Saturday, August 31, 2013

WILL THE MEEK INHERIT THE WORLD?

President Barack Obama has spent a couple weeks arguing and trying to convince America and the world that he -- Obama the Warrior -- didn't need anybody, especially Congress, to give him -- Obama -- permission to put a hurt on President Assad of Syria for using chemical weapons -- gas -- to kill more of his people, woman and kids.  But first, Obama said, understand that no American soldiers will be at risk, and that his -- Obama's -- objective is NOT to get rid of Assad, the so-called regime change, nor to hurt any of his live civilians.  Just what his objectives are, are unclear.  But a year ago he drew a RED LINE against Bashar A. using gas.  Step over that line, B. Assad and your Ass is grassed.  And now that you -- Assad -- have killed with gas 1500 or so of your people I -- Obama -- am serious.  Apparently gassing to death is more pernicious than simply shooting to death.  But, again, now I -- Obama -- am serious.

NOT

I -- Obama -- will act decisively AFTER we -- Congress and I -- get back from vacation after September 9th.  And after I -- Obama the Warrior -- get permission and I hope those nasty Republicans will give it to me.  Because I am Obama the Warrior.

No, this is not a joke.  If Obama ever makes up his warrior mind, which is doubtful, because he is afraid of being criticized by those important to him -- Hollywood actors, hip hop rappers and the like -- and they don't like war, then if he does shoot off a few non-lethal, non-regime-changing Cruise missiles, WILL Vlad Putin give Iran some big weapon to lop onto Israel?  If it does, will Obama THEN make up his mind since America'll be contractually obligated to respond on Israel's side?  And if we do, will Russia come in?  And where is the Peoples' Republic.  Its leaders are getting tougher as its economy is getting weaker.  Will Putin and the Chinese, Iranian and Islamists act rationally according to the American definition of "rational"?

Complicated and dangerous with an intellectually lazy, spontaneously acting, somewhat internationally ignorant, and unrealworldly president in charge.  The world knows he is unsteady, unreliable, weak and lacking inward self-confidence. 

NO, THE WEAK WILL NOT INHERIT THE WORLD, AS REPUBLICANS CLEARLY KNOW.  THE STRONG WINS.  PUTIN IS STRONG.  ASSAD IS STRONG.  OBAMA IS MEEK!

Not Much Chance for Cutting Red Tape for Businesses


  • The Wall Street Journal

  • LETTERS
  • August 30, 2013, 3:40 p.m. ET

Not Much Chance for Cutting Red Tape for Businesses

The central command of all business by government is a core goal of the progressives, so cutting red tape for business is unlikely to happen soon.

 


Regarding Thomas Stemberg's "A New Law to Liberate American Business" (op-ed, Aug. 22): In describing the success of base closings, Mr. Stemberg forgets that the base closings helped to cut military spending, one of the core goals of progressives. This was a main reason for the success of the base closings. It was the polar opposite to reining in the crippling rules and regulations on business. The central command of all business by government is also one of the core goals of the progressives. Since progressives control the presidency and the Senate, this rational, obvious release of business back onto free enterprise cannot happen. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will in all likelihood never even move this proposed new law into committee. I just don't believe progressives want to hold back "job-killing regulations" or any regulations at all.

A better plan for Mr. Stemberg would be to publicize the huge benefits of business to employment and the creation of prosperity. I believe most of the electorate doesn't understand this. They are propagandized to believe "profits" are evil and that business leaders are greedy and corrupt. Until that changes, nothing will happen. Finally, the greatest effort needs to be in simply winning elections. A Republican or tea-party conservative president might stand a chance of passing some common-sense laws. Until that happens, if it ever does again, the noble effort of Sens. Angus King and Roy Blunt will be an exercise in futility.

Theodore M. Wight

Seattle

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Here is the original article about which I wrote:

  • OPINION
  • August 21, 2013, 7:06 p.m. ET

Thomas Stemberg: A New Law to Liberate American Businesses

If Congress could close military bases, it can reduce job-killing regulations.


