Quote of the Day–how screwed up are we edition
Actually we have a pair of quotes of the day. First from Roger Pilon who is the VP for legal affairs at Cato”
Our tax system sucks the substance and spirit of entrepreneurs and workers alike, filters that substance through Washington, then sends it back through countless federal programs that instruct us in minute detail about how to use the government’s beneficence. Manufacturing, housing, education, health care, transportation, energy, recreation — is there anything today over which the federal government does not have control? A federal judge held recently that Congress can regulate the "mental act" of deciding not to buy health insurance.
Steel on target. Key word? “Control”.
Our next quote in this edition comes from Mark Steyn about our Sneerer in Chief who addressed the concerns of an American had about gas prices by telling him maybe he ought to get rid of his gas hog:
America, 2011: A man gets driven in a motorcade to sneer at a man who has to drive himself to work. A guy who has never generated a dime of wealth, never had to make payroll, never worked at any job other than his own tireless self-promotion literally cannot comprehend that out there beyond the far fringes of the motorcade outriders are people who drive a long distance to jobs whose economic viability is greatly diminished when getting there costs twice as much as the buck-eighty-per-gallon it cost back at the dawn of the Hopeychangey Era.
Bingo. Definitely campaign advertising fodder. A “let them eat cake” moment. The man defines “don’t care” and “out of touch”. One assumes he considers statements like that to be "leadership".
~McQ
Nuff said.
I’ve never subscribed to the Radical Right conspiracies like the Bilderbergers and such, but you definitely get a feeling that there is this “great undertow” that pushes the ships of state around the world.
For me, it’s the whole AGW “thing.” By all rights, the whole theory of AGW should have been dead 2 years ago, but it keeps returning with all the joy of an unwanted season. Why ? Because it had become the “gravy train” for so many. The UN finally thought they had a permanent source of funds that would allow them to no longer beg to member states (like the US with those pesky conservatives). The progressives saw it a the long awaited “carbon tax” that would fund the sailing of a thousand progressive ships, including the ill defined “green economy.” Corporate America and Europe saw it as a new source of “corporate welfare” as they would cash in on the “green economy.” In general, it was a “win-win” for everybody except those who would have to pay.
Enter the “useful idiot” named Barack Obama. The guy runs the government like the movie “Dave” but instead we get the “evil Dave.” Still the idiot, but still the POTUS but with a megalomania complex, instead of the ever caring character in the movie.
Bottomline, these folks feed on America being “screwed up.” It meets their ends. Besides, they know they can blame “Bush” no matter what happens, and with each revelation, they can strengthen their case to do more damage. It’s a long way to the bottom, and they expect to be there, to cash in, all the way down.
(LA Times) — He’s considered one of world’s most dangerous terrorism suspects, and the U.S. offered a $1-million reward for his capture in 2005. Intelligence experts say he’s a master bomb maker and extremist leader who possesses a wealth of information about Al Qaeda-linked groups in Southeast Asia.
Yet the U.S. has made no move to interrogate or seek custody of Indonesian militant Umar Patek since he was apprehended this year by officials in Pakistan with the help of a CIA tip, U.S. and Pakistani officials say.
The little-known case highlights a sharp difference between President Obama’s counter-terrorism policy and that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Under Obama, the CIA has killed more people than it has captured, mainly through drone missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas. At the same time, it has stopped trying to detain or interrogate suspects caught abroad, except those captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The CIA is out of the detention and interrogation business,” said a U.S. official who is familiar with intelligence operations but was not authorized to speak publicly.
Several factors are behind the change: