Author: Robert

Back to the Fall of 2008?

The insane spending of President Obama and his merry Dems looks like it’s returning America to the situation it was in just under 3 years ago. It possibly could be even a lot worse. Mark Steyn has just published an important, but depressing, column about the state of affairs in Washington, DC. Here’s a key section:

If you owe the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank has a problem. If you owe the banks 15,000,000,000,000 dollars, the planet has a problem.

Moral Question

A friend, knowing I’m finalizing my car purchase today, called this morning. He insisted that I, just hours before the sale is to be completed, contact a car broker acquaintance of his to see if I can get a better deal elsewhere. This would mean foregoing all the time the salesman and other personnel at the dealership have spent with me, test driving several cars, arranging financing, etc.
I immediately rejected my friend’s suggestion, as I view it as unethical. I won’t be changing my view but am curious whether you might have a different one?
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The Deep Seated Hypocrisy of Hollywood’s Left

Adam Carolla hosts a weekday podcast that happens to be the most popular one in the world. Recently he has been playing segments of a first person audio recording of his grandfather’s life history.
In this video I put together, you’ll hear his grandfather talking about his time at Ellis Island, NY, after arriving from Hungary. Then you’ll hear Carolla contrast the complete lack of gratitude expressed by so many in Hollywood today.
As is always the case with Adam Carolla, a language warning is necessary:

South Koreans Taking America For Granted

The hatred towards America by more than a few Canadians is well known. We see it exhibited every month by NDP and some Liberal politicians. We see it expressed regularly here on SDA by the Leftist cretins that periodically infest this wonderful community. What I wasn’t as acutely aware of were similar sentiments expressed by South Koreans. Talkshow host Dennis Prager recently had a few things to say about this.

Narcissism on an Entirely New Level

SDA regular ‘ET’ has long explained that to understand Barack Obama you just need to accept that in his mind, everything is about him. With that in mind, the Dear Leader is soon going to be turning 50 and a BIG Birthday Bash is planned!
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What are you & your family going to do to celebrate The Great Barack’s Birthday? Perhaps plant your children in front of the TV, force their eyes open as in Clockwork Orange, and watch El Messiah’s speeches over and over and over again?! Seriously, waddya goin’ do?

Toronto on the Rebound

The economy of Toronto appears to be recovering nicely by all accounts. This is a good thing, not just for the city, but for Canada as a whole. I would never have dreamed that Ontario would ever slip into have-not status, yet they did. With Toronto doing better, hopefully this will reflect well on the country’s largest province as well. After all, the workers in the West don’t want to keep bailing it out forever!
Now, when are Montreal & Quebec going to do the same?

The Aftermath of the Riots

The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) is going to start laying charges against hundreds of hooligans who participated in the mayhem, destruction, and theft in the downtown core on June 15th.
Roy Green, who is sitting in for CHQR’s Dave Rutherford today, has invited me and Vancouver Spirit Rally organizer, Amanda Page, onto the show to talk about this. If you’d like to listen to or participate in the discussion, you can listen live here. It’ll begin just after the 11:30am MST (10:30am PST / 1:30pm EST) news.

Canadian Prostitution

I’ve long thought of the Pivot Legal Society as a victim-baiting organization / Leftist front group. Perhaps elements of them actually are. But on the show that I photographed yesterday, I thought Katrina Pacey sounded more like a reasonable libertarian:

What say you?

Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out!

Jason Kenney and his Ministry are set to rescind the Canadian citizenships of 1,800 fraudsters. He discusses the matter with Geoff Currier here. Sun News TV was all over this, such as here and here. It appears that even more than a few of Canada’s Left support the idea that the law should be respected.
Just one thought: Bravo!!!
Question: How long will it take before the “support groups” start calling Jason Kenney a racist?!

Why Republicans Should Stay Clear of Mitt Romney

Last Thursday evening, WABC’s John Batchelor had a guest co-host named Mary Kissel, who works for the Wall Street Journal. In one of the segments, they interviewed a journalist named McKay Coppins about a recent article of his. You can listen to the interview here beginning at 19:00 (about half-way through the podcast).
Mr. Coppins tried his best to defend what he was saying in the article but Batchelor & Kissel kept battering him with questions, eventually shattering to pieces his defense of Romney. Towards the end, Batchelor asks a most important question: “Doesn’t this suggest to us that Mr. Romney would do better in another party?”
Mitt Romney might be a nice guy, might look like a President, and absolutely does have a good track record in business. But he’s too much of a flimsy fellow when it comes to any core set of values and a concrete vision. Sometimes compromising is a good thing but often it’s absolutely the wrong thing to do.
America is in trouble. A whole lot of trouble. The next Republican American president simply cannot compromise when it comes to fixing the economy and restoring a large semblance of fiscal sanity to government spending. For if it’s more of the same then the whirlpool of financial ruin that the nation is cascading down into will only pull it down in a stronger fashion. That’s not a good thing for anyone in the world except America’s enemies.

A Good Reason to be Skeptical of Academics

In the recent Reader Tips, EBD provides a link that makes one reach for the calendar to see if it’s April Fools Day. In a piece that is so stupefyingly idiotic, one Susan F. Steiner has published something that is even too outrageous for The Onion.
EBD kindly pulled out a few gems:
“The mantra that ‘the budget must be balanced’ is a throwback to the 19th century, originating from the same outmoded economic thinking that justifies women’s lower wages…”

“Fiscal austerity – aka, reducing the deficit – endangers our lives.”
“Since the U.S. government is both sovereign in its own currency and the sole issuer of dollars, it can never run out of them. How could it? Don’t think printing presses here: Federal debts are paid off by Treasury clerks making a few clicks on computer keyboards—keyboards identical to the one I’m typing on now…”

“In fact decent societies don’t ‘cost too much.’ The real problem is that our government, held hostage by right-wing extremists, won’t spend enough.”

A quick check reveals Ms. Steiner’s “credentials“:
Susan Feiner, PhD
Professor of Economics/Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies
University of Southern Maine

A Stronger Blend of Tea Needed in 2012

Mark Steyn, always an exceptional writer, hits the ball out of the park with No bargaining with Barack Obluffer. Here is one key section (emphasis mine) :

But in essence the spenders are negotiating among themselves how much debt they’re going to burden you with. It’s like you and your missus announcing you’ve set your new credit limit at $1.3 million, and then telling the bank to send demands for repayment to Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s kindergartner next door.
Nothing good is going to come from these ludicrously protracted negotiations over laughably meaningless accounting sleights-of-hand scheduled to kick in circa 2020. All the charade does is confirm to prudent analysts around the world that the depraved ruling class of the United States cannot self-correct, and, indeed, has no desire to.

One hopes that all reasonably minded Americans are paying attention! The Tea Party made a good start in 2010 but clearly, the majority of the elected officials in DC have shifted back into “same old, same old” mode.
Update: Victor Davis Hanson has written a superb article as well.  h/t ET   In it there’s a most interesting quote from 2006. You’ll be blown away who said it:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

Rising Anger Down Under

Alan Jones is kind of like the Rush Limbaugh of Australia. He has a podcast that’s well worth a listen if you want to keep apprised of what’s going on in the big land in the southern hemisphere.
Recently Jones has been hammering Australia’s PM Julia Gillard about the carbon tax that she and her Green Party coalition partners are insisting upon bringing in. The outrage is more than a little reminiscent of something that happened here in Canada almost 3 years ago.
The Australian public is clearly outraged at Gillard’s arrogance to introduce something they don’t want. No surprise that some Radical Leftists choose to use Saul Alinsky tactics to support their zealotry.
Christopher Monckton is down there stirring up the pot:

P.S. Ezra Levant and Tim Ball discussed the issue on Sun News TV yesterday.

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