By THOMAS G. STEMBERG

Nearly 30 years ago, I started a company called Staples Inc. SPLS -1.00%that went on to do pretty well. Launching a business like Staples in 2013 would be a much harder proposition, with success by no means certain. There are so many government impediments to business today that the next Staples—and its 50,000 jobs—might never get off the ground.

Chief among those roadblocks: the blizzard of bureaucratic red tape that buries businesses and stifles job creation. These include the additional 16 million hours that vending-machine and chain-restaurant business owners must spend complying with new food regulations each year. But there is also the license that magicians require to do a rabbit disappearing act, which mandates an annual fee, surprise inspections and a rabbit disaster plan. All told, American business faces 46,758 pages of rules to live by in the Federal Register.

This confounding web of federal regulations may be curtailed if Sens. Angus King (independent, Maine) and Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) have anything to say about it. Their Regulatory Improvement Act of 2013 could be a game changer.

The legislation introduced in late July would create a bipartisan Regulatory Improvement Commission, charged with recommending cuts in the regulatory regime, and the law would require Congress to vote on the proposals. This is desperately needed. The government has few processes at its disposal through which it can re-evaluate the efficacy of outdated regulations—and many members of Congress lack the expertise, time and courage to effectively scale them back.

The King-Blunt concept is tested and has already worked remarkably well. The Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission, an independent, bipartisan commission of experts, was established in the late 1980s to reduce the number of military bases. Politics made it nearly impossible for Congress to do the job, as it was too easy for politicians to cut deals and protect each other's pork. Instead, the commission selected the bases and reported its findings to Congress for mandatory, up-or-down, nonamendable votes.

It worked. Since 1988, there have been 121 major base closures, 79 major base realignments (which may close down part of a facility or transfer personnel away from it) and 1,000 minor closures and realignments under BRAC.

In short, the BRAC Commission gave politicians what they crave most: cover. Nobody back home could blame them for losing a military base. The King-Blunt proposal will give representatives the same cover with regulations.

The bipartisan Regulatory Improvement Commission—with members appointed by the president and congressional leaders—would tackle one area of regulation at a time. Its members would be charged with finding regulations that are duplicative, like the 642 million hours employees will spend complying with redundant regulations this year, according to the American Action network.

The panel also will try to identify obsolete regulations, maybe resembling the arcane rules the Federal Communications Commission leverages to achieve whatever regulatory aims the commissioners desire.

Finally, the King-Blunt commission will look for excessive regulation, perhaps scaling back the 1,659 pages of "simplified" mortgage disclosure and servicing rules the president's new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued in July.

The public—people on all sides of an issue—would advise the commission in an open comment period while it considered which regulations to put on the chopping block. The resulting list of targeted regulations would then be reported to Congress, to be eliminated or curbed.

Here's the best part: Both chambers of Congress would be required to vote on the recommendations within a month. Lawmakers could review, but not change, the report. There would be no deal making, no tricky amendments and no ducking of tough decisions. Lawmakers would be asked a simple question and could only give the simple answer: yes or no.

Job creators know that regulatory relief can't come soon enough. In 2010, the Small Business Administration pegged the annual cost of complying with regulations at $1.75 trillion. The SBA report covered 2008 and the burden has certainly grown since. A May 2013 report by the Heritage Foundation, "Red Tape Rising," found that new regulatory costs added in 2012 totaled $23.5 billion.

That's a staggering amount of money to pay for government rules. In 2008, the GDP of the entire state of California produced slightly more than $1.75 trillion. At this rate, the current regulatory regime just kills more jobs and stifles the formation of new small businesses—the lifeblood of job creation in our economy.

In 1986, we founded Staples in large part because of what used to be an enormously productive American financial system. The system that fueled entrepreneurship 25 years ago is now being regulated to death under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, which requires as many as 398 new regulations. The next Staples, and its 50,000 jobs, may not happen because of this burden.

If the president and Congress are serious about creating jobs, they must take seriously the job-killing regulations that are holding job creators back. The King-Blunt proposal can get the job done—and jump-start the lagging economy in the process.

