Back to Basics

I have a sneaking suspicion that President Barack Obama has a sign on his Oval Office desk that reads, “The buck stops with Dubya.”

According to the Boston Herald, “Our President cannot resist a good opportunity to blame Bush.” The President has blamed Bush on everything from the credit crisis to Hurricane Katrina.

It was on the five-year anniversary of Katrina late last month that Obama showed courage in the face of criticism and calmly reiterated the message from that chart topping song a decade past, “It Wasn’t Me.”

Last month the President was campaigning for the upcoming elections in New Orleans, ground zero for Katrina. He told the audience that he would not abandon their cause. Then the President called Katrina and its aftermath not just a natural disaster but “a manmade catastrophe — a shameful breakdown in government that left countless men, women and children abandoned and alone.”

“Implicit in Obama’s remarks,” wrote The Associated Press: “is an indictment of sorts against former President George W. Bush’s administration for its handling of the crisis.”

When it comes to the Gulf Coast the President just can’t resist blaming Bush. During the height of the BP oil spill the President was at it again.

“For too long, for a decade or more, there has been a cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill,” said Obama from the White House Rose Garden last May. “It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies. That cannot and will not happen anymore.”

In fact, the Obama administration has a laundry list about the previous President, two wars in the Middle East and an economy that can’t get traction. The way Obama is revving up for the fall elections you would almost think he himself was running against Bush.

While giving a speech last month, Obama said the Republican Party hasn’t differentiated itself from its predecessor.

“They don’t have a single idea that’s different from George Bush’s ideas — not one,” Obama said to applause. It seems that Obama thinks he is taking the high road as to not actually naming Bush but instead saying, “The previous administration.”

Countless times Obama has said that it is Republican policies which caused the recession.

“We got here after 10 years of an economic agenda in Washington that was pretty straight forward,” Obama said in August. “You cut taxes for millionaires, you cut rules for special interests, and you cut working folks loose to fend for themselves. That was the philosophy of the last administration and their friends in Congress.”

And it is not just Obama whose mantra is to fault Bush. Congressional Democrats like to blame the former President for just about everything. Even with the 2010 midterm elections a couple of months away, Democrats think that “blaming Bush” is still a winning strategy, even though they have had a majority for almost four years and Obama has been in control for nearly two.

I am not yet an old timer but I have been around the block.

President Obama thinks that by recently signing a new bill spending $600 million to beef up border enforcement he will look tough on illegal aliens. But decisions such as today’s lawsuit by the Justice Department against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to stop his policies regarding illegal aliens shows where the administration’s policies are really headed.

The bill Obama signed, which authorizes the hiring 1,500 new border personnel, the deployment of a pair of unmanned reconnaissance drones, and replacing some bases along the border is valuable, but it hardly undoes what the president has done up to this point. With a recent Rasmussen poll showing that 68 percent of U.S. voters support a plan to continue building a fence on the Mexican border, Obama’s change strikes one as a temporary smoke screen.

Up until now the president has worked to cut the number of border agents. 384 border agents were cut last October 1st and in the 2011 fiscal year budget Obama proposed cutting another 180 agents through attrition.

But it isn’t just his record of previously reducing the number of border agents. Obama has strongly opposed the use of fences, whether real ones or virtual ones. In March, he halted funding for the physical fence. Spending on “Total, CBP/Border Security Fencing, Infrastructure, and Technology” (which included the virtual fence) has fallen from $1.05 billion in 2008 at the end of the Bush administration to $800 million in 2010 to $574 million in the coming 2011 budget. That is a $479 million annual cut, something that isn’t going to be made up with a pair of unmanned drones.

Unfortunately, Obama appears to wish for continued illegal immigration as his administration has actively tried to stop states from helping enforce current federal laws. Consider the many actions that Obama has taken so far:

– Just in the last last week two actions by the Obama administration have come to light. A defacto amnesty is being established where deportation cases are being dropped against illegal aliens who have already been arrested. In another case, a non-citizen, who committed several felonies ranging from perjury to voter fraud, was coached by the Department of Homeland Security on how to purge evidence of these actions from his record so that he could still be granted citizenship.

– The Obama administration has brought several lawsuits to try prevent states from discouraging illegal aliens from entering the country. One is well-known and aims to stop Arizona from requiring police to ask for some type of ID — no matter what their accent or looks — of anyone who is “technically ‘arrested’” by police. In May, another lawsuit was brought against Arizona over its law revoking state business licenses for companies that regularly violate immigration laws. The Obama administration’s stance is especially odd since business licenses routinely are conditioned on a crime-free record and such rules have always been determined by the states. The administration hopes to make immigration law the single exception of a law allowed to be broken.

