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Not News: Food Stamp Participation Jumped by Over 600,000 in September; Last Pre-Election Number Revised Up
By Tom Blumer | December 07, 2012 | 23:57
The U.S. Department of Agriculture released its latest report on food stamp program participation through September today. I received the email alerting me to the release at 5:17 p.m., so it seems reasonable to believe that USDA and the Barack Obama administration wanted the new data to get as little attention as possible (as will be seen later, it’s currently getting none). If so, they have two probable reasons for wishing to minimize its impact.
The first and more obvious of the two is that the food stamp rolls increased by over 607,000 in September to 47.71 million, yet another all-time record. That’s awful enough, but here’s the real kicker: the participation figure for July, the last month of data available before Election Day, was revised up by over 150,000, changing that month’s reported increase from 11,600 to just under 166,000. As will be seen after the jump, no other month’s data was revised except August, where the changes were infinitesimal
Remember how our friends on the left were so appalled that the Michigan state legislature passed a right-to-work law? How about in just-across-the-lake Illinois, that liberal bastion and home of President Barack Hussein Obama?
By Rick Pearson, Chicago Tribune | 1:26 p.m. CST, December 19, 2012
A coalition of public employee unions issued a report today blasting state legislation to address their vastly underfunded pension systems and offering instead to make increased worker contributions if lawmakers raised $2 billion by ending tax benefits to corporations and imposing new taxes.
Appearing at the James R. Thompson Center, members of the We Are One coalition said plans backed by Gov. Pat Quinn and another proposal supported by a bipartisan group of lawmakers would violate the state constitution by reducing pension benefits already guaranteed to workers. They predicted such a change would be overturned by the courts.
Moreover, the group said the plan Quinn was advocating would “cause deep harm to working and retired state employees and teachers, negatively impact the Illinois economy and yet still not solve the state’s primary pension problem — the failure to regularly fund its annual required contributions.”
The unions said their offer to require state workers and teachers to pay 2 percent more toward their retirement was conditional upon the state making an “ironclad guarantee” in state law that government fund its pension obligations.
To help fund those obligations, the unions proposed eliminating several corporate tax benefits as well as imposing new taxes on auto trade-ins, satellite TV service and downloaded digital entertainment. The new funds also could be used to help offset cuts in other public social services, the group said.
Illinois has been struggling to keep big companies in the state since Illinois Governor Pat Quinn approved an income tax increase in January. Quinn has been widely criticized for the move, and a new survey ranking Illinois among the worst business climates in the U.S. will likely provide fodder to the naysayers.
According to a survey released Monday, California, New York and Illinois have the “least favorable business climates” to corporate executives in the U.S. Nearly 25 percent of the 322 corporate executives surveyed said Illinois was unfavorable due to high taxes and “anti-business climate/regulation.”
“With the battle for business more intense than ever, states and their economic development organizations need to pay close attention to the results of this survey,” Development Counsellors International (DCI) President Andrew T. Levine said in a statement. “Whether accurate or misguided, perceptions about a location’s business climate often play a crucial role in site selection decisions and where companies invest money and create jobs.”
Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina had the most favorable business climates, according to the survey.
Mike Frerichs is running to keep his seat in the 52nd District Senate seat from Champaign County. He clams he’s all about small businesses in Illinois. Yet, things have gotten so bad during histerm in office that his own family is moving their business out of Illinois and into Indiana.
On the main page of his Senate website, Frerichs is all proud of the “job-creation program” he had a hand in but the best “job-creation program” would be to make Illinois more business friendly and tax-hike-Mike has no desire to do that at all.
The business climate in Illinois under Frerichs and Democrat Governor Pat Quinn is so bad that even Frerichs’ own family is moving its business out of the state.
Recently The Champaign News-Gazette reported that Frerichs cousin moved his trucking business from Illinois over to Covington, Indiana.
Frerichs’ cousin admitted that it is all true and that Illinois’ horrid business climate drove him out of the state.
Readers will not be surprised to learn that Mike Frerichs is a Democrat.
Illinois is doing just what our friends on the left say government should be doing as far as taxes and the economy are concerned, and the result is a loss of businesses, a state government which cannot fund its pension system, and calls for even higher taxes. Simply put, the Democrats’ economic policies are being put into practice, and they are not working!
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Chevron Corp. will move as many as 800 jobs to Houston from its California headquarters to support its exploration and production operations, the company told employees Thursday.
The oil giant will maintain its corporate headquarters in San Ramon – just east of San Francisco – where 6,500 employees work.
In an email to its workers, Chevron said jobs moving to Houston include employees in support groups involved with technology, procurement and business development.
“Moves in these groups are expected to take place over the next two years to support our growing upstream business,” the company email said.
I wonder how many businesses are relocating employees from Texas to California. Somehow, I suspect not many.
An interesting move. Chevron is moving support jobs to Houston, which will improve efficiency and (presumably) lower costs. “Moves in these groups are expected to take place over the next two years to support our growing upstream business,” the company e-mail stated, and it makes sense that such jobs would be closer to the physical activity involved. The corporate leadership remains in California, so most of the top executives don’t have to move.
California and Illinois are both following the Democrats’ preferred model for government: unsupportably high government spending, and a high tax regime. Now the Pyrite State is losing another 800 good jobs. Those jobs might or might not have been moved anyway, even if California were governed better, but the anti-business attitude on the Left Coast couldn’t have helped swing the decision toward keeping the jobs in San Ramon.
She’s the Bitch that took God out of School and nothing has been the same since. And this was over her son having to pray at Poly HS in Baltimore. Remember it well. She moved to Texas, went missing, found dead much later. And I think her son became a minister. Now today we had another PREYING at school, but it was of children. I wonder if each school shooting, the heat is turned up higher at her current residence.
Saw Obama comment on this. And honestly, I didn’t think he was going to get through his comments without breaking down. He did wipe away a tear or two. It was tough for him to handle. I will praise him for his words.
It happened in 1963 along with all the other things that altered the course of America and more or less derailed the core fabric of the country. To me, it was the start of the long slow descent we’re in now. What was commonplace in 1962 has been peeled back slowly to the point of what was normal life then, is now looked at as you could do that then. This woman was a starting point of all normal nuclear families complain of today. That is if normal nuclear families still exist anymore.
From Wikipedia: Madalyn Murray O’Hair (April 13, 1919 – September 29, 1995) was an American atheist activist. She was the founder of the organization American Atheists and served as its president from 1963 to 1986. One of her sons, Jon Garth Murray, was the president of the organization from 1986 to 1995, while she remained de facto president during these nine years. She is best known for the Murray v. Curlett lawsuit, which led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling ending official Bible-reading in American public schools in 1963. This came one year after the Supreme Court prohibited officially sponsored prayer in schools in Engel v. Vitale. O’Hair later founded American Atheists and became so controversial that in 1964 Life magazine referred to her as “the most hated woman in America”.[1][2]
In 1995 she was kidnapped, murdered, and her body mutilated, along with her son Jon Murray and granddaughter Robin Murray O’Hair, by former American Atheist office manager David Roland Waters.
It was bad enough when they had uber-loon Keith Olbermann sit in with them on the pre-game and halftime, and when they engaged in doltish PC antics. Now, Bob Costas (who I already can’t stand for his condescending delivery of practically everything) decides to lecture us all about gun control:
“Our current gun culture,” [sports writer Jason] Whitlock wrote, “ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.”
“Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football, will be analyzed. Who knows?”
“But here,” wrote Jason Whitlock, “is what I believe: If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”
Because you’re an idiot, Whitlock. And you too, Costas. Belcher was obviously suffering from some severe mental and emotional issues. Thinking that because he may not have had access to a gun he wouldn’t have killed his girlfriend and himself is wishful thinking at best, and plain stupidity at worst. Not to mention that handguns enhance people’s safety every freakin’ day.
