A Game Of Charades

That's what all this debt ceiling squabble has been,a game of charades.Nobody-Republicans or Democrats- really wants to balance the budget and begin to reduce our debt;through gimmicks they move money here and there,call it a cut all the while they are increasing the budget.If you or I did that we would go to jail for fraud.

Here is what Moody's thinks of all our boondoggles;

The "limited magnitude" of both debt plans put forward by congressional leaders would not put the nation's AAA credit rating back on solid footing, Moody's Investors Service announced Friday.
"Reductions of the magnitude now being proposed, if adopted, would likely lead Moody's to adopt a negative outlook on the AAA rating," the credit rating agency said in a new report. "The chances of a significant improvement in the long-term credit profile of the government coming from deficit reductions of the magnitude proposed in either plan are not high."
It added that "prolonged debt ceiling deliberations" have increased the odds of a downgrade, but that the firm is still confident policymakers will avoid a default.
"It remains our expectation that the government will continue with timely debt service," the firm said.
It also clarified that as far as it is concerned, the nation will only default if it misses an interest or principal payment on U.S. debt, not if it misses payments on other obligations like federal employee salaries or Social Security benefits.

The report also gives credence to a claim popular among Republicans: that the government has enough cash to avoid a default even past the Aug. 2 deadline set by the Treasury Department.

"If the debt limit is not raised before August 2, we believe that the Treasury would give priority to debt service payments and could thus postpone a potential debt default for a number of days," it said. "Revenues would be more than adequate for some period of time to meet those payments, although other outlays would be severely reduced as a result."
Moody's previously put the nation's top credit rating on watch for a downgrade on July 13, as lawmakers continue to fight over a deal to raise the debt limit.
While Moody's is confident it will not have to downgrade the nation's rating because of a default, it maintained that long-term debt and deficit problems will continue to weigh on the AAA mark.

If the GOP had any guts-outside of 22 in the House they don't-they would tell Harry Reid where to stick it and do nothing,laying it right in Obama's lap telling him,"its your turn now big boy,prioritize the budget and cut it."That would never happen though,Obama would play hard ball and those delicate daisy's in the GOP would wilt in the sun and cave.We can all dream though,can't we.

One last thing,RUN,SARAH,RUN!

Uh-Oh

From Yahoo;

Bad news, stock-market bulls: Corporate insiders are selling their companies' shares at an abnormally fast pace.
In fact, one measure of that selling activity shows insiders of NYSE- and AMEX-listed companies recently were selling at the fastest rate since data began being collected in the early 1970s, four decades ago.
On the theory that insiders know more about their companies' prospects than do the rest of us, this is an ominous sign

Is their any good news out there?

Hat tip to III Percent Patriots.

We Know What To Do,We Just Lack The Will To Do What Is Right!

From Punditt & Pundette;

Call me cynical but I don't think it matters much either way. Trying to stanch a hemorrhage with a pinky-sized bandaid won't prevent the inevitable bleed-out. Most Americans are either oblivious to the fiscal mess we're in or panicked by Obama and the liberal media into the view that their intransigent representatives need to hurry up and "fix" this with more borrowing. What's clear is that we -- Congress and most Americans -- lack the will to deal with it in any significant way.

We can blame Obama,John Boehner,or any other politician all we want to,but at the end of the day this whole mess-this massive hole of debt we are in- is all our fault-We The People's fault.The American people always get what we want and the truth be told we want big government no matter how bad its crushing our economy.We may rail against it,but when it comes time to do something about it,we hem and haw and do very little to reduce the size of government,because we embrace security over liberty.

That's where the real debate is isn't it,between liberty and security.Would you rather be free,governing yourself,answering only to God and your family,or would you rather feel safe and secure,letting a government handle all the unpleasant things in life,making all those difficult decisions for you?We have chosen security,but security comes with a price,your liberty.

The Boat Is Sinking...............

The boat is sinking.We have and are taking on too much debt.We should be bailing water-cutting the budget- but are leaders in Washington are debating on how much to enlarge the hole in the bottom of the boat to take on more debt,because only in Washington Bizzarro World is the solution for existing debt is to add on more debt on top of that debt.

From The Market Ticker;

 

S&P says it must be FOUR TRILLION.  Four is greater than two - by 100%.

