I’m dealing with this right now:
Most state agencies could face additional 6 percent budget cuts to help offset a projected $161 million revenue shortfall.
Kerri Richardson, spokeswoman for Gov. Steve Beshear, said the administration is now gathering information on the potential impacts of the budget cuts.
State Budget Director Mary Lassiter sent letters to the heads of most government agencies on Friday alerting them to potential reductions in funding.
Richardson said the Medicaid program would be shielded from any additional cuts. Public schools, state unversities, community colleges, and the teacher retirement system also are among a short list of agencies and programs that would be spared.
Richardson said the administration is being prudent by planning for the potential budget cuts.
Now, the problem here is as Medicaid grows, it squeezes out other programs. However, the requirements for Medicaid are stricter than the state programs it replaces. Net effect, elderly and mentally handicapped lose state funded services. Period. That’s not speculation, that is what is happening in Kentucky and all across the country right now.
What is the guts to Nancy Pelosi’s health care reform? Funny you should ask:
That’s my opinion. But, it was written by The Wall Street Journal. Trust whoever you want, but in the real world, it’s already happening and Pelosi’s version would only make it much much worse, much much quicker. As states run out of money, they’ll have to drop services. Where do you suppose those people will wind up then?
I’m waiting for Associated Press’s fact check on how Pelosi justifies expanding a program that is bankrupt to provide more services to more people.
17
Nov
For whatever reason, the Associated Press felt it took 11 of their staff to read Sarah Palin’s 432 page book. The review was reporting at AP’s best:
- “….spends chunks of time reciting campaign pablum….”
- “Palin, like a former beauty contestant….”
- “Oh, and the Constitution.”
- “Other than a few smarmy asides….”
- “…..she writes at the end, ever folksy, ever optimistic, weirdly ungrammatical.”
Get the warm fuzzies reading that?
Here’s a list of other books AP has fact checked this year:
Well, in fact, here’s the entire list of “FACT CHECKS” the AP has ever put their name to:
That’s it.
I figured this couldn’t be such a blatant hatchet job by the Associated Press. So, I searched “book review”.
Nothing.
In fact, AP came to this conclusion a couple of years ago:
And, they seem to have held true to that commitment.
Except for this one particular book.
Ever wonder what AP had to say about Obama’s books?
Nothing.
Now, I’ve already seen it popping up on other boards, stuff like:
The Chicago Tribune actually fact-checked at least one of Obama’s books as part of an eight-part series. They’re in the Trib’s archives now so I haven’t bothered to delve deeper. Maybe a conservative who cares will be willing to actually dig them up and claim they gave him a free pass.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/chi-bookclub_12jul12,0,5352133.story
“Each book club will meet twice to discuss the book, a biographical account the Tribune found through its own eight-part series to be largely accurate but sometimes misleading in the details.”
The Trib is NOT the Associated Press. If you wanna debunk me, go ahead. But, make sure it’s the AP and not anyone else.
This just strikes me as an incredibly blatant attack on Palin.
While we’re waiting for Associated Press’s Fact Check of the Democrat health care reform bill, let’s read this:
16
Nov
Nobody needs to die worse than Antoinette Nicole Davis and Mario Andrette McNeill.
Well, except for whoever their clients were.
Unfreakinbelievable.
Slow. No meds. Painful. Screw “unusual punishment”. Nothing can match what they put a child through.
That’s all I have to say about that. I hope I never see them again. Ever.
OK, here’s what I’m dealing with:
The story comes with an example:
Now, the story ASSUMES that Apple pulled the app because a stockholder objected to it. He prefers apps that make fart sounds and shake babies until the stop crying. But, that’s just an assumption. I have a somewhat different ASSUMPTION. What he objects to seeing on his Iphone is this:
And, if the authors of this app want it to ever see the light of day, they need to change Nancy’s caricature to look something like this:
I’ve stolen that title from Classically Liberal. It’s not really the point I’m shooting for, but it’s close enough and the article is a riot. A lot of people have been claiming Obama’s socialist. I have for that matter. However, people supporting Obama have dismissed those claims as rhetoric. However, Obama’s White House PR person recently spoke of her admiration for Chairman Mao. Members of the Democratic Socialists of America are all over Obama’s Cabinet. So, there’s definitely a strong socialist streak in The White House and Congress right now. A lot of people are saying “so what?”. They’re claiming blurting out the S-bomb is just a scare tactic and those mentioning the S-bomb are radical right wing terrorist wannabes. Well, there’s a little more to it than that.
