The California government has been trending towards socialism for twenty years now, so in a way what is happening is a preview of our national problem. So here’s my suggestion: Since we don’t seem to have the political will to make government smaller, let’s make it shorter! All government employees in California now get Fridays off! Close down the state government one day a week and adjust the payroll. If the workers don’t like it they can always go into the private sector and get a real job.
Tag: Quote of the Day
Quote of the Day Part 1
Wow! 😮
Holder was eight years old half a century ago. The desegregation of schools had barely begun. The “dream” of Martin Luther King, Jr. was still ringing in the people’s ears and he had only recently been murdered. Black men and women did not figure in our national politics. Black teenagers did not then reasonably aspire to do well at school -the odds were against them–or hope to graduate, as Holder did, from Columbia University (as Barack Obama also did) and from the Columbia Law School. There were no black generals or managing partners of law firms or presidents of the best institutions of higher learning or CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and not many black people at all in the solid middle class. And almost none in the upper middle class. How many blacks were actually rich or even super-rich? No, America is not racial paradise. But it is more integrated, much more integrated than Great Britain and France which used to disdain our bigoted traditions and habits. No longer, believe me, no longer.
Kudos to the person that had the guts to say this in public! 😀
Trackposted to Nuke’s, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, , Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Quote of the Day
Partisans of President Bush may blame Obama for presiding over a strategic retreat, but it is the Bush administration that assured and accelerated such a retreat.
As Robert Pape of the University of Chicago writes in The National Interest: “America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today’s world of rapidly spreading knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back at the Bush administration years as the death knell of American hegemony.”
Pape’s harsh verdict is rooted in his reading of history, that the “size of an economy relative to potential rivals ultimately determines the limits of power in international politics.”
In other words, when a great nation’s share of world product shrinks, the nation’s strategic position follows. Between 2000 and 2008, the U.S. share of world product plunged from 31 percent to 23 percent, and is expected to fall to 21 percent by 2013 — a decline of 32 percent in 13 years. China’s share of world product over the same period will more than double to 9 percent.
Pape went back to the 19th century to correlate the rise of the great powers like Britain and the commensurate growth in their share of world product. He found the Bush decline had no precedent.
“America’s relative decline since 2000 of some 30 percent represents a far greater loss of relative power in a shorter time than any power shift among European great powers roughly from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to World War II. It is one of the largest relative declines in modern history. Indeed, in size, it is clearly surpassed by only one other great-power decline, the unprecedented internal collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.”
With an economy still three times that of China, America continues to be the world’s most powerful nation, fully capable of defending all of its vital interests. We can no longer, however, defend every ally to whom we made a commitment over the six decades since NATO was formed.
Obama’s assignment: Rebuild U.S. productive power, and execute a strategic withdrawal from non-vital commitments.
Quote of the Day
Since America is edging ever-closer to the point where, in the name of public health and national security, the state must make for the individual the most detailed of personal decisions, why not kill two birds with one stone? One could easily combat both the crime spree and obesity epidemic by not only putting the innocent under house arrest but by also only allowing them to eat the provisions brought to their doors during the periods of protracted curfew and quarantine.
Preposterous, you say. Americans will never put up with living in such a manner. Well, up until recently, would they have put up with a 24 hour curfew?
Throughout the Western world, freedom as we once knew it is pretty much on its last leg Things we once took for granted such as driving over a public bridge or even enjoying our own yards will become a thing of the past unless we vocalize our dissent. And with the attitude Obama has exhibited towards the press here in the opening days of his presidency, even the ability to do that may be endangered if the American people fail to exercise eternal vigilance.
Quote of the Day
Since 1982, the United States has run $5.7 trillion in trade deficits in manufactured goods, and $2.1 trillion in trade deficits in auto parts, trucks and automobiles. In the Bush years alone, the United States ran more than $1 trillion in trade deficits in auto parts, trucks and cars.
These statistics, these realities — factories closing in the United States, manufacturing jobs being outsourced in the millions to China and Asia, enormous, endless trade deficits in goods — testify to a painful truth: America is a receding and declining world power.
And in dealing with this systemic crisis, Obama’s stimulus package is as irrelevant as were the Bush tax cuts.
How do we correct those “trade-related imbalances” of which Volcker spoke? We must export more and import less, save more and spend less, produce more and consume less. We need to emulate the ants and behave less like the grasshoppers of summer.
But how do you tell that to two generations of Americans who have been raised in an era of entitlement?
America needs an Industrial Policy.
But how do you tell that to Americans indoctrinated in the hoary myth that Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley caused the Great Depression and anything that sounds like America First risks a rerun of the 1930s?