It’s bad enough I tuned in to see how my second favorite football team (Eagles) was faring against “America’s Team” (Cowboys) last evening. I certainly didn’t need this sanctimonious garbage on a football game yet again. It’s one thing for Costas to say “Looks like the gun control debate may resurface” or something to that effect, but don’t f’in lecture me.
I’ll never be tuning into Sunday Night Football henceforth. Who needs it. I’ll just scope the constantly updating ESPN.com game schematics.
“The most important person in the world to you is you, and you hardly even know you.”
That was the most evil, most vile, most satanic, most sadistic, most corruptive, most destructive jingle and ad campaign of the 1970s. It created tens of millions of narcissists nationwide. 50 million of them voted for the biggest narcissist ever to sit in the Oval Office in history. And they have succeeded in destroying this once great (and now crumbling) nation. And it is the fault of that ad campaign and that jingle and the radical Socialist education establishment.
J Jesus first. O Others second. Y Yourself last.
The only way to true joy in your life is to dedicate yourself to Jesus first, others second, and yourself last. Any other — all other — routes will lead to despair and an overwhelming feeling of neediness. You will not ever feel at peace until you exercise JOY.
And this nation will never recover from its narcissistic Socialist, nation-destroying agenda until enough people exercise JOY to counteract all the narcissists who voted for the world’s biggest narcissist (eclipsing Adolf Hitler himself).
OK, most people will see this as more of a Hallowe’en to Thanksgiving recipe, but it’s really for all year ’round. It’s gone around my e-mail group, but York lost it and needed it again, so I said to myself, “Self, the whole purpose behind these cookies is lost, if you keep it a secret! Why don’t you tell the world, hey?”¹
2 cups canned pumpkin
1 cup sugar
½ cup cooking oil
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp milk
2 tsp vanilla
1 bag Nestle’s Toll House chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350º F. Combine pumpkin, sugar and oil in a mixing bowl. Add flour, baking powder cinnamon and salt, mixing well. Mix soda and milk in a separate container, then add to cookie mixture. Stir in chocolate chips and vanilla.
Drop by spoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet, and bake @ 350º F until done; about 15 to 20 minutes. Serve warm with lots and lots of ice-cold milk, and napkins, since you’ll get melted chocolate chips all over your fingers.
And these cookies can be enjoyed by Democrats and Republicans, moonbats and wingnuts, and even the occasional Ron Paul supporter.
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¹ – I’m guessing that some people will figure out from where that quote came.
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Cross-posted on THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL.
Truth Before Dishonor is currently in negotiations to acquire a new author. This person has a certain star power and has proven elsewhere to be able to destroy the lies of the Loony Left with shock and awe. Amazing has this person’s total destruction of the whiny Left’s comments been. Truth Before Dishonor has given an offer of authorship here to this particular star, and the star has declared a definite interest. But prior obligations for the month of November and a previously scheduled month of December separation from serious internet activities has pushed back the decision date until January, 2013.
But I strongly hope and believe this particular person of a specific star power will become an author on Truth Before Dishonor in 2013. Stay tuned. If this person does indeed join the ranks of Truth Before Dishonor authors, I guarantee you, you will not be disappointed.
I now open the floor for the ever hopeful to be ever hopeful.
A dark cloud follows him wherever he goes.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
Farmers obviously need rain for their crops, so there are some who resort to cloud seeding, adding silver iodide to the clouds to try to force rain out of them. But it’s a bad idea to seed a thunderstorm cloud. Cumulonimbus clouds can produce nasty things like hail storms, massive lightning storms, micro-bursts, tornadoes.
And of course, there are those who always bring bad luck with them, like Bad Luck Schleprock, our current President.
