust them to run the country?

The first three paragraphs of an AP article titled “Money-losing Senate restaurants to go private” read:

WASHINGTON (AP) – The famed bean soup served in Senate restaurants is made up of dried navy beans, smoked ham hocks, onions and a million-dollar tab for the taxpayer.

That menu for financial distress could be about to change as the Senate, following the lead taken by the House more than 20 years ago, moves to privatize the restaurants, coffee shops and cafeterias located in the Capitol and Senate office buildings.

The Senate last week passed a bill authorizing Senate restaurants, now run by the Architect of the Capitol, to go private, ending months of back-and-forth between Democrats appalled by the operation’s money-losing ways and other Democrats worried that restaurant workers would get thrown out like the ham bones.

The opening paragraphs from the Washington Post likewise detail just how disasterous this Senate-controlled operation truly is:

Year after year, decade upon decade, the U.S. Senate’s network of restaurants has lost staggering amounts of money — more than $18 million since 1993, according to one report, and an estimated $2 million this year alone, according to another.

The financial condition of the world’s most exclusive dining hall and its affiliated Capitol Hill restaurants, cafeterias and coffee shops has become so dire that, without a $250,000 subsidy from taxpayers, the Senate won’t make payroll next month.

The embarrassment of the Senate food service struggling like some neighborhood pizza joint has quietly sparked change previously unthinkable for Democrats. Last week, in a late-night voice vote, the Senate agreed to privatize the operation of its food service, a decision that would, for the first time, put it under the control of a contractor and all but guarantee lower wages and benefits for the outfit’s new hires.

The House is expected to agree — its food service operation has been in private hands since the 1980s — and President Bush’s signature on the bill would officially end a seven-month Democratic feud and more than four decades of taxpayer bailouts.

Just in case you figure the Washington Post article must be conservatively biased, the aforementioned Associated Press piece puts it this way:

…the Senate restaurants last year cost taxpayers $1.3 million with food quality and service that is “noticeably sub par.”

[Senator Diane Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Rules Committee,] noted that in budget years 2003 through 2007, Senate restaurants racked up deficits of $4.7 million while the House received commissions from the operator estimated at about $1.2 million.

Losses could top $2 million this year, and the restaurants will need a transfer of $250,000 from the Senate’s emergency funds in July to make payroll, she wrote in a letter to other senators.

A private review commissioned by Feinstein found that the Senate operation had no strategy for improvement other than price increases. She said new menu items “have not been remotely reflective of the rapid change in the food industry whether it be health and nutrition or ethnic foods.”

So let’s review: the private-run House cafeteria is generating over a million dollars in profit while the Senate/government-controlled cafeteria racks up nearly $five million in deficits.

But Democrats continuously call for one massive element of the economy after another to fall directly under government control, and those elements of the economy they can’t directly control, they seek to pile up regulations that amount to control, which harm the ability of American businesses to compete in the global marketplace.

Another few paragraphs toward the end of the AP article demonstrate just how much trouble we are in now that our economy is in the hands of Democrats:

But Feinstein’s efforts to change the system ran into obstacles from four Democratic senators: Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who questioned whether current workers would face lower wages, reduced benefits and be deprived of union representation.

Feinstein said she was “somewhat dismayed” by the resistance. She stressed that under the proposed contract with Restaurant Associates, the New York-based company that runs the House restaurants and will operate the 550-seat cafeteria in the underground Capitol Visitor Center slated to open this fall, current employees will continue at the same basic rate of pay and receive the same level of health insurance and retirement benefits.

Those not wishing to switch to the new system would be eligible for a voluntary buyout of up to $25,000. She said 47 of the 96 permanent restaurant employees are expected to take the buyout.

The four senators signed off, saying they were pleased that Restaurant Associates was willing to commit in the contract to union neutrality and a reasonable annual cost-of-living adjustment.

Modern Democrats are socialists, and they have been for decades. They look at the horrendous failure of Europe’s economy and say, “That’s what we want for the United States. Profit doesn’t matter; common sense doesn’t matter; reality doesn’t matter. It’s all about protecting workers’ benefits, no matter how ineffecient, unsustainable, unrealistic, or doomed to disaster our policies prove to be every time they are tried.

Why did it take Democrat Dianne Feinstein to tackle this? Why did it take Republican Richard Nixon to go to China? Democrats have blocked such common sense privatization approaches for years. it took a Democrat to finally overcome the Democrat’s opposition. And Democrats had to act because now that they are in control, they could actually start taking some of the blame for their stupid policies.

Please understand this: these people cannot even control their own cafeteria, yet they want to control 1/6th of the economy, and intimately involved themselves in matters of life and death for hundreds of millions of people.

The last apparently not-so-delicious bit of irony is also important to understand:

In a masterful bit of understatement, Feinstein blamed “noticeably subpar” food and service. Foot traffic bears that out. Come lunchtime, many Senate staffers trudge across the Capitol and down into the basement cafeteria on the House side. On Wednesdays, the lines can be 30 or 40 people long.

House staffers almost never cross the Capitol to eat in the Senate cafeterias.

“It’s so bad that the Senate hasn’t yet figured out that House ‘Taco Salad Wednesday’ trumps any type of entree they have to offer,” said Ron Bonjean, a former press secretary to both the House speaker and the Senate Republican leader.

You see, whether we are talking about the Senate cafeteria or the government-managed health care system that Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats seek to impose, what we will end up with is something really expensive that produces crappy results.

When the Democrats get their way with our health care system, it is only a matter of time before medical care is “rationed,” just as it is in Europe. This is because bureacrats don’t run things as much as they run them into the ground. The cost of treatment will go up (as government insiders get their piece of the pie, as the massive government regulations take effect, as government employee unions usurp benefits for themselves that Americans in the private sector don’t receive, etc.) and the quality and level of treatment will go down.