Take Your Endorsement and Shove It

From the Democrat candidate for Governor of Rhode Island, Frank Caprio, to President Obama:

“I never asked President Obama for his endorsement and what’s going on here is really Washington insider politics at its worst,” Caprio said. “He can take his endorsement and really shove it as far as I am concerned.”

...

Caprio today charged that the president is “coming into Rhode Island treating us like an ATM machine. I will wear it as a badge of honor and a badge of courage that he doesn’t want to endorse me as a Democrat.“

How the mighty have fallen.

Barack Obama for the Heisman

What's a man to do after winning a Nobel Prize? Why, turn his eyes to the future of course!

Help our President win the Heisman Trophy!

Nissan has a promotion through ESPN that will create a "people's vote" for the Heisman Trophy. You can write in Barack Obama and give him a vote.

Fire away!

Hat Tip: Freddoso

If You Don't Deserve It, Why Accept?

Today, President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize. The reaction around the world is mixed, at best. For many the question is simply, "What has he done to deserve it?"

I've waited until the President could address the issue in his own words to comment. Now that he has addressed the issue, I am furious.

Obama himself sought to put some distance between himself and the ward, saying, “I do not view it as a recognition of my own acomplishments, but a recognition of the role of American leadership” in the world.

“To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures” who won in the past, Obama said at the White House.

My question goes directly to the President's credibility after this statement, directly to his honor. It is simple. If you don't feel you deserve the award, why are you accepting it?

If you don't feel like you've accomplished anything that deserves reward, you should step aside from accepting the award. After the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Al Gore for tenuous reasoning, at best, many around the world began to view the award as having lost its credibility. This award has long stood as the highest honor a man or woman could receive for either a lifetime of hard effort toward promoting peace, or a monumental achievement in promoting world diplomacy.

Woodrow Wilson won the award for leading the establishment of the League of Nations, and shaping the Treaty of Versailles. Teddy Roosevelt won the award for negotiating the end to the Russo-Japanese War. The Dalai Lama won the award for a lifetime of promoting Tibetan freedom through peaceful resistance to the iron fist of an oppressive government. These are all phenomenal accomplishments that were capable of carrying the weight of one of the highest honors in the world.

If the man selected to win the award cannot reasonably conceive of any reason that he should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the only reasonable thing he can do to allow the award to hold its legitimacy is to graciously refuse to accept the award. There are surely other people who have devoted themselves to promoting peace around the world through major accomplishments. Two better qualified candidates listed by the Globe and Mail come to mind:

Denis Mukwege, Medical doctor

Seeing pregnant women arrive at the hospital on a donkey and dying during childbirth encouraged Mukwege to study gynaecology and obstetrics. Noticing that so many women had been sexually abused, he later founded the Panzi hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hundreds of thousands of female sexual violence victims have been helped so far.

Handicap International and Cluster Munition Coalition

These organizations are recognized for their consistently serious efforts to clean up cluster bombs, also known as land mines. Innocent civilians are regularly killed worldwide because the unseen bombs explode when stepped upon. Thirty-four nations are known to have air-dropped cluster bombs from the 1970s to the 1990s.

The President giving up an award he himself does not feel he deserves, for the sake of allowing it to be awarded to a person or group far more deserving would not only restore legitimacy to the Nobel Peace Prize, but would also shine a glowing light on the works of many other individual candidates and groups who are working every day to promote peace world wide. His rejection of the award would do more for these organizations in one fell swoop in terms of them receiving new volunteers or donations than they might ever expect otherwise.

Unfortunately, it appears he will accept anyway, as he spews more useless rhetoric.

“I will accept this award as a call to action, a call to all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st Century.”

Indecisive...Even In His Artwork

The critique of this artwork hanging on the walls of the White House is succinctly put by Nick Schultz at The American.

"Indecision and Obama. You don’t say."

Chicagobama

Abraham Miller pens an article today for American Thinker that begins to shed a much brighter light on the surge of Chicago machine politics to the national stage than has really been shone thus far. To be sure, I have blogged about some of Obama's tactics, particularly his dealings with and treatment of the media. Basically, when asked questions that require actual thought and real leadership-style answers, he all too conveniently relies on Mayor Daley's approach of berating the press.

