We Have Lost, So it's Welcome to Meximerica

He does whatever he wants...

President Obama is above the law. He can decide which laws he likes and which laws he doesn't and with the executive privileges afforded him by the constitution he rides herd over timid and/or paralyzed Congress and does what he wants.

He wanted to take over the school loan program and so he did, no discussion, no debate and certainly no legislation. Last week he decided he didn't like the way the "Dream Act" voting turned out in Congress so he declared that he is just not going to enforce the immigration laws that now exist. Of course it was an election year ploy to bolster the Hispanic vote in his favor. Nonetheless, he did what he wanted regardless of what the law says.

Everything with this guy is partisan and political, everything. He is by far the most divisive politician this country has ever seen. He never engages with Congress, not even with his own party. He spouts shibboleths and propaganda and the adoring media just carries the water. If one of them steps out of line they get booted or at least ostracized until they crawl back into fold with unending hymns of praise. Right Mark Halprin?

Obama isn't at all serious about solving this country's problems only forwarding his radical ideological agenda. Congress has twice rejected his budgets with zero votes in his favor  -   that's zero Republicans and zero Democrats. He simply isn't serious about being a leader. He convinces no one with his sophomoric rhetoric and then just declares what will be so. Congress and the media just roll over  -  and we will see in November whether the "people"roll over too.

Yesterday the Supreme Court upheld the key element of the Arizona immigration enforcement law. Namely they affirmed the provision that local law enforcement CAN try to determine citizenship status when investigating possible crimes. They threw out 3 other aspects of the Arizona law, but the immigration status issue was one that got the lawsuit all started.Obama wins 3 to 1 right? Miffed that he didn't get all he wanted what do you suppose the imperialist did? The petulant brat immediately ordered ICE and the Justice Dept. to sever all ties with Arizona law enforcement. In other words when Arizona has illegal aliens to turn over to ICE the phone won't be answered.

President Obama just does whatever he wants, damn the constitution. No one in Congress really challenges him. The Republicans are a joke, they are clearly on the right side of this debate and they just roll over and play dead because they are so afraid of offending Hispanics. It's just sad. Have some guts you pansies!

With this ruling the Supreme Court essentially said immigration is in the Federal government's corner - which is absolutely true. The constitution gives the Federal government the DUTY to safeguard our country from foreign invaders, but Obama is blithely shirking this duty and inviting invasion. This should be a crime, hell, it is a crime.

No one I know, and not one Republican or conservative is "against" immigration, but most of us are against illegal immigration. President Obama spits on all who obey the law and follow the rules to get into this country.

Welcome to Meximerica.


CW

The Middle Class: The True Wild Card

The middle class must be destroyed

Have you heard about the report released last week showing the American middle class has lost 39% of it's wealth over the past few years. In other words we have been transported back in time to 1992 wealth wise. That's just the fact. While it seems incomprehensible, it has happened, and it seems almost as if it was planned...

The powers that be, if you are into grand global conspiracy theories, came to realize 30 or 40 years ago that the middle class in the Western world had to be destroyed. Particularly the American middle class. Considering where we are right now, our place and time in history, it's literally the only thing that makes sense.

Why else would the powers that be continue to suppress the modern global economy, bottle-up the true potential of America, Canada, Australia and Western  Europe? In the past 30 years we've seen technology explode and thereby shrinking the world in the process, making nearly everything more efficient and productive. There is no need or reason for poverty, illiteracy or hopelessness anymore, all of it could be stamped out here in the 21st century. Yet it won't be. Billions will continue to live in poverty without the hope of ever seeing and end to it. Why? Simple enough, the poor and desperate can be controlled. So now you see the problem of the middle class.

The middle class was a powerful force, an unpredictable force for those who want to control things. The main problem with an economically powerful and rising middle class is the "cat herding phenomenon". They just continue to do what they want because they frustratingly act in their own self-interest. When they are so flush with money you can't get these people to stop building their far flung suburbs and driving their SUV's so you can force them into your cute choo choo trains in the city

The problem for the controllers, the mega business/government conglomerate, was devising a way to carefully, cleverly separate the middle class from their wealth without necessarily fomenting a revolution. Revolutions are even more unpredictable, messy and sometimes bloody too.

Can you imagine the brainstorming session that must have been...

"We can destroy their jobs, move whole industries to slave labor in China..." Cue head nodding.
 
"We can encourage them to become investors in equities, we'll even match them dollar for dollar, promise a rosy retirement (while they shovel their money into our pockets) and then pull the rug out from under them - over and over." Cue uproarious laughter.
 
