Thursday, September 22, 2011

Selling the Brooklyn Bridge

Who's the bigger fool? Someone who thinks he is smarter than 350 million people collectively, or 350 million people who are increasingly seeing through the media smog?
Barack Obama recently declared that there are a couple of hundred bridges in the nation that are on the verge of collapse, and only passing his latest pork bill will save thousands of Americans from death.
You don't have to be an affirmative action graduate from Harvard to know that the Highway Trust Fund contains billions of unspent dollars and that bridges on the verge of collapse would be the top priority for that money.
In addition, you don't have to be a TelePrompter-reading orator to know that taxpayers were just raped to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars and THAT money was supposed to go to the nation's most important "shovel ready" projects.
Bridges groaning under the weight of vehicles and cracking from the strain are not important?
How is it that this national "emergency" is so far down in the pecking order? Who sets the priorities in the White House?
The $20 billion Obama extorted from BP would have paid for a lot of bridge repairs. Not to mention the billions spent to shore up labor unions and protect the jobs of government workers.
To get on national television and make such a transparent political statement shows one thing: utter contempt for the American people.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Proud of ignorance

One of (many) infuriating things about liberals is how they speak so smugly about matters of public policy when they literally have no inkling of the situation.
For example, the pipeline the paper mill in Palatka is building to improve the health of the river.
Libs continue to insist that the mill is doing just the opposite, by introducing millions of gallons of poison that is not going into the river currently. (Many of them gain their ignorance from a local newspaper columnist who has demagogued this issue for years.)
Fact: The mill's discharge has been going into the St. Johns River for more than 50 years.
Fact: It is cleaner now than it was 50 years ago.
Fact: The only reason the pipeline is needed is because the environmental standards have been increased.
The mill has spent more than $100 million improving the quality of its discharge. It also spent some $20 million on alternatives to the pipeline that environmental wackos insisted would work. They didn't.
The burden of that cost will fall on the mill workers and its customers.
But the so-called environmentalists don't care about that. They hope to close down the mill and eliminate the jobs of more than 1,000 mill workers. Mother Nature is more important than the workers and their families.
That's liberal compassion. They are always willing to sacrifice YOUR livelihood for their fantasies.
All the environmental regulators agree that by moving the point of discharge to the middle of the river instead of letting it seep into the edge will improve the health of the river, because the solution to pollution is dilution.
Libs, of course, know better. They have total faith in their intellectual and moral superiority.

Friday, September 2, 2011

How to destroy your own argument

Political consultant (and not a very successful one) Bob Beckel is supposed to be one of the smarter liberals. And, of course, libs are smarter than the rest of us anyway.
Yet in a discussion on The Five, on Fox News, Beckel displayed his own ignorance vividly.
As other libs have been doing, he tried to excuse the rant by a Muslim congressman, who accused other members of Congress who are supported by the Tea Party of being racists.
It is inexcuseable and the lib talking points call for them to admit he went over the line.
Then, they follow it up by excusing him because the Tea Party and other conservatives want to balance the budget.
To balance the budget, they want to limit the increase in spending -- without increasing taxes and thereby impeding growth.
Libs equate this to racism on the grounds, as Beckel tried to explain it, that "the most vulnerable" would be harmed by not continuing to increase spending as much as libs want to.
By the most vulnerable, they mean Americans of African ancestry who are poor. Libs imagine they would "suffer" if federal spending increases of the past few years were not further increased.
But, then, out of the blue, Beckel spoke the truth!
"You know, most people on welfare are white," he said.
This is true. But Beckel is so dense he did not realize he had just shot down his own argument. Unfortunately, the other members of the panel did not pick up on it either.
How can it be racist to support limits that would harm more white people than black people?
This could only be true of black politicians. It was a black politician who made the allegation. But he is one who opposes the spending limits.
White conservatives who want to help blacks by producing jobs for them cannot be called racist for wanting sane budget limits that harm mostly white people (if, indeed, they harm anyone).





Thursday, September 1, 2011

Stearns is plugging away

U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns of Northeast Florida is a low-key guy. I've known him for about 20 years and he is not a headline hunter, but he is a plugger.
As head of the House Energy Committee's oversight subcommittee, he has been investigating the Solyndra deal that just went bust.
In throwing cash all over the nation, the White House tossed a half-billion dollars at Solyndra, which makes solar panels. You know: "green" jobs and all that.
Well, Solyndra just went bankrupt. And 1,100 jobs went down the drain.
The deal smelled fishy from the start, which is why venture capitalists wouldn't put money into it. But one of the investors was a big Democrat cash-bundler. The company got a $535 million loan guarantee from the government.
Stearns has learned that the Office of Management and Budget, which is supposed to recommend a stimulus project before it goes forward, never made a recommendation on Solyndra. It took a while to find this out because the administration stonewalled the congressional effort to get the information.
Yes, that's the same administration that promised to set the highest standards for "transparency." Instead, it has been one of the most secretive and least cooperative.
The Government Accounting Office also has looked at the deal and found that several required steps in the process were leapfrogged.
Now the taxpayers apparently are out the money and Stearns wants to hold hearings to find out how much more of the trillion dollars in stimulus was hurried out the door without proper vetting.
No problem, the White House says. It knew all along that some of the programs weren't going to be a success.
Really?