Stand Like A Rock

The Economy Keeps Getting Worse, While Washington Fiddles

 ECONOMICS  No Responses »
Feb 262010
 

by Bones
David Bellavia blog, February 26, 2010

America is in a deep financial hole, and it is time to ask if Washington really cares.  This administration is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per job created, yet refuses to initiate policies which would encourage free enterprise to create those same  job… for nothing.  To make matters worse he is attempting to create new federal programs which will insure the quadrupling of the national debt within the decade.  By refusing to stop spending or cut programs he has sent a message to the world, that it is just fine to be a debtor nation.   But the rest of the world is not ‘buying it’.  China, the nation who holds more of our bonds than any other, has recently refused to purchase more of America’s promissory notes.  Then in an apparent move to boost government owned and run, General Motors and Chrysler, the Democratic controlled congress invited Toyota to Capitol Hill where they all but accused its president, Akio Toyoda, of a second attack on Pearl Harbor.  Make no mistake, they dishonored this man, and to the Japanese honor is paramount.  So in one week China refuses to buy any more American paper, and the congress insults its second largest creditor, Japan.  Is this any way to run a debtor nation? Continue reading »

Posted by DagnyTaggart at 2:45 pm  

“Bending the Curve”: What Really Drives Health Care Spending

 HEALTH CARE*  No Responses »
Feb 262010
 

The main problem is a pricing system that insulates both patients and producers from normal market incentives.

By JASON FODEMAN, M.D. AND ROBERT A. BOOK, PH.D.
From the Heritage Foundation, February 19, 2010

Much of the motivation driving health care reform is grounded in the belief that U.S. health care spending is too high and rising too quickly. Whether measured by individual insurance premiums, average spending per person, total national spending, or federal and state government health spending, U.S. health care expenditures are growing faster than inflation, faster than average wages, and faster than the gross domestic product (GDP). Thus, the President has declared that one key purpose of health care reform is to “bend the cost curve” downward.[1]

However, this strong consensus that health care spending is too high and growing too fast has not led to agreement on the causes or the appropriate responses. The most commonly proposed explanations for increases in overall health care spending include: Continue reading »

Posted by DagnyTaggart at 2:39 pm  

Theodore Roosevelt, Big-Government Man

 CONSTITUTION  No Responses »
Feb 262010
 

by Jim Powell
The Freeman, February 26, 2010

Theodore Roosevelt has been known as “the Good Roosevelt,” “the Republican Roosevelt,” and “the conservative Roosevelt,” as distinguished from his fifth cousin Franklin, who’s credited with ushering in modern American big government.

Yet promoters of big government have long recognized TR as one of their own.

Biographer Frank Freidel wrote that “While at Groton [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] first fell under the spell of his remote cousin Theodore Roosevelt. . . . Theodore Roosevelt believed in using to the utmost the constitutional power of the president. . . . This strong use of government was for the most part appealing to Franklin.” During the Great Depression, FDR promoted “a program emphasizing national planning in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt.” Freidel noted that “in words reminiscent of Theodore Roosevelt, FDR declared ‘the duty rests upon the Government to restrict incomes by very high taxes.’”

Historian Eric F. Goldman said that Lyndon Johnson, who simultaneously launched huge domestic entitlement spending programs and escalated the undeclared Vietnam War, admired “the hyperactive White House of Theodore Roosevelt.” LBJ reportedly remarked, “Whenever I pictured Teddy Roosevelt, I saw him running or riding, always moving, his fists clenched, his eyes glaring, speaking out.” Continue reading »

Posted by DagnyTaggart at 2:29 pm  Tagged with:

Joe Biden’s Deceptive Celebration

 ECONOMICS, NEW AMERICA  No Responses »
Feb 262010
 

by Chip Wood
Personal Liberty Digest, February 26, 2010

Joe Biden’s Deceptive Celebration

Well, once again Barack Obama’s schedule conflicts with mine. The President has announced that he will host a “bipartisan summit” on healthcare this coming Thursday in Washington.

I say “this coming Thursday,” but by the time you read this, it will have been “yesterday.” That’s because I submit this column five days before you read it. So my comments about the healthcare summit—like the one last month, on POTUS’ SOTUS—will have to wait for a week-plus after the event. (In case you’re not up on your Washington acronyms, POTUS’ SOTUS stands for the President of the United States’ State of the Union Speech.)

Every week I write three columns for Personal Liberty Alerts, the wonderful free ezine you just clicked on. Straight Talk (the one you’re reading now) is the lead column every Friday morning. Also on Friday, I write a mini-column called Chip Shots that is the last item on the page. Chip Shots, as the name implies, is a collection of interesting little tidbits from the news. (For example, in today’s effort the first item is the scariest proposal to come out of Washington in a long, long time.) Continue reading »

Posted by DagnyTaggart at 2:12 pm  Tagged with:

MDA Says Logo Designed Three Years Ago

 ENEMIES OF AMERICA, PRESIDENT, SECURITY  No Responses »
Feb 262010
 

Dear Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency,

Why did you change your LOGO for the Missile Defense Agency to the Obama “Muslim” Islamic crescent moon ? Is this part of your new equal opportunity diversity management ? Perhaps you are preparing us all for Sharia Law and the new world order.

Maybe the United Nations wants all our nuclear weapons technology to share with China > ? Nope we already did that under Clinton.

So we are all ears waiting to hear back from you. Keep us posted. Inquiring Americans want to know.

Senior Chief Ross
United States Navy Retired. Continue reading »

Posted by DagnyTaggart at 2:06 pm  

Incredible Photos: Afghanistan, February, 2010

 AFGHANISTAN WAR, OUR MILITARY  No Responses »
Feb 262010
 

In southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, Thousands of American, Afghan and British troops entered Marja in the biggest offensive of the war, with the goal of destroying the Taliban’s largest haven and restoring government presence in southern Afghanistan. Resistance was sporadic and fierce as troops seized positions around the area. Stricter combat rules and a concerted effort by the Afghan government and NATO forces were aimed at not only protecting the civilian population, but planning for the aftermath, building infrastructure, support and trust in an area long dominated by the Taliban. Collected here are images of the country and conflict over the past month, part of an ongoing monthly series on Afghanistan. (43 photos total)

See photos

Posted by DagnyTaggart at 12:18 pm  

Too Little, Too Late, Too Cynical

 ECONOMICS, NEW AMERICA, PRESIDENT  No Responses »
Feb 252010
 

What’s behind Obama sudden embrace of statesmanship?

by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online, February 25, 2010

The United States may very well owe a crushing $20 trillion by 2020. And thus President Obama last week named a bipartisan commission to find ways to address our national debt.

Such a Periclean response might sound sincere and worthwhile. But it comes 13 months into this administration — and only after Obama added nearly $1.5 trillion in new borrowing in 2009. And by the time the new deficit commission submits its recommendations at the end of this year, the current 2010 budget will have put us out another $1.5 trillion.

The president not that long ago ran on the theme of fiscal sobriety. During the 2008 campaign, he took advantage of the public anger over the Bush deficits that had climbed to an aggregate of $2.5 trillion over eight years. Now, though, he looks to trump Bush’s eight-year record of red ink in his first two years. Continue reading »

Posted by DagnyTaggart at 4:01 pm  

Toyota and the Price of Modernity

 UNCATEGORIZED  No Responses »
Feb 252010
 

Even the highest technology produced by the world’s finest companies can be fallible and fatal.

by Charles Krauthammer
National Review Online, February 25, 2010

Amazingly, the congressional hearings on Toyota were relatively civilized. Apart from some inevitable theatrical hectoring, the questioning was generally respectful, the emotions controlled. This was all the more remarkable given the drama of some of the testimony, such as that offered by a tearful Rhonda Smith, who recounted how, in her runaway Lexus, she had called her husband because “I wanted to hear his voice one more time.”

Such wrenching and compelling stories might impel you to want to string up the first Toyota executive you find. But the issue here is larger and highly complex.

Industrial society produces an astonishing array of mass-produced products — cars, drugs, medical devices — that are at once wondrous and potentially lethal. Continue reading »

Posted by DagnyTaggart at 3:58 pm  Tagged with:
 Older Entries  Newer Entries
© 2010 Stand Like A Rock ~ Maintenance by Jennifer Keener Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha