Claim: “this bill will reduce the deficit by _(insert huge amount here)_ by _(insert two years from now)_”

definition: the bill being touted will restructure an existing agency with the hopes of making it more cost efficient.  In reality this will never happen to a government agency and the agency will just need more money.  After the restructuring finishes we’ll vote to give the agency the “funding it needs to do it’s job right.” Or in other words, there is no such thing as a government agency being cost efficient and the general solution is to throw money at the problem until it looks good or gets off the front page.  Additionally, this bill, and the future bill to give additional funding to the agency will both increase your taxes.

Claim: “this bill will create _(insert what sounds like a huge number of jobs, don’t give a year)_”

Definition: This bill won’t create any new private sector jobs, in fact it will likely destroy them.  It will create new government jobs though, somewhere in the range of a few thousand cushy ones.  They can claim this however because there is no way to prove a new job isn’t the result of their bill nor is there a time restriction, so jobs created a gazillion years later count too.

Claim: Biden: “this is a big F*#king deal”

Definition: Finally! This will be off the front page and we’ve all got something in our pockets.  Now hurry up and get over with this press conference so we can stop talking about it and pretend it never happened, cause we’re in big F*#king trouble.

Claim: “we’re going to pay for healthcare with a 10% tax on fake tans”

Definition: we just found a new way to only tax white people, poor white people at that.  Hopefully this punches those Tea Party people in the gut.

Claim: Obama: “I’m not taking my trip to Indonesia because of the importance of getting this vote on healthcare done”

Definition: I forgot this was the start of March Madness when I booked my tickets.  But since I’m home, I needed to find a way to skip the Grid Iron dinner yet again, because unlike Bush or Clinton who always went and performed flawlessly, I don’t know how to make a joke about myself.

Claim: Obama: “I’m going to stop smoking”

Definition: This is why I want this healthcare reform package so desperately, cause with the number of packs of tar I smother my lungs in per day there’s no way I’m going to get good coverage.  Since I don’t have enough mental resolve to actually carry through on this campaign promise to my wife, and because I don’t want to look bad in the press when I get caught smoking on the White House lawn, I’m going to light up in the White House.

p.s. I hope no one remembers DC has a ban on smoking in public places and buildings.

Claim: Stupak: “I’m now alright voting for ObamaCare because Obama has pinky promised to sign an executive order saying it doesn’t change anything about abortions.”

Definition: I have no idea of Obama was telling the truth, and I don’t care.  But this airport sure does look pretty with my name plastered all over it!

Asked about all the underhanded tricks and backroom deals being made to pass the healthcare bill, Obama’s answer was nothing short of an arrogant and assumptive “that’s just playing politics, that’s how the game works.”

Guess our only hope now is for a change of administration.

Somewhere behind us lays the ravaged body of the American dream, murdered by soothsayers with fallacious promises carrying bludgeons of false liberty.  Below us ‘overprotective mother’ welcomes our fall with open arms, wanting to carefully nurture every waking moment of all of her children: ensuring all are equally fed and none is allowed to enjoy what another cannot.  Ahead of us lies a lifetime of slaps on the wrist, timeouts, and punishments for wanting something more.

Beside mother sits the proverbial pie.  No longer do we have to struggle to get our share, the pie has already been evenly divided so that we might each have a piece, we only have to give up everything we’ve worked for to get it.  Just staring beneath our feet, the boredom of our future life already begins to sink into our hearts.  No longer will we enjoy the freedom of the chase, the sheer joy of coming out triumphant after battling to survive.  No more rainy days: only the sunny.  No more snow: only summer.

Should we jump, no one will ever again live the American dream of rags to riches.  There will be no more bedtime stories of pioneer heroes, adventure, and hardships overcome.  Everyone will be sustained, but no more.  The pie has only so many slices, and everyone must get one.

But what if mother is wrong?  What if I need to stumble before I can walk?  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve enjoyed my life immensely.  I’ve lived through poverty.  I’ve lived day to day not knowing if the next was going to be the day my family was tossed on the street with nothing.  I’ve watched as relatives fought, best friends made horrific decisions, and others took their lives.  I’ve made a million and one mistakes, hurt myself and those I care about a million more, but I wouldn’t trade that life experience for anything.  Not for financial security, not for world peace, and definitely not for universal healthcare.  A life without freedom is not a life worth living: and yes, freedom includes the ugly.

I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for the bonds I share with all the people who shared the same life experiences, but many will fail to see what if anything that has to do with healthcare, so I’ll make it extra clear.

Forcing individuals to buy an insurance policy they do not want restricts economic and personal liberty.  Forcing people to pay for protection or membership they didn’t want used to be the height of un-American: the worst characteristic of unruly gangs and later unions, the target of Great American Westerns and the A-Team.  This “pay up or else” brutality is what most pioneers to came America to escape, and appears as a repetitive theme in the reasons for separation listed in the Declaration of Independence.

Worse, enslaving doctors to a government run healthcare system robs them of all ability to control their own careers.  Since when did Washington have the right to control the workplace?  I don’t want Washington telling me I have to design websites for everyone that asks, meet website quotas, and charge a set price and no other.

Lastly, it takes from me a liberty guaranteed in the constitution by the tenth amendment, which was added to the Constitution as part of the bill of rights by the states before they would agree to ratify it.  It states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

No where in the constitution or in any of its amendments is Washington given the power to control the workplace of any individual, nor any power that could even be interpreted in a convoluted manner in order to obtain that power.  Washington has completely overstepped its bounds and violated the pact.  As far as I’m concerned, if the Constitution is out the door, then so is Washington.  We sit upon the Great Abyss.  Should we jump any direction but as far away from it as possible, we condemn out country to follow in the footsteps of every failed nation in history that lost sight of defending the virtues they were founded upon, and that is My Cup of Tea.

Van Jones, who was fired almost immediately after Obama appointed him “White House Council on Environmental Quality” for his prevalent communist sympathies, previous statements made in strong support of 9/11 conspiracies, and vulgar behavior was more than likely referring to the sinking ship of American Capitalism in the wasn’t-socialist-enough vein.

What’s so ironic is that not only is the NAACP so ready and willing to throw support to an individual whose comments when asked why Republicans seemed to be able to muster more bipartisan support while in control than Democrats included “they[Republicans]‘re assholes.”

In case you just need to see this for yourself, here’s the video:

What’s not Ironic is that Van Jones is still willing to support Obama even after Obama threw him under the bus.  In his answer to this same question he continues to say:

“As a technical, political kind of term. And Barack Obama is not an asshole. Now, I will say this: I can be an asshole, and some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama, are going to have to start getting a little bit uppity.”

The communist sympathies in Van Jones still believe that Obama is the best chance for socialism in the U.S.

It doesn’t matter though what was in Van Jones’ mind as he made the comment, because you and I and everyone else who heard it will still understand it as yet another stab at Bush, and the bad economy he supposedly left Barack Obama to inherit.

Now, I’m not saying that the recession didn’t start during Bush’s term, but I am calling BS on President Obama’s insistent refusal to accept responsibility for TARP and the first bailout.  The senate had to author and vote on that legislation before it was ever voted into law and given to Bush to sign, and I certainly don’t remember Obama doing anything then to stop it, unless you consider a yes vote and taking time out of a campaign to help push it through staunch opposition.

I further recall Obama’s support of Ben Bernanke, the unheralded root of so many of the problems both with the mortgage crisis and the extremely poor bailout decisions.  Sure Ben inherited artificially deflated interest rated from Greenspan, who had justified lowering them to offset the 2000 tech bubble burst (that’s right, our recession today humorously is the offset of the recession that appeared under Clinton), but that didn’t force him to hike the rates up to ‘normal levels’ overnight, throwing the mortgage sector into crisis.  Nor is there a ‘normal level,’ any rate determined by one individual instead of by natural forces is inherently artificial.

We all remember what happened with the mortgages.  Households who could afford a $500 monthly mortgage payment couldn’t afford a $1000 or greater monthly payment, and a debt and foreclosure bomb was upon us.  But somehow, it was Bush’s fault that individuals had refinanced with lower interest rates.

Van Jones was right, Obama is steering the titanic.  In real life, the Titanic didn’t sink right away, it had a few last hurrahs to give before it tipped and slid to the bottom of the ocean.  The economy will recover and America will prosper left to itself, but the repeated bailouts and huge debt that Obama has steered us into is an iceberg ready to sink our ship.

Every few days another storm barges through the region piling onto the record total snowfall and reminding everyone that global warming makes the world colder, and wetter.  Luckily, the EPA and the Global Summit on Climate Change haven’t been successful in banning that hot fire, so I can still warm my hands and feet after I finish shoveling, but I remain apprehensive with the knowledge that my fire is making the world warmer and thus colder: a deadly paradox that leads to more fires, more heat, more warming, and of course more cold winter nights.