Mr. Stemberg, founder and former CEO of Staples Inc., is managing general partner of the Highland Consumer Fund and a member of the Job Creators Alliance.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Progressives set the rules, Republicans Obey. And Bray.

"Sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never harm you."  That was good knowledge from Mom and Dad.  And I have followed it, even being called "Birdlegs" then "Buzzard" and not fighting back.  Those bulliess (now against the law of society, but completely human) would have felt better if I would have fought back, either with a fist or words.  But I didn't.  I won they lost.

Get it?

But your falling for the Progressives' rule -- words harm -- means that they win, and you don't.  Unless you're a progressive in which case you lose, too.  (But Progressives probably won't be reading this, since they don't like to hear disagreement.  Another win for Progressives.)  Words might make you feel badly, some obviously do, but hurt you?  I doubt it.  But with the entire Progressive nation saying and repeating over and over again that words harm, you start to believe it.  NOT SO. 

There is a new industry invented by Progressives: Trayvonism.  It is reaping media rewards and helping Oprah promote her movie about some dead Negro White House butler of seventy years or something.  And Al Sharpton gets paid cash money dealing in Trayvonism.  WHY?  Because Trayvonism is not about some kid with a black nose getting killed.  Or the killer getting set free by a Constitutional jury of his peers.  It is about words harming.  Clearly a bullet harmed the man.  But not words, or one particular word, Nigger or nigger of which there's no evidence Zimmerman called him anyway, but no matter, he "could" have.  So let's move on to emotions.

Here's the problem.  How a person "feels" (as though anyone but that singular person can know anyway) has become important as a method by which Progressives define and frame arguments.  Republicans (or Tea Party conservatives, or "the Right") simply then argue on an uphill slope; they accept that bad "feelings" are, ummm dangerously harmful and should be cured (by Progressives according to Progressives, naturally) and try painfully to show that in fact they -- the Right -- don't use "bad" words.  They do, of course, since most everyone does.   

But it has gone further, much further.  According to the Progressive doctrine, and accepted unchallenged by conservatives, "feeing" like you might -- might, not did, miss a meal; or might -- might, not did, lose a job; or one of the greatest harms known to mankind -- actually feel insecure about the economy.  According to Progressives all these are ailments to be fixed.  WHY?  If you feel like you might have to give up a movie to buy food aren't you being able to make a choice?  Isn't
"choice" beneficial?  Should the government eliminate that particular emotion of "feeling" you might miss a meal?

 Why not say, as my parents did, "Sticks and stones may break your bones but words (or in this case emotions) will never harm you."  Progressives have the Right and everyone else believe that words harm you.  They might make you angry or uncomfortable or feel bad or something, but harm you?  NO!  But probably every one of you reading this agree that words harm.  Fight back, you chickenshitted loser.  (Did that harm you?)

Now do you see why Republicans lose and Progressives win?  Progressives establish the playing field and set the rules.  Republicans, like nice little sheep, obey and bray.  (Losers!)

Baaaaaaa!

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Disorganized, leaderless, mis or unmanaged. That is our government today.

President Obama is not and never has been a leader/manager.  He's not so bright enough for the small stuff.  Give him a big idea and he's all over it.  But run with it?  Not so much.  He has a Sesame Street attention span.  Measured in seconds, not even minutes. 

In today's Wall Street Journal were four articles.  Headlines:

1.  "GAO Study Faults Export Program"  [It] "isn't properly managed, said Congress's watchdog arm."

2.  "Court Keeps Yucca Mountain in play" "[Obama's] Nuclear Regulatory Commission was 'simply flouting the law'"

3.  "Delays to Health-Law Provisions Start to Pile Up"  "47% of respondents [to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll] said the law [ObamaCare] was a bad idea"

4.  "Judge Sinks Lawsuit On Screening Hires" "A federal judge casts doubt on government efforts to restrict employers' use of criminal-back-ground checks in hiring"  "[It is] a theory in search of facts to support it."  "There are simply no facts here to support" "[Obama's] Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claim that black applicants were improperly discriminated against."

