RedStateEclectic

Did I Write That?

Did I write that?

Bomber Barry, Yes He Can

Neither do I wish to make a point about the US-Israel relationship, nor do I understand the Israel-related allusions of the image, I simply like the striking depiction of the BU(shO)BAMA system, the concerted cynical usurpation of America by the Republican and the Democrat establishment.

Obama - The Audacity of Fraud, my post from 2008 predicts the below findings. There is nothing special about the uneducated, waffling, and self-aggrandizing Bomber Barry. Barack Hussein Obama is simply the new chief-puppet to take the self-empowerment of the two colluding parties that own America to the next level.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Big Global Warming Freeze

Following on from the blog post yesterday about the Met Office’s Julia Slingo claiming the recent ‘freak weather’ (aka a cold winter) could have been predicted if only the Met Office had more supercomputing power…

AM [Autonomous Mind, a blog, G.T.] emailed respected meterology experts Joe Bastardi and Piers Corbyn to ask them what supercomputing technology they employ that helps them to generate forecasts that are consistently more accurate than those of the Met Office.

Thus writes Autonomous Mind in a post entitled Bastardi and Corbyn Reply:

I found this statement by Mr. Bastardi remarkable, but so is his entire reply:

... open mindedness and the crucible of capitalism and competition, where if not right enough, Piers and I  will get fired,  makes a bigger difference than just saying I need more money for a bigger computer so I can rely on it.

Corbyn has been a consistent combatant in the fight against the global warming mumbo-jumbo, his reply is particularly valuable thanks to the links in it that lead to sources explaining his method.

My answer to What supercomputers do I use? is:

W A I T  F O R  I T…………..

N
O
N
E

And before someone goes looking for the ‘NONE’ computer company I mean: We do not use ANY Supercomputer we use P H Y S I C S.

Read the entire, short reply.

See also my post A Storm in a Tea Cup, and the various links to further RSE posts at the bottom of that post.

John Dingell in Trouble?!

In what has to be the most unbelievable development in the Michigan congressional races this year, 84 year old John Dingell might be in trouble and lose his seat. Dingell is the longest current serving member in Congress and resides in an heavily Democratic district in southeast Michigan. In fact, the 15th district has been represented by a John Dingell since 1933. His father until 1955 and Junior ever since.

Dingell was seen as one of the chief architects of the new health care law and was celebrated by the Democratic party for 'seeing it through in his life time.' Obviously, he is a statist and no lover of liberty or limited government. His father is well known for helping craft the social security program and set the ground work for national health insurance.

Three weeks ago, Dingell sent out a release to donors that he was in desperate need of money. According to the letter, his Republican challenger was wealthy and a worthy adversary. Well, that just sounded like typical boiler-plate hooey from someone in a safe congressional seat: he won in 2008 with over 70%. [It is the same sort of scare fund raising letters that Ron Paul sends to his supporters every year regarding primary challengers whom he then dispatches with 80%+ support.]

In fact, a poll was conducted shortly after the letter that showed Dingell with a comfortable 20 point lead on his unknown Republican challenger, Robert Steele, a cardiologist from Ann Arbor. End of story, right?

Nope. Today, the Detroit News reported on a poll conducted by what seems to be a legitimate polling agency that is slightly left-leaning showing Steele ahead 44-40%! If this is real or the race is even close then NO INCUMBENT DEMOCRAT IS SAFE. This could spell doom for Democrats all around the country.

I make no claims about the improvement towards smaller government and liberty were Steele to win. I have not met him but I do know that the Campaign for Liberty members in his district are very excited for his candidacy.

November 2nd is shaping up to be a very interesting day indeed.

Doom for Social Security

I received this analysis of the current Social Security from an email subscription through the Daily Reckoning website. I can't find the link on their site so I am just posting it in its entirety here. The telling points are that as of the end of this month, Social Security will go into deficit mode probably to never return to surplus again. This is 6 years before it was originally projected by the CBO and spells doom for future recipients, taxpayers, and probably current or soon-to-be recipients.

The End of Social Security as We Know It
By Ian Mathias
Baltimore, Maryland

On September 30, America will quietly begin a generational shift. This will be the final day of the government’s fiscal year 2010, and consequentially, a very notable day for Social Security. September 30 will be the last day – maybe for a long time – that Social Security could possibly be operating at a surplus.