I will persist in naming the latest exercise in fear mongering to steal our freedom global warming: climate change just doesn’t exude the same level of stupidity and exists as part of a gradual tactical transition to brainwash the public into believing that any change is bad change.  Our world is defined by change.  At times in our past the Earth has been tens to hundreds of degrees warmer than now, even our precious ice caps and the Arctic Ocean used to be alive with green flora and fauna.  At other times our world has been locked in ice, terraforming entire continents.

But as you struggle to keep warm this winter and to heat your house without emptying your wallet for your energy bill, at least let your mind be eased by this: if you use a wood pellet stove, you are saving the world from global warming.  You heard me right.

It’s no small surprise that burning wood pellets constitutes green heat, or that congress gave a $1500 tax credit on new wood pellet stoves, but the argument is that burning wood pellets is more energy efficient and releases less carbon dioxide than simply letting old forests die and rot, or in many cases become fuel for massive forest fires.  What co2 is released is also offset by new forest growth, which unlike old forests sucks in far more co2 than it lets off.

Wait, old forests are bad for the environment?  So bad its better to grind them up and burn them to heat our homes?  That would imply that the national park service is one dirty polluter, anything but environmentally friendly, and a large contributing cause to global warming: just saying.

Honestly, this has been more than just a winter to remember. Over the past year precipitation rates have consistently set huge monthly and seasonal records here in the D.C. area.  The past year alone has wiped out the effects of decades of drought: our water table was replenished by mid summer, and we’ve been soaking in the extra ever since.  If this is the result of global warming, everyone should be thankful it’s happening.  But please, stop and think: colder winters, cooler summers, greater snowfall, greater rainfall, global warming.  It just doesn’t all add up, does it?

State of Delusion
Barack Obama
27 January 2010

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Tonight, I am going to address, the issues, before this great nation. Now let me be clear. I will only talk, in stilted, comma infused, English. I will never, get to a point, without contradicting myself, somehow. I will not, allow, the television camera, to highlight my prolific addiction, to myself, and the mirrors of my teleprompters. Nor will I ever, admit, that I never utter sentences, unless I can somehow manipulate the meaning into an oxymoron.

Tonight, I will begin by talking about my administration’s extreme dedication to cutting wasteful spending, and reducing, our nation’s debt. Let me start, by saying that it’s not my fault. I don’t have supreme power to fix all of your problems. But I will fix this, because I will never let America be second. I will not wait, Not when China, North Korea, Russia, and Germany are not waiting, but modernizing their economies, and bringing hope to their people.

I will state scary facts, until you are forced, to believe, whatever outrageous statement I make next is divine fruit given to you from heaven. I will prolifically start my sentences with I, because I only give myself credit. I will remind you that I am not part of Washington, I will hope, that my mesmerizing words, will cause you to forget that I am Washington’s, ringleader.

Tonight, I will claim, that trillions of dollars we didn’t have that was spent in the first year of my administration, was forced to be spent, by Bush. And tonight, I can’t help but blame him, for Washington’s failure. Now, I want to clear some things up.

I support universal health-care because I listen to the tears of the millions of Americans, even those with health-care, who are an illness away from financial disaster, and I care. I will pretend. I will pretend that I am ignorant that these uninsured Americans have iPhones, iPods, extra cars, large screen high-def TVs, expensive vacations, and starting today, an iPad. I will ignore that little Max, who might be diagnosed with cancer tomorrow and not live another day, was given a Nintendo Wii, DS, and XBOX360 for Christmas to go with the new games and new TV you bought him for his birthday a week ago, when you could have taken him to a doctor or bought health insurance.

I will lie and declare that I support health-care because it would save Americans a trillion dollars, just because it sounds cool to shout huge savings when I know I’ll just be taxing you extra and raising your rates. I will claim that I will continue to fight for transparency in government and an end to lobbyist control, even as I surround myself with lobbyists, and close the doors on the health-care debate. I will also claim that I will send back any health-care bill not up to my standards, even though this one is true. I would. I just don’t have any standards.

And finally, Tonight I will reprimand the supreme court for bringing fairness and equity to the election cycle by making blatantly untrue and loaded statements about their ruling. I will ignore that before, Unions and Media Organizations had a monopoly on campaign advertising in the weeks before an election, and that now their dollars and control can be balanced.