There are two types of people when discussing socialism. There are those who know what it is and its place in history, and those that don’t. That’s it. Some think they do, but, they still don’t. Now, regardless of taking sides, which anyone who knows me knows which side I’m on, the fact is still very simple that socialism is what it is and making the accusation that Obama is socialist is black and white. Socialism is what socialism is. Calling it something else or denying it doesn’t change what socialism is.
So, let’s run with the assumption that Anita Dunn gets her wish and Obama suddenly eschews the values of Chairman Mao. We’d have to look at history to understand why some people would fear socialism. Not the Communism part which freaks everyone out, but the socialism part. Socialism is defined by Dictionary.com as:
- a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
- procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
- (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.
Now, if you’ve got your own personal definition of socialism, stop here and go away. You’ll understand why if you do proceed. The shining example, as brought to our attention by the White House expert on Chinese Communist socialism, per Anita Dunn, is to stare adversity in the face and do it anyway.
That is very stupid. Dangerously stupid. Anita Dunn cites the fact Mao came from basically nowhere and took over China eventually. That’s all fine and good, but that has nothing to do with the political system she’s eschewing. Once Mao did take over, he initiated a chain of events that a lot of people have cited, but few have actually explained why. The problem with socialism is it is a top-down management style. All decision making is made by the government. Now, Obama and his bunch are saying this is good because all businesses are greedy and the government is not. However, the government doesn’t always get it right either. I cite Mao’s China from 1948-1952 as only one of the many examples of why socialism fails.
Mao was a moron, plain and simple. He believed that various Marxist principles could be used to produce bumper crops. Since the Maoists said that solidarity of the people made the people stronger, then the same applied to grains. Thus growing grains tightly packed together would make them stronger, not destroy crops. This was just one area where the Maoists tried to apply “scientific Marxism” to the physical laws of agriculture—applications that failed over and over.
So these experiments were dismal failures. But such failures are not enough to lead to a famine. Other factors come into play. One such factor was the fear of the dictator. Mao’s ideas failed but no one wanted to tell him. Tyrants could easily confuse the message with the messenger. So the incentive was to lie.
Local bureaucrats, instead of admitting that crops had been reduced, decided to write reports claiming that crops had increased. Those reports went to the superiors. The superiors, not aware of how much of the report was bluster, combined these exaggerated reports together. And they, thinking the reports were accurate, saw no harm in making them look even better by increasing the crop yields. And so it went. As the “data” accumulated it appeared that scientific Marxism was a success in agriculture. The top echelon of Mao’s China got reports that made them very happy.
Desperate for hard currency the Chinese officials decided to take advantage of their bumper crops and sell them outside China. So they confiscated a large section of what crops did exist for export. This meant that food was scarcer at the local level as the farms were depleted of their stock to fill the quotas for export. A year goes by and the next set of reports have to be prepared. Again no one wanted to be the first to prick the Maoist bubble. Nor did anyone want to report they had failed, not when everyone else was apparently so successful, as the reports clearly indicated. So once again they took the figures from the year before and added a bit to them. And the process repeated itself.
At the top levels of the government Communist officials received more data, carefully collected from across the country, indicating an even larger crop than the year before. So the quotas for export were increased.
More food was confiscated. But a problem arose. You can’t confiscate food that doesn’t exist. Authorities scoured the countryside and couldn’t find the crops that supposedly existed. The conclusion they drew was a simple one: the farmers were greedy, counter-revolutionaries who had obviously hidden the bumper crops. They were attempting to sabotage the revolution. So the officials, convinced the farmers had hidden food somewhere confiscated all the food they could find—which was actually all the food there was. The farmers had no hidden stocks, the data was wrong. The cumulative effect of lots of small distortions produced a massive error which resulted in the deaths of millions.