Back in March, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) admitted that most Social Security funding projections were way off, and that sometime in 2010 the program would begin paying out more than it’s taking in. In August, the Social Security Board of Trustees said much of the same, that they too were drastically revising previous solvency projections. Just a year ago, both agencies forecast that the Social Security Trust Fund would stay out of the red until 2016. This year, they said 2010... As in, it’s probably already happened.

According to this year’s FICA/SECA tax receipts and benefit payouts, there’s reason to believe the SS fund dipped into deficit as early as February 2010. But since there’s no “official” government mandated date for when Social Security officially entered the red (we wonder if either agency actually knows) the end of the fiscal year will have to do, for now.

Though there will be some debate over when SS started losing money in 2010, there will be no such discussion in 2011, or the year after, or the year after that...or maybe ever again. Despite 2009 projections completely to the contrary, the CBO and Social Security Trustees now expect the fund to suffer deficits indefinitely. There may be two or three years of surplus if the US economy can avoid a double dip recession, but over the long term, in the words of the SS Board of Trustees, “program costs will permanently exceed revenues.”

(Quick aside: That is one ugly revision. There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind, but someone at the CBO had quite an awakening in 2010.)

In summary of the CBO’s findings, the credit crunch and subsequent “Great Correction” moved a future Social Security crisis into the present tense. In fact, the whole issue is now worse. Stock market crashes and unemployment plights like those we’ve suffered lately have long term, arguably irreversible effects on wages, income inequalities, retirement plans and tax revenues...all of which will pile on top of Social Security at a time when it’s already bearing a heavy load.

But as you might remember, we’ve been here before. A not-so-dissimilar bout of high unemployment and lousy economic growth in the ’70s brought the Social Security fund to a sudden crisis in the early ’80s. By 1982, the powers that be weren’t just fretting over the program entering deficit...they had every reason to believe the Social Security would be out of money in as little as a year.

The Regan Administration’s solution was a bi-partisan study group called The National Commission on Social Security Reform (NCSSR). To lead the commission, Washington hired a man who has since proven to be one of the most unsuccessful monetary and fiscal planners in American history: Alan Greenspan.

Long story short, the Greenspan Commission marked “the end of Social Security as we know it”... or at least as we knew it in 1983. That year the Commission released its findings and recommendations, most of which were gradually implemented over the next decade. Here are some of the basic elements of their reform:

• Social Security tax rates (including Medicare taxes) rose from 9.35% in 1983 to over 15% by 1990.
• The minimum age to file for full benefits was slowly raised from 65 to 67.
• The cost of living adjustment (COLA) was re-engineered to track growth in wages or inflation, whichever is lower. Previously, COLA just rose with inflation.
• The taxable wage base rose dramatically. In 1983, all individual income over $32,400 was not subject to Social Security taxation. Today that base level is $106,800.
• Greenspan’s plan offered Social Security coverage (and colluded participation) for most tax-exempt and federal employees that were previously excluded.

Essentially, Greenspan’s fix for Social Security was to take in more money and pay less of it out at a later date. And with the help of a booming American economy through most of the ’80s and ’90s, it worked... until it didn’t. As noted above, we’re just about back to square one.

(The real irony here is that there’s reason to believe there was nothing long-term about Greenspan’s solution in the first place. The Greenspan commission was formed by President Regan’s chief of staff Jim Baker, and it’s an open secret Baker’s key objective was only to make Social Security a non-issue for the 1984 election. As with most administrations, the real crisis was left for the next guy to deal with.)

The current generation of leadership is now “that guy.” Worse yet, this Social Security crisis is larger than the one we faced in 1982, which was a combination of a cyclical economic downturn and SS rules and mechanisms in need of reform. Today we face a structural crisis...they’re called baby boomers.

76 million Americans were born between 1946-1964, the so-called baby boomers. On January 1, 2011, the oldest member of this demographic – the largest America has ever known – will turn 65. At present they make up about a third of the entire US workforce. Taking their place will be Generation X, about 46 million people strong. Forgive us for the back-of-the-envelope math, but that sounds like 30 million fewer contributors to the Social Security fund and tens of millions of new beneficiaries. Hmmm...

