The Smoke Break

You want some brie with that whine?

Coddling Criminals Continues

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The Wall Street Journal notes today that enforcement of immigration laws is now starting to succumb to the pitiful, “Why me?” cries of the liberal agenda on behalf of their criminal voter-wannabes, in preparation for the big, sucking sound of President Obama’s next reform push.

The 287g program was designed by the Bush administration to train local police to help federal immigration authorities locate criminal aliens.  But apparently its success and the support of those participating in it are its downfall.

“I think the program is working great,” said Wake County, N.C., Sheriff Donnie Harrison. “If the highway patrol brings someone to our jail, and they say they are foreign born, then they are flagged for 287g. They have committed a violation of some sort to be brought to our jail…from broken tail lights to murder and rape.”

Raleigh, N.C., resident Maria Hernandez was booked into a Wake County jail after failing to show up for her 6-year-old son’s truancy hearing, according to her account and that of her attorney, Marty Rosenbluth.

Ms. Hernandez, a cleaning lady who came to the U.S. illegally nine years ago, is now in deportation court. “I don’t understand why they come after people like me,” she said.

I’ll tell you why, Ms. Hernandez.  Usted es un criminal.  You are a criminal.  You broke the law when you entered this country deliberately and illegally and the consequence of your law-breaking is deportation.

Adios.

Cap & Trade Vote Or Michael Jackson?

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Is no one immune from the ratings game?

Michael Jackson died today and while it’s certainly a momentous event in the history of pop music, is it really so newsworthy that every media outlet is now devoting hours and hours of air time to blather on about it?  Even FOX News is preempting Bill O’Reilly’s show tonight to air a hastily-patched-together special.

I find this ironic and I find it sad.  And, somehow, it’s almost like a perfect storm.  Ed McMahon died Tuesday.  This morning Farah Fawcett lost her long fight with cancer.  And by the East Coast prime time news hour Michael Jackson is unexpectedly pronounced dead in Los Angeles.

And no one can talk about anything else.

Conservatives, in particular, want to cling to their Bibles and too-often beat others over the head with their beloved book yet it is the Bible that says to “let the dead bury their dead”.  I won’t deny that the death of a pop icon is sad but am I the only one remembering that Michael Jackson was also of questionable morals?  Frankly, this is a time when there are truly important matters at hand that must be properly addressed.  The citizens of Iran are dying in their streets for fairness and freedoms, North Korea is moving nuclear weapons material across the seas and, most frightening of all, the Waxman-Markley energy bill – cap & tax – the biggest destruction of American life we have yet to see in our lifetimes – is going up in the House tomorrow for a floor vote.

I imagine that Obama and his Congressional cohorts are doing happy hula dances at tonight’s White House luau to celebrate their good fortune at this distraction.  A shindig paid for by us, by the way, but to which we, the American taxpayer, are not, of course, invited.

More Haste Makes More Waste

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CNN is a lame excuse for a “news” outlet, but you can go here and see for yourself just how the Democrats in Congress are spending our money to do everything possible to force through their progressive agenda.

Instead of allowing time to actually read Representative Henry Waxman’s travesty of a tax …errrr…. cap & trade …errrr… “climate change” bill, when Texas Representative Joe Barton wanted the committee clerk to read the 900+ page bill out loud and thereby rightfully risk postponing getting the b.s. …errrr… bill out of committee before the Memorial Day recess, good old Henry decided to hire a “speed reader” instead.

Of course the “sample reading” provided was unintelligible.  Which meant going through with Henry’s idea would be as bad as not reading the bill at all before voting it out of committee.

Which leads me to ask:  just how stupid are the people who sent Henry Waxman to Washington?  Are they relatives of the people who sent Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barney Frank?  If so, no wonder infertility has become such a big “problem”; Nature abhors inbreeding.

Big-Mouth Biden

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Vice-President Joe Biden’s verbal gaffes may be considered par for the course, may often be dismissed as “amusing”, but the man now proves himself to be not only abhorrently ignorant but dangerous.

At the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, Biden decided it was quite all right to use classified security information to amuse his tablemates.   Eleanor Clift, Newsweek’s contributing Washington editor, aka left-wing media gossipmonger, was quick to pass on that Biden decided to talk about the “secret bunker” under the old U.S. Naval Observatory.  The old U.S. Naval Observatory is, of course, the home of the Vice-President.