No one has a clue how many people starved to death in China from 1948-1952. Estimates generally range around 30 million, give or take 20 million or so. The reason they don’t know is because in socialist China of 1948-1952, crops counts were important, deaths not.
All thought it all, Chinese propaganda were telling people their government is good, the farmers starving to death were doing so because they were hiding their crops. No one questioned Mao’s claim that the greedy were starving to death by the millions. Even to this day, Anita Dunn apparently doesn’t.
OK, so you’ve got two situations here already. You’ve got me, who knows what socialism is, and knows the ramifications of socialism. Then, you’ve got Anita Dunn, who idolizes Mao for something he didn’t say or do.
Dunn claims he rose up against the Chinese government. Fact is he was groomed by the Chinese government and military to be leader. He did lead some revolts, but during the early part he kept his day-job as, get this one folks, a union organizer. He left that position to join an already occurring revolt. He rose to power not on intellect, as Obama’s peeps would have you believe, but on sheer brutality. The stories of Mao’s military torture tactics are stuff you don’t even see in gore movies.
Now, we’ve experienced this kind of top-down bureaucratic pandering that’s caused us all kinds of issues. Let’s go back eleven years. In 1996, President Bill Clinton attacked Iraq without any seeming provocation. He was under investigation. However, his justification was that Iraq was interfering with the United Nations inspections teams so that he could build weapons of mass destruction. This came from a report George Tenet presented to Congress. Clinton would do it again in 1998. Of course, he had “credible evidence” that Hussein was once again trying to amass WMD’s. Using the “evidence” Tenet presented to Congress, George W Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. Almost immediately Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats claimed they had been lied to. Not by Clinton, or by Tenet, but by Bush. A few years later the conclusion was that there never were any WMD’s in Iraq. This is just another example of socialist pandering resulting in horrific results. Now, in this case, the “evidence” Tenet had was justification to go to war with another country. OR, Tenet’s evidence was fabricated to impress his boss. OR, Pelosi lied when she said Bush lied. Bottom line, the “evidence” was collected by the President, used by the President, then used against his opposition by constantly changing. And no one asks a question. The very bottom line is this manipulation of facts by Tenet/Clinton cost a lot of US soldiers’ lives. It’s no different than Mao starving greedy farmers to death. Neither should have happened, and only happened because of information distorted to please the top dog. In China, there was no media to question Mao’s blatantly stupid moves. In the US, there is. However, if that media chooses not to ask any questions, it’s no different than Mao’s China.
9
Nov
Immediately after Obama took office in January, the Department of Homeland Security seemed to take a drastic turn in policy. Rather than concerning itself with terrorism associated with known terrorist groups, it seemed to target everything BUT known terrorist groups:
DHS Report on Right Wing Extremism –
Normal people just groaned. It was that kind of groan you make when you’re a kid and the coach puts in a kid who is clueless on the court. You know you’re screwed. So, us radicals and extremist average white male conservative bloggers just kicked back and waited for the inevitable. Over the weekend, we got what I don’t think surprised much of anyone. A terrorist attack. It however, was not an average white male Christian redneck. It was, roll the drum please, a person belonging to the one domestic organization that DHS DARE not utter in their report. It was, are you ready? A Muslem.
Yup. It was a Muslem with terrorist connections, radical thoughts on the internet, and a very vocal dislike of the United States. That wouldn’t be such a big deal, but, he was in the military.
Not sure just how much more wrong a report could possibly be regarding extremism in the United States. However, last I recall, there are no Christian versions of Sharia. Some of these Muslims do practice Sharia within the United States. Some guy drove over his daughter a week or two ago. A year ago or so some guy beheaded his soon to be ex-wife.
Those acts seem kinda radical to me.
That stuff didn’t seem to bother the new DHS. They decided to target groups that have no proven history of extremism in the modern era.
Pandering to the President by targeting the people he personally dislikes will get a lot more people killed. There are extremists in every social clique. Ignoring the most dangerous, most organized, most visible, and proven history of terror is just disgusting in its sheer stupidity and bias.
7
Nov
Everyone talks about how deep racism runs in the US. I’m not gonna deny we’ve got some issues. However, two events occurred today that I think puts things in a different light.