A good day for President Obama, he's on vacation.

Friday, August 2, 2013

FEDERAL HURT FEELINGS COURT

Seattle officials call for ban on 'potentially offensive' language

[http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/02/seattle-officials-call-for-ban-on-potentially-offensive-language/#ixzz2apXWGmEM]

Government workers in the city of Seattle have been advised that the terms "citizen" and "brown bag" are potentially offensive and may no longer be used in official documents and discussions.
KOMO-TV reports that the city's Office of Civil Rights instructed city workers in a recent internal memo to avoid using the words because some may find them offensive.


 "Luckily, we've got options," Elliott Bronstein of the Office for Civil Rights wrote in the memo obtained by the station. "For 'citizens,' how about 'residents?'"

 In an interview with Seattle's KIRO Radio, Bronstein said the term "brown bag" has been used historically as a way to judge skin color.

 "For a lot of particularly African-American community members, the phrase brown bag does bring up associations with the past when a brown bag was actually used, I understand, to determine if people's skin color was light enough to allow admission to an event or to come into a party that was being held in a private home," Bronstein said.

 According to the memo, city employees should use the terms "lunch-and-learn" or "sack lunch" instead of "brown bag."

 Bronstein told KIRO Radio the word "citizen" should be avoided because many people who live in Seattle are residents, not citizens.

 "They are legal residents of the United States and they are residents of Seattle. They pay taxes and if we use a term like citizens in common use, then it doesn't include a lot of folks," Bronstein said.
Seattle, however, isn't the only city with an eye on potentially disruptive words.

 The New York Post reported in March 2012 that the city’s Department of Education avoids references to words like “dinosaurs,” “birthdays,” “Halloween” and dozens of other topics on city-issued tests because they could evoke “unpleasant emotions” among the students.
Dinosaurs, for example, conjures the topic of evolution, which could rile fundamentalists and birthdays are not celebrated by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Halloween, meanwhile, suggests an affiliation to Paganism.

 Officials said such exclusions are normal procedure, insisting it’s not censorship.
“This is standard language that has been used by test publishers for many years and allows our students to complete practice exams without distraction,” a Department of Education spokeswoman told the newspaper last year.
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The obvious next step is a federal "Hurt Feelings Court" where a person -- and his or her trial lawyer -- can bring a civil, or perhaps when the laws are passed, a criminal action against someone that used a potentially offensive word that hurt his or her feelings.  The evidence of course would be one's testimony about one's hurt feelings.  There would be a fine.  Ultimately one would have to purchase insurance -- from a federal government agency -- to protect oneself and to pay the winning trial lawyer.

 

 

Andrew Napolitano: 'Nudge Squad' Goes Too Far


[http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/napolitano-obama-nudge-squad/2013/08/01/id/518220?s=al&promo_code=14622-1]

Napolitano said the Obama administration is overreaching with its recently revealed "Nudge Squad."

"What will they think of next? The government can't deliver the mail, and they want to tell us to fix the broken screens in our house, clean our attics and change the oil in our cars? These are not functions of government," the former New Jersey Superior Court judge and Fox News contributor said Thursday.

"If the Constitution protects anything ... it protects the right to be different. We don't need the government in our faces telling us how to live," Napolitano said on "Fox & Friends."

 Napolitano was referring to a so-called "Behavioral Insights Team" put together by the Obama administration to explore ways that might encourage Americans to improve or change their lives. Paying back-taxes, making homes more energy-efficient, and eating better are just some of the things that could be addressed with an ad campaign or other promotional effort, FoxNews.com reported Tuesday.

"We have a Constitution — says what the federal government should do and limits it to only doing that. This type of nudging us and telling us how to live is not there," Napolitano said.
"When does a nudge become a push?"

Napolitano stopped short of suggesting the program amounts to an effort at mind control, but he said it still goes too far.

"This particular administration is interested in controlling people, even if the Congress is not," he said. "And this is one of the ways it will do it. Nudge, nudge, push, push, elbow, elbow."
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