Monday, August 29, 2011

Early warning signs?

Members of Downtown Rotary still are buzzing about a bizarre appearance by Mayor Alvin Brown a couple of weeks ago.
One said the speech -- full of platitudes and mush -- was the "worst speech I ever heard," and this person has heard many.
Yet, it was a prepared speech -- not one off-the-cuff, which might be excused.
On top of that, Brown applauded himself throughout the speech, while members of the audience stared in disbelief.
Since taking office, Brown has announced an "economic summit," which is kind of busywork with no clear reason or purpose. He also has expounded on the need for "downtown development," which has been a theme of every mayor for the past six decades.
The frosting on his cake is a plan to spend $70 million on a trolley.
This is just an old newspaperman's hunch: Before 2015 the RINOs -- I mean "prominent Republicans" -- who helped defeat a competent conservative candidate are going to be offering excuses for their foolish actions.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Changing times, and minds

In 2008 candidate Barack Obama said President Bush was "irresponsible" and "unpatriotic" because the national debt had increased by $4 trillion during Bush's eight years in office.
President Obama has added more debt in three years than Bush did in eight. Twice as many people are unemployed.
That's not all. The stock market is in turmoil. We have more military involvement in foreign lands than under Bush. China is closing the military gap with us, rapidly.
Yet in an Orwellian comment, the White House press office says the mounting debt is a "validation" of the sagacity of Obamanomics.
How much hypocrisy and chicanery will the American people take? Will they re-elect Obama in 2012 when he is still blaming Bush for all his failures, four years later?
There is a virtual certainty that if the election were next week and there was a 100 percent voter turnout, Obama would be chased from office.
But it is way too early to say what will happen in November 2012.
Obama already is trying to pose as a tax cutter and spending hawk. With the media's help, he might be able to sell that bill of goods to people who don't know the facts or don't care about them.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Journalistic malpractice

One local paper was so devoid of news this week that its editors felt the need to run a story made up from scratch by the Associated Press. It is a typical practice in the liberal media.
You select a conservative target and then make up a story that will cast the person in a negative light.
The big story was that Gov. Rick Scott gets health insurance, and pays the same rate as 32,000 other state employees.
Shocking!
Well, OK, not shocking. So, they have to jazz it up a bit.
They revealed the fact that Scott actually opposes the federal government's attempt to take over health care through the vehicle generally known as Obamacare!
That's it.
This is a news story?
Naturally, libs fell all over themselves with outrage. They didn't know what they were outraged about but I do. It is because Scott beat Alex Sink at the polls and became governor. Libs believe only Democrats are fit to hold public office.
They have been working overtime to demonize Scott since he was elected.
In this case, anyone who examined the story would laugh -- if they were capable of critical thinking. But, of course, the public schools don't teach critical thinking. They indoctrinate children to follow the liberal line.
Someone capable of thinking would ask, why shouldn't Scott buy health insurance that the Legislature voted long ago to make available to state employees?
At one time, it was free. Now the employee has to pay a cost. It is a low cost, because it is subsidized. Again, not Scott's doing.
The fact that he agrees with the majority of Americans on Obamacare has absolutely nothing to do with the story. Many of those 32,000 who get the insurance at the same rate undoubtedly agree with Scott. Are they to be held in disrepute also?
Are only those who think Obamacare is good policy entitled to have health insurance supplied by the state?
Previous governors of both parties got the benefits established by law, regardless of what federal government policies they agreed with.
Unlike them, Scott does not accept a salary from the state. This obviously more than makes up the amount of the subsidy he gets on health insurance.
This is a completely fabricated story. It is, in fact, not a news story. It is an attack on Scott.
It is much like one of the made-up stories published by this local daily. At one time they attacked a number of local citizens solely because of the amount of water they use monthly.
Water is a free resource that the city and private companies deliver to residents for a fee. Several years ago the fee structure was revised, in fact, to penalize those who buy larger amounts.
So people were held up to public ridicule and scorn just because they buy large amounts of a product that the city sells.
The implication is that they are "wasting" something valuable that belongs to "society," using more than their "fair share." This is one of liberaldom's favorite myths and themes.
We could not run out of water on the planet Earth if we wanted to. The worst that could happen is that some day Florida residents might have to use water from the ocean, as millions of other people around the gllobe do every day.
Libs also claim that food is scarce. So where are the stories castigating people who spend too much at the local groceries? You won't see those for two reasons: grocery stores spend millions on newspaper ads, and the city doesn't keep records of people's grocery bills, which makes it effortless to cook up a phony story about water usage.
If you read a story in a newspaper, which fewer people do every day, ask yourself: Is this news or propaganda?

Thursday, August 4, 2011

The plan is working

Never let a crisis go to waste, Barack Obama's closest adviser told him.
But first you have to have a crisis.
If there's not one handy, create one.
Today's fall off the cliff in the stock market is a natural result of the spending and debt binge Obama has been on since he took office.
I'm convinced now that his plan is to create not just a recession, but a Depression.
He and his socialist pals, including George Soros, have to be licking their lips looking back at the 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to move America further toward socialism than it had ever been. He did it by using the crisis at hand, which he didn't create but made worse.
Herbert Hoover had cut taxes and the nation was heading out of the recession of 1929 when Congress passed the worst piece of legislation ever, the Smoot-Hawley tariff. That put the nation, and the world, into a depression.
Roosevelt, after being elected by promising to cut taxes and balance the budget, did the opposite. When people needed jobs and food, he jailed employers for trying to lower wages and sell food at lower prices. His make-work job programs employed some people, but kept them out of work in the private sector.
Even his own financial adviser admitted at the end of FDR's first term that nothing they had tried had worked.
Obama's plan is to do everything FDR did, and double or triple it. With the nation in a depression, he can assume huge powers for the government, as FDR did, and the freedoms lost this time may never come back.
The only risk he is taking is that the economic hardships he is creating will backlash in November 2012 and prevent him from being elected. He is counting on Soros and the media to keep that from happening.
If he wins his gamble, there is nothing to stop him.