Weekend YouTubin November 14, 2009
Posted by The Underground Conservative in 80s Music, Music, YouTube.add a comment
Well, technically this is DailyMotion, since YouTube didn’t have the video I wanted.
My favorite Bon Jovi song, Living On A Prayer:
The Sea Of Red Ink Swells November 13, 2009
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Deficits, Economy, Federal Budget, Jobs, Spending, Taxes.add a comment
Gee, just when we figured the economic news couldn’t get much worse …
The budget deficit for the first month of Our Lord and Savior Barack Hussein Obama’s first full budget is bigger than even the White House thought it would be.
WASHINGTON — The federal government kicked off fiscal year 2010 by posting its widest-ever October budget deficit, the Treasury Department said Thursday.
The $176.36 billion gap is more than $20 billion wider than the shortfall recorded in October 2008, driven up by lower tax receipts, stimulus-related revenue reductions and consistently high government outlays.
Treasury’s monthly budget statement shows receipts were $135.33 billion in October, down 18% from a year earlier and at the lowest level since October 2002. Meanwhile, outlays were $311.69 billion, down 3% from a year earlier and at their second-highest monthly level on record.
The October deficit figure is wider than the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate for a $175 billion deficit in the month and wider than the $165.9 billion expected by analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires.
Folks, this is without a second porkulus package and the full implementation of the first porkulus package as well as the impact of the $1 trillion-plus government-run health care legislation.
Investor’s Business Daily surveys the widespread damage of trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.
Here is one key datapoint: From 2008 to 2019, federal revenues are projected to grow by $1.45 trillion, but extra interest payments on the public debt of $550 billion will soak up nearly 40% of those extra tax dollars.
Here is another: Consider that in 2008, Washington spent about half as much on interest payments ($253 billion) as it did on the nondefense programs that it budgets on an annual basis ($508 billion).
Those nondefense outlays cover homeland security, education, job training, housing assistance, veterans’ health, science, workplace safety, transportation, the environment and foreign aid.
But by 2019, interest costs would reach $800 billion under the Obama budget compared with $720 billion in spending on nondefense discretionary programs.
From 2008 to 2019, interest costs are projected to grow more than twice as fast as the economy, from 1.8% of GDP to 3.8%. That extra 2% of GDP is roughly equal to the projected cost of Medicaid in 2019.
Meanwhile, spending on those discretionary programs would shrink relative to the size of the economy as interest costs consume 20 cents for every dollar in tax revenue, up from 10 cents in 2008.
All this is before the entitlement crisis turns really ugly in the following decade. And all this is in the president’s budget, which no one has argued presents a picture that is too pessimistic.
Right now, the size of the federal debt is equivalent to $39,000 for every American — man, woman, child. That is staggering. And that’s not even figuring in the impact of the federal takeover of health care, the crippling economic damage of both cap-and-tax and the VAT as well as the repeal of the Bush tax cuts.
Says Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:
[W]e’ve created a new entitlement program equal to Medicare, and with about the same financial stability. And the problem will get worse as government creates new programs in health care, energy production, and more. The inefficiencies of government programs will force the government into ever-increasing borrowing.
Obama now says he wants to attack the deficit, but without serious spending cuts and reduction in the size of government, any such reductions would have to rely on heavier taxation — which would kill the economy, reduce federal revenues, and put us even further behind on debt reduction. The only way to fix the problem is to dismantle Leviathan, and unfortunately Obama is headed in the opposite direction.
And those tax increases to which Ed is referring will be awfully hard to impose when virtually all of the jobs have gone overseas. In other words, what jobs will be left and who will be left to work them in order to pay those taxes?
