Mandate, Shmandate. Hello There Cliff, I’m Ready To Go

It seems the Republicans in Congress, that are still there, believe they’re wearing a “We held the House this past election, and all we got was this lousy T-Shirt!” T-shirt. And the wily Dems have no problem sidling up to the newly T-shirted and complementing them on its fit and trendiness, “you look fantastic!”

Who cares if the Dems claim they have a mandate, that’s what they’re supposed to do. You win, claim a mandate, and walk away. Let the losers stomp their feet, hold their breath until purple and then scream, “No mandate! Whaaa!!!”.  Meanwhile the winner goes on to plan what to do with the newly found illusory political capital. Remember when W. was re-elected? He claimed the same thing, and it drove the donkeys bonkers. So, buck up Republicans and don’t play into it, ignore it. Now, I’m just a lowly software pleb that annoys his neighbors occasionally with an acerbic blog or two and I know this. So, why don’t the paid politicians know this?

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Decay Point: Dissolve Detroit…

Desolation, desperation, and delusion have swept over the Motor City for decades, constantly wearing down the streets, buildings, and the people.  So, it comes as no surprise that talks of its dissolution ring out through the desiccated city like the hollow, rusty clang of a muffler finally falling from a car, resting on cinder blocks, … Read more

Funniest Display of Idiocy on the Left

So succinct. So hilarious.  From smalldeadanimals.com comes a poignant rejoinder that exposes the naive idiocy on the left brilliantly. (h/t Corner,  smalldeadanimals.com)    

Secession By Atrophy

Ah, what’s a little secession between states, eh?  So a state is no longer under the auspices of the United States, it’ll be an orphan. Big deal. What do you think will happen? That the forlorn and forgotten former territory of the United State will sit in pathetic darkness like a shivering punished child at an Oliver Twist orphanage after ditching all of the other states to go off on its own, and now is no longer welcome? That trade will cease between the former compatriots, and an occasional border skirmish will break out like a resentful anthema on the blistered skin of envy?  C’mon, that won’t happen…. okay maybe that will happen.

But if you’re one of those screaming “Secession!”, a little patience may serve you well. It might happen, maybe not officially, but in effect secession has a chance to occur if we do not soon take an exit from the economic road on which we are currently speeding. We’re $16,000,000,000,000 in debt, and nowhere in sight is there any curtailing indicator.  As I and others have stated previously that once a dollar is payment on the debt, that same dollar cannot be then used for other things. As the debt begins to siphon funds from Federal Government responsibilities to the bondholders, that money cannot be used again, and choices must be made.

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Decay Point

Hostess-strike-biddefordSocietal decay has many symptoms.  One of which that mottles our society like a cancerous blotch on the drooping bosom of freedom is the unending, unforgiving, and unyielding sense of entitlement –entitled to things coming not just from government, but directly from fellow citizens as well.

The expression supposedly uttered from Marie Antoinette to the people suffering from a bread shortage, “let them eat cake” has been transposed and inverted to the 21st century version of “let them never eat golden sponge cake again,” coming from not a Queen, but from a whaling union worker as a union strike eats the last Twinkie and a bakery shuts its doors, laying off 18,000 workers (if you want the details, Google it for yourself).

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Book Recommendation: With The Old Breed

I made a mistake.  Last week, November 4th, was the 89th birthday of a soldier that forever changed the way I think about war. Eugene  B. Sledge served in the Pacific in World War II. He was a private, a grunt, a jarhead marine. He slogged his way through rancid, fetid sludge in scorching heat … Read more

O Bomb A Job

Tick. Tick. Tick. Boom: Boing announces layoffs. Tick. Tick. Boom: Murray Energy announces layoffs. Tick. Boom: Energizer Holdings to lay off 1,500, close 3 plants, Boom: Companies plan massive layoffs as Obamacare becomes reality. Boom: Utah company blames Pres. Obama for 102 workers laid off. Boom:  Large corporations join small businesses in announcing mass cuts … Read more

The End of the Beginning of the End

When not caused by war, nations decay slowly and gradually (e.g., modern day France, Italy, Spain, Greece etc.).

Alas, now, it seems ours is no different. Its exceptionalism is dissolving into the ordinary. It’s a choice made by the people. They fore-go liberty and self subjugate themselves under ruling political and administrative classes of which they’ll never be a part.  They’ll never rise to those classes because they’re taught apathy, complacency, and their place since birth.  They are relieved of the burdensome onus of everyday decisions.  Decisions that were proudly made by preceding generations that were not a bother or an onus at all to them.  To them, it was life. Deciding what to do, how to live, and how to be was essential and culminated in traditions, virtues, and mores.

