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The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”   – President Barack Obama, Inauguration, 1/20/09

Naw, it doesn’t.  From the Daily Signal (emphasis mine):

The guiding fiscal principle of President Obama’s 2009 Stimulus Package was simple: “Spend it as fast as you can.” Programs operating under that principle are almost predestined to flunk a cost-benefit test—and the federal Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) has proved to be no exception. University of Chicago researchers have documented that WAP is yet another government “efficiency” program that does not actually save money. The only surprising finding was just how badly it failed. Costs exceeded benefits by a 2-to-1 margin.

The fundamental problem with energy-efficiency mandates and subsidies is that they are based on two absurd premises. First, they assume that consumers are not fully interested in saving money—hence, government intervention is required. Second, they expect a bureaucracy that has served up an $18 trillion national debt to transform into Scrooge McDuck when it is time to count energy pennies.

I dryly note that

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From the Washington Post (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Centering her presidential campaign on boosting incomes for middle-class Americans, Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday will begin unveiling an economic policy agenda designed to lift working families that have experienced years of wage stagnation and economic anxiety. In a major address in New York, the Democratic front-runner will lay out a diagnosis for why wages have been stuck and a framework to ensure that economic growth benefits more ordinary workers, according to campaign officials.  “She believes that making sure the real incomes of everyday Americans are rising steadily and strongly is the defining economic challenge of our time,” said one campaign official, who previewed Clinton’s remarks on the condition of anonymity.

Clinton will endorse a host of popular Democratic policies, such as increasing the minimum wage and investing more in infrastructure. She will emphasize proposals tailored toward working women, one of her most important bases of support, such as expanding access to child care and paid family and sick leave.  The ideas, in many ways, sound similar to the second-term agenda of President Obama, who faced an economic crisis during his first term and started to more directly address the nation’s long-running economic problems during his second. But he has struggled to pass major legislation with a Republican-dominated Congress.

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Well, at least he and his advisors understand, unlike some politicians in NH, that you CANNOT WIN WITHOUT CONSERVATIVES!  From Mediaite (emphasis mine):

Congratulations on your official presidential announcement, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Now you get to spend part of your day explaining away something one of your advisers said. Speaking — wait for it — anonymously to National Journal’s Tim Alberta, a Walker adviser tried to calm fears the candidate was moving too far to the right in order to win the Iowa caucus by intimating that positions taken this early on are contingent.

Contingent?  Contingent on WHAT?

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“No Martin O’Malley, the beauty of our country came from the radical ideas that WE individuals were sovereign and not some aristocracy (elected or born), that we were a nation of The Rule of Law where the Law was guided by and subject to our Constitution, and that WE The People make the decisions for how our lives are to be lived and not the Government turning the original relationship of service upside down to one of master.”

A couple of rough notes on his time with Josh McElveen:

His statement about lowering the cost of a college education gave me the impression seems to assumes that students are FORCED to take on debt.  What about “No”? How about making OTHER choices – not every kid needs to go to college, ESPECIALLY if want they want to study is an economic loser (e.g., if you don’t get a job in academia, getting a degree in “gender studies” is non-functional economically).  He seems to assume that kids are FORCED to act this way – but they are not.  He never defines what a “mountain of debt” really is (just like with our interview yesterday at the CNHT Picnic yesterday where former VA Guv Jim Gilmore refused to define what “balanced” meant when we asked him about religious liberty in context of religious liberty enshrined in the Constitution vs mere ordinance or regulations of non-discrimination).

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OF OBERGEFELL AND OSTRACISM: After the Supreme Court’s decision on Same Sex Marriage, Dan McLaughlin of Red State was quoted as saying, “Now the contest begins to see who’ll be the angriest winner.” Last week it was George Takei of Star Trek making racist slurs against Clarence Thomas. This week, Max Lindenman of Patheos spots Sally Kohn tossing her name into the ring (emphasis mine):

Just as I was learning not to hate the term “national conversation,” gay marriage supporters have decided to quit speaking to us. That would, at any rate, be the earnest wish of Daily Beast columnist Sally Kohn. In last Sunday’s piece, “The New, Post-Homophobic Christianity,” she ticks off all the denominations that have changed their teachings on homosexuality and asks “Will anti-gay Christians be politically and socially ostracized?”

