Spend our way out of recession?

Democrat James Clyburn says we need to spend our way out of the recession (and I thought it was already over):

“We’re not going to save our way out of this recession,” the majority whip added. “We’ve got to spend our way out of this recession, and I think most economists know that.” The Hill

No country has ever spent its way out of a recession and the only economists who believe we can are the ones who do not know what they are doing. You would not spend more to get your family’s out of control budget in order and no one in his right mind actually thinks that it is possible to spend one’s way to prosperity.

Obama awards no bid contract

Barack Obama and the Democrats all screamed about no bid contracts when Bush was in office (that evil Halliburton) though they never made a sound when Bill Clinton awarded that company no bid contracts. Nevertheless, Obama said that practice would be limited and that competition was necessary to keep the cost of contracts down. However, he awarded a no bid to the company of one of his financial contributors.

The recent awarding of a lucrative federal contract to a company owned by a financial contributor to the Obama presidential campaign — without competitive bidding — “violated” President Obama’s many campaign pledges to crack down on the practice, a top State Department official told Fox News. Jammie Wearing Fool

The argument could be made that he said it would be limited so he did not violate a promise. Surely some contracts have to be no bid because some companies are the only ones that perform certain tasks. Of course this is the case with Halliburton but this did not stop Democrats from howling like scalded dogs. In any event, this no bid should never have been awarded. Even if there is a way to prove that it was necessary or proper, the fact that it was awarded to a financial contributor smacks of cronyism. It looks wrong and perception is often reality. The left said that contracts to Halliburton benefited Cheney (they did not) and that was their opposition to the no bids it received. Funny how there is no mention of the Obama no bid award which does benefit someone who supported him…

About those 9/11 terrorists tried in civilian courts

Dana Perino spells out the facts about 9/11 terrorist trials:

First, the only civilian trial of a 9/11 terrorist was Moussaoui who was arrested before 9/11 had even happened and before the President had authorized detaining terrorists as enemy combatants.

Second, Moussaoui had his trial while the entire military commission system was under sustained legal attack by left-wing lawyers, which put all military commission trials on hold. So he couldn’t have been tried by military commission back then any way. Gateway Pundit

This sets the record straight for those who act as if we have tried a million 9/11 terrorists in civilian courts.

And why those terrorist animals should be in Gitmo (didn’t Obama close that place?)

Speaking of terrorists, here is why they should all be kept at Gitmo:

I was a federal prison guard at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. In 2000, I was with a prisoner, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, taking him back to his cell. His cellmate was Khalfan Khamis Mohamed. They were accused of bombing two embassies in Africa in 1998. Later they said that they worked with Osama bin Laden and that they helped set up al Qaeda.

We were back at their cell. It’s only me and those two guys. No supervisors. Just the three of us. Somehow, they slipped out of their handcuffs.

They sprayed me with some kind of hot sauce. I couldn’t see. They pulled me into the cell and hit me — boom, boom. They hit me so much, I swear to God, like a hundred times.

I hit my radio. I thought help would come.

They wanted the keys for the other prisoners, but they couldn’t find them. They were in my front pocket. I used to be big, 300 pounds, and I was laying on them. I gave them my car keys.

About halfway through, they used a comb — thick and long, about 10 inches, with a handle. They’d taken the teeth out and sharpened it like a knife.

They put it in my left eye. It went three inches into my brain. Read the rest and see a picture of the guy who was attacked at The New York Post

Those animals should have been at Gitmo and this would not have happened. Perhaps they need to be water boarded a few hundred times to take away some of their energy.

Newsweek has a cover with a balloon containing the words “The recession is over.” Barack Obama poked a little fun at that cover in a town hall style meeting:

“I don’t know whether you’ve seen the cover of the latest Newsweek magazine on the rack at the grocery store, but the cover says: ‘The Recession is Over,’” Obama said, prompting chuckles in the audience.

“I imagine you might have found that news a little startling,” he continued, to more laughter. “I know I did.”

The last thing Obama needs is for people to be reminded that his 787 billion dollar stimulus did not work and that the economy is worse now than it was back when the stimulus was passed. Obama promised us unemployment would not go above 8% if it was passed and would hit more than 9% if it was not. His caveat was that it could go even higher if we did nothing.

They rushed the stimulus through and unemployment is 9.5%, there are no signs of recovery and those so called shovel ready projects have not started. Few if any jobs have been created and the dollar gets weaker by the day. Obama’s stimulus has been a failure and the Newsweek cover mocks this (though they might be sincere in their assertions).

So Obama poked a bit at the cover claiming the recession is over. In February, Newsweek featured a cover with the words “We are all Socialists now.” Obama made not one peep about that cover. He runs around claiming that those who call his health care plan Socialist are wrong but when a major magazine called us Socialists he never said it was not true.

He was quick to hit the one about the recession but silent about the one on Socialism. Perhaps it is because he knows the recession is not over but he wants us all to be Socialists.

I know Obama is a Socialist and that he is leading this country down the road to Socialism and that is probably why he made nary a peep about the Newsweek cover claiming that we are Socialists.

Sometimes silence speaks louder than words…

Looks like the Won is finally coming down to Earth. His approval rating country wide is the lowest it has been at 56%. His supporters will say that this is a good number, and it is, but it has continued to trend downward and poll numbers for individual states are lower with Ohio at 49% and Virginia at 48%. George H.W. Bush had approval numbers in the 70s following the Gulf War and they rapidly disappeared (within a year). Obama had a wave of excitement because he screamed Hope and Change and because he is the nation’s first half black leader. Some of the shine is starting to wear off. His approval is up but his approval index is -5.

Obama said we had to act now with the stimulus or we would be doomed. They acted “now” without even reading it and we are still doomed. The unemployment number, the one he promised would peak at 8% with the stimulus, has reached 9.5% and will likely hit 10% by the end of Summer. He has spent trillions we do not have and he continues to push for more spending that is unwise and reckless. People are beginning to see he is out of his league and that he is taking us the wrong way. While Germany, which said no to stimulus, is rebounding from its recession, we are heading deeper into ours and Obama’s solution is to have another stimulus. He wants to do more of what did not work. These very acts are the ones FDR took when HE drove us into a depression.

The Democrats of his majority are bucking him. A large number oppose the health care plan because it is too expensive and would add to the massive debt they are creating. The cap and tax bill has met stiff resistance in the Senate where Robert Byrd has been extremely vocal about not supporting it. Others have reservations as well. Even the liberal Brookings Institute says it will cost too much and be damaging to us financially.

Universal health care and cap and trade will have a tough time passing even though the Democrats can do that without any Republican support. This economy and all the things going on belong to Obama and his party and the consequences are theirs as well. The Democrats in Congress are aware of this and they are thinking about their next campaigns to be reelected.

Obama’s numbers will continue to fall unless, by some miracle, his policies start to make things better. However, since history shows that we will suffer high inflation (a position many economists predict) things will not get better any time soon.

While Obama works on another stimulus to spend even more money we do not have, Germany is seeing the outcome of acting responsibly. Contrary to what some of his advisers think, a second stimulus will not help any more than the first one did.

If he continues on this path 2010 will be a good year for Republicans (if they can get good candidates to run).

We will have to wait to see if we still have a country in 2012 to make predictions.

As an aside, Congressman Hoyer says health care bill would not get votes if members had to read it. [Big Dog Salute to Stop the ACLU]

The tax cuts enacted under George Bush were for everyone and the middle class made out better than the wealthy. I know that is hard to believe because a rich person gets a bigger dollar figure back but that person pays many multiples of what a middle class worker pays. Additionally, the lower 50% of wage earners pay just under 4% of our nation’s taxes. If they pay little or none then they should be getting little or none back. Our government though, believes in income redistribution or “spreading the wealth.” That is why the last stimulus checks went to people who paid little or no taxes while the upper wage earners, the ones whose taxes ultimately paid for the stimulus, got NOTHING.

When Barack Obama was running for office he said that George Bush had tax cuts for the rich. He had to say that because that is the mantra the left uses to invoke class warfare. They make the middle and lower classes support them by making them envious of the rich. Obama vowed that he would get rid of Bush’s tax cut for the rich and that he would cut taxes for the middle class. The problem with that is the Bush tax cut benefited the middle class and if it goes away the taxes on them go way up. If Obama takes away the tax cut and then gives them a tax cut, what did they gain? Oh well, it sounded good.

As part of the newest stimulus package that Obama says will likely end up being over a TRILLION dollars, there are tax cuts. That is right left wing moonbats who supported him, Obama wants tax cuts for those making under some magic number that is a moving target. Of course, when Bush cut taxes the left said that it would lead to less money going to government and that it was wrong to cut taxes when the country was in such debt. Since the sainted one is adding tax cuts to a stimulus package he must now be admitting that tax cuts stimulate the economy.

But Big Dog, that means nothing. Obama promised to give tax cuts to the middle class and to end Bush’s tax cuts fo the evil rich.

Yep, and Obama is also giving tax cuts to the rich. He has stated that he will probably not seek immediate repeal of Bush’s tax cuts for people making over $250,000 (the tax cuts were for everyone, Obama just wants to repeal them for anyone making this amount or more) and that he will let them expire in 2010. Imagine that, he is allowing the rich to keep the tax cuts in order to stimulate the economy. Barack Obama is now showing what Republicans have stated and what George Bush demonstrated and that is tax cuts (for everyone) stimulate the economy.

A few things though. The tax cuts for the middle class were not part of the original plan and Obama has them there as bait to get Republicans to sign on to the stimulus package. Also, the tax cuts will have little effect on the economy because they will be accompanied by a huge amount of government spending, spending that will give us a deficit that will take generations to pay off.

I am not in favor of the stimulus package and I believe that the more government meddles in the issue the longer the recession will last and it might end up in a full blown depression. We need the government to allow the free market to correct the issue as it always has. Despite Obama’s claim that Wall Street has not worked and needs more government regulation, the fact is the market has worked very well for a long time with just a few periods of economic downturn. The market is good more often than it is bad.

We do not need more government regulation. Government regulation and abandonment of free market principles is what got us in this mess. The government forced lending institutions to make loans that people were never going to be able to pay. That is too much government intervention. Everywhere governments meddle in the free market there is turmoil.

The politicians in DC have spent billions of dollars on bailouts already and there are trillions of dollars that they refuse to tell what it was spent on or who it went to.

More bailouts and more spending means that we have to borrow more money. China already has billions of dollars invested in our government and they are discussing investing billions more. When the bill comes due we are going to be in even greater trouble. We just don’t have the money.

Obama admitted that tax cuts are a stimulus for the economy. Now he needs to learn the second part and that is cutting government spending. If we cut the spending then we will reduce the deficit and things will gradually work back to normal.

I recommend we do not pass the stimulus package. The government is spending well beyond its means and that is a recipe for disaster.

Just ask any of the people who got loans they could not afford when the government forced lending institutions to lend them money.

Is it any wonder that people in this country live beyond their means? Their government is leading by example.

Source:
CNBC