So, today I am telling you about the seeding of a 3,000 mile wide thunderstorm cloud hanging over the US — and the silver lining that comes with it. It’s painfully schadenfreudig. Painfully schadenfreudig, indeed. (Multiple stacked redundancy intentional.) Barack Obama and the Democrats, very cynically aware that their grand scheme to shove the US headlong into Socialism could cause them to fall out of power, set up a series of Laws and programs that would save most of the very bad results until after the 2012 election. After having blamed Bush for all the Democrat-and-Socialist caused travails, they would have a way of avoiding responsibility for the looming mega-disaster. It works like this:
Set up a Socialist system with all the false positives front-loaded and all the negatives back-loaded.
Get possibly voted out of office before the negatives hit, so the Socialist-caused negatives would hit when Conservatives were in office.
Blame the Conservatives in office for the economic disaster the Socialists caused.
Get the Socialists re-elected to complete the evil transformation of the Free Market US into a Socialist state, with the Conservatives forever blemished by the results of Socialist actions.
But a strange thing happened along the way. The Socialists got re-elected by a completely ignorant, envious, slothful, free hand-out seeking crowd. And all the back-loaded disasters will hit while the Socialists are in power. (By the way, did you know that tornadoes are also backloaded? They are on the back end of cumulonimbus clouds, and not up front.)
ObamaCare is one such program. As most of it is set to kick in now that the election is over, total disaster is on the horizon. Businesses, who cannot pay the cost of ObamaCare and stay afloat at the same time, will be laying off massive numbers of workers nationwide. Other businesses will be cutting their low-level employees (the working poor) to under 30 hours a week so those businesses can stay in business. Very little expansion will be happening, if any at all. It’ll be full-on contraction.
A nice little poisonberry in ObamaCare — that “make health care cheaper for all” lie — is a 2.3 percent excise tax on all medical devices, such as crutches, wheelchairs, heart stents, etc, etc. And an excise tax is far worse than a profit tax or income tax. It hits the gross revenue and not the after-expenses cost. For example, suppose it costs a business 5,000 dollars for the raw materials to make a single product. Add in the labor costs, the health insurance costs, the retirement costs, the social security tax, the medicare tax, the property tax for the building itself, the electricity cost, the property insurance cost, the transportation cost, the bookkeeping cost, and all other costs associated with getting the already developed product to market and the final cost to the business is 6,800 dollars. The business sells the product for 7,000 dollars because that’s what the market will bear. The business gets a profit of 200 dollars per sale.
In comes the 2.3 percent excise tax. Another 161 dollars off the top. The new profit for the 7,000 dollar item falls from 200 dollars to a whopping 39 dollars (an effective tax rate of 80.5 percent of the profit). Not enough to make the company a going concern. Kill the Research and Development department of the company — the life-blood of all businesses that want to survive, for if a business is not growing and moving forward it is necessarily dying.
But it doesn’t stop there. No, not at all. That same company also has to pay the new, higher costs involved in providing ObamaCare to all its employees (instead of the less expensive insurance plans which were optional, which fair portions of employees did not opt into). That 39 dollars per product, which used to be 200 dollars per product goes negative. It costs more to produce than it can be sold for.
But, again, it doesn’t stop there. Obama’s declaration that electricity costs must necessarily skyrocket and he’ll bankrupt coal-fired electric plants necessarily means the energy-intensive manufacturing industry will get hit hard with skyrocketing overhead costs. Costs that cannot be reduced merely by laying people off. So instead, the companies will shutter its doors and either go off-shore or cease to exist, providing a double-whammy of forcing the products to become far more expensive than they are now and far more difficult to obtain.
Small businesses will collapse. The middle class will become working poor. The working poor will become the unemployable destitute. Products the middle class used to be able to afford will become luxury items. Items that were luxuries for the working poor will become nothing but unreachable pipe-dreams. Inflation will go into hyper-drive. Interest rates will climb, making the cost of borrowing prohibitive. And deficit spending, which has been kept artificially low (yeah, I said it), will explode.