Thank you, and goodnight. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and pretend like we work.

-Barry

In today’s world of online marketing and email newsletters, companies put more on the line than ever before.  Allowing advertisers to send ’special alerts’ to your E-list too often and your list becomes worthless as members simply delegate all of your messages to their spam.

The quality of the advertising itself is also an issue, especially when you put your own brand name at the top of the email.  Online corporations that market other online corporations without regard to the advertisement’s authenticity or quality but only the whether the check clears the bank run a high risk of their own brand image becoming suspect.

Newsmax is a prime example of a company that makes both of these mistakes.

Newsmax not only uses their email list to send an annoyingly large number of advertisements to their subscribers daily under the guise of ‘Newsmax Specials’ or ‘Alerts,’ they seem to not care to screen their advertisements for quality at all.  Sure, at the end of the day it is the advertiser’s responsibility to make sure that their ads aren’t fraudulent, but Newsmax practically stakes their entire reputation on these ads without double checking them.

About a week ago Newsmax sent me an advertisement featuring energy analyst John Myers and his latest recommendation, Tamm Oil and Gas (TAMO).  Who John Myers is and whether or not he is an Energy Analyst I don’t know, but at the very least his analytical skills are of dubious quality.  It took me less than thirty seconds to decide that the email was a ploy to make the advertiser some quick dough, and just a few minutes (thanks to the very helpful tools at MSN Money Central) to reassure myself that I wasn’t missing out on the deal of a lifetime.

TAMO formed out of Hola Communications (not sure how the industries relate, but it seems their then new CEO was a Canadian Energy speculator), and owns a large selection of Oil Sands in Canada.  The first red flag? Oil Sands are only profitable if Oil prices go way up and stay there, a possibility as China’s oil appetite grows but not a done deal.  TAMO’s oil sands are undeveloped, but according to their website they are currently in the process of test drilling and getting ready to move dirt.  On their latest SEC filing TAMO claimed about $10k cash (no real change from the third quarter, or for that matter any quarter they’ve filed) with no outstanding debts.  Now I’m not an Oil Sands engineer, but it seems to me that a company doing oil sands explorations and testing is going to have heavy operating costs, so no debt and no cash: second red flag.

One possibility is that TAMO’s costs are low because they own their own exploration, drilling, and testing equipment.  However, also according to their latest SEC filing the company’s total hard assets (equipment, furniture, computers, etc) amounts to a whopping total less than $400: third red flag.

And for a last note about their finances, TAMO declares the value of their Oil Sands properties as ‘unevaluated,’ but they had no problem increasing their properties’ estimated worth from $4million to nearly $17million: fourth red flag.

With all the above in mind, it was no surprise to read the very fine print at the bottom conveniently difficult to read that said:

“this paid advertising issue of John Myers (hereafter “MYERS”) does not puport to provide an analysis of any company’s financial position or prospects and is not to be construed as a recommendation by MYERS and is not in any wat to be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any security. Tamm Oil & Gas Corp. (hereafter “Tamm”), the company featured in this report, appears as paid advertising in an effort to increase industry and investor awareness.”

I’m not surprised that I received a spam email purporting to guide my wallet to riches, but I am concerned for Newsmax’s sake that they risk their reputation as a Conservative news organization of decent repute by allowing their advertisers to peddle horrible financial advice under their banner.

The American civil war was a crisis that brewed under the surface for decades before, as was the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.  Often, society doesn’t speak up until it feels it has to: the bullied against a wall syndrome.  Government constricts individual rights more and more until finally citizens find they have had enough and revolt, either at the ballot box or in the streets.

Nearly every situation has a defining moment: an event that begins a cascade of emotion.  Every event has a leader, or a conspirator, or a hero, or a villain, or all of the above.  Rick Santelli’s January “rant” on CNBC was a defining moment.  Joe Wilson shouting “you lie!” was another.  Most recently ClimateGate, the scandal involving leaked emails showing falsified climate change data and attempted cover-ups, was such a moment.

Resentment has been brooding under the surface for decades now.  As more and more legislation restricts or threatens individual rights under the guise of preventing human-caused environmental damage and catastrophic climate change, Americans and individuals around the world have felt bullied, pushed against a wall, and shoved aside in the name of preventing a faceless fear.  Eventually many spoke up, criticizing the poor science, ludicrous hypotheses, and ‘end of the earth’ fear being driven into our lives by hypocrites, liars, and fear-mongers.