Here Comes Da Judge November 13, 2009
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Jihad, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Sept. 11th Attacks, Terrorism.add a comment
Wonder if the Obama administration will bring this guy in to be the judge in the civilian show trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 jihadists …
Excerpts From ‘Going Rogue’ November 13, 2009
Posted by The Underground Conservative in 2008 Election, 2012 Election, John McCain, Republicans, Sarah Palin.add a comment
From Drudge via Sister Toldjah:
Some excerpts from the highly anticipated Sarah Palin tome (that’s book, for those of you who graduated from Racine Unified) due to be released next week, and already a No. 1 bestseller:
Going Rogue: An American Life
by Sarah Palin
Chapter Four; Section 8, pages 255-257By the third week in September, a “Free Sarah” campaign was under way and the press at large was growing increasingly critical of the McCain camp’s decision to keep me, my family and friends back home, and my governor’s staff all bottled up. Meanwhile, the question of which news outlet would land the first interview was a big deal, as it always is with a major party candidate.
From the beginning, Nicolle [Wallace] pushed for Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News. The campaign’s general strategy involved coming out with a network anchor, someone they felt had treated John well on the trail thus far. My suggestion was that we be consistent with that strategy and start talking to outlets like FOX and the Wall Street Journal. I really didn’t have a say in which press I was going to talk to, but for some reason Nicolle seemed compelled to get me on the Katie bandwagon.
“Katie really likes you,” she said to me one day. “she’s a working mom and admires you as a working mom. She has teenage daughter like you. She just relates to you,” Nicolle said. “believe me, I know her very well. I’ve worked with her.” Nicolle had left her gig at CBS just a few months earlier to hook up with the McCain campaign. I had to trust her experience, as she had dealt with national politics more than I had. But something always struck me as peculiar about the way she recalled her days in the White House, when she was speaking on behalf of President George W. Bush. She didn’t have much to say that was positive about her former boss or the job in general. Whenever I wanted to give a shout-out to the White House’s homeland security efforts after 9/11, we were told we couldn’t do it. I didn’t know if that was Nicolle’s call.
Nicolle went on to explain that Katie really needed a career boost. “She just has such low self-esteem,” Nicolle said. She added that Katie was going through a tough time. “She just feels she can’t trust anybody.”
I was thinking, And this has to do with John McCain’s campaign how?
Nicolle said. “She wants you to like her.”
Hearing all that, I almost started to feel sorry for her. Katie had tried to make a bold move from lively morning gal to serious anchor, but the new assignment wasn’t going very well.
“You know what? We’ll schedule a segment with her,” Nicolle said. “If it doesn’t go well, if there’s no chemistry, we won’t do any others.”
Meanwhile, the media blackout continued. It got so bad that a couple of times I had a friend in Anchorage track down phone numbers for me, and then I snuck in calls to folks like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and someone I thought was Larry Kudlow but turned out to be Neil Cavuto’s producer. I had a friend call Bill O’Reilly after I was inundated with supporters in Alaska asking why the campaign was “ignoring” his on-air requests for a McCain campaign interview. I had another friend scrambling to find Mark Levin’s number. Aboard the campaign plane I was within twenty-five feet of reporters for hours on end. Headquarters’ strategy was that I should not go to the back of the aircraft and talk to the press. At first this was subtle, but as the campaign wore on, Tracey or Tucker would call headquarters to request permission, and someone in DC would respond, “No! Absolutely not- block her if she tries to go back.”
Alreadya, it looks like what many of us suspected all along. The McCain campaign had shut out media outlets that would have been friendly to Republicans — the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, talk radio — in favor of currying favor with the Drive-By Media, whom McCain had been sucking up to for 10 years in hopes of winning their eventual approval.
From appearances, Nicolle Wallace may have set Sarah Palin up to fail with the Katie Couric interview by implying that Couric would be a friendly interviewer. Given the fact that Wallace had nothing positive to say about President Bush and his administration, one must wonder just whose side she was on.
Add the observation that Palin had to surrepititously contact the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin and was questioned by voters as to why the campaign was avoiding The O’Reilly Factor, it’s as if they were trying their best not to win.