The light that Miller shines in his article, while being brighter for being on American Thinker (as compared to my small efforts), is also more focused on the real machinations of the behemoth that is Chicago. A professor of politics specializing in ethnic politics, Miller has studied Chicago extensively, and is able to focus us in on what really matters. While many of us debate the high level business concerns, Miller brings us back to street level, explaining the down-and-dirty nature of this political machine:

Talk-radio host Sean Hannity can trumpet medical savings accounts on one day and talk about the forty percent of Americans who don't pay taxes the next, and he will be immune to the inconsistency because Hannity's listeners are taxpayers. But a medical savings account means nothing if you don't pay taxes.

If you don't pay taxes and don't have health insurance, you want a card in your wallet that says someone else is going to pay. You want a medical savings account and tort reform about as much as you want another Chicago winter in an unheated apartment.

If you grow up poor and minority, everyone else's gain is ill-gotten. You expect the people you elect to take from them and give to you. If they don't, then there is no point in electing them. You might as well stay home on Election Day.

Michele Malkin is upset that David Axelrod's firm is doing the public relations for Obama Care. Michele Malkin is a superb intellectual analyst of Chicago politics, but she has no visceral feel for it. When Mayor Richard J. Daley was confronted about the city's insurance business going to a sole-source brokerage run by his sons, he responded that there would be no point in being in politics if he couldn't throw a little business to his children. Why would Axelrod be in politics if he couldn't profit from it?

The emphasis added is my own. Here is the problem when taking the stance against healthcare. As we argue items like freedom of the marketplace, liberty of the individual, taxes and opening up competition across state lines, there remains the fact that we stray away from our visceral feel of Chicago politics. Indeed there is no greater example than Chicago for the concept of Organized Exploitation. As Miller points out, those people waiting for an insurance card are, to The Machine, simply statistics to be exploited.

If you want to understand Obama's health care policy, you need to start where Obama starts. You need to start with Chicago. You need to look at constituent interests.

Obama won in 2008 because, among other things, he mobilized the electoral periphery. He mobilized young voters and minority voters, people who traditionally had a lower probability of showing up on Election Day. Chicago politics is about mobilizing the vote. "Vote early and often" is the city's sardonic refrain.

Obama needs his newly socialized base. He needs them to keep coming to the polls. In the vein of Chicago politics, he needs to deliver benefits to them.

Unrewarded, the electoral periphery will revert back to apathy. Health care is a reward to this base of people who are on the economic as well as political periphery.

There is little doubt that our health care system in general requires reform. As Miller points out, along with many others, this does not require 1,000+ pages of legislation added to a government that is already nothing short of Leviathan. But, as Miller notes:

...building a new power base resulting from the mobilization of the political and economic periphery requires redefining the nation's health problems as the nation's health catastrophe.

Health reform is Chicago politics on a national level. Welcome to the city.

At least our skyline is gorgeous.

White Folk Are Ready to Riot

I suppose even posting this makes me an EXTREEEEEEEEEEME RACIST!!!!!

But it's pretty damn funny and I just can't help myself.

Cash for Clunkers: Obamacare Edition

Let the ad campaign begin!



































HT: Modern Conservative

Obama's Imperialism

Even as Obama has increased America's physical imperialism in the middle east, with nary a peep from those who so demonized Bush for it, he is extending American Imperialism into even the most peaceful of countries.



HT: International Liberty

Misplacing My Rage

Today Bruce Bartlett at the Daily Beast pens a column about how all of us out here that are upset about the immense government expansion taking place before our eyes are blaming the wrong person, by taking it out on President Obama. Who are we to blame? Well, President Bush, of course! Now, let me say that from a purely economic standpoint, yes, Bruce Bartlett is correct, and he does a great job of explaining himself.

Conservatives delude themselves that the Bush tax cuts worked and that the best medicine for America’s economic woes is more tax cuts; at a minimum, any tax increase would be economic poison. They forget that Ronald Reagan worked hard to pass one of the largest tax increases in American history in September 1982, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, even though the nation was still in a recession that didn’t end until November of that year. Indeed, one could easily argue that the enactment of that legislation was a critical prerequisite to recovery because it led to a decline in interest rates. The same could be said of Clinton’s 1993 tax increase, which many conservatives predicted would cause a recession but led to one of the biggest economic booms in history.

According to the CBO, federal taxes will amount to just 15.5 percent of GDP this year. That’s 2.2 percent of GDP less than last year, 3.3 percent less than in 2007, and 1.8 percent less than the lowest percentage recorded during the Reagan years. If conservatives really believe their own rhetoric, they should be congratulating Obama for being one of the greatest tax cutters in history.

Conservatives will respond that some tax cuts are good while others are not. Determining which is which is based on something called supply-side economics. Because I was among those who developed it, I think I can speak authoritatively on the subject. According to the supply-side view, temporary tax cuts and tax credits are economically valueless. Only permanent cuts in marginal tax rates will significantly raise growth.

On this basis, we see that Bush’s tax cuts were pretty much the opposite of what supply-side economics would recommend. The vast bulk of his tax cuts involved tax rebates—which failed in 2001 and again in 2008, because the vast bulk of the money was saved—or tax credits that had no incentive effects. While marginal rates were cut slightly—the top rate fell from 39.6 percent to 35 percent—it was phased in slowly and never made permanent. Neither were Bush’s cuts in capital gains and dividend taxes.

I could go on to discuss other Bush mistakes that had negative economic consequences, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which imposed a massive regulatory burden on corporations without doing anything to prevent corporate misconduct, and starting unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will burden the economy for decades to come in the form of veterans’ benefits.

It is very important for Conservatives, Libertarians and, yes, the GOP, to understand and accept this argument. It's the same argument I posted about earlier as to Peter Schiff's appearance on Fast Money the other day. Poor decisions were made, on top of poor monetary policy, and everything went to hell. We all need to recognize that this is what happened. Just as the Fed propping up the market right now cannot be sustained, neither could have the "good" effects of Bush's tax cuts then have been sustained, particularly as they were largely rebates, as Bartlett discusses.

Where Bartlett's article goes wrong, however, is in its actual point. Bartlett is trying to say that everything that is going wrong right now is the after-effects of the wrong-headed economic policy that the Federal Reserve implemented under President Bush. And he argues that since the President appoints the board of the Federal Reserve, it's on Bush. So we should be mad at Bush, not mad at Obama.

The problem with Bartlett's argument is that he has completely ignored every single step the Obama administration has taken since January. For instance, you cannot deride the Bush tax cuts for being non-stimulative since they were rebates, and then in the same breath try to tell me that Obama is simply trying to clean up the mess by doing the exact same thing in the "stimulus," which was laden with "cuts" that were cuts in rhetoric only, and which were ALL rebates, and not possibly stimulative in any way. You cannot argue that the actions of the Federal Reserve, and the Fed's ties to the presidency, are the problem, and completely ignore the fact that Obama wants to expand the role of the Federal Reserve, making it yet more dangerous.

In a display of Monday Morning Quarterbacking that Peter King himself would be envious of, Bartlett even goes on to blame Bush for never undertaking reform of healthcare.

But there is yet another dimension to Bush’s failures—the things he didn’t do. In this category I would put a health-care overhaul. Budget experts have known for years that Medicare was on an unsustainable financial path. It is impossible to pay all the benefits that have been promised because spending has been rising faster than GDP.

In 2003, the Bush administration repeatedly lied about the cost of the drug benefit to get it passed, and Bush himself heavily pressured reluctant conservatives to vote for the program.

Because reforming Medicare is an important part of getting health costs under control generally, Bush could have used the opportunity to develop a comprehensive health-reform plan. By not doing so, he left his party with nothing to offer as an alternative to the Obama plan. Instead, Republicans have opposed Obama's initiative while proposing nothing themselves.

So the economy sucks now because Bush never reformed Medicare? OK I'll bite on that. But don't tell me that I should be happy now that Obama is pushing a healthcare reform bill that, in case you haven't been paying attention, doesn't fix Medicare! In fact, largely undiscussed is the idea that what this current healthcare bill does do, is to take the private sector of healthcare insurance, which is functioning profitably, and roll it into a social security and medicare type of package. Those two packages, coincidentally, are rotting like dead fish on the side of the road at this point.

The economy stands as it will, at times alongside, at times astride, at other times even subject to the world of politics and government. What remains consistent however, is that the economy will behave in a manner largely dictated by our central bank's monetary policies. This is the case no matter which party is in office. But we must remember that two wrongs do not make a right. Bush did wrong, and Obama is continuing to do wrong, and to do worse. Because we should be mad at Bush for what he did or did not do in the past, does not mean we shouldn't be mad at what we're watching our government continue to do wrong.

President Bush is no longer in office. President Obama is. It is only practical that we voice our opinions to those who can do something about it. My rage, and the rage of all those like mine, is simply against the machine. When the engine breaks down, I care not who the conductor is. I care only that he is able to make the necessary repairs. And I'm sure as hell going to let him know about it when he's slicing off fan belts when the problem is the oil, even if the oil should have been changed by the last guy.

Art vs. Racism

Jokers Wild!

Intimidated by the Administration

Some sage words of wisdom about the tactic of "Rahming it Through":

When you rush these budgets that are a foot high and nobody has any idea what's in them and nobody has read them, it gets rushed through without any clear deliberations or debate then these kinds of things happen...I mean you remember there was no real debate about that. It was so quick that it was introduced that people felt very intimidated by the administration.

And here's the video of who said it:



Oops.

Obama's Metrics

There is a lot to be said for the likes of the Rasmussen and Zogby polls about the president and his policies. However, both the Left and the Right tend to ignore certain polls as being either too liberal-minded, or too conservative-minded in their samplings. That said, the big breakthrough for conservatives of late has been that that ever-so-pesky Zogby poll is starting to show disapproval for Obama as well. But what happens when we go even further? Many during the election viewed Facebook as a major influence politically, so much so that debate questions were taken live online from Facebook chat sessions. So what does the Facebook community have to say about the agenda our president has been pushing of late?

Are you in favor of a government run healthcare system?

Yes: 112,367 (22%)
No: 381,234 (74.5%)
Maybe: 18,016 (3.5%)

Should the U.S. adopt a Universal Health Care System?

Yes: 141,143 (69.7%)
No: 60,218 (29.7%)
I Really Don't Care: 1,178 (0.6%)

Would you support a nationwide handgun ban?

Yes: 38,242 (8.0%)
No: 434,705 (91.1%)
Not Sure: 4,379 (0.9%)

Do you approve or disapprove of Obama's job in office?

Strongly Approve: 35,583 (17.1%)
Approve: 20,882 (10.0%)
Neutral: 5,992 (2.9%)
Disapprove: 22,645 (10.9%)
Strongly Disapprove: 123,498 (59.2%)

Pretty interesting results, with some huge samplings at that, from a realm that most consider to be vastly liberal.

Guarding Obama's House: The REAL Costs

It has been 258 days since Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. Since that day, the City of Chicago has spent at least $2.2 million keeping his south side home secure.

Now I know what you're about to say. It's the home of the President of the United States. The government has an obligation to keep him and his family safe. And I agree. The problem is that he is the Commander in Chief of the Federal Government, and all $2.2 million of that security has been paid for directly by the City of Chicago.

We Chicagoans are reassured, however, according to Jacquelyn Heard, that "...the federal government will fully reimburse us for all costs associated with protecting President Obama in Chicago." One wonders quite simply then, from where within the federal ranks will the reimbursement come? The first option would seem to be the Secret Service. Sadly, that appears to be a dead end.

Darrin Blackford, U.S. Secret Service spokesman, said it is "not equipped or funded" to provide reimbursement. "We rely heavily on the assistance we receive from our law-enforcement partners."