Ms. Clift is quoted as saying Biden told them, “… a young naval officer giving him a tour of the residence showed him the hideaway, which is behind a massive steel door secured by an elaborate lock with a narrow connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment.  The officer explained that when Cheney was in lock down, this was where his most trusted aides were stationed, an image that Biden conveyed in a way that suggested we shouldn’t be surprised that the policies that emerged were off the wall.”

This refers, of course, to the days after 9/11.

Since the Vice-President is second in line to the Presidency, it is quite proper that their well-being is secured in times of a national emergency, such as during the terrorist attacks of 9/11.  Does Biden not understand that it’s HIS sorry ass that bunker is intended to protect, should the President’s strange and untenable foreign and domestic policies open up the United States to such a horrible thing again? 

If he finds relaying classified security information the only worthwhile means by which to criticize the policies of his predecessors, perhaps the combination should be changed on the bunker’s “elaborate lock”. 

The only problem is that the loss of both Obama and Biden would put Pelosi in charge, since the Speaker of the House is third in line to the Presidency.  And I’m not sure which thought sickens me more – that possible terrorists now have a confirmed target at which to aim, or Pelosi sitting in the Oval Office as President of the United States.

Texas, It’s A Whole Other Country

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It’s now official.  The State Department even says so!

 

State Department 100-Day Report

 

 

BUREAU OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
Washington, DC
April 29, 2009
OVERALL DEPARTMENT POLICY ACCOMPLISHMENTS, REGULATORY INITIATIVES, AND INTERAGENCY EFFORTS

In the first 100 Days of the Obama Administration, Secretary Clinton and the State Department have made significant progress in advancing America’s national security goals and promoting America’s values around the world.

Secretary Clinton is already the most traveled Secretary of State in a new Administration. The Secretary’s trips have included her inaugural trip to Asia, the Middle East and Europe, Mexico and across the border to Texas, the Hague in the Netherlands, Europe with President Obama, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago with President Obama, and to Iraq and Kuwait.

 

(Note that the above text is a copy & paste right off their website.  It’s a pretty big gaffe so I won’t be surprised if it disappears when the mainstream media finally takes note that those not wearing rose-colored glasses are laughing at their savior and therefore gets the attention of the administration.)

Digging Deep

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Someone sent me the link to the website where you can see President Obama’s spin on how the stimulus money is affecting life in each state.  It also has “heartwarming” stories about how all of the stimulus is positively impacting people’s lives.  One tidbit caught my attention:

“The immediate tax cuts showed up in my husband’s bi-weekly paycheck, an extra $35. That doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but that’s an extra $70 per month. With that, my husband and I can take a vacation to Pennsylvania for the weekend, something we haven’t been able to do in two years. “

Wow!  Somebody had better alert the media.  We never saw anything like this when the $1,000+/year tax breaks under President Bush were in effect.

Now THAT’S transparency.

A Small Business Owner Explains U.S. Economic Reality

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A friend forwarded this to me today in an email.  I don’t know who wrote it, but I think the author could be any one of the millions of small business owners in the United States today.  I do know if it were me, I’d be telling my employees the same thing.

This, not the dangerously idealistic, entitlement-lobbied cesspool of “Ivy-League elite” progressive thinking in Washington, is the reality of the the Obamanation.

 

To All My Valued Employees,
 
There have been some rumblings around the office about the future of this company, and more specifically, your job. As you know, the economy has changed for the worse and presents many challenges. However, the good news is this: The economy doesn’t pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job. however, is the changing political landscape in this country.
 
However, let me tell you some little tidbits of fact which might help you decide what is in your best interests.
 
First, while it is easy to spew rhetoric that casts employers against employees, you have to understand that for every business owner there is a back story. This back story is often neglected and overshadowed by what you see and hear. Sure, you see me park my Mercedes outside. You’ve seen my big home at last years Christmas party. I’m sure all these flashy icons of luxury conjure up some idealized thoughts about my life.
 
However, what you don’t see is the back story.
 
I started this company 28 years ago. At that time, I lived in a 300 square foot studio apartment for 3 years. My entire living apartment was converted into an office so I could put forth 100% effort into building a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you.
 
My diet consisted of Ramen Pride noodles because every dollar I spent went back into this company. I drove a rusty Toyota Corolla with a defective transmission. I didn’t have time to date. Often times, I stayed home on weekends, while my friends went out drinking and partying. In fact, I was married to my business – hard work, discipline, and sacrifice.
 
Meanwhile, my friends got jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made a modest $50K a year and spent every dime they earned. They drove flashy cars and lived in expensive homes and wore fancy designer clothes. Instead of hitting the Nordstrom’s for the latest hot fashion item, I was trolling through the discount store extracting any clothing item that didn’t look like it was birthed in the 70’s. My friends refinanced their mortgages and lived a life of luxury. I, however, did not. I put my time, my money, and my life into a business with a vision that eventually, some day, I too, will be able to afford these luxuries my friends supposedly had.
 
So, while you physically arrive at the office at 9am, mentally check in at about noon, and then leave at 5pm, I don’t. There is no “off” button for me. When you leave the office, you are done and you have a weekend all to yourself. I unfortunately do not have the freedom. I eat, and breathe this company every minute of the day. There is no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour. Every day this business is attached to my hip like a 1 year old special-needs child. You, of course, only see the fruits of that garden – the nice house, the Mercedes, the vacations … you never realize the back story and the sacrifices I’ve made.
 
Now, the economy is falling apart and I, the guy that made all the right decisions and saved his money, have to bail-out all the people who didn’t. The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed a decade of my life for.
 
Yes, business ownership has is benefits but the price I’ve paid is steep and not without wounds.
 
Unfortunately, the cost of running this business, and employing you, is starting to eclipse the threshold of marginal benefit and let me tell you why:
 
I am being taxed to death and the government thinks I don’t pay enough. I have state taxes. Federal taxes. Property taxes. Sales and use taxes. Payroll taxes. Workers compensation taxes. Unemployment taxes. Taxes on taxes. I have to hire a tax man to manage all these taxes and then guess what? I have to pay taxes for employing him. Government mandates and regulations and all the accounting that goes with it, now occupy most of my time. On Oct 15th, I wrote a check to the US Treasury for $288,000 for quarterly taxes. You know what my “stimulus” check was? Zero. Nada. Zilch.
 
The question I have is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over 2,200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single mother sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her next welfare check? Obviously, government feels the latter is the economic stimulus of this country.
 
The fact is, if I deducted (Read: Stole) 50% of your paycheck you’d quit and you wouldn’t work here. I mean, why should you? That’s nuts. Who wants to get rewarded only 50% of their hard work? Well, I agree, which is why your job is in jeopardy.
 
Here is what many of you don’t understand … to stimulate the economy you need to stimulate what runs the economy. Had suddenly government mandated to me that I didn’t need to pay taxes, guess what?  Instead of depositing that $288,000 into the Washington black-hole, I would have spent it, hired more employees, and generated substantial economic growth. My employees would have enjoyed the wealth of that tax cut in the form of promotions and better salaries. But you can forget it now.
 
When you have a comatose man on the verge of death, you don’t defibrillate and shock his thumb thinking that will bring him back to life, do you?  Or, do you defibrillate his heart? Business is at the heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate it, not kill it. Suddenly, the power brokers in Washington believe the poor of America are the essential drivers of the American economic engine. Nothing could be further from the truth and this is the type of CHANGE you can keep.
 
So where am I going with all this?
 
It’s quite simple.
 
If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, my reaction will be swift and simple. I fire you. I fire your co-workers. You can then plead with the government to pay for your mortgage, your SUV, and your child’s future. Frankly, it isn’t my problem any more.
 
Then, I will close this company down, move to another country, and retire. You see, I’m done. I’m done with a country that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, will be my citizenship.
 
So, if you lose your job, it won’t be at the hands of the economy; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country, steamrolled the constitution, and will have changed its landscape forever. If that happens, you can find me sitting on a beach, retired, and with no employees to worry about ….
 
Signed,
Your boss

Placing Blame Where Blame Is Due

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It has now been 10 years since the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado.  Since then, there have been more than two dozen such shootings in schools around the United States and the inevitable fallout discussions about a lack of God in people’s lives.  There have been many who are quick to blame the inherent separation of church and state embedded in the Constitution for things done by those who don’t play with a full deck but the truth is that living is, itself, more an act of faith than anything else and whether even avowed athiests realize it, hoping is the same as praying, worrying is a form of negative prayer, and we all do it.  A lot.

All of this, then, reminded me of this piece.

 

“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
that word is love.”
(Sophocles)

Dear God,

Why do you let children die in their schools?

Signed,
a Concerned Student

——

Dear Concerned Student,

There are some who will say it is because I am not allowed in your schools any more. But the truth is that this is the hard-lesson result of the diseases of apathy, greed, and lack of personal responsibility that pervade your society.

I surely love you and I always will, but I gave your parents the job of caring for you properly and teaching you right from wrong and the coping skills needed to get along with others and to succeed in life. And I am afraid that most of them are just not doing their job. They are handing you over to underpaid and overworked teachers who love you, too, but are not allowed to even speak out when you treat them with the same disrespect you show your parents. Your parents allow you to spend far too many hours in front of the television, whose programmers don’t love you; they only love the companies who buy their advertising time so as to encourage your parents to neglect you further in the quest to have even more…”stuff”.

Hardly anyone exercises their right to vote so your elected officials just follow the whims of their supporting lobbies, and I can assure you that those special interest groups don’t love you at all.

Now understand, my dear child, I am always, now and forever, everywhere and as long as schools have tests, there will be prayer in schools. But you would do well to take the time to sit down with your parents and ask them why some parents fail to love their children enough to give them what they really need – love, respect, and discipline – instead of the inadequate substitute of material things.

Blessings,
God

P.S. One more word about my gift to you of Free Will. There are some souls who, no matter how hard their parents try, turn away from the light, turn away from goodness, and choose to do bad things. Their parents weep, as do I, but we do not stop loving them.

 

Copyright 2007 PJ. Garner, used with permission.

You Might Be A “Right-Wing Extremist” If….

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This is a truth:  they walk amongst us.  There are nut jobs wandering all over this world.  They hang out in the fringes of every political party; in fact, they hang out in the fringes of any organization.  (Ok, unless you send them to Congress, then they hang out in front of the cameras.)

This is another truth:  we surround them.  The actual number of dangerous nut jobs, though 15 minutes of fame is far more than they deserve, remains small.

With the administration’s steady efforts steering America into fascism, those who did not vote for President Obama and an increasing number of those who did vote for him, are now becoming genuinely concerned.  Promises made are being kept and those who remember that it is the right of every American citizen to speak up about the government’s ignoring of basic rights and freedoms are starting to do just that.

Conveniently then, the Department of Homeland Security has released another report about homeland terrorists.  Only this time, they are examining what they call “right-wing extremists”.  You know, those wack jobs like the KKK, paramilitary groups, and other uber-paranoid lone wolves like the late Timothy McVeigh.

The problem is that they are painting the picture with a brush several sizes too large for the job at hand.  The report is strikingly lacking in details and that does no one any good. 

While the liberals and left-wing nuts are using the mainstream media to castigate those who want less government spending and, indeed, less government in general, chafing at those who want to see the Constitution and Bill of Rights maintained, this report conveniently gives the right-wing nuts an opportunity to point at the left and claim it’s yet another of the left’s attempts to kill free speech and the right to peacefully assemble.

But is it?  Maybe it’s due to my professional background and willingness to dig beyond the surface of most things, but I don’t see the same cause for alarm.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t have serious concerns.

First concern is that the Department can’t seem to pull up any reports about “left-wing extremists”, though, of course, they are quick to claim such investigations are bipartisan and that they do have such reports…somewhere.

Second, the Department just can’t seem to tell anyone exactly when this particular investigation was started, though the report references the election campaign.

Third, the report quotes an FBI report when talking about concerns over extremist groups targeting returning veterans for recruitment.  However, the actual number of such recruitments provided by the FBI is all of 203 over the course of 6 1/2 years (that is about, oh…about .8%; yes, “point eight percent”).

Fourth, and what I consider the most important, is the timing of the release of this report.  While it is dated April 7, 2009 and allegedly sent to law enforcement officials around the country at that time, it only hit the media the day before thousands of Tea Party protests are scheduled to be held around the country.  The day before peaceful assemblies of average Americans who are no longer buying the story that spending more money that we don’t have is the way to get the country out of its enormous, crippling debt and want their “unrepresenting representatives” to know that the nonsense must stop now.

In the same vein as releasing old news about foreign spies looking around the power grid at the same time legislation is introduced to create another huge and far-reaching-into-the-lives-of-private-citizens government program for “cyber security”, this seems to me to be yet another deliberately-orchestrated “fear factor” attempt by the administration to influence public thinking.  The last thing the administration wants is for the majority of Americans to disagree with the dangerous policies being set in motion both home and abroad.  They don’t want anyone questioning their decisions to effectively create a fascist regime out of the Republic of the United States of America.  And what better way to get the average citizen to cower quietly at home than to release a report that plainly speaks about “right wing extremists” being concerned about the economy, about illegal immigration, and about gun control?  That plainly speaks about “right wing extremists” wanting the government to protect and defend the Constitution and the sovereignty of the United States?

Would YOU want to be lumped in with the real right-wingnut wackos because you are concerned about the economy, about illegal immigration, about gun control or the loss of our basic rights and freedoms?  Of course not.  And when you read the report carefully, I don’t believe that is the intent.  It outlines valid concerns that the currently bad, getting-worse-every-day situation in this country could possibly cause some who aren’t wrapped too tight to burst and decide that the real right-wing extremist wack jobs are correct and join up with them.

A valid concern.  But clever in its timing.  Oh, so very clever. 

I say don’t bother with the liberal left’s blatherings about this, and take what the right has to say about it with a grain of salt.  It remains our right to peacefully assemble and to make our voices heard by our government.  But if you don’t like being handed even a hint of a threat, then by all means I would encourage you to do whatever you need to do to attend a Tea Party tomorrow.  Go with head held high and focus on the issues, all of which cross the lines of political party affiliation.  (Like that President Obama just committed the United States to providing an additional $140 billion to the International Monetary Fund without any input from Congress, who has refused doubling the U.S.’s contribution for the last 12 years due to the costs to the American taxpayer and the risk of the loans made from the fund).

It is your right, and I dare say it is your duty, to be concerned and to voice that concern.  But that, my fellow Americans, makes you a patriot.  Not an extremist.

Greed As The Roots of Fear

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An article caught my eye last night.  It talked about the fears creeping into the upper ranks and the board rooms of big companies.   Apparently Americans’ dissatisfaction with the enormous greed of some of these people has them wondering if someone will sooner than later take out their frustration on them in the same manner workers in Europe are kidnapping executives in ransom for labor demands.  (A practice noted in the article as being considered quite acceptable by most folks in France, thanks to the entitlement mentality of labor unions that pervades the EU.)

Can’t say as I blame them.  You lay in your bed, it gets wrinkled, kiddo.  When you pay individuals multi-million dollar salaries to be nothing more than the spewer of weasel words to “analysts”, when you cut workers or their pay but still pay bonuses to your good old boys and girls at the top, you are behaving unethically.  And somewhere deep inside your twisted, selfish little minds, you know this.  I don’t condone violence, but you know that if something doesn’t change, it’s just a matter of time before someone else whose little balls aren’t in all the little holes decides to take you out with them.

The article quoted Kelly Klatt, CEO of Center for Security Solutions, an Orlando, Fla.-based consulting firm.  “They are doing ‘what if’ planning. ‘What if it gets worse? What do we need to do to protect our management?’”

The answer is so simple even a 5th grader could answer it.  Change your ways.  One small move would change the climate and perceptions of big business forever:  the executives of any company that has to lay off employees or cuts salaries in order to stay viable should automatically forfeit any and all bonuses for the year.  I know of some companies where smart, honest, and fair-minded owners have chosen to tie everyone’s compensation to the performance of the company and everyone, from worker to owner, is quite happy.  Their productivity is solid and loyalty is high.  Because both owners and workers know their relationship is a symbiotic one – if one side thrives, they all thrive.

Just think of all the money that companies would save.  In light of the mainstream media’s coverage of the AIG bonus outrage, I’m surprised shareholders from sea to shining sea haven’t already demanded this.  Particularly when this fear of retribution swelling in the bosoms of CEOs and other executives is now costing the shareholders real money in the form of paying for physical security.  But I suppose the boards and executives are counting on shareholder ignorance, the same way Congress counts on the ignorance of its constituents.