That became too onerous for the generations that followed, they blithely go about taking direction and surrendering thinking and creativity to others in the elite political classes.

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We Fight On. There’s No Such Thing As A Lost Cause…

“If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ victory, though that victory itself … Read more

It’s Time for Us to do Our Part

Four years ago was historic. The first black president was inaugurated. For the first time, a former First Lady became the Secretary of State. It was the first time the Democrats controlled the Oval Office, House of Representatives, and the Senate since the nineties. It was the first time I stopped yelling at the news and rolled my lazy butt off the couch and started actively participating in the political discourse (okay, that part’s not really historic).

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The “Let me be clear” President is Anything But

Let me be clear. The nation’s understanding of Benghazi-gate remains fuzzy at best.  We’re still experiencing this administration’s version of Chinese water torture as it slowly drips out information, one contradictory drop at at time.  We’re more than six weeks on, and all we have are more questions.

For a president who constantly says, “Let me be clear,” none of this is clear.  The Benghazi attack was the result of a video and a protest getting out of hand, then no, it was not. It was a spontaneous attack; no, it was planned.  The President kind of, sort of, may have referenced the Benghazi attack as an “act of terror” in the 9/12/2011 Rose Garden speech, or he was referencing the attacks 9/11/2001. It’s not clear. To make that even more unclear was Ambassador Rice, just a few days after the President’s Rose Garden speech, saying that it was a spontaneous event in response to the video leading one to believe that the administration didn’t believe the 9/11/12 attacks were an act of terror.  Of course this was again redressed when the moderator in the second presidential debate stepped in it and muddied the waters further.

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Benghazi-gate reveals the Clintons we all remember…

With their defense team assembled, the Clinton offensive begins. Of course this was prefigured by several Clinton observers (including fellow Groker Steve) because taking a political fall, whether they’re actually responsible for it or not, is anathema to their biology.  That’s like asking Michael Moore to leave some Doritos in the bag. Or like asking … Read more

From the Pages of “Remember When…”

From the logorrhea that is the administrations communication effort on Benghazi-gate echoes a discordant, but somehow familiar, verse: Clinton assembles legal defense team. For those of you old enough to remember the cringing embarrassment that shivered through the nation as the president of the day struggled to re-cast the meaning of the word “is” into … Read more

Notable Quote: Frederic Bastiat on Liberty

God has implanted in mankind also all that is necessary to enable it to accomplish its destinies…Away, then, with quacks and organizers! … Away with their artificial methods!  Away with their social laboratories, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their State religion, their inflationary or monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their … Read more

Notable Quote: Less Government is for the Ordinary Worker

“One of the reasons why I am in favor of less government, is because when you have more government industrialists take it over and the two together form a coalition against the ordinary worker and the ordinary consumer” Milton Freidman

Don’t Think The Debt Matters, Think Again

We’re $16,000,000,000,000 in debt. Don’t think it matters?  Consider this: who owns the debt, and what is going to happen when they collect?  How are government programs going to remain funded when interest payments on the debt begins to siphon off those funds into coffers of the bondholders?  Ask yourself this question again after you’ve contemplated the return to the historical average interest rate and not the artificial rate we’ve been basking in.  “...from 1971 until 2012, the United States Interest Rate averaged 6.2 Percent…”,  but we’ve been enjoying rates less than 3% for what seems like five years.  The government borrows 40% of every dollar it spends in your name.  Imagine how great the interest payments will be on that borrowed money when we return to the historical average?  Think the interest rates will remain this low?

Permanence is fleeting.

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Notable Quote: Hayek On Collectivist Doctrine

“…the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demand for ‘conscious’ control or ‘conscious’ planning is that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme” – FA Hayek    

President Obama Inherited an Economy Coming Out of a Recession – Yes, You Read That Right.

For years now, and especially recently, we’ve been awash in rhetoric that claims that President Obama inherited a recession and that without spending $831,000,000,000 in stimulus money we don’t have the United States would enter into a depression.

The president’s door-to-door acolytes continue to hose the unlucky that answers the knock with claims that the president couldn’t do in 4 years what it took FDR 12 to accomplish.  The premise of this hogwash implies that the two conditions are comparable.  They’re not.  FDR was dealing with an actual depression (and protracting it, in my view, see Robert Higgs’ “Depression, War, and Cold War” for more information) and this president was not.

Well the acolytes can keep blasting the firehouse of mistaken rhetoric, but anyone that decides to shelter themselves from this falsehood can do so.  President Obama inherited an economy coming out of a recession.

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Notable Quote: Hayek On Where Planning Leads

“… planning leads to dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of coercion and the enforcement of ideals and… essential if central planning on a large case is to be possible” –FA Hayek      

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