Quote of the Day
What we are really seeing is that the generals increasingly have their own agenda and it ain’t bringing the troops home. They provide good access and notable comments to a lot of enablers in the media like Ricks who like a robust story full of blood and guts and want to make sure the good old global war on terror goes on and on. It might be simplistic to ask “If Usama bin Laden is the enemy and he is located in Pakistan why have we been fighting wars for seven years in Iraq and Afghanistan?” Sometimes the simple questions are the only ones worth asking.
Quote of the Day
God seeks righteous agreement but His chosen people live in anarchy of their own making.
Quotes of the Day
Those who prattle about the perils of protectionism need to be
asked: What has free trade produced, but a bankrupt America that
must go hat-in-hand to Beijing to borrow the money to rebuild our
crumbling infrastructure? Are we also to use Chinese iron, steel
and cement because they, with their Third World wages, will work
for less than our fellow Americans?As for Europe’s threat of a trade war, bring it on!
We would eat their lunch. As analyst Charles McMillion writes, in
eight years of Bush, Canada ran up $500 billion in trade surpluses
at our expense, Japan ran up $600 billion, the European Union $800
billion.These three trading partners, often by imposing value-added taxes
on U.S. imports, and rebating those taxes on goods sold here,
racked up $1.9 trillion in trade surpluses, sucking jobs, factories
and technology out of the United States. These trade deficits, and
the even larger ones with China, says Paul Volcker, are behind our
present crisis.America is bust. It is shameful to have to go to China and Japan to
borrow the money to rebuild America. But to go to China and Japan
and borrow billions, and not spend the money here, makes zero sense.We have indulged in free trade for a quarter century. And look
where it has gotten us.
Until the American people demand that their elected members of Congress live up to their duties and responsibilities under the Constitution, they will continue to have their pockets picked clean by these corrupt banksters in New York City (and London) and their contemptible facilitators in Washington, D.C.
Quote of the Day
This week President Obama claimed that failure to pass his economic stimulus bill will have catastrophic consequences for the U.S economy. The reality is the catastrophe will be far greater with his plan then without it. If the trends of January and early February of 2009 continue, the rug will be completely pulled out from beneath the U.S. economy, and the full cost of the President’s “economic depressant package” will be apparent to all.
If foreign capital does not continue to pour into Treasuries, interest rates and consumer prices in the U.S. will soar. At that point, we will finally be confronted with the real crises that I have long predicted. When the day of reckoning arrives our policy response will be critical. If we continue on the course our new President has mapped out, the catastrophe will far exceed the scope of any he hoped to avoid.
Quotes of the Day
Let it be said. There is nothing wrong about Americans fighting to preserve the culture and country they grew up in. That is what patriotic conservatism is all about. And if the Times can understand and support the right of native tribes like the Navajo and Apache to preserve their unique character and culture, why this viral hatred of those of us who wish to preserve the Western and Christian character of America?
So, I repeat the question, Do Americans really cherish freedom anymore? And, if we do, what are we going to do about it? I believe that there are specific and constructive steps that can be taken to restore liberty in this land. (I will develop these thoughts later.) I further believe that there are still millions of Americans who really do understand and cherish freedom. We may be in a minority, but remember, we were also a minority in 1776. Freedom is laborious, onerous work. And not everyone enjoys hard work.So be it. Let lazy, indolent fools wallow in their servitude. God will yet see to it that there is a land of liberty for those who truly desire it and are willing to fight for it. I firmly believe that.
Remember, liberty is a precious gift from our Creator. For those who fear God, respect Natural Law, and love liberty, there is yet a “promised land.”
We may have to do a little searching; we may have to rethink our priorities; we may have to adjust our lifestyles; and yes, we may have to “pledge our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” in order to obtain it; but our forebears thought it was worth it–and so do I.
As Friedrich Schiller wrote in William Tell:
“By this fair light which greeteth us, before
Those other nations, that, beneath us far,
In noisome cities pent, draw painful breath,
Swear we the oath of our confederacy!
A band of brothers true we swear to be,
Never to part in danger or in death!“We swear we will be free as were our sires,
And sooner die than live in slavery!“We swear, to put our trust in God Most High,
And not to quail before the might of man!”Such people can never be enslaved. And I believe that such people still exist in these United States of America. I count them my brothers. I offer them my arm and my heart. After all, we are freedom-loving Americans.
Will we see the nationalization and control of our main banks as Europe has done and is doing? I say, yes.
Will we start to hear “socialist” speeches about us all cutting back, thus giving more taxes to the Government to solve endless emergencies? Salaries might need to be cut everywhere and business achievement and profit swiped bit by bit, of course for the betterment of a troubled society. Watch it unfold.
Yes, there should be significant salary limitations and spending requirements if a troubled company receives national financial aid, but a way to independent achievement and reward, not prolonged Government control, taxation, litigation and regulation!!!
Ronald Reagan said it best many years ago and was right! “Big Government is not the solution. It is the problem.”