"We can get them to sink all their money into the "American Dream" of home ownership, enticing them with cheap money and a promise of ever rising home values. Encourage them to use their homes as ATM machines, run up their personal debt into the stratosphere then we'll bring it all down like a house of cards." Cue high fives all around.
 
"We'll dumb down the schools, but require a college education to get a decent job thereby separating parents from their money or saddling the kids with a mountains of debt and then hope they don't realize we were lying about the jobs anyway." Cue thumbs up, winks and nods.

Until recently the industrious middle class and hungry young entrepreneurs kept reinventing reality and climbing out of the hole the corrupt government and big business had dug. I fear this is coming to an end. Europe is on the brink right now. America is not far behind. Canada and Australia won't fare well when the big economies collapse. Even Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICs) will suffer immensely.

The horrifying thing is that the human suffering will be unfathomable when the collapse happens. The collapse will be precipitated by the middle class finally succumbing to the fiscal and financial corruption of the proverbial powers that be.

I ask again and again. To what end? Who would benefit by a global systemic economic collapse. It all seems so insane when we as the human race have it within our power to make hunger and poverty go away. We need only to unleash the shackles holding the economy back. But then, maybe the powers that be want the sort of cleansing that will come about with a massive die off of human life.

I find the idea of this cynical and frankly sickening.

What if the middle class doesn't succumb? What if we tighten our belts and start demanding our governments right this ship. What if we recognize the liars among the populists and the patriots who say one thing (anything) to get elected and then fall into the corruption they promised to fight against. What if for once we have a politicians and powerful business leaders who desire to do the right thing for the country, for humanity instead of the singular focus of feathering their own nests while the mighty oak tree withers and dies underneath them? Well... One can dream.



CW

Is Calfornia lost? In a word, yes

Once the envy of America, perhaps the envy of the world California had everything. Every passing year the Golden State dies a little more. It's sad and tragic, for no other state in America has the abundance, beauty and climate California has. Soon California will be bankrupt, correction, they are already bankrupt amassing a 16 billion dollar annual deficit while facing $500 billion in unfunded liabilities. There is no rescue in sight and it's hard to imagine the Federal government bailing the state out without huge concessions.

For decades now, state legislatures (and the citizens who support them) have ignored rational calls for fiscal responsibility. Corporations large and small are relocating. The so-called rich forced to pay higher and higher taxes have been voting with their feet too. There won't be enough wealthy corporations or wealthy individuals left to pay the ever increasing tax rates. Yet the electorate keeps voting in the same ultra liberal Democrats who gleefully promise to stick it to the rich. How soon will a bankrupt state run out of coerced money from nonexistent taxpayers? What we have a bankrupt state, dominated by Democrats where Democratic legislators keep their number one constituents fat and happy - the public unions - and the non-taxpaying citizens are promised the world.


The "Golden State" has become the "Welfare State". Perversely a recent study showed that $69 million in welfare cash is being spent in Vegas casinos, cruise ships and Hawaii every year. Yet, any talk of cuts in benefits for the so-called poor or from bloated pension plans is met with derision and smears. Don't even bring up benefits for illegal immigrants...


Here's the rub - the national Democratic Party favors the exact policies California has enacted over the past 30 years. Somehow we are to believe things will turn out differently for the rest of America.

It might be instructive to read what some distraught Californian's have to say in response to a recent CNSNews.com article about the state they love...

Douglas:
California is done.  Lived here for 20 years and have watched the hand-out politicians being elected and reelected by a touchy, feely public who steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the reality of their decisions. Even if Moonbeam's reforms pass, it will only close about half of the deficit. Businesses are exiting in droves and high income earners who can are moving out of state. Yet, Democrats hold every state wide office.  It's like watching someone who is killing themselves with drugs refuse to stop. Decisions have consequences: 3 - 5 years, tops, California declares bankruptcy and all the pensions are gone.

RogerDane:
Been in CA since '73 and in a few short years the liberal policies of obviously "socialist leaning" Democrats has ruined the state. America, LOOK to CA and your future is there for the reading. Continue to allow small groups of union management to knife the rest of society in the back, continue to elect "entitlement" minded politicians, continue to allow education to applaud the decline of our Constitutional Democracy and to "unionize" small minds with "free lunch" ideology; continue to eat away at the foundations of America's ideals and the whole of the United States will look like California.