In fact, we are told by the City's Office of Legal Affairs that "There is no reimbursement mechanism currently in place for this [post-inauguration] money." Indeed, when we look at the article as a whole, it appears that the only money the federal government intends to reimburse the City of Chicago for is that $1.5 million spent to secure the premises between the election and the inauguration.

That total works out to be $19,736.84 per day, by the way.

We are told relating to that whopping sum that

Police Department spokesman Roderick Drew said the department spent the money to pay officers overtime to secure only the Obama residence, but he could not go into detail about how many officers were assigned to the house.

Well thankfully I'm able to do some simple math, and I'll even be very fair. Assuming the officers assigned to the security detail were reasonably experienced, and had been with the force for at least 2.5 years, they were making a total of $63,616 per year, including duties and uniform allowances. Let's assume they actually cost the City 30% more than that in benefits, for a total of $82,700 per year. On a normal pay scale, that works out to a base-salary of $30.58 per hour, and a total base cost of $39.76 per hour. Assuming time-and-a-half for overtime hours that were indicated by Drew to be the driving costs, the base-salary becomes $45.88 per hour, yielding a total base cost of $55.05 after adding the benefits.

Let's assume the home was secured 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that officers were rotated in such a manner that one shift was regular time, followed by two shifts of overtime. Our equation to determine the number of officers involved then looks like this:

($39.76/HR)*(8HR)*(X) + ($55.05/HR)*(8HR)(16HR)*(X) = $19,736.84

and we find that X = 26.02 16.46

That's 26 16 officers. Every single hour of the day for 76 days. And if there was less overtime paid, it means even MORE officers of the Chicago Police Department were assigned to watch his home. Now obviously I've left out the daily cost of food, fuel, equipment, etc. But comparative to the daily cost of the officers, these costs are minimal, so we are still looking at well over 20 probably 12 or 14 officers every hour assigned to what is a relatively peaceful area of the city.

And what about since Barack Obama was inaugurated and moved into the White House? The City spent another $650,000 through the end of April, coincidentally the duration of the "First 100 Days." That's another $6500 per day. It makes sense that the cost would be far less money every day considering the house is empty now. But the City is unwilling to tell us what those dollars have been spent on. If we use our same equation, we are left with X = 8.56 5.42. That's eight five police officers dedicated to securing an empty house, every single hour of the day.

And here is our real cost. Where was the Secret Service between the election and the inauguration? Why did the City have to allocate more than 20 14 police officers every hour of every day to this cause, without even knowing for sure that it could ever possibly be reimbursed? And how does the City justify allocating eight five officers every hour of every day to guarding an empty building? With a police force that is dwindling in numbers every year, and that requires officers to fill in the gaps on off-duty hours for overtime to begin with, who is making the decision to allocate this many resources to what is essentially an empty box full of furniture?

Not that I should expect an answer as a subject in the Kingdom of Daley.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that my equation was incorrect. Given my stated assumptions, the $55.05 needed to be multiplied by 16 hours, not 8. Therefore X = 16.46 in the first term, and 5.42 in the second term.

Not quite as egregious, but egregious nonetheless.

Apologies for the initial mistake.

Crazy Birthers Not Letting Go

Drudge is giving it the Red Headline treatment. WorldNetDaily (ugh) is calling it a BOMBSHELL!

A U.S. Army Reserve major from Florida scheduled to report for deployment to Afghanistan within days has had his military orders revoked after arguing he should not be required to serve under a President who has not proven his eligibility for office.

For those of you not already in the know, Major Stefan Cook filed suit to block his deployment to Afghanistan on the grounds that President Obama is not a natural born US Citizen. And you thought the legs had come out from under this one. According to Cook:

"As an officer in the armed forces of the United States, it is [my] duty to gain clarification on any order we may believe illegal. With that said, if President Obama is found not to be a 'natural-born citizen,' he is not eligible to be commander-in-chief."

Even crazier, his lawyer, perhaps aptly named Orly Taitz (wow) is assuming now that the military has pulled back his deployment, it obviously means that Obama must not be a citizen.