Therefore, no matter what sort of crap the Democrats spew, until and unless they put a credible plan on the table that achieves four trillion in actual deficit reduction neither party is serious.
No, this is not a pass for the Republicans.  They haven't put forward a credible plan either.
The fact of the matter is that both parties are well-aware that addressing the problem will cause an immediate contraction in GDP.  If you get rid of deficit spending it's an immediate 12%+ hit.  If you cut in half it's 6%. 
Pick one - there's no resolution that actually fixes the problem and avoids this.
Either come up with a $4+ trillion plan which is still going to produce a monstrous amount of damage and will only extend the time before we blow up - not fix it - or shut up and go home.
The markets are done with the bullcrap - they know the Democrats and Republicans are lying and they're not going to believe either of you any more.  Either cut it out Reid - and Boehner - or watch the markets crash and, once the downgrades come, you will risk getting too close to the critical point in the gravity well at which point disaster is inevitable.  

Buy Gold! Pretty soon our money wont be fit to wipe our own @$$ with.

 

Once Again The Voice Of Sanity In A Wacky World

Via Free North Carolina.

"The Sistine Debt Ceiling"

Via POWERLINE;

Rest assured no matter what happens in this debt ceiling fiasco,we-the tax payer-will get the short end of the stick,the shortest end of the stick.

The 150 Anniversary Of The Battle Of 1st Manasass

Today is the 150 anniversary of the battle of 1st Manasass.This day marks the 1st major engagement of the WBTS in which close to 5,000 men were killed,missing,and wounded.On this day the"rebel yell" was 1st sounded on a battlefield when Gen. T.J. Jackson told his men, "to yell like the furies."Also,who can forget,today Thomas Jonathan Jackson got his more famous sobriquet "Stonewall" from Gen.Bernard Bee.Last but not least,today marks the day the Yankees got their 1st butt whopping,they would receive many more by the end of the war.

"Rothbard On Lincoln And His War"

Via Free North Carolina;

Like the leftists and neocons who are Lincoln cultists, the beltway "libertarians" have taken to smearing and defaming Lincoln critics as "neo-Confederates." In doing so they support the centralized governmental leviathan and the foreign policy of military imperialism that is Lincoln's legacy. That of course is why statists of the Left and the Right idolize Dishonest Abe. I'd like to see if the beltwaytarians have the chutzpah to apply this label to the late, great Murray Rothbard, of Brooklyn, New York, who authored this scathing critique of Lincoln and his war that contained such passages as the following:

"The two just wars in American history were the American Revolution and the War for Southern Independence."

"If the Articles of Confederation could be treated as a scrap of paper, if delegation to the confederate government in the 1780s was revocable, how could the central government set up under the Constitution, less than a decade later, claim its powers were permanent and revocable? . . . [T]hat monstrous illogic is precisely the doctrine proclaimed by the North, by the Union, during the War Between the States."

"One of the central grievances of the South . . . was the tariff that Northerners imposed on Southerners . . . The tariff at one and the same time drove up prices of manufactured goods, forced Southerners and other Americans to pay more for such goods, and threatened to cut down Southern exports."

"The Republicans [in 1861] adopted the Whig program of statism and big government; protective tariffs, subsidies to big business, strong central government, large-scale public works, and cheap credit spurred by government."

"[Lincoln's] major emphasis was on Whig economic statism . . . Lincoln's major focus was on raising taxes . . ."

"In his first inaugural, Lincoln was conciliatory about maintaining slavery; what he was hard-line about toward the South was insistence on collecting all the customs tariffs in that region."

"Lincoln was a master politician, which means that he was a consummate conniver, manipulator, and liar."

"Lying to South Carolina, Abraham Lincoln managed to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt and Henry Stimson did at Pearl Harbor 80 years later — maneuvered the Southerners into firing the first shot."

"There is no heresy greater, nor political theory more pernicious, than sacralizing the secular. But this monstrous process is precisely what happened when Abraham Lincoln and his northern colleagues made a god out of the Union."

"Sherman's infamous March through Georgia was one of the great war crimes, and crimes against humanity, of the past century-and-a-half."

"[B]y targeting and butchering civilians, Lincoln and Grant and Sherman paved the way for all the genocidal horrors of the monstrous 20th century."

Rothbard is right,Mr. Lincoln's war was a war of genocide.The Union hide this genocidal war behind the pre-text of a war to free the slaves,while Mr. Lincoln imposed a all powerful federal government by the force of arms on the states.

Michele Bachmann Stabbed In The Back

From David French at The Corner;

Among the more disgusting aspects of Washington life and politics is the anonymous attack by “former aides.” About the only thing that can be said for certain about such attacks is that they’re cowardly. As for their veracity? Their anonymity makes them immune to further questioning and renders us incapable of discerning whether they even had the access or first-hand knowledge they claim. All we’re left with are rumors — rumors elevated to national attention because they’re reproduced in reputable outlets.

Last night it was Michele Bachmann’s turn to be eviscerated by “former aides.” The Daily Caller reported (and Drudge picked it up) that she suffers from — wait for it — headaches. Apparently these former aides (medical doctors, no doubt) believe she’s “incapacitated” by migraines and this makes them “terrified” about her condition if she’s president.

Terrified? What magnificent patriots they are! What a public service they’re performing! If only these brave defenders of the Republic would identify themselves so that we can ask them a question or two. For example, you say that she’s “incapacitated,” but in one of your lurid examples despite her headaches she actually “managed to attend several events in California, including an appearance before a California chapter of the Eagle Forum and a fundraiser in Palm Springs.” Does “incapacitated” mean what you think it means? Or, if your definition of “incapacitated” includes trips to “urgent care centers” (a fancy name for a walk-up clinic), what do you have to say about this list of presidential ailments? If these aides get the vapors from a migraine or two, I’m glad they’re off her team. After all, presidential politics is tough stuff, and we can’t have excitable, backstabbing aides lurking around — ready to betray their boss for the thrill of a Drudge hit

These "former aides" are truly disgusting.If you don't think,Michele Bachmann,is fit-whether emotionally or physically-to be POTUS then have the the guts to sign your name to these accusations,if not shut your pie hole,coward.

Also,we don't know if the Daily Caller didn't make up these "former aides" just to give legitimacy to some scuttlebutt they heard-it wouldn't be the first time that the media made something up to suit its own purposes.

"The Great Charade"

From Mark Steyn;

But in essence the spenders are negotiating among themselves how much debt they’re going to burden you with. It’s like you and your missus announcing you’ve set your new credit limit at $1.3 million, and then telling the bank to send demands for repayment to Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s kindergartner next door.

Nothing good is going to come from these ludicrously protracted negotiations over laughably meaningless accounting sleights-of-hand scheduled to kick in circa 2020. All the charade does is confirm to prudent analysts around the world that the depraved ruling class of the United States cannot self-correct, and, indeed, has no desire to.

The more these "negotiations" go on,the more depressed I become-with the exception of a few,their is absolutely NO ONE in Washington willing to do the right thing and reduce the size of our already bloated Federal government.Everyone seems to have accepted that the only course is to extend our already over-extended debt ceiling,only in Washington is adding more debt the answer to existing debt.

America is in the car with leaders at the wheel on a LSD trip,everyone knows we are headed for a cliff that leads into the abyss at 100 mph,but those at the helm assure we can fly.We are doomed.

"Dear House Republicans, This is Your “Time For Choosing”

Via Red State;

Dear House Republicans,
In the election of 2010, voters sent you to Washington to do two things: (1) End Obamacare and (2) pull us back from the brink of financial ruin.
You have failed at the first task. Obamacare remains. You never even seriously attempted to restrain its funding or implementation. Heck, you haven’t even saved the incandescent lightbulb.
Will you now fail at the second task too?
If you cave, fold, or compromise on the President’s terms, you will have failed in both your missions. If you support Mitch McConnell’s plan, you will have decisively failed.
Now is a time for choosing. Now is your time for choosing.As I pointed out to John Boehner yesterday, despite what the pundits in Washington are telling you, it is you and not Obama who hold most of the cards. Obama has a legacy to worry about. Should the United States lose its bond rating, it will be called the “Obama Depression”. Congress does not get pinned with this stuff.
But there are a few points that you need to understand.
First, as the hours go on, the doom and gloom scenarios are going to get worse. By the end of July, Goldman Sachs, Ben Bernanke, and Timmy Geithner are going to tell you the world will end unless you raise the debt ceiling.
They did it with TARP too.
And now we know that the amount of money used in TARP was far less than allocated and a lot of the TARP situation involved Hank Paulson forcing solvent banks to play along. Oh, and a great many Republicans were primaried out of office.
Do not believe the doom and gloom. Wise decisions are never made when premised on fear.
Second, understand that the pundits and talking heads people expect you to listen to probably have it wrong. Remember, in 2010, they told you that if you kept being the Party of No, you’d lose. And yet . . .
As I’ve said repeatedly, the pundits and chattering class in Washington have a bias far greater than their liberal one — it is a good government bias. They believe Republicans and Democrats should come together and do grand bargains. Evil and stupid come together and do something evil and stupid. The press heralds it as bipartisanship at its finest, damn the results. We’ve been doing these grand bargains for years. Remember the last time we had a balanced budget in DC? That was at $5 trillion in national debt and no one bothered to read the fine print that the “balance” was actually based on a 10 year Congressional Budget Office projection.
Likewise, the pundits with a good government bias for some reason tend to ignore the Democrats’ problems. In 2010, the media told us you beat the Democrats because the Democrats got their message wrong, not their policy. We know the truth. But we also know that the Democrats were willing to lose to advance socialism. Are you willing to lose to advance freedom?
Finally, and here is my big point — you have to win this fight. If you do not win this fight, there will be no more chances to turn back government. Why? Because President Obama is holding senior citizens hostage with their social security checks.
If the President can force your hand by using entitlements as a lever to punish the American people if you don’t do as he wants, you will have established this as a precedent. From here on out, if you lose this fight, every time you balk at expanding government, social security checks will be withheld, medicare payments will be withheld, and in just a few short years, surgeries will be cancelled, vaccinations withheld, and hospitals shuttered.
It will all be because if you lose this fight now, the Democrats will know for certain from here on out that they can use withholding entitlements as a tool to force your hand.
You must win this fight. You must show you are not afraid. When Ben Bernanke brings the Grim Reaper in on August 1st to tell you we are all going to die, you must mock death and choose life — not bipartisan compromises that will keep growing government and ever more rapidly turn this nation into a third class banana republic. In short, you must hold the freaking line!
Now, some of you, if you have read this far, are saying, “But in 1995, the Republicans got blamed for shutting down the government.” They did. But that’s because Americans detest losers. And Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole threw in the towel instead of fighting. Their will broke. They did not break the President’s will. Of course, the next year the GOP still only lost 9 House seats and actually gained Senate seats. Imagine what would have happened had they broken the President’s will.
House Republicans, this is a time for choosing: Do you choose to be more courageous than the Democrats who were willing to risk defeat to advance socialism? Is keeping your job more important to you than saving the country? If so, the odds are you will both lose your job and lose your country.
This is a time for choosing. Choose wisely.

If the GOP caves and folds-as I think they will- me-thinks it will be time for a new political party for conservatives to call home.

Could Sarah Palin Raise Enough Dough To Make A Presidental Run?

From Hot Air;

Fundraising prowess is a key characteristic for any potential presidential candidate to possess. So, does Sarah Palin have it? Depends on how you interpret recently released numbers. Her political action committee, SarahPAC, today reported raising $1.65 million in the first half of 2011 — with a total of 36,700 contributions from more than 24,000 contributors.
That money couldn’t be put toward a presidential campaign, but, as Michael O’Brien over at The Hill put it, “the haul reflects the extent of Palin’s latent support that could be converted into support for a White House bid.” The bare number doesn’t sound particularly impressive in light of what other candidates have raised. It doesn’t even sound particularly impressive compared to what another non-candidate has raised: Americans for Rick Perry raised $400,000 in just a few weeks.
But the number of contributors matters and what Palin was able to do with the money also matters. Palin spent $1.59 million in the past six months. SarahPAC Treasurer Tim Crawford declined to say exactly how the money was used beyond noting donations to candidates ($65,000) and to the Young America’s Foundation ($18,700), but it seems safe to assume some of it went toward the One Nation bus tour, which garnered all kinds of attention from the media and the public. Based on her return on investment on that, Palin knows how to stretch a dollar to her advantage.

And this;

But the point is, a Palin campaign wouldn’t suffer for lack of money.

From the mantra of the Obama campaign,YES SHE CAN!

Obama Has Taken Hostages In Debt Ceiling Talks

The Thug in Chief has threatened to take America's senior citizens hostage,if he doesn't get his way in the debt crisis debate;

President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.
"I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News

If the GOP had any guts-don't worry they,they don't- they would call Mr.Obama's bluff,and raise him in more spending cuts.More likely though,Boehener and McConnell will cave and give Obama his tax increases with no spending cuts while extending our debt limit putting us further into the abyss.