Clearly, McCain didn’t just fail to understand the impact of the New Media, he had an open hostility to it. Remember: during the 10 years McCain spent selling out every conservative principle under the sun, his chief source of criticism was El Rushbo. McCain is a vindictive, petty individual. Seems he’d rather lose than owe his election to Limbaugh and talk radio.
And, it seems that McCain’s handlers wouldn’t even allow Palin to talk to the press unless they orchestrated the event. It appears that they realized they weren’t going to win and the usual collection of blueblood countryclubber GOP elitists were intent on destroying a potential real conservative candidate for 2012.
The question begs asking: who were they working for? John McCain? Or Mitt Romney?
Tweet Of The Day November 13, 2009
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Terrorism, Twitter.add a comment
From Doctor Zero of Hot Air’s The Green Room:
Great ironic ending for the KSM saga: he walks away from a botched trial, but is immediately imprisoned for failing to buy health insurance.
Obama Orders A Show Trial November 13, 2009
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Al Qaeda, Jihad, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Sept. 11th Attacks, Terrorism.2 comments
Our Lord and Savior Barack Hussein Obama has ordered that the mastermind of the September 11th attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, be brought to New York City, one of the sites of those attacks, for a civilian trial.
WASHINGTON — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and four others accused in the attacks will be put on criminal trial in New York, Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce later Friday.
The decision, described by people familiar with the matter, is part of wider announcement planned on how to bring to justice detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison. It’s the first set of decisions before a Monday deadline on how to deal with the more than 200 prisoners remaining at the facility, which President Barack Obama has ordered closed.
Mr. Mohammed’s trial in New York was widely expected since the Obama administration announced a preference to hold criminal trials, instead of military commissions for terror suspects held at Guantanamo. New York’s Manhattan U.S. attorney competed with the district in northern Virginia, home to the Pentagon, to prosecute the 9/11 accused and senior al Qaeda leader. A team of prosecutors from both districts will handle the government’s case, people familiar with the matter said.
That’s right. The Anointed One has essentially made KSM an American citizen and granted him the full protection of the U.S. Constitution normally granted American citizens. That means:
- The right to a fair trial
- An attorney provided and paid for by U.S. taxpayers
- The right to review all the evidence against him, potentially including classified intelligence matters
- The right to exclude evidence against him, including any confession obtained through enhanced interrogation techniques
May also allow legal maneuvers such as having the entire case thrown out because of questioning without a lawyer present. That would also exclude any statements made without KSM having a lawyer present. Also, the issue of whether he was properly Mirandized.
Erick Erickson at Red State is not happy:
There have been reports in the past month about another potential terrorist attack disrupted in New York City. Bringing these high profile terrorist leaders to New York will just put a target on New York again.
Even worse, the White House is going to subject these terrorists to criminal trials in civilian courts. They will get all the due process rights of citizens in court and potentially will be able to get access to material evidence in a civilian court that could reveal intelligence we’d prefer them not to have.
Seriously. Does anyone not think that Al Qaeda won’t try to disrupt this show trial? NYC is a sitting duck once again, and the Second Coming of Christ just painted a huge target on the city.
What’s more, this show trial will allow KSM to put America on trial as his defense. More America-bashing, which I’m sure pleases the Apologist-in-Chief no end.
Michelle Malkin predicts a backlash unlike anything the White House has seen yet (and that’s saying a lot):
If this White House thought Tea Party activists were an “angry mob,” wait until they see the backlash from 9/11 family members and their supporters nationwide. We’re not going to sit down and shut up about the reckless, security-undermining Obama 9/10 agenda and conflict-of-interest-ridden AG Eric Holder.
Call them out.