– Consider Obama’s recent decision to hire former Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt to head the U.S.

It is beginning! The death of the system of warm water currents in the Atlantic Ocean is already having a icy effect in Europe. It will get much worse!

Russia has seen it’s first snow accumulation of the season.

http://www.snow-forecast.com/maps/static/europe/last3days/snow

According to Rutgers Global Snow Lab, Russia doesn’t normally receive snow until the second week in September.

http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_dclim.php?ui_day=251

More is forecast for the next week, as well as in Norway and Sweden. Southeast Greenland is expecting heavy snow.

http://www.snow-forecast.com/maps/static/europe/next3to6days/snow

Much of The UK and Ireland are expecting cold weather during the next week, as is Moscow. Temperatures on the Greenland ice sheet will be dipping down to near -25C. Nice August weather!

http://www.snow-forecast.com/maps/static/europe/132/lapse

Never before so much rain in Germany ~ link ~Germany received more rain in August than in any August since records began in 1881, the German Weather Service (DWD) announced Monday.

“We have measured more than double the amount of rain as the long-term average for August,” said DWD spokesman Uwe Kirsche.

About 157 litres per square metre had fallen on average across the nation, a new record. The previous record, set in August 1960, brought “only” 134 liter / sq m. That compares with the average over many years of just 77 litres / m.

The sun shone in August 2010, approximately 143 hours, some 27 percent below its normal target of 197 hours. Many weather stations reported new records in the lack of sunshine, for which records have been kept since 1951.

It has been especially frustrating for farmers. The spring barley harvest was cut off right at the beginning of the month, then in the second half of August were the oats.

Snow in Alps a month earlier than normal ~ link ~ Snow in Voralberg, a month earlier than “normal”. Many farmers still had their cattle in the fields! Global warming seems far removed from these regions.

Coldest South Australia in 35 Years ~ link

August turns to November in Germany ~ link ~ My calendar tells me its still August, well at least for another day, but here in Southern Germany it is like November!!! Cold rainy, windy weather the whole day! A raw day to just stay inside and hope and wait for the return of warmer weather! Only7 degrees Celsius during the day for the end of August!! I think we are going to see some record low high temps broken today!

There is Snow falling in the middle Alps turning the landscape into a winter wonderland!

The weather pattern across western and eastern Europe has been consistent with global cooling! Reports that the grain harvest is in jeopardy because it’s been too cold and wet and the corn fields are not looking all that great either for this time of year! The outlook for September is cooler and wetter than average!

Most every child has sought to fulfill their entrepreneurial spirit by opening a sidewalk lemonade stand. It’s as American as hotdogs, apple pie and… lemonade.

And as 7-year-old Julie Murphy of Oregon made plans do the same thing millions of kids have done before her—during an art fair held the last Thursday of each month on the streets of Northeast Portland and conveniently called Last Thursday—she never dreamed she’d be violating a government regulation.

Well, little Julie has now had her first experience with our boot-on-the-throat authorities. The local food police shut her down.

Julie and her mom toted gallons of bottled water, packets of Kool-Aid, bags of ice and some plastic gloves to a spot on the sidewalk July 29 and Julie set about selling lemonade to the hot and sweaty patrons and vendors. Then a “woman with a clipboard” walked up and asked to see her $120 temporary restaurant license.

“What? No license?,” asked the lady in the clipboard, who turned out to be county health inspector. “Well pack up or we’ll fine you $500.”

Well Oregonians tend to be prickly lot, and as Julie and her mom began packing, up nearby vendors and patrons suggested they stay, telling them the regulation-happy clipboard lady had no right to run them off. They suggested Julie offer her lemonade for free and accept donations. And business picked up.

But it wasn’t long until clipboard lady came back with help. Julie started crying, and patrons and vendors confronted the government thugs, creating quite a scene, as Julie’s mom told the local paper.

Multnomah County Health Department Supervisor Jon Kawaguchi told The Oregonian that, “…we still need to put the public’s health first.”

But, Eric Pippert, the food-borne illness prevention manager of the state’s public health division got to the heart of the matter when he said that technically, any lemonade stand—even one on your front lawn—must be licensed under state law, but inspectors are unlikely to go after kids selling lemonade, unless you’re on Alberta Street during Last Thursday. In other words, if you stand to make real money.