When the whole idea of Social Security was first brought to the table, way back in post-Depression FDR days, there were 16 Social Security contributors for every 1 Social Security beneficiary. Today, that ratio is closer to 4:1. By 2030, when America will be bearing the full brunt of retired baby boomers, that ratio will be 2:1. To accommodate that ratio, either recipients will have to get less, or workers will have to pay more. The current method of funding the program is simply no longer applicable.

And there’s a whole other “problem” with current or soon-to-be Social Security beneficiaries: They’ll likely live much longer (and expensive) lives than their parents. In 1935 the average life expectancy was 65, making the minimum age to collect SS almost a cruelly ironic death sentence. Today, the average American will live to around 77... yet the minimum age to collect full benefits has only risen by 2 years. And if you believe tech-savvy people like my colleague Patrick Cox, we are on the verge of generational medical breakthroughs that could expand our life expectancies into the triple digits.

So what happens when the largest demographic America has ever known taps into a fund already in deficit? And what will we do if they...well...won’t die on time?

You can whine about “paying into Social Security every month for the last 40 years and I deserve every penny” till the cows come home... But this is simple, cold math. If you’ve been in the working world that long, you must understand by now the difference between what’s fair and what’s reality. The reality of the moment is this: You must...

• Prepare to pay more Social Security taxes
• Prepare to receive less Social Security benefits

As it stands today, there’s just not enough money to fund the Social Security program as we know it. With $2.5 trillion left in the SS warchest, there is no immediate threat to the status quo. But as the SS Board of Trustees forecast in August, “Over [a] 75-year period, the Trust Funds would require additional revenue equivalent to $5.4 trillion in present value dollars to pay all scheduled benefits.” That gap will be filled by borrowing from abroad, taxing at home or slashing the benefits of those yet to retire. Either way, it’s hard to picture a happy ending for Social Security. It’s in your best interest to build a substantial retirement fund of your own and – probably more importantly – one for your children.

Red Tide... I'm Baaa-aack!

 

Would You Hide A Muslim In Your Attic?

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/980/will-you-hide-a-muslim-in-your-attic

It is not the Muslims that scare me. It is the people who are trying to make me so paranoid of the Muslims that I will forsake my principles and turn against my fellow human beings because their ways are different than mine that scare me. It is those who believe that people should be treated differently simply because of their religion that scare me.

Didn't we already go through this? How often does this deja vu have to happen before we get it? It wasn't that long ago when a national socialist country decided it wanted to restrict and regulate people due to their religion. The German Nazis were quick to label Jews as evil. They were the reason for all of mankind's woes. They were the spawn of the devil. They were racially inferior and needed to be controlled. Oh, it started off in a seemingly harmless enough fashion, with registrations and the like so that the government could keep an eye on them and make sure they were on the up and up and doing all their business by the rules, but it quickly devolved into something much worse. It quickly became one of the darkest chapters in human history.

I wonder how many twitter followers I'll lose over this?

Meg Whitman's Candidacy Irritates Me

There is a Reagan commandment that declares “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican." Well, forgive me for I am about to sin. But I can't believe there's apparently no stopping the Republican vs conservative train wreck that Meg Whitman represents. As a former eBay dabbler, I watched her systematically destroy what was one of the best examples of a free market economy, and then walk away just as her attempt at a global empire started to crumble.  There is no doubt in my mind that her plans for California involve what is best for Meg, and certainly does not involve any semblance of small government, liberty lovin' conservatism.

In the beginning, Pierre created eBay - a simple platform to enable sellers to show their goodies to buyers. New stuff, used stuff, collectibles, baby clothes, unmentionables....anything and everything was for sale on eBay.  And people came to buy. They came in droves. They bought stuff, and the auction format meant that demand set the price. I remember feeling almost guilty because some of my items sold for far more than I personally valued them at.   Almost everything sold, too. Some sold lower than it should, which made the buyers happy. Some sold higher than it should, which made the sellers happy. A friend of mine scoffed, you "could sell dirt on eBay,"  and he was almost right. Almost everything that was listed, sold. 

But Meg came in and systemitically ruined it. Under her leadership, the company grew and became less efficient. And she didn't hesitate to engage in selectively protectionist activities. She kowtowed to the big sellers who whispered they should get special favors because they generated the most income.  She seriously restricted the types of items that could be sold - some for questionable legal reasons, but some for a revolting concept of political correctness. She started capping how sellers could charge for shipping and handling. And she forced all sellers to accept her expensive payment "option" while banning cash, checks and money orders.

And the buyers were also complicit in the transition of eBay. They refused to accept that shopping on eBay required an iota of common sense. They bought into obvious frauds, then refused to accept responsibility for bad decisions. "Why, I didn't notice that the .10 cell phone had a shipping charge of $700. That is eBay's fault!" "I didn't care that this seller had tons of negative feedback from unhappy buyers. It is eBay's fault that I am also now unhappy!" Apparently there is a reason we're a nation of whiners - it works.

Today, eBay's marketplace is a pathetic shadow of what it once was.  The listings in most categories are from big, faceless sellers selling either overpriced retail closeouts or dirt cheap imports direct from Hong Kong. The search results are skewed to provide minimum exposure to the small sellers, and even browsing is an effort in futility because the hundreds of identical cheap imports flood  most of the categories, making the small treasures that buyers loved almost impossible to find. Sell through rates are abysmal at all levels, and their only substantial gains are in their money-changing services.

This woman has no business being in the Republican Party, much less winning elections, and seeing her succeed simply does not bode well for the future of the party. Like another old saying goes, that light at the end of the tunnel is a train.

 

 

Lindsey Graham Wants To Invade Africa Next

Another quick post: I caught this live online this morning. Thanks to RSLudlum at RonPaulForums for posting the mp3, which is hosted at WTMA

Graham is practically salivating over the thought of invading Africa next.

As long as these people are controlling our party, nothing can change. They rarely admit that our military spending is even part of the deficit, and their base won't even support cutting back on social spending. No way are they going to be adult enough to take an honest look at the cost of our military spending.

Remember when GW Bush won on a platform that included privatizing social security? Look what happened - the neocons in Congress sided with Pelosi and shut him down on that, and now Republican candidates frantically deny they would ever support such a "drastic" measure. Apparently everything in Washington is an untouchable third rail now.

But we're somehow supposed to now believe they're going to repeal Obamacare? Hogwash, I say. They have no interest in giving up one iota of control. After all, this is pretty much the plan the Mitt Romney wanted to pass. Does anybody really want to bet against a GOP plan to "fix" it by implementing the public option? Heck, maybe they can push through single-payer under the guise of playing tough with the big bad insurance companies.

These people must be stopped. Jim DeMint said recently (in a WSJ article that is worth a read) that "This may be our last chance with voters, because if we're given the majority . . . and don't reform Washington, everybody is going to say, 'What's wrong with these guys? We need a third party."

How Will The Dems Hang On?

There’s been plenty of talk ‘round here about the 1/4 of Americans, labeled as republicans, kicking booty and “taking back” both houses of the corrupting, corrosive, bicameral beast. What stands in their way is the other one-fourth of group-thinking Americans who believe that their answers to life’s problems should allow for their continuing presence as a slight majority: the democrats.

The blues have their work cut out for them in some respects but they still have some trump cards. First and foremost, the main stream media can be relied upon to talk things up as November draws nigh. For starters, they will attack any threatening outsiders religiously and relentlessly. Rand Paul will be target numero uno.  He will be the representation of all the nasty things those republicans will do once in office. This will force other republican candidates to drop some of their libertarian rhetoric for a more socialist-conservative message. Not much of a stretch for most of them.

Also, whatever the blue team thinks will be effective will be ceaselessly drummed into the national psyche. What theme will work? Bad times, possibly. After all, who is known for representing the little guy when the chips are down? If Mr. and Mrs. America think that hard times are to become harder still, the blue team may have the advantage there.

With regards to the war, there is now a schedule in place, politically designed for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan to commence in July of 2011. This helps the democrats as they go home to pitch their agenda to their patient and believing faction of peaceniks. It also happens far enough from the 2012 election to give the president some wiggle room.

Finally, this brings me to the perpetual plume of oil spewing forth from the Gulf. Which side of the two-party system is synonymous with big oil? With memories of the awful republican reign still engrained, will the citizenry risk their very environment to the red team when the blue team seems so much more enlightened in this regard? Look for BP to be bloodied up to the hilt over the next four months.

All in all, the democrats might suffer less than expected, and the biggest reason for this may be the lack of trustworthiness on behalf of republicans. We’ve been down this road before and the red team failed to deliver. While some conservative pundits and pols have professed to seeing the small-government light, they remain a minority in many senses. What is important is how those in power act when they have it, not how much they promise when they want it.