How is 1.2 trillion dollars (or more) in deficit spending “artificially low”? That’s a good question. And I have a good answer for that. Two words: “debt” and “service”. Debt service.
Historical view of the Prime Rate from Forecast Chart.com (8 percent line added).
Above is a chart showing the historic levels for the Prime Rate, from Forecast Chart.com. I added a red line at 8 percent for reference. Below is a chart showing the historic levels for the Discount Rate, from a 2009 article on Apin Talisayon’s Weblog (data obtained from the Financial Forecast Center). I added a red line at 6 percent for reference.
US Discount Rate From 1950 as found on Apin Talisayon’s Weblog (6 percent red line added).
From Apin Talisayon:
As I said, central banks had recently been dropping interest rates, and so we cannot use the abnormally low prevailing interest rates (0.5%). I plotted the historical data of discount rates set by the US Federal Reserve since January 1950 from the Financial Forecast Center[.]
As you can see in the above two charts, the Prime Rate and the Discount Rate differ in levels, but mirror each other. And they’re not only at historic lows; they’re far below historic norms. That means the future necessarily will provide much higher rates on borrowing than today. And the Federal Government’s debt service costs absolutely must skyrocket. Couple that with the US credit rating crumbling — and will continue to crumble — and the interest on the debt will become astronomical. Even a fairly normal rate of 6 percent with our current 16,000,000,000,000 dollar deficit means 960 BILLION DOLLARS in interest payments alone. By 2015, our national debt will be 20 TRILLION DOLLARS and the interest on that debt will be 1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS. That’s before paying for roads, bridges, high speed trains to nowhere, free birth control pills for Sandra Fluck (phonetic spelling), free abortion pills for Sandra Fluck (phonetic spelling), free ObamaPhones, free health care, free foodstamps, free college tuition, free housing for the poor and forever pregnant single mothers, free Big Bird, free NPR propaganda, bailing out California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, free cowboy poetry, and oh yeah, paying for our national defense.
1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS SPENT TO PAY FOR ALREADY SPENT MONEY WE DIDN’T HAVE BEFORE PAYING FOR ANY CURRENT PROGRAMS AND EXPENSES!!!
The Socialist who ascended the throne in DC, along with the Socialists in the US Senate who have adamantly refused to produce a Federal Budget since April, 2009, in direct violation of Federal Law and the US Constitution, have successfully Cloward-Pivened the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. The most prosperous nation this world has ever seen has been successfully brought to financial ruin by the Leftists in power who have no use for a document that is “over 100 years old”. The aim? Destroy the Free Market and implement Socialism worldwide.
The silver lining? Conservatives have not been responsible for any of it. Conservatives have not been in charge for any of it. I know, little solace for the loss of a once great and mighty and FREE nation. Will there be anything left to save by 2016? And will there be any conceivable way to save it and return to prosperity from the Abyss of Destitution Obama and the Socialist Democrats have created? Or will it already be too late? I, for one, am not looking forward to the disaster these next 10 years will provide us. (UPDATE: Nice Deb performed her Karnac impression and answered my questions before seeing them. Go to her site to read her answers.)
The governor of California is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out and attacks the governor’s dog, then bites the governor. The governor starts to intervene, but reflects upon the movie Bambi and then realizes he should stop because the coyote is only doing what is natural.
He calls animal control. Animal control captures the coyote and bills the state $200 for testing it for diseases and $500 for relocating it. He calls a veterinarian. The vet collects the dead dog and bills the state $200 for testing it for diseases. The governor goes to the hospital and spends $3,500 getting checked for diseases from the coyote and getting his bite wound bandaged.
The running trail gets shut down for six months while the California Fish and Game Department conducts a $100,000 survey to make sure the area is now free of dangerous animals. The governor spends $50,000 in state funds implementing a ‘coyote awareness program’ for residents of the area. The Legislature spends $2 million to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently eradicate the disease throughout the world.