And then he made this telling statement: “When you go to a public event and set up shop, you’re suddenly engaging in commerce.” And government bureaucrats were afraid it was commerce outside their control.

After a week’s worth of hue and cry from the Portland masses, Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen gave a reprieve to Julie and her fellow child-entrepreneurs. Cogan said he directed county health department workers to use “professional discretion” in doing their job.

“A lemonade stand is a classic, iconic American kid thing to do,” Cogen told The Oregonian. “I don’t want them to be in the business of shutting that down.” He also called Julie’s mom and apologized.

So, sanity is temporarily restored in Portland.  But not so in Los Angeles, where four armed food-police thugs raided a natural market with guns drawn last month, ordering store workers to drop their mashed coconut cream and step away from the nuts, as The Los Angeles Times reported. Original story and video here.

The latest jobless numbers are out. Unemployment remains stuck at 9.5 percent — with employers shedding 131,000 jobs in July. Private sector employers added 71,000 (less than the private sector payroll additions in June); 143,000 Census workers were let go. The WSJ reports:

The jobless rate, which is calculated using a separate household survey, held steady at 9.5% in July. Economists were expecting it to edge higher to 9.6%.

After the worst recession in decades, the recovery that began in July 2009 has recently been losing momentum, but it’s hard to say if it’s just a temporary slowdown or if the economy could start to contract again. The Federal Reserve may consider taking steps to support the economy when officials meet next Tuesday. Some worry that with unemployment still so high and consumer prices recently dropping, the U.S. economy runs the risk of falling into a Japan-like deflationary trap of very slow growth and falling prices.

…in a sign of the labor market’s continued weakness, Friday’s report showed that 45% of unemployed Americans, or 6.6 million people, were out of work for more than six months in July. The longer someone is without a job, the harder it is to find work. With time, people lose skills — and employers are often loathe to hire someone who hasn’t been working for long periods.

More downward-revised numbers:

The June data was revised down significantly. Payrolls fell 221,000 that month, more than the 125,000 drop previously reported, as only 31,000 jobs were added in the private sector.

Taking into account revisions to prior months this year, the U.S. economy added an average of less than 100,000 jobs a month in the first seven months, a level that’s not strong enough to bring unemployment down.

The eve before the numbers came out, yet another Obama economic adviser is abandoning ship:

President Obama must grapple with the economy without another key adviser, given the departure of Christina Romer.

Romer, who chairs the Council of Economic Advisers, announced Thursday night that she is returning to her previous job as economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Her resignation follows that of budget director Peter Orszag.

Rumors about who pushed her out:

…the scuttlebutt, apparently, is that she had run-ins with Larry Summers, who had a lot more access to The President.

There’s also gossip — completely unsubstantiated, we just know that people are chattering about this — that Summers wanted Romer out.

Meanwhile, back in Spain…

Spanish police have cleared off a stretch of beach for U.S. first lady Michelle Obama and daughter Sasha to relax by the Mediterranean after a busy day of sightseeing.

Police used palm trees Friday to mark off the boundaries of a 100-meter (100-yard) expanse for the American delegation. On either side, onlookers gawked.

As the first lady rested inside a canvas hut by the shore, her 9-year-old daughter splashed around in the sea and a security guard swam with her.

Pity poor, old Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

While campaigning for take over of the U.S. House by Democrats in 2006, she had such high hopes for elevating the quality of politicians serving in The People’s House.

If only the American people would install a Democrat majority, she argued, corruption, greed, fraud, lying, and mean-spirited neglect would be replaced by Angels of Liberalism, souls so spiritually pure that wrong would never again be countenanced in the House.

She would, she promised, drain the swamp and clean out the riff raff and bottom dwellers!

She would smoke out, and destroy, House members affiliated with the Culture of Corruption, thereby saving America from all manner of debauchery!

She would restore public confidence in the honesty and integrity of elected officials by eradicating the unworthy from the ranks of the U.S. House!

Then the unthinkable actually happened: The people of America ceded the U.S. House to Marxists and morons, and as a result, Nancy Pelosi proved, beyond a doubt, the existence of the Peter Principle by absconding with the Speaker’s gavel which, by default, meant she was the new Speaker.

Thus began the degradation of the esteemed U.S. House to its current sorry state as the Pelosi House of Ill Repute.

Two years ago, Charles Rangel started making negative news as allegations of tax impropriety began to surface.

These revelations were particularly embarrassing to the “Swamp Lady,” as Nancy Pelosi was known in comedy clubs and other venues where honest people congregate to talk politics.

The joke was that Pelosi’s swamp cleaner was programmed to spit out only members with an R next to their names, thereby leaving blobs of corruption like Rangel unscathed.

Still, Pelosi defended her chubby tax cheat and refused for the longest time to challenge Rangel to abandon his spot as the Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means.

Month after month, Pelosi continued to stand strong in her stubborn defense of Charles Rangel, waiting, she said. for more definitive proof and facts.

Then last Thursday a House panel made public 13 charges of misusing office and tax and disclosure violations against Rangel as it opened the trial phase of the ethics proceedings against him.

Trial phase? Good golly, Madam Speaker, this sounds serious!

With the release of the public charges, many powerful Democrats, including President Barack Obama, have suggested that now is the time for Charles Rangel to end his career with “dignity”—and before even more damage is done to the Democrats’ chances in the upcoming elections.

In spite of the political firestorm that is consuming Charles Rangel, Nancy Pelosi has, as of this moment, made no statement, has uttered no new support or condemnation for the rotund rascal from Harlem.

Which leads to the pressing question: What Say Ye NOW About Charles Rangel, Speaker Pelosi?

I’m trying to make sense of the moratorium of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. This cannot be good for the U.S. economy. But it is interesting that it comes along right when Government Motors is about to release the Chevy Volt. You know, the electric car that costs $41,000 which no one wants. They are going to steal around $6,000 from your neighbor to entice you to buy it so the cost does go down in that regard.

I ran the numbers. Let’s say you managed to buy this little vehicle for a discounted price of $35,000 including rebates, incentives and tax credits. Let’s say gasoline is $3 gallon. Let’s also assume given that cost you would spend $2,000 for fuel a year. It’s a decent average. Depending on your car maybe you blow through $200 a month or so on fuel. Let’s also assume you could buy a used Honda for $7,000 which is roughly the same size as the Volt. That is a difference of  $28,000. Think maybe you could buy a lot of gasoline for that money? Yea, about 14 years worth before breaking even on your Volt purchase. It’s just a dumb purchase for all except the elite earth and granola people.

So why are they pushing to sell this thing and stop drilling in the Gulf? The Five Minute Forecast gives us clues:

The Obama administration’s six-month ban on exploratory deep- water drilling has four more months to go. What happens after that, nobody knows. Analysts from Morgan Stanley to our own Byron King say it could easily become a 12-18-month ban.

The result: As existing Gulf of Mexico fields deplete, fewer new ones would come on line to replace them. The resulting shock could see 6% of all the oil the U.S. uses — 1.2 million barrels a day — disappear over time.

New legislation tightening the rules on offshore drilling could come up for a vote in the House as soon as tomorrow (today). Never mind that existing rules were neither followed nor enforced in the Deepwater incident, we need new rules. The new rules would further crimp Gulf production.

In the end, the U.S. could need to import 80% of its oil from foreign producers. That’s up 20% from current needs. At current levels of consumption, the U.S. will need to import 15 million barrels of oil a day.

Where are those imports coming from? From these “iffy, at best” sources:

* Venezuela: Hugo Chavez is making noises about cutting off the U.S. supply if border tensions with U.S. ally Colombia heat up any further. Sure, he’s said this before and it’s always been a bluff. But we’re not talking about the most stable of leaders here… His socialist schemes have cut Venezuelan oil production more than 25% over the last decade

* Nigeria: Elections next year could easily heat up the split between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south. And it might give new life to the warlords in the south who’ve bedeviled the oil industry for years.

I noted the pathetic fiscal prognosis for bloated, bankrupt Illinois the other day.

Reader Scott from North Dakota e-mails: “Reading about all of the states that are going belly-up, I can’t help but tout my home-state; North Dakota. Good old-fashioned sense and discipline (lot’s of farmers up there).”

Check it out: An $800 million surplus.

State budget director Pam Sharp says North Dakota should finish its two-year budget cycle with an $800 million surplus.

Some states aren’t as fortunate and had been hoping for extended federal stimulus aid. Congress was poised to extend some stimulus funding to states, but the measure died in the Senate last month. States that counted on the money must now make up the difference in their budgets…Sharp says the state has never relied on federal stimulus funds and has never counted on them.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev. pauses during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April, 13, 2010. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

With the nation focused on the spill in the Gulf and hearings with oil executives this week, Democrats in Congress have a tiny amount of breathing room to try to move two enormous spending bills through.

However, Republicans say the votes are still not there for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a sign of the growing public discomfort with exploding budget deficits and national debt. A Reid spokesman blamed Republican obstruction, though it is not at all clear that all 57 Democrats and the two Independents who caucus with the Democrats are currently on board.

Reid, a Nevada Democrat, moved Monday to end debate on a $115 billion grab bag of extensions on unemployment insurance, Medicaid assistance to states, payouts to physicians who take Medicare patients, tax exemptions for certain industries, as well as a series of new taxes on corporations and investors.

This legislation, which would increase the budget deficit by about $79 billion, has been batted around Congress since March, with lawmakers passing short-term extensions in the interim. The House passed a scaled down version late last month that has since been beefed back up by the Senate. Republicans have pushed Democrats to pay for the spending with money from the $862 billion stimulus bill, an idea that has gained traction but continues to be resisted by Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

Democrats aim to pass the “extenders package” this week. But another huge spending battle awaits over $50 billion split between money for state education systems and money to spur community banks to increase lending to small businesses. President Obama pressed congressional leaders in a letter Saturday to pass this spending without paying for it, promising to address the $1.3 trillion deficit and $13 trillion national debt.

Despite the fact that the national spotlight has moved for the moment off of the Senate’s deliberations and on to the oil fiasco — which has taken center stage this week largely due to hearings with executives Tuesday and Wednesday as well as Obama’s two-day trip to the region and Oval Office address to the nation Tuesday night – Reid is still searching for ways to pass the extenders package.

“He doesn’t have 60 (deficits matter again). He’ll need spending cuts and deficit reduction to lubricate votes, not oil,” said a senior Senate Republican leadership aide.

Kyle Downey, a spokesman for Sen. John Thune, South Dakota Republican, said that “not even the failed government response in the Gulf can distract the American people from a massive tax hike.”

The extreme difficulty that has beset Democrats in trying to push through spending packages is evidence of the unease with which many Democrats now, particularly in the House, are looking ahead to fall elections and an electorate furious about government spending that they believe is out of control.

While I would rather not become a posting ground for specific campaigns, I received this email from Senator Jim DeMint and the Senate Conservatives Fund regarding corruption in the Utah primary. Here again we see the Chicago style tactics at work, trying to influence an election by using illegal politics. The people of Utah will have to decide. But they need to be making their decision on facts and some some skewed mailer sent from an unknown source.

“Dear Friends:

I don’t normally tell you about the political games being played in specific campaigns around the country, but today is an exception. Something happened in the Utah Senate race last month that you need to know about.

A political mailer was sent out to thousands of Utah delegates right before the May 8th Republican Nominating Convention, which smeared Mike Lee — the strongest conservative in the race. Negative attacks occur in politics all the time, but this one was very dirty … and very illegal.

The mailer was designed to (a) look like it was sent by Mike Lee to attack Senator Bennett and (b) to use Mike’s church affiliation to promote his campaign — something that is seriously frowned upon in Utah politics.

Illegal Mailer from Unknown Source

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, “GOP delegates saw the use of the religious symbols as inappropriate and the direct-mail piece — purporting to support Senate candidate Mike Lee — may have been among the factors that cost Lee his front-runner status at the Utah Republican Convention earlier this month, according to a survey by Brigham Young University’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy.”

Whoever sent this mailer knew that it would damage Mike Lee’s campaign at the exact moment when he needed the support the most. If this mailer had not been sent, it’s very possible that Mike Lee would have gotten the 60 percent he needed to win the nomination at the state convention without a primary.

What upsets me most about this anti-Lee mailer is that whoever sent it didn’t have the courage or the integrity to identify themselves. It was sent by a group called Utah Defenders of Constitutional Integrity, but no such group exists.

This sneak attack was launched by a bogus group in direct violation of federal campaign laws, which require groups to register with the FEC and provide contact information on all political communications.

We did research using the postal permit used for the mailer and found that it was produced by Precision Strategies in Alexandria, VA. We’ve called to find out who hired them but nobody is talking.

This is the kind of Chicago politics that you and I have come to expect from President Obama and the Democrats, but not in a Republican primary.

I’m writing to you today because I don’t want the people who did this to get away with it. And since we cannot find the source of this smear, the only thing we can do is make sure Mike Lee wins the Republican primary on June 22nd.

Many of you have already supported Mike Lee’s campaign. But we cannot stop there because we don’t know what other last-minute, bogus attacks will be made against him.