True to form, these ‘nay-sayers’ were dismissed as ‘crazy’ ‘unintelligent’ ’skeptics’ in ‘denial’ of the ‘blatant truth.’  How inconvenient though the real truth is.  This moment just got them at their own game, revealed all their true colors, and squashed their ability to leverage ‘don’t you care about the earth’ power over Washington, London, Canberra, Copenhagen, and everywhere else worldwide.

So here is a toast to great moments in the history of mankind: let all the lies employed to control us be dispelled, let all the fear tactics be dispersed, and let all the bullshit be revealed.

The prevailing deception behind TBTF is that the wealth, resources, and jobs from companies that bust are gone.  To the contrary, big companies failing is exactly the medicine the market needs to grow.

Take for instance the dot-com bust in 2001.  Sure, the U.S. entered a recession.  No, TBTF companies weren’t on the brink of bankruptcy, but hundreds of over-priced internet start-ups were.  The effects of their collapse rippled through the market and Internet Service Providers who had spent hundreds of millions creating a fiber-optic grid around the world suddenly found their money pool drying up.  Unlike mortgage lenders who received a bailout when the housing market collapsed, Internet Service Providers entered bankruptcy.

But even though the major owners of the infrastructure that supported and made possible the modern era of information and communication were gone, the infrastructure itself remained. Bankruptcy opened the door to a quick recovery and a far more stable surge in internet growth.  Venture Capitalists wised up and spent more time researching start-ups, stock traders didn’t gamble as much hoping each new start-up would turn them into millionaires, and more importantly, the companies who entered bankruptcy paved the way for cheap internet.  Laying fiber optics not just nationwide but worldwide in less than a decade was no small feat, nor a small investment.  As ISPs dropped like flies creditors were left with fiber optic networks on their hands that they had little use for, and they sold them to recover their investment at pennies on the dollar.  With almost unlimited bandwidth available (limited only by your dial-up modem and the phone line into your house), companies who bought up the bankrupt networks were able to quickly offer low cost internet because of their drastically reduced sub-costs.

Al Gore didn’t invent the internet, recession did.  The infrastructure didn’t disappear, it just changed hands.  Sure a few jobs were lost, many large fortunes lost, but that was a small price for the economy to pay towards the growth in jobs and wealth that followed.  The important lesson to learn is that letting big companies fail will be better for the economy in the long term than any short term fix is worth.  The trillions Washington has committed to spending or already spent simply aren’t worth it, we shouldn’t reward mediocrity.

————————————————–

Every good operation needs a fallback.  For liberals, Jimmy Carter is the perfect fallback.  An unintelligent and manipulable former peanut farmer turned failed president.

What’s perfect about Jimmy is that given the right drink he’ll say just about any darned thing you want him to, and he’ll get away with it, because he is (a) a liberal, (b) an ex-president, and (c) expected to say dumb things.  No one believes the things Jimmy says, and no one has to.  What matters is that the thing Jimmy was told to say got said, and now its out there, a lie floating around in the dark like Archibald Crane’s headless horseman.

Every couple of years the liberal elite drag Jimmy out of the gutter to tell some tall tale that they can’t but which needs telling.  Yesterday, they gave Jimmy a picture of a white guy yelling at a black man and told him to stamp racist all over it in big red letters.  A few years before they used Jimmy to rewrite history painting Bill Clinton as the hero who relentlessly pursued Osama Bin Laden[1] instead of the traitor who let Bin Laden go and sold sensitive Nuclear secrets to the Chinese… who have since helped half a dozen of our enemies develop nuclear capabilities.  And repeatedly they used Jimmy to call the Bush Administration liars.

Joe Wilson is anything but a racist, if for no other reason than Jimmy Carter called him one.  The liberal elite are running scared because they are rapidly losing America and any legitimacy they had left with the ObamaCare debacle after their infantile shoplifting spree these last twelve months.  In order to even hope of overcoming their Waterloo, they had to first stop the momentous surge in opposition represented by Wilson’s historic stand for reason and sanity against the President, and when they unsuccessfully attempted to make him appear submissive on the house floor in front of all of America, they had no option left but to fire the racist shot behind them during their retreat.  Make no mistake about it, Jimmy Carter’s statement was nothing short of a failed shot in the dark.  The bluff is over, it is time to bring the debate back to ObamaCare.