"We won! We won before we even arrived," she said with excitement. "It means that the military has nothing to show for Obama. It means that the military has directly responded by saying Obama is illegitimate – and they cannot fight it. Therefore, they are revoking the order!"

You'll forgive me if I see this chain of events unfold and think that it represents a hypothetical mathematical equation wherein I'm given 1 + 1 + X + Y = Z, and I immediately exclaim that Z = 3,456,578.26. The intellectual leap here has no basis in reality. If one is thinking in terms of 1 + 1 = 2, then one simply assumes the military just wants this stupid jackass to go the hell away and stop being a publicity hound, particularly since he's an engineer anyway, and they can just fill his position with somebody else.

But for those of you thirsting for blood on this one, Doug Mataconis is your huckleberry, as he outlines that Cook looks to have been planning to pull this fast one all along.

So, let’s get the timeline down:

February 1, 2009:

Major Cook signs on as a “military Plaintiff” with Orly Taitz, a phenomenon I noted back in February

May 8, 2009:

Major Cook volunteers for deployment to Afghanistan

July 10, 2009:

Major Cook files a lawsuit asking to get out of his deployment because Obama is not a “natural born citizen”

Something smell fishy to you? Yea, me too.

We would all be much better served if people like Stefan Cook and his lunatic lawyer would find a way to articulate their opposition to Obama through discussion and real grass roots activism. You're an engineer, Major Cook. You've obviously got a rational brain in there somewhere. You're a lawyer, Ms. Taitz. You may not have a rational brain in there because of that, but you at least have one that has to be functioning highly on some level.

Help organize a Tea Party. Join a PAC. Start a blog. Make friends and influence people. Be the leaders of society that your highly functioning minds demand that you be.

But for the love of god and country, STOP WASTING OUR TIME!

Stimulus #2 - All Hands On Deck

According to Barack Obama today, we apparently have yet another "stimulus" bill to look forward to. This to come on top of the trillion dollars we've already passed, and further on top of a potential nationalized healthcare plan costing at least another trillion, according to the CBO. Perhaps I am an alarmist. After all, the President has assured us we don't need another stimulus...yet.

"Not yet because it is important to see how the economy evolves and how effective the first stimulus is. The stimulus package was the first thing we did and we did it a couple of weeks after inauguration," Obama said in response to a question.

At first glance a suitably pragmatic approach. Until he continues.

"At that point, nobody understood what the depth of the recession was going to look like. ... It's not surprising then that we missed the mark in terms of our estimates of where unemployment would go. It's pretty clear that unemployment will end up going over 10 percent if you look at the pattern."

Gone is the fear-mongering pretentiousness Obama displayed back in January and February when he and the Democrats in Congress force-fed us this heaping pile of dung. Now we find a man who simply didn't understand what the depth of the recession was going to look like. In fact, we find a man who is merely just like every other man. He couldn't possibly have known that the stimulus would be ineffective! Nobody could have!

In fact now it's pretty clear we're going to have simply thrown a trillion dollars away as unemployment continues to rise unabated even despite the stimulus spending.

But of course, somehow it would only be worse without it.

So I wonder what the real question is here? It seems to me not to be IF we will get a Stimulus #2, but WHEN. Obama has insulated himself on all sides on this issue. There are two options for the future:

1. The Pure Fantasy Option - Stimulus #1 works, the economy improves measurably because of its effects, and Obama's Keynesianism is proven right. Stimulus #2 is passed easily due to the roaring success of Stimulus #1.

2. The Horribly Real Option - Stimulus #1 fails or has no measurable effect on the state of the economy. Obama takes to the podium to peddle more fear, claiming over and over again that the only reason unemployment isn't even worse is because of all the jobs heroically "saved or created" by Stimulus #1, no matter how impossibly immeasurable the statistic, and that surely without Stimulus #2, unemployment will only spiral further out of control.

Gird your loins, America.

...and the Law Won!

Barry O'Bomber of the Barry Bomber Four joins us today to debut his new single, covering the classic "I Fought the Law," but with his own special twist, chronicling his rise to the presidency and actions since his inauguration. Enjoy folks!