Her answer: “I sure hope so.”

… Or is she convinced that offering us the cold shoulder is the best way to make us change our minds?

That what Totalitarians are all about.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday said the nation owes an apology for slavery.  “As a nation — I don’t think as a president, but as a nation — we have got to apologize for slavery,” the 2016 Democratic presidential contender told host Joe Madison on Sirius XM’s “The Black Eagle.”  “As a nation we have got to apologize for slavery, and of course the president is the leader of the nation,” he added.

Sanders said that slavery had caused too much suffering to remain unaddressed.“Obviously nobody in this generation was involved in slavery,” Sanders said.

And that is the point point of major #FAIL.

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Or better: How well do they keep their promises?  If you ask almost anyone at the grassroots that question (with a few examples as prompts), you’d most likely get a “well, not too well”.  This is not a new topic for us here at the ‘Grok – we’d really, REALLY like to wholeheartedly like to support Republicans but over the last few years, we techies and engineers who MUST deliver concrete deliveries without excuses, grow weary of going “Rah Rah!” time after time with the same who would, by their own accountings, lead us into a Promised Land.  And even with our now extremely low expectations, instead of the Promises Land, we get DoDaville.  Here’s a bit of it from American Thinker (reformatted, emphasis mine):

The Republican Establishment, with the exception of the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the Republican controlled House of Representatives from 1995 to 1998, has been content, since 1946, to merely slow down the big government policies of the Democrats, while politically decrying their tax and spend policies.  However, in truth, many have been comfortable with reaping the financial and ego-gratifying rewards of such indifference while playing the game with their counterparts in the other branch of the overall governing class.

They have brought us upon themselves – and they wonder why the moniker of “Junior Democrats” has stuck over the years.  The post goes on to discuss how Left the Democrats have gone back to their now Marxist roots:

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Ayup – there is no one more Establishmentarian than Jeb Bush in this race (he of the “…willing “[To] lose the primary to win the general…”) which immediately signaled to the base of “need you (sniff)?  nope”.  So we’ll see how that works out for him.  And then he decides to double down and continue the throwing away of the base:

“Yes, I got a lot of good advice from the last candidate who I wish was president right now, the last Republican candidate, and he validated a belief that I have which at some point we have to start campaigning in a way that is beyond the base. I think you have to be respectful of conservatives and you have to campaign hard, convince thatm (sic) that you’re the guy that can unite the party, but there also always has to be an eye on the ball on the next group of people who decide who the president is going to be.”

Hate to keep sounding like a broken record, but look at the record just here in NH this last November with the top of the ticket.  Who, btw, are the poster children for exactly what Bush is saying he’ll be doing.  All three now, have drubbed their base.

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“I’ll be free of them four days a week!!”

Yeah, that was the exclamation of one mother of young children when she heard that her two kids were going to be in school through the summer in Special Ed class. Not a word was said at that point in time about the help they “might” get – just that she now had all that time for herself.  At government expense.  She was ecstatic!   Sigh….my wish is that all young parents would be this: whose hand should be rocking YOUR child’s cradle? 