Today is the 25th anniversary year of Vanessa Williams being crowned Miss American. She ran into some difficulties and Suzette Charles took over. The reason that is significant is Vanessa Williams was the first black Miss America. Suzette Charles happened to be the second. In fact, we’ve had a few now:
- 1984 – Vanessa Williams
- 1984 – Suzette Charles
- 1990 – Debbye Turner
- 1991 – Marjorie Vincent
- 1994 – Kimberly Aiken
- 2003 – Erika Harold
- 2004 – Erick Dunlap
- 2007 – Rachel Smith
7 of the last 26. Not too shabby. 23% of them all since 1984. Not bad considering the population is a lot less than that. And, that’s not all. Miss USA competition has had a few black winners as well:
- 1990 – Carole Gist
- 1993 – Kenya Moore
- 1995 – Chelsi Smith
- 2002 – Shauntay Hinton
- 2007 – Rachel Smith
- 2008 – Chrystle Stewart
England is having an event right now as well. Rachel Christie got into a bar fight and has relinquished her crown. She has the distinction of being England’s first black Miss England.
And, although the United States now has a black President, England is still waiting for their first black Prime Minister.
I really think Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson need to take their act to England.
4
Nov
Rod Blagojevich, among other things, was accused of pay to play with SEIU. He got ran out of the governor’s office.
On September 14, 2009, Pat Quinn released this video:
Quinn immediately signed an executive order allowing collective bargaining for in-home workers. Most of these workers are family who live in the home in the first place. That didn’t matter to Quinn. The order went so far as to allow SEIU to collect fees from people who opted NOT to unionize.
The workers voted it down overwhelmingly.
The SEIU donated heavily to Kentucky’s governor as well. We’re waiting for a Quinn-esque executive order. The state is pondering moving services from agency services to individual consumer directed options programs. Exactly the arrangement SEIU has been targeting.
They’ve donated tens of millions to Obama.
And people wonder why the public option is so important to Obama and Pelosi.
Someone has suggested a RICO investigation into SEIU. Anyone REALLY think Eric Holder would do that? Go ahead, pull the other one.
4
Nov
I know everyone thinks I’m going to say last night was a referendum and Obama’s toast. But, I’m not going to just toss that out there. This is what I do think.
A lot of people talked about NY-23 like it meant something. The entire race was fubar for all concerned. You had a Democrat that wasn’t doing too well challenged by a Republican no Republicans liked. Toss in a conservative running as a “Conservative”, and it got real muddled. In fact, it got so screwed up that the Daily Kos got so confused he supported the Republican and Sarah Palin supported the independent. In the end, the very not-Republican dropped out and endorsed the no-popular Democrat. That had both party organizations teamed up against the independent. Not too surprisingly, the Democrat won. Main lesson learned, picking a candidate that does not reflect the party’s core values just never works out too good in the long rung. In this case, it didn’t in the short run. The Republicans have two years to figure out who would be a good candidate in that district. If they do, the Republicans get it back. If they don’t, it stays Blue Dog.
Virginia was fairly cut and dry. The Democrats, fresh on the heels of delivering Virginia to the winning Democrat in the 2008 President’s race, had everything rolling. So, they picked a candidate no one apparently liked. How do you do that? Virgina went 53% for Obama in 2008. One year later, it went 58% for the Republican. Once again, it’s easily argued the Democrats picked a candidate that did not reflect the party’s platform. No matter how you cut it though, that was a 16% swing in one year. That’s pretty astounding. Sure, Deeds may not have been the best candidate of all time, but surely that feel-good feeling the 58% got from last year could have delivered more than 42% of the vote this year. If you’re looking for an Obama mandate, my opinion so far is it certainly did not help this Democrat. Hurt him? Dunno. But to lose 16% in one campaign doesn’t look very good to me.