Breakin rocks in the hot sun
I fought the law and I won
I needed money cause I had none
I fought the law and I won

I left my baby and it feels so bad
Guess my race is run
She's the best girl that I ever had
I fought the law and I won

Robbin people with a six-gun
I fought the law and I won
I lost my girl and I lost my fun
I fought the law and I won

I left my baby and it feels so bad
Guess my race is run
She's the best girl that I ever had
I fought the law and the law won

Barry O: Wait a minute. That's not how that last line was supposed to go was it? Did somebody change my teleprompter?

Obama-Prompter

Obama and his teleprompter.

The only problem I see with this is that there isn't one to the left as well...

Obama: Gross Abuse of Power

I just watched this Rachel Maddow piece on an Obama speech. I really wish I had gotten the chance to watch the speech he gave live, so I could have gotten angry then and threw my TV through a wall. I can't say what she does any better (or close to it) so here is the clip, please watch it.

I will give you a moment to scream and yell...

When my rage subsided, partially because I voted for a man that I knew was lying but never dreamed would lie this much, and partially because this is just appauling, I was left with fear. One should never have to fear the actions of a democracy towards its own people. Right now, I do though.

Anti-terrorism measures and laws have been able to be used towards the American people also. Photography censorship in train stations and air ports is what first jumped to my mind. This indefinite imprisonment seemed like it could be also. I get it, put a known terrorist behind bars until you figure out what the hell to do.

What about the rest of us though?

My brother has Anti-Social Personality Disorder. He also has (or hopefully had now) drug problems. He has been to prison multiple times, each time he was released and fit for social life. Well, obviously they were wrong. He is a repeat offender with a very long criminal record. He is statistically going to commit another crime and likely a more serious one then before given his pattern. Do I have to fear that he will be put back in prison without trial if someone thinks he could be a threat again?

I am scared, and I don't think there are covers deep enough to burrow under to hide from this one.

Can I please just take my vote away... please.

Has Obama Killed the UAW?

The United Auto Workers has made concessions on wages and benefits in order to receive controlling ownership in Chrysler. The proposed company that would reemerge would be owned as follows:

Company Creditors (Including the US Government) - 10%
Fiat - 35%
United Auto Workers - 55%

In agreeing to this situation, the UAW would be making a few concessions that seem to make sense. According to the Wall Street Journal

Among the cost-cutting measures that the UAW leaders have accepted are a suspension of cost-of-living-adjustments and new limits on overtime pay. Workers will only be paid for overtime after they have worked at least 40 hours in a week. Chrysler workers will also lose their Easter Monday holiday in 2010 and 2011, according to the union summary.

I think this gives us a pretty good insight into the overreaching that the union had been doing in terms of employee benefits. I'm fairly sure the actual definition of overtime is that point at which one exceeds 40 hours worked in a week. This makes me wonder just what the "overtime" structure had been all this time, not to mention just what other little goodies the UAW had leveraged out of the Big Three over the years, that has ultimately brought these once shining beacons of success to their knees.

The ownership in Chrysler has been referred to by many as Obama's payback to the UAW for the massive amount of support he received from them during the election. This would seem to fit with Obama's general stance on worker's rights and his overall anti-corporate attitude. On the surface this looks like a monstrous payback to the unions. But is it really?

Fearing a complete loss of their agreement altogether should Chrysler go to bankruptcy court, and a judge throw the agreement out, the UAW agreed to the aforementioned ownership structure. Ron Gettelfinger, and others before him, have lived out a mission to extract higher pay and greater benefits from these three companies each time a new labor agreement came around. The UAW under Gettelfinger has been particularly anti-corporate in its message, critical of companies for "the corporate global chase for the lowest wage which creates a race to the bottom that no workers, in any country, can win." This kind of fantasy statement may have been a great motivator for garnering support while things were sunshine and roses in the economy, but now this is no longer the case.