The governor’s security agent is fired for not stopping the attack. The state spends $150,000 to hire and train a new agent with additional special training, re: the nature of coyotes. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) protests the coyote’s relocation and files a $5 million suit against the state.
The governor of Texas is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out and tries to attack him and his dog. The governor shoots the coyote with his state-issued pistol and keeps jogging.
The governor spent 50 cents on a .380-caliber, hollow-point cartridge. Buzzards ate the dead coyote.
And that, my friends, is why California is broke and Texas is not.
Three years ago today, there was a jihadist attack on Fort Hood perpetrated by Major Nidal Hasan. Michelle Malkin has the names of those murdered, which included one soldier’s unborn baby:
LTC Juanita Warman, 55, Havre de Grace, Md.
MAJ Libardo Caraveo, 52, Woodbridge, Va.
CPT John P. Gaffaney, 54, San Diego, Calif.
CPT Russell Seager, 41, Racine, Wis.
SSG Justin Decrow, 32, Plymouth, Ind.
SGT Amy Krueger, 29, Kiel, Wis.
SPC Jason Hunt, 22, Tillman, Okla.
SPC Frederick Greene, 29, Mountain City, Tenn.
PFC Aaron Nemelka, 19, West Jordan, Utah
PFC Michael Pearson, 22, Bolingbrook, Ill.
PFC Kham Xiong, 23, St. Paul, Minn.
PVT Francheska Velez, 21, Chicago, Ill. and her unborn baby
Michael G. Cahill, Cameron, Texas [civilian]
It still breaks my heart thinking of Pvt. Velez especially, who cried out for her baby as she lay dying.
A pregnant soldier shot during a rampage at a Texas Army post last year cried out, “My baby! My baby!” as others crawled under desks, dodged bullets that pierced walls and rushed to help their bleeding comrades, a military court heard Monday.
A soldier had just told Spc. Jonathan Sims that she was expecting a baby and was preparing to go home, when the first volley of gunfire rang out Nov. 5 in a Fort Hood building where soldiers get medical tests before and after deploying.
“The female soldier that was sitting next to me was in the fetal position. She was screaming: ‘My baby! My baby!’” Sims said.
It’s pretty much a known fact for anyone with more than two brain cells in their head that the attack on Fort Hood was a terrorist attack. Hasan had plenty of evidence against him there. He defended suicide bombings and said that Muslim service members were justified in killing US troops. He was in contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, one of the world’s most notorious terrorists. And what did they discuss? Carrying out jihad in the United States.
Yet Barack Obama continues to classify this attack as “workplace violence”.
Shame on him.
How can there be shame on someone who is shameless?
If there was ever a time for the Commander-in-Chief to change the designation away from the idiotic “workplace violence” tag to something which would allow the award of Purple Hearts to the victims of Nidal Hasan’s deliberate attack on American soldiers, Veterans’ Day would be that time.
I do not understand why he does not; it isn’t as though doing so could somehow inflame passions of the Muslims around the world against the United States more; we are at war against the Islamists, and are actively killing them in Afghanistan, directly, through combat, and in Pakistan via the occasional drone attack against al Qaeda leaders. We sent SEAL Team 6 into Abbottabad, Pakistan, to eliminate Osama bin Laden, and we used unmanned drones in Yemen to kill Anwar al-Awlaki and then his son,Abdulrahman al-Awlaqi, though the actual target at that time was (supposedly) Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian al Qaeda operative. The Muslims know that we are at war with the Islamists, and the American people know that we are at war with the Islamists, and there is really no reason at all not to designate the Fort Hood massacre as an Islamist attack on our soldiers.
THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL salutes our veterans on Veterans’ Day, and as much as I can speak for our host here, TRUTH BEFORE DISHONOR does as well.
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Cross-posted on THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL.
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Related articles:
Attention anti-Christian Socialists and Leftists (that includes all who call themselves Democrats): A challenge.