Progressives (if you have been listening to Hillary Clinton and Obama for the last few years) have been pushing for this for decades – but why?  Well, in their mindset, every woman must fulfill their her destiny – and that, in their mind, can only be done in the workplace.  A stay-at-home Mom?  Doing what I think is the most important job in the world?  Well, Progressives know EXACTLY what that is – raising children.  These incremental Socialists understand that completely and THAT is the goal that they are striving for.  They KNOW that whoever raises the child owns the future – for values taught young last forever in most cases.  If a child is spending far more time in hands of government run and NEA staffed schools than with their parents, whose values are going to be inculcated? Already we see teachers believing that parents are an impediment and that THEY know what is best for the kids and less and less, no longer hiding it. Let’s face it, government school staffs are highly critical of conservative and religious values – vast majorities ARE in the Party of Government and are Progressives themselves.  This from Hot Air:

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Greece has sucked the oxygen out of the financial news at owing $270 billion for this country of 11 million people and now wants to stick it to those who became the “other peoples’ money”.  PR also made news when its governor said that it could not pay back its $72 billion debt and now wants US laws changed so as to be able to go bankrupt (and also stick it to those who became the “other peoples’ money”.

And then there is China – no, not quite the debt that is the topic.  It is their absolute meltdown of their stock exchanges over the last 3 weeks or so: $3.2 Trillion of value just vanished.  We Groksters had a number of emails on the techie news of the day (United Air Lines, Wall St Journal, NY Stock Exchange) but also mentioned China.  My 2 cents:

China has been a ticking time bomb for a while, financially.  Folks for a few years, have thought that Commies have been fudging their economic numbers and their exchanges have lost $3.2 Trillion over the last month or so.  Now, the Chinese govt can’t stem the flood of what Instapundit calls a “preference cascade” – investors finally got sick of putting up with the nonsense and started pulling out as some of the real data’s results starting showing up.

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Huh (reformatted, emphasis mine)?

Fidel Castro hails Alexis Tsipras’s ‘brilliant political victory’

ATHENS: Former Cuban president Fidel Castro congratulated Greek Prime Minister Alexis ­Tsipras for his “brilliant political victory” in the country’s ­referendum, which saw voters ­deliver a resounding “no” to more austerity measures…

…Dr Castro wrote to Mr Tsipras saying he had “closely followed this victory” on Venezuelan TV station Tele Sur, said a statement from Mr Tsipras’s office.The letter from the 88-year-old described Greece as a country well-known to Cubans for its ­history and famed contributions to “the most complex of all human activities, art and political science”.  Dr Castro wrote that Greece had “the admiration of the Latin American and Carribean peoples” for the way in which it “defends its identity and its culture against external aggression”.

Really?  Only in a Socialist / Communist world of delusion can one Commie tell another one that.  OK, buckos, riddle me this:

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Snarky title aside, here is yet another example where someone demands additional Government action because someone made a rather dumb decision to do something rather dangerous, thinking he would not be in line for a Darwin Award. No, the site doesn’t list Devon Staples yet (it used to be MUCH more up to date in the past but rarely much lately) but I will not be surprised if soon.  This is the 22 year old Calais, Maine that decided he could use a mortar based firework as a helmet – and lit it even as his buddies were telling him with words to the effect “dude, that might not be such a great idea”.  It is also my understanding that liquid libations containing ethyl alcohol added to his refusal to listen (“hey, wanna hold my beer – watch this!” is a common sentence that precedes a dismal outcome). They said “No!”, he beamed broadly, and lit it off.  And died instantly.

Now, I do feel bad for his friends and family.  I, however, do have to take issue with this (reformatted, emphasis mine):

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• Hillary Clinton: And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”
• Michelle Obama: “That’s why we start with kids, right? We can affect who they will be forever.”, “He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism…Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed”

And add in the militant gay activists who are demanding total affirmation and celebration – or you will be destroyed.  Doubt me?  From taking away tax exemptions from churches that won’t give into gay demands, the destruction of businesses, reputations, and careers, we see this mob not just willing to win but have a scorched earth policy of General Sherman.  And now we can add kicking anyone out of the military who violates their secular religion (and with no small amount of attitude):

“What truly troubles these cretinous sentinels of vile prejudice and hate-mongering bigotry is the fact that this ruling will go down historically as the watershed moment which may indeed shatter the spine of the religious right in the U.S. military, whose prior viselike grip over the chaplaincy has formed the key obstacle to social progress within the Armed Forces. Cry us a river!

Translation:

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