Golf is all the rage

Remember the rage over Pres. Bush playing golf? If you can remember, let this remind you.



If that ain't a case of BDS, I don't know...

There wasn't a liberal out there that wasn't on the front line condeming Bush for playing golf. In 8 years, he played 24 times.

So where is the outrage now? In just over a year, Obama has been on the links 32 times.

Oh that's right! If you're a liberal or a democrat, you can do whatever the fuck you want, because the ends justifies the means. If you're conservative or Repulican, watch out. Nothing you do will be right.

This is called a double standard, and is one of the problems with political discourse today. You can't have honest debate if one or either of the sides is dripping deeply of hypocracy.

Just another example of the bull shit out there.

(I'm now waiting for the Bush-haters to come comment. You can then get a glimpse into liberal insanity)

Is government too powerful, out of control?

The Huge, Hidden Tax You Pay for Government
The Code of Federal Regulations is now over 157,000 pages long. Last year alone, 3,503 new rules went into effect -- that's a new regulation every 2 1/2 hours, day and night, seven days a week. Federal rules cover everything from pork rind imports to farm animal weighing procedures to what colors are allowed for surgical stitches.

There Oughta Be a Law
This article is in full compliance with all applicable state, federal, and municipal regulations.

DOE's Search and Seizure
The feds are coming to inspect your home if you want to sell it, according to regulations buried in cap-and-trade legislation and standards decreed by the Secretary of Energy. But there are numerous legal difficulties inherent in DOE "inspections."

Pelosi sends chill
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered a most disturbing promise to PBS’s Jim Lehrer on Wednesday, proudly announcing that the methods employed and nearly employed to force ObamaCare on the American people (formerly the most free people on the planet) would, from this day forward, serve as her “model for future reforms.”

Congress aims to ban chewing tobacco from majors
Chew on this: Congress is putting pressure on baseball to ban major leaguers from using smokeless tobacco during games. Smoking tobacco while in uniform and in public view is already banned, and don't get Tigers manager Jim Leyland going on that one.

Obama’s new tax on…Rainwater!?
Would President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency really force Americans to pay a tax on “rainwater runoff” from homes and small businesses?

Jay Ambrose: Democrats continue campaign against individual liberty
It's an absurdity that the federal government has the right to make Americans buy health insurance, but what's worse is the ha, ha, ha of the left that free people making their own decisions about the way they live is selfishness or shibboleth
 
Obama will now have his private army
Of course, SEC. 430, Establishing a Ready Reserve Corps. lists in detail the commissioned Regular Corps and Ready Reserve Corps that will be trained up, fired up, lined up and controlled by Obama himself. Naturally the purpose for this army is to stand by in case they are needed at short notice for a national health emergency or emergency response missions.

Big Government Crushes Christians
Massive spending means massive government - a system that reaches into virtually every corner of our lives. From house loans to student loans to light bulbs to toilets and even to the cars we buy and drive, we feel the government's direct hand. Corporate executives worry about "pay czars," doctors worry about government-set prices for their services, and we all wonder if the Internal Revenue Service will be monitoring our health insurance choices.

The ACLU Goes AWOL
When George W. Bush was president, the ACLU and its liberal allies were driven nearly berserk by the possibility that the FBI might know what library books Americans had borrowed. Under the terms of the health care legislation that President Obama signed into law [on March 24], the IRS will have access to all of our most intimate medical records -- and not one peep from the ACLU or anyone else on the Democratic side of the aisle in either the House or the Senate.

The sad story of Initiative 960

It's a simple story actually, but one you wouldn't think you'd hear coming from these United States of America...until recently. Like the Democratic Congress passing a bill it didn't understand and the majority of voters -- however small -- didn't want, the democrats in the state legislature in Washington state recently thumbed their noses at voters.

Voters in Washington state passed I-960, as it's known, about two years ago to ensure that the state goverment couldn't raise taxes on them without a 2/3 majority in both houses, or by a referendum by the voters.

But times got tough. The state government overspent, and now they face a $2.35 billion budget deficit. So the Democrat-controlled Legislature repeals I-960 (which is allowed via a provision that this can be done after 2 years, and is more complicated than I can put down here).

In order to balance their budget, along with some $700 million in budget cuts, the Democrat-controlled Legislature is going to raise taxes on the fine people of Washington state by $780 million (that's $487.50 for each of Oregon's 1.6 million workers). The rest they think they'll get by begging at the federal trough.

So basically the State Legislature says to voters: "Fuck you. Pay up. Just because we can't effectively manage your money, you get to pay anyway." Nice, isn't it?

If anyone thinks the "liberal, progressive" democratic party is all about the power of the people, you're an idiot. The Republicans have become bad enough. But the dems are worse, much worse.