Show where your Socialism (or Liberalism, Progressivism, whatever you want to call it) has prevented sexually transmitted diseases at a level greater than that espoused by devout Christians or devout Jews.
Show where your Socialism (or Liberalism, Progressivism, whatever you want to call it) has prevented abortions at all, or failing that (which I know you will), show how it has prevented more abortions than devout Christianity or devout Judaism.
Show where your Socialism (or Liberalism, Progressivism, whatever you want to call it) has created more upward mobility on the economic ladder for the average citizen.
If you fail at any of the above, you prove that Socialism cannot match Freedom.
(this article subject to expansion at a later time or date)
I really, really wish I were joking about the title, but I’ve actually heard several folks seriously suggest this. (Hugh Hewitt show had a co-host/guest suggest “dropping the abortion issue,” for example—thankfully, Hugh pointed out that was…not a great idea.)
In a campaign where social issues were not focused on, where the SoCon vote was assumed, where the entire point would be “It’s the economy, stupid” and our turnout dropped hugely… we should really ditch these social conservatives entirely and try to peel off some Democrat voters. I was one of the folks that was saying at the beginning that we could not just assume we’d get our own base and that all we needed was to go after other groups, though I—like many others—thought that things were obviously bad enough that maybe the base could be taken for granted.
We tried the “shut up about social issues, focus on the financial short-term disaster.” Shock shock, it didn’t work. The “of course” votes didn’t show up, as best we can tell at this early of a time. Of course there was fraud and probably voter suppression, but we knew from the start that we’d have to win so big that they couldn’t cheat.
I know the thinking Libertarians believe that Social Issues hurt us, and if we’d just drop them it would improve—but they ignore that if you let people do all the stupid stuff they immaturely desire, they are going to want to be saved by someone else. (I’m ignoring the sub-group of thinking Libertarians that thinks having children at is a “personal choice” with no serious effect on the future of society, and mostly only something that ‘women want while they leach off men.’ I wish that last part was not a very slight paraphrase.) Of course, thinking Libertarians think social issues hurt because when thinking Libertarians recognize the cause and effect of libertine personal actions in creating demand for a leech-State, they become at least isolationist conservatives, rather than Libertarians. But I’m digressing.
So, we tried assuming that the rah rah Abortion!! stuff on Obama’s side would be enough to 1) get half our base out, and 2) get them to vote for Romney. Clearly, that was wrong.
We focused on the economy. I think we did pretty well on that, considering that Obama and Co could lie their tails off about what we actually said. (It’s a given, sadly.)
That makes me think that we maybe should’ve beat on the military side of things a bit more as well. I have friends who are still active duty who thought I was blowing smoke up their rears when I told them there was never a protest when the Ambassador was killed, when that was known just days after the attack. (Power Line linked an interview in a UK paper that included quotes from the guys who were opening a hospital with the Ambassador; they were on the phone when the attack started, and there was no mention of a protest, which would’ve been a pretty big deal.)
So, we need to actually make our own case, try to win the base before we try to peel folks off, and probably improve our communication networks. I’m going to work even harder on applying this in person—when someone says something incredibly untrue in person, I’m going to politely correct them. Yes, it’s uncomfortable and socially awkward, but that is what the other side’s tactics depend on. At some point, the drunk in the party has to be confronted. We’re there and past.
This is going to be especially hard on religious people. There are a lot of very nice people who…well… voted for Obama because that’s what “nice” people do.
Weimar Germany had an economic crisis.
The Germans elected a bunch of politicians who scapegoated large groups of Germans, pitting Germans against each other.
German political leaders turned their backs on their Constitution, and the German people followed along, like sheep, out of a sense of expediency and crisis.
Free Germany then collapsed into a totalitarian state, which soon crumbled into total devastation, but only after tens of millions of lives were lost.
We are repeating history. But this time, there’s no gleaming beacon on the hill to come to the rescue. We are the last bastion of Freedom left in the world. And We The People are willfully letting that freedom vanish.
We tried and failed. We on the Right worked hard to rid our government of the man who would deign to utter the words “The Future Must Not Belong to Those Who Slander the Prophet of Islam”, in complete rejection of our First Amendment and complete rejection of Judaism and Christianity. We tried and failed.
And just as we Christians and the practicing Jews here in the US are having our Religious Freedoms stripped from us by the Obama administration are left further unprotected and unsafe and unfree, so are you, Israel. You’re on your own. For the next four years, you cannot count on the US to help keep you safe from the Mohammedan terrorists surrounding you who want nothing less than your total annihilation.
You are now “a nation of unwalled cities” and only Providence can help you now. You have no friendly nations to come to your rescue.
But you still have many millions of people here in the US who are praying vehemently to Adonai on your behalf. The US will fail you, and just did. But Yahweh will not. Even as the followers of the evil, genocidal, pedophiliac, burning in Sheol Mohammed redouble their efforts to destroy you, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph will be there for you. As He promised.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.
From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again into bondage.
–Dr Alexander Tytler, Scotsman, history professor at the University of Edinborough on The Fall of The Athenian Republic around the time of the birth of the US
Having reelected a Socialist who has vowed vengeance on us and to bypass Congress and maintained a Leftist Senate which has refused to obey the US Constitution and Federal Law by refusing to write a Budget since April 2009, here are a few things I see in our future:
1. Energy inflation and food inflation (two items left off the “official” inflation rate) will continue to far outstrip the inflation rate, as the Obama administration bankrupts electricity producers and rolling black-outs become commonplace in this land of plentiful natural resources we will not be permitted to use. The inflation rate itself will necessarily heat up heavily.
2. Businesses will continue to downsize due to the undue burdens of catastrophic regulations and taxes, reducing the number of employees and turning many full-time positions into part-time positions, causing the official unemployment numbers to climb and the real unemployment numbers to skyrocket.
3. The poverty rate and dependency rate will climb higher, as fewer people work and more people hold their hands out for “ObamaMoney”, causing even greater harm to those who are the producers. The US will further cannibalize itself.
4. The National Debt will continue to skyrocket and deficit spending will once again increase year-over-year instead of decreasing, causing two more reductions in US credit ratings. The Fed, which has caused the absolutely inevitable skyrocketing inflation rate, will no longer be able to keep interest rates artificially low. The interest rates will jump 7 to 15 points in the next 4 years, causing the US debt service portion of the (unwritten) Budget to explode.
5. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare expenses will reach half the (unwritten) Federal Budget, and beyond, as each work to bankrupt themselves and the US.
6. Religious Liberty will be curtailed as Government forces Christians to either fund that which is immoral or dissolve their outreach programs. Churches will learn they cannot preach on certain subjects without fear of criminal sanctions.
7. Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom to peaceably protest the Government will be restricted. Our Second Amendment rights will be severely cut. Our rights against illegal searches and seizures will be infringed upon. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments, largely ignored now, will be blatantly curtailed.
In short, the “shining beacon on the hill” that was the Freedom and Liberty the US provided the world will have its 50,000 watt light removed and replaced with a half-watt red decorative light. The US has spent the last 30 years slipping from apathy into dependence. We are now sinking from dependence back into bondage. And it will take great men and women of steely resolve and moral strength to wrest this once great nation out of the entropic hands of the Socialists and the Dependent Class. And that means fighting both the Democrat leadership and the Ruling Class Republican leadership. Tooth and nail.
John Hitchcock
Foxfier
Hube
DNW
Yorkshire
If there was ever a time for the Commander-in-Chief to change the designation away from the idiotic “workplace violence” tag to something which would allow the award of Purple Hearts to the victims of Nidal Hasan’s deliberate attack on American soldiers, Veterans’ Day would be that time.