LucidThought:
Agreed!  If I have any sort of "cultural identity" at all, it is that I am a Californian, and it is utterly heartbreaking to see the most beautiful place on the planet destroyed by feel-good, mindless twits who would vote for a monkey if it had a (D) behind its name.  Could it be more obvious?  California.  Illinois.  Michigan.  New York.  Democratic governance results in dysfunction and bankruptcy.  Idiots, and the tribalism of party politics are dooming our state.

And finally, and fittingly,

Travalot:
I was raised in CA, during which time Ronald Reagan was governor.  He gave CA the first budget surplus since WWII.  CA had the best schools in the nation - or the world for that matter.  The food production in the Central Valley was the envy of even the bread basket states of our nation.  The climate and beauty of the state was matched only by it's innovation, production, and growth.  People from all over the country and the world flocked to CA to take advantage of the incredible opportunities there.  It was a wonderful, magical place.  But then the Democrats took over.  The radical liberal hippies who used to haunt Haight Ashbury somehow got themselves elected or ensconced in the education system and law profession.  Their poisonous ideology soon permeated, and I, too, fled the state as the taxation mounted and the regulations increased.  From my new home in Texas, I watched my home state further decline into the morass of liberalism that can only lead to destruction.  I watched from afar in hopes that sanity would be restored and I could some day return to the place I loved so much.  But it was not to be.  I'm 60 now.  That was a long time ago.  My heart hurts as I realize that there is no salvation there.  I return occasionally to visit loved ones.  I no longer recognize it.  It looks like a 3rd world country there.  My heart is broken.

All of our hearts should be broken. There's nothing I would love more than to dream of retiring in California. We can still visit California, for now, and enjoy the weather and the beauty, but California Dreamin' is becoming more of nightmare, and that's extremely sad. 


CW

Amazing Statistic

From Michael Barone's DC Examiner article on the Wisconsin recall:

Public employee unions insist that dues money be deducted from members' paychecks and sent directly to union treasuries. So in practice, public employee unions are a mechanism for the involuntary transfer of taxpayers' money to the Democratic Party.

Walker's law ended this practice and gave public employees the choice of whether to pay union dues. The membership of AFSCME, the big union of state employees, fell from 62,818 to 28,785.

This is amazing!

When union members have a choice they choose in vast numbers to leave the union behind. What is more amazing is that these are public sector employees.

I am thrilled that Walker survived as much for the fact that I agreed with his policies as for the fact that recalls should be reserved for malfesance and not just disagreements. Walker's bill passed lawfully. The voters would have had the chance to throw him out in 2014.

I have a real problem with public unions and their benefactors in elected office creating sweatheart deals that go far beyond the norm for the times. Public employees work hard - of that I am sure - but they work no harder than the rest of us stiff's who pay thousands out of pocket for our health care and retirement.

I shed no tears for the losers in Wisconsin.



CW

Media Bias:They can't help themselves PART II

It's way too early to let the nascent presidential race dominate this space. After the conventions, well, that will be another story. (OK, OK, nascent is a misnomer, there is nothing nascent about it. Neither Obama nor Romney have stopped campaigning since 2008). Still, it's hard to let certain things pass without comment.

In this The Atlantic "Wire" story we have claims that the mainstream media is not, I repeat, not in the tank for President Obama. The proof is the number of negative stories about the President compared to Mitt Romney over the same period. For one, Obama is the incumbent and has a record, a bad one at that, and Romney was the most moderate, least controversial candidate among a field of scoundrels, fools and radicals competing in a party endorsement process.

Measuring a story for positive or negative treatment of a candidate is dicey at best. Many of the negative Obama stories are of the devil's advocate type. Where the reporter or commentator will spill the argument against the president while the dripping condescension and utter dismissiveness is palatable. Usually the end of the story will portray the President as above it all.

What I see clearly is the combative attitude of the President's mainstream media supporters. That attitude is on full display when a Romney supporter is being questioned. The inquisitions are confrontational, the questions tough and the answers already concluded. The job of the interviewer is always to get the Romney guy to end up admitting something unflattering about the candidate. If at first they fail they twist and turn the question until they get what they want. Sometimes I'm embarrassed for the reporter and can't image other viewers/listeners are not also taken aback by the confrontational tone. The same is almost never true when questioning an Obama guy.

So, by golly, these guys can cite statistics all they want, but intent and nuance is almost never measured in raw numbers. Heads up to the Mainstream Media: No amount of cheer leading - or kid gloves - will help if the economy is this bad or even worse by October.


CW