Malkin also publishes this exchange between the Defense Department and a 9/11 survivor. Worth re-publishing:
Here is the e-mail the DOD’s Director Victim Witness Program sent out to victims, survivors, and family members of jihadi attacks this morning (via Sgt. Tim Sumner, brother-in-law of FDNY Joseph G. Leavey, 45, Ladder 15, WTC):
You are receiving this email because you have been identified as a victim, survivor, or victim family member of an Al-Qaeda attributed attack and have requested to be kept informed of events involving detainees charged in military commissions or being held in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility in connection with those attacks.
We would like to inform you that the U.S. Departments of Defense and Justice will be making an important public announcement later this morning. At 10:30 am Eastern Standard Time, the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism will post information for victims about the announcement on its password protected victims’ website. At 11:00 am the Defense and Justice Departments will issue a joint press release notifying the public of the information, and there will also be a press conference. In addition, the Defense Department will notify victims about the information by email.
Both the Defense Department (Karen Loftus) and the Justice Department (Heather Cartwright) are sending out this e-mail to ensure that as many victims as possible receive it. We apologize if you receive duplicates. If you know of other victims who may be interested in the information, please pass this on to them.
Here’s what Tim sent in response:
We have an announcement as well: we will fight with every remaining breath in our bodies both their bringing KSM and the rest of the 9/11 conspirators to federal courtrooms within walking distance of where they slaughtered our loved ones. And whomever finds Manhattan’s federal courthouse near Ground Zero a “sentimental favorite” for the 9/11 trials is a damn fool and they ALL ought to be fired. Pass that message on, far, wide, and up and down the chain-of-command.
We’ll have a chance to fire the elected officials responsible for this travesty in November 2012. Yes, President Palin has a nice ring to it.
Melissa Clouthier is taking a poll on whether this is the dumbest idea yet to eminate from The Anointed One.
More from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:
What do we get from having the 9/11 plotters tried in criminal court in New York City? Well, we get to have the city painted as a big, bright target for terrorist action during the entirety of the trial. Thanks to press coverage, which should be an order of magnitude more obsessive than the OJ Simpson trial in LA fourteen years ago, jihadists will come out of the woodwork to make a big international splash, or more likely a boom. We also give KSM and his cohorts a big, juicy media platform for their bile. That was one of their motivations for conducting the attack in the first place, and we finally get to deliver it to them.
John Hindraker weighs in at Power Line:
The potential for these trials to turn into fiascoes is large; perhaps President Obama and his Attorney General have forgotten the “political” trials of the 1960s and 70s. But they seem committed to returning to the pre-September 11 model of treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter, regardless of the consequences.
Ask yourself this question: suppose that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial results in an acquittal or a hung jury. Would the Obama administration really let him go? If so, they are crazy. If not, why are they holding the trial?
We are officially back to 9/10. God help us.
Quote Of The Day November 12, 2009
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Politics, U.S. Congress.comments closed
“There is no distinctly American criminal class, except Congress.” — Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Fort Hood Jihadist Just Another Victim November 12, 2009
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Islam, Jihad, Terrorism.comments closed
Right on cue, the state-run media starts making excuses for Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadist who attacked Fort Hood.
It wasn’t a terrorist attack. It was just another case of workplace violence.
Hasan’s murder spree appears, however, to be much more about seeking vengeance for personal mistreatment than spreading terror to advance a political agenda. In many respects the Fort Hood massacre stands as a textbook case of workplace murder, even though a military base would seem to be an unusual location. Such a crime would seem more likely to occur inside an office building, such as in Friday’s shooting spree in Orlando. Despite its unique function, Fort Hood is indeed a workplace, the U.S. Army an employer, and Hasan a disgruntled worker attempting to avenge perceived unfair treatment on the job. His rampage was selective, not indiscriminate. He chose the location — his workplace — and then apparently singled out certain co-workers for death.
And it’s probably your fault, too.
Like so many disgruntled workers and ex-workers nowadays, Hasan saw himself as a victim of injustice and his fellow soldiers as villains who had conspired against him.
Labeling Hasan a terrorist because he committed an act of terrorism is so unfair to him.