National Defense: Down the Drain

History will show that Obama's national defense policy is like Carter's, only on steriods. Oh, it's all designed to make you feel good, thinking that now everyone must love us. But from a study of the historical record, this feel-good policy only comes back to bite you on the ass.

• No missile defense for Eastern Europe, or any part of Europe for that part. I'm sure there won't be one for the U.S. Why we don't build systems to defend us from rogue missiles, I'll never know. Man, if there's one nuclear-tipped missile headed for our eastern seaboard, I want to shoot that fucker down. I don't want to wait and launch a missile of my own. Shoot theirs down, and not only have you defended the nation (President's first responsibility), but you now have the political leverage.
  
• Suddenly, there is no war on terror. It's overseas contingency operations. So we're back to fighting terrorism as a law enforcement problem (which is reactive, not proactive) than a military problem (which tends to be more proactive, or preventative).


• Next, sign a treaty with Russia to reduce our nuclear capability. And Russia gets to pull out if we start building defensive missile systems (I guess that was the reason we gave up Eastern Russia).


• Now, Islamic terrorism is a thing of the past. Or at least we have to call it something else, namely in our defense policy documents. But you know what? Call a rose by any other name, and it's still a rose.
  

Recently, just this week, Obama made another change to our national defense policy. According to the American Thinker:

It says something profoundly disturbing that our president would base a nuclear strategy on the feel good notion that we are "setting an example" for the rest of the world to follow. Did it ever penetrate his skull that the very nations that threaten us - never mind Iran and North Korea which he exempts from the new policy - could care less about the US "good example?" What towering ignorance and breathtaking arrogance would lead a president to abandon the notion that we should forget about "good examples" and just protect the country?

And now, Obama advisers plan to remove terms such as "Islamic radicalism" from a document outlining national security strategy and will use the new version to emphasize that the U.S. does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terrorism, according to the AP.

The U.S. is now in appeasement mode. This is very dangerous, and is based on a false assumption, rather then real-politik.

This is where we're headed

Note the problem the Brits are having with their nationalized health-care system. Seems not all cancer patients are getting the medicines they need to treat their diseases. So the government increased taxes to cover the cost. From Health Insurance and Protection, from the UK:

All cancer patients would have access to the cancer drugs they need under a Conservative government, the Tories are claiming, thanks to a £200m cancer drugs fund [sic] created by raising the threshold for employers national insurance contributions.

The party claims that this policy will ensure that no cancer patient is refused access to drugs that have been licensed since 2005, if their doctors say they need them. Currently drugs that are licensed may still not be available on the NHS, if the national institute for health and clinical excellence (NICE) deems them to be not clinically or cost effective.

Note that they have a national institute making decisions about who gets a drug, and who doesn't. Not necessarily the doctor, nor the patient. And for all of this, the average Brit pays about 11 percent more of his smaller average salary in taxes than does a worker in the U.S.

This is where the Democrats want to take us to. But I think the majority of Americans were thinking something different when they heard "Health Care Reform."

How does Texas do it?

Texas has a lower unemployment rate than most states, and nearly 2 percent below the national average of -- still -- 9.7 percent. Our housing market here has also not experienced the shakeup going on around the country. Reports the Washington Post:

It's one of the great mysteries of the mortgage crisis: Why did Texas -- Texas, of all places! -- escape the real estate bust? Only a dozen states have lower mortgage foreclosure and default rates, and all of them are rural places such as Montana and South Dakota, where they couldn't have a real estate boom if they tried. Texas's 3.1 million mortgage borrowers are a breed of their own among big states with big cities. Fewer than 6 percent of them are in or near foreclosure, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association; the national average is nearly 10 percent.

The land in Texas might look an awful lot like its Sun Belt sisters Arizona (with 13 percent of its borrowers in foreclosure) or Nevada (19 percent) -- flat and generous in letting real estate developers sprawl where they will. Texas was even the home base of two of the nation's biggest bubble-era homebuilders, Centex and D.R. Horton. Texan subprime borrowers do especially well compared with their counterparts elsewhere. The foreclosure rate among subprime borrowers in Texas, at less than 19 percent, is the lowest of any state except Alaska.

Part of the reason is that Texas didn't experience the stratospheric run-ups in home prices that other states did. On average, the home-resale prices of the 20 metro areas in the Case-Shiller Home Price Index peaked in 2006 after more than doubling since 2000. In Dallas, one of the 20 areas, they rose just 25 percent, gradually, and have barely declined. But there is a broader secret to Texas's success, and Washington reformers ought to be paying very close attention. If there's one thing that Congress can do to help protect borrowers from the worst lending excesses that fueled the mortgage and financial crises, it's to follow the Lone Star State's lead and put the brakes on "cash-out" refinancing and home-equity lending.

No wonder places like California and Michigan are losing residents, and Texas in gaining residents.