Steyn Putting It All In Perspective

Mark Steyn,puts in proper perspective,the News of the World hacking story,the Atlanta schools cheating scandal,and project Gunrunner;

We’re not talking about hacking a schoolgirl’s cellphone here. Real people are dead. Yet nobody’s going to close down any wing of the vast spendaholic DEATFBI hydra-headed security-state turf-war. And while Eric Holder, the buccaneering attorney general at the center of this wilderness of mirrors, doesn’t yet have as many Distinguished Public Servant of the Year awards as Beverly Hall, judging from his cheerfully upfront obstruction of the congressional investigation, he’s not planning on going anywhere soon.
So, at the News of the World, every single employee is clearing out his desk. But, at the Atlantic Public Schools, at the DEATFBI, life goes on. A curious contrast. The striking feature of Big Government, from Athens to Sacramento, is its imperviousness to any kind of accountability — legal, fiscal, electoral, popular. A media mogul, a bank chairman, an oil executive, a corporate-jet depreciation-claimant are easily demonizable: As President Obama cautioned CEOs a couple of years back, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

"The King James Is An Unparalleled Cultural Triumph"

Last week,Rich Lowery,went an disgraced himself by propagating The Cult Of Lincoln.Now,Rich Lowery,has gone an redeemed himself by correctly surmising the King James version of the Bible's place in our history and our culture;

The availability of the Bible in English, Bobrick notes, fostered commercial printing and a culture of reading. It created space for people — ordinary people, needing no official sanction or filter — to read and think about their faith and life’s profoundest questions. Ultimately, that undermined the authority of, to take another phrase from the King James Version (Romans 13:1), “the powers that be.”
“Free discussions about the authority of Church and state,” Bobrick argues, “fostered concepts of constitutional government in England, which in turn were the indispensable prerequisites for the American colonial revolt. Without the vernacular Bible — and the English Bible in particular, through its impact on the reformation of English politics — there could not have been democracy as we know it.”
The translators of the King James Version stated their “desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood of the very vulgar.” In a cultural triumph difficult to imagine 400 years later, it not only found a wide audience, but elevated it.

If you want to see the cornerstone of Western Civilization,the bedrock of English style democracy,if you want to see the foundations of American constitutional liberty,go find yourself a King James Bible,and there you will find the source of everything that has made us great.

"Lost Kid In Store"

This is funny!

Via The Feral Irishman;

A Muslim kid can't find his mother in the supermarket.

The store attendant says ''What does your mother look like?''

The kid says "How the Hell should I know?"

Happy Independence Day

The Cult Of Lincoln

One of the problems in conservatism today is the outright worship and revering of Abraham Lincoln among conservatives.He is lauded from Rush Limbaugh even to Sarah Palin as a hero of American Constitutional government even though Lincoln destroyed the Founders original vision of the Constitution,a limited federal government,and instituted an all powerful Leviathan that has consumed states and individual rights.Outside of Ron Paul,I know of no major conservative on the national scene who would dare criticise Lincoln.

So it came to no surprise to have found Rich Lowry to have written this;

In the prelude to and during the Civil War — the 150th anniversary of which we mark this year — Lincoln clung to the Declaration as the fundamental statement of the nation’s purpose. The Declaration, according to Lincoln, easily could have enunciated the practical reasons for our split from Britain, and left it at that. No ringing philosophical statements, no invocation of “unalienable rights.”

But Thomas Jefferson’s handiwork was meant for the ages. Lincoln praised him for possessing the foresight “to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”

What a load of hog wash!If their are 2 individuals who are diametrically opposed to one another in American history,it is Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.Their is no greater champion of states rights and the rights of man than Thomas Jefferson,and Rich Lowry,Abraham Lincoln is no Thomas Jefferson.

Lincoln did get this right though,that the Declaration of Independence rebukes and is "a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression",and Mr. Lincoln it rebukes you most of all.

A lot of people like to perpetuate the myth that Lincoln believed in equality under the law,when nothing could be further from the truth;

I am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and the black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man.

Lincoln in his speech to Charleston, Illinois, 1858

It is evident that,Lincoln,did not believe all men were "created equal",as is spoken in the Declaration.

Furthermore,what right did the Declaration of Independence give,Lincoln,that by the use of military force he could hold,free and soveriegn states in the Union against their will,after they had democraticly chosen "to alter or abolish it."

Lincoln is just as guilty as,King George III,in his many offences to the the colonies.He sent large armies in among the southern people without their consent.He blockaded southern ports.He refused to "Assent to Laws",by ignoreing and subverting the Constitution.As King George's armies "plundered our seas,ravaged our coasts,burnt our towns,and destroyed the lives of our people",so did Lincoln armies do the same to the South and more so.

What does the Declaration of Independence say about such men;

A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

If their ever was "a Tyrant unfit to be a ruler of free people",it was Abraham Lincoln.

Thomas Connolly refers to,Robert E. Lee,as the "marble man",because after the war the people of the south diefied him,dehumanizing him,removing all fault and error from him.The people of the North did something simmilar to Lincoln,he has been bronzed over.He has been made and fashioned as they wanted him to be,hiding who he really is,thus making a tyrant a false god of liberty.