Here’s more. The Telegraph’s Toby Harnden writes about the rush in the state-run media to blame America for Hasan’s act of jihad. Here’s The Olbertard on Hasan:
Keith Olbermann speculates that the (Christian) “fundamentalist thing within the US military may have contributed to this harassment” and concludes that Hasan was a victim of “a religious hate crime”.
Wisconsin’s Budget Trainwreck November 12, 2009
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Business, Economy, Gov. Jim Milhous Doyleone, Jobs, Scott Walker, State Budget, State Government, State Legislature, Taxes, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Governor's Race.comments closed
This is hardly a Top Ten list we’d want to make here in Wisconsin, but it’s hardly surprising given the lack of leadership in the governor’s mansion and the Legislature over the past seven years.
Wisconsin’s budgetary mess is among the 10 worst in the nation, according to a new report.
Wisconsin residents should brace for more tax increases and service cuts, based on an analysis that rated the state’s budget predicament among the 10 worst in the country.
The rise in unemployment and a steep drop in revenues from 2008 to 2009 suggest a dire future for a state that has struggled to fill perennial budget shortfalls, according to the Pew Center on the States and its report, “Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril.”
The top-10 ranking puts Wisconsin in a dubious group with California, a state that issued IOUs to contractors earlier this year. Wisconsin is ranked ninth-worst, tied with Illinois.
“A challenging mix of economic, political and money-management factors have pushed California to the brink of insolvency,” said Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States. “But while California often takes the spotlight, other states are facing hardships just as daunting.”
States will slow the country’s climb out of the recession if they turn to tax increases or drastic spending cuts to balance their budgets, Urahn said. At a minimum, the shortfalls will lead to more furloughs of state workers, higher college tuition fees and less support for social services.
The report pinned Wisconsin’s budget problems, in part, on the loss of 140,000 jobs and one-eighth of its manufacturing workforce in the current recession. The lagging economy drove down tax collections 11.2%, comparing the first quarter of 2008 with the first quarter of 2009, according to the report.
Gov. Jim Doyle and the state Legislature began the 2009-’11 budget process with a $6.6 billion shortfall. They filled the hole with $2.1 billion in tax and fee increases, $2.2 billion in federal stimulus dollars and cuts in state agency spending and aid to local governments and schools.
The report predicts the 2011-’13 budget will start with a structural deficit of $2 billion, and the slow economy is not likely to produce tax revenues to fill that gap. State numbers show tax revenues from July through September trailed the collection a year ago by 8%.
“The next biennium, starting July 1, 2011, is a really scary one from my perspective,” said Andrew Reschovsky.
Here’s a chatr showing where Wisconsin stands:
While the situation may be as dire as the report indicates, the prescription recommended by the report — tax increases — is the precise cause of the situation. It cannot be the cure.
All Gov. Jim Doyle and the Democrats have done over the past seven years is tax, tax, tax and spend, spend, spend. They’ve played budgetary sleight-of-hand games by robbing the state transportation fund — money needed to maintain of the the key state infrastructure systems — to pay off the state teachers’ union and pretend the budget was balanced when it clearly was not.
All the tax increases, combined with the unhealthy regulatory and litigation climates, have forced businesses to flee the Badger state in search of more healthy environments. When those businesses leave, jobs go with them. Usually good paying jobs with benefits. The unemployed are left with few if any appealing choices: move with those jobs (if indeed it’s an option), take a lesser job (less money, usually few if any benefits), or go on the dole (unemployment and other handouts).
Albert Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. So why would yet another round of tax increases fix a problem caused in large part by tax increases and an unhealhy tax climate?
Answer? It won’t, but cutting taxes across the board — income, business, estate, etc. — would. Repealing the regressive tax increases such as the iPod tax would also help.
The next governor of Wisconsin has his work cut out for him in repairing the state’s business climate and attracting businesses and jobs back here.