The UAW is now a potential owner in Chrysler, and has given up a great deal in its labor agreement with Chrysler to attain that role. As a matter of simple economics, this necessarily means that its other labor agreements with Ford and GM will be substantially weakened as well when renegotiation time rolls around with them. The ownership in Chrysler also necessarily removes one of the UAW's bargaining chips. No longer can the UAW use a good agreement from Chrysler to leverage one just a tad better out of Ford or GM. In the marketplace, any agreement the UAW now makes with Chrysler is essentially meaningless, since they will have shaken hands with themselves.

The general loss of leverage and subsequent loss of political and coercive power seems to me a major blow to the UAW. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. From the previously linked WSJ article:

"This is the eclipse of the UAW. It's going to be a shadow of what it once was, I'm afraid," predicted Gary Chaison, a professor of labor relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., who was interviewed prior to the disclosure of all details.

AND

"This will make it more difficult to do the things that the union is known for: organizing, political action, bargaining and community development," said John Russo of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown University

In short, the mission now needs to change for the UAW. Ironically, it is now the UAW's job to become an evil, greedy corporation, searching for an ever lower wage. In order to maintain its own existence, the UAW is now required to generate a company level profit. It must now make decisions as an owner responsible for both its employees, and the health and welfare of the company, but always putting the company first, for without the company, there can be no employees.

The question is now, after a long history of extorting the Big Three, playing one contract agreement off another off another to generate ever higher payouts for ever lessening production, will the UAW be able to do it? Will an organization that has always fought ownership, be able to act as a responsible owner? If they can, then Obama's arrangement of this situation will indeed have been a gift in payback. If the UAW continues to be the UAW, however, history will look back on this as Obama's deathblow to the UAW.

Of course, all of this is to say that Chrysler is able to emerge from its bankruptcy reorganization, rather than, as seems possible, filing for Chapter 7 and going under altogether.

Big Brother Fiddling While Rome Burns

Everybody knows the saying. The story goes that the Roman Emperor, Nero stood on his balcony playing an instrument and singing of the destruction of Troy as his city burned.

While this may or may not have actually happened, "fiddling while Rome burns" has become an apt phrase to turn about anyone who acts foolishly in times of stress or crisis.

That said, with our economy in shambles and the American people growing restless, I think it would be fairly easy to simply look at President Obama's week or so of actions and scheduled events that we're currently experiencing and come to a similar conclusion about him.

03-18-2009 - Obama makes highly televised NCAA tournament picks

03-19-2009 - Obama interviews on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno

03-22-2009 - Obama interviews on 60 Minutes

03-24-2009 - Obama schedules prime time press conference.

03-25-2009 - Obama scheduled to appear at the DNC fundraising event

The first event was fairly understandable and routine presidential camera muggery. Not much of a big deal about it other than the fact that our supposedly ballin' president didn't have a clue about any of his picks, as evidenced by the fact that he's even getting demolished by John McCain in that regard.

While that wasn't so bad, it was particularly irksome to know that the President of the United States, with the country in dire straits, would fly across the country to yuk it up on what used to be a comedy show. While I certainly understand that the president is probably fully equipped to work on the fly, anyone who does work on the go also understands that you are never so productive as when you are at your desk, focused singularly on the tasks at hand. There is no doubt in my mind that, while he may have been working during what had to be some eight to ten hours of flying back and forth across the country, our president was nevertheless distracted from his primary task of leading the United States.

This is similarly the case for his interview on 60 Minutes. There is no way that Barack Obama could have devoted the attention necessary to prepare for the questions asked of him and been focused on actually doing his job at the same time.

Tomorrow night we will be treated to yet another hour what I am sure will be another fake news conference, where Obama will only field questions from people that won't put him on the spot or throw him off his teleprompted answers.

The day after, the perpetual campaign continues, as he'll yet again shirk his presidential responsibilities to try to get people to give him more money for a presidential race that is still only a twinkle in the eye of the political spectrum.

Our president certainly seems much more concerned lately about being as visible as possible, about remaining in the limelight, than about actually being the president of this country. But perhaps that is the point, as he is becoming the physical manifestation of George Orwell's Big Brother right before our eyes.

In any event, be he Barack Obama, or be he Big Brother, Rome is burning, and I don't see anyone making an effort to take the fiddle from his hands.