New Jersey was more fun to watch. In this case, New Jersey is about 33% Democrat, 46% non-declared, and 20% Republican. In order to win as a Republican, you have to get about 2/3 of those non-declared voters. Difficult, but doable. And, the really odd thing about New Jersey is they are very predictable about doing it. They will always vote Democrat for the President. But, their candidate doesn’t always win. When that Democrat does win as president, they immediately turn their back on the person they put in and vote the opposite way for governor. There is one thing fairly unique about this election over the last few tho, see if you can figure it out:
| Year | President | Party | Governor | Change |
| 2008-2009 | 2,215,422 | Democrat | 1,030,760 | -53% |
| 2004-2005 | 1,911,430 | Democrat | 1,224,551 | -36% |
| 2000-2001 | 1,788,850 | Democrat | 1,256,853 | -30% |
| 1996-1997 | 1,652,329 | Democrat | 1,107,968 | -33% |
| 1992-1993 | 1,436,206 | Democrat | 1,210,031 | -16% |
It’s not so much they did the usual thing of electing a Democrat for president, then immediately ditching him once he’s in office, it’s how big the swing was. The incumbent governor lost 1.2 million voters Obama had recruited for him. That folks is a TON of votes. Now, I’m a believer that all politics is local. However, when a presidential candidate recruits X number of new voters, which Obama obviously did, to lose those voters in one year is pretty astounding. Net result, New Jersey goes Republican.
Net result, in major contested races, Obama’s team went 0-2. They ceded Virginia, but campaigned heavily in New Jersey. Net result, losses of equal proportions. The percentage was closer in New Jersey, but given it was an incumbent of the same party as the freshly elected Democrat president, Obama should have meant something there. If he did, then Corzine must have been hugely unpopular. Mathematically, it appears Obama had no impact whatsoever. It could be argued Obama saved Corzine from an even more embarrassing defeat, but, that doesn’t mean squat in the final tally. It could also be argued Obama cost Corzine the election. I don’t really buy that. People generally dismiss national influences on what they perceive as local issues. The effect the national leaders should have is to get the base excited enough to get out and vote. Obama obviously did not do that. I don’t see that he hurt Corzine. But, he most obviously did not help Corzine enough to win.
Two elections is not a referendum. Virginia and New Jersey often elect Republican governors. There is no trend for either state other than New Jersey’s odd obsession of voting against the president that gets elected. The last thing the Republicans need to do is assume that whatever they did the last six months was the trick. The trick here was the fact the Republicans, in the governor’s races, fielded much better candidates. In the case of NY-23, they did not. So, the Republicans can’t assume that people are so fed up with Obama that they’ll vote for whoever is in the opposite party. It just doesn’t work that way.
Tradition dictates that the Republicans will pick up some seats next year. People love to stick it to the President whenever they can. They only way the Republicans will fubar that trend is to pick candidates that those people who are ready to stick it to the party in power can not support. 2010 will be a year the Republicans need to run as conservative, but not radical, candidates. The mistake the Republicans made during the last “revolution” was they assumed all traditions were wiped clean because they were so superior of a party. They learned real quick that wasn’t the case. In 2010, they’ll need to stake their positions and take advantage of the anti-government mentality. In 2012, Republicans will need to be more moderate to pick up those that can’t support conservative values. If they had done that eight years ago, they’d still be in power.
That’s some speculation for sure. The one proven point from last night is contrary to a lot of speculation from Keith Olbermann and the like, the Republican Party is alive and fully functional.
Sensing a bit hesitation in President Obama’s support, Hamid Karzai promised reforms the world can believe it. Among those reforms:
“We want our Taliban brothers and all others to come back and join with us,” he added.
Last I recall, the entire point of going into Afghanistan was to remove those who supported Osama Bin Laden. For those that have obviously forgotten, that was the Taliban specifically.
Now, I don’t blame this specifically on Karzai. Obama brought in his guy to run Afghanistan. He said he needed troops to keep the peace since the Taliban was regaining momentum. Obama, after declaring Afghanistan the only true war we should be in, ignored those military leaders and decided his best course of action to deter the advances the Taliban were making was to do absolutely nothing. This worked in such a way ( draw your own conclusion ), that allowed the Taliban to make very public and aggressive strikes to prevent the national election from occurring. Abdullah then drops out, the election is indeed canceled, just as the Taliban wanted and democracy supporters feared. Karzai then declares to the world he’s willing to work with the Taliban.
Obama, just bring our guys home. You’ve already lost the freakin war that so many people have died for.
