I'm sick of it already

The election, that is.  And largely, I am sick of the distortions of the attack ads. And then the complicity of the media.

There is a difference in the general theme of the attack ads: Democrats attempt to assassinate an opponent's character and Independents and Republicans tend to focus on voting record.  Sure, because Dems have the luxury of having been in office, they have to attack character instead of record, but the level to which they stoop is just astounding. Is that a measure of their desperation, or is it a reflection of the vindictive and petty nature of their politicians. Don't go off and excuse the various PACs and Committees for the ads, these are wholly vetted by the DNC and the candidates themselves.

Ind/GOP politicians can focus on the reality of someone's voting record: Bob Golnik is running against Niki Tsongas with the simple tag line that "Niki Tsongas voted with Nancy Pelosi 98% of the time." Message: she does not represent your interests, she votes the official party line because she is a hack. Quite right. She was elected because she is the widow of Paul Tsongas, one-time Presidential wannabe and left of left Liberal in the classic Massachusetts paradigm.

Is that an attack ad? Dems would say "yes." I'd say it is a statement of fact -- a fact that has led to the imposition of some of the stupidest legislation ever to come out of Washington. A vote for Tsongas is also a vote for socialism.

Speaking of stupid, I keep hearing Liberals on the radio talking about how Obama cut taxes for the middle class. Another great piece of Liberal fiction.  The very nominal give aways are "cuts" only in the most literal sense of the word. They are neither permanent nor honest. The fact remains that Obama has sought to relieve the majority of Americans of any direct federal taxation whatsoever -- in order to lull people into thinking that he is cutting taxes. REALITY says otherwise: the TARP bailout, various stimulus binges and Obamacare are in fact the greatest taxation increases ever foisted on a nation. You see, they have to be paid for in the long run.

When your medical insurance rates go up -- and they will, along with cuts in service -- you are being taxed. As a result of this legislation you are experiencing the redistribution of money, goods and services in no less a manner than direct taxation. Already, we are seeing rates climbing as insurance companies consolidate and seek to cover the gap between revenues and obligations.  When illegal immigrants acquire full medical privileges (or any other benefits), you are being taxed for that action.

What is a tax? It is "a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on worker's income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services and transactions."

Another example? Obama's minions are imposing "cap and trade" through regulation ... if the EPA, once led by arch-psycho-liberal Carol Browning (who is now "Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy" and therefore in a position to continue to direct the EPA) mandates that certain coal-fired electricity plants are non-compliant, then they will face the need to close or install scrubbers to become compliant.   That these plants meet or exceed the standards of the EU and other climate-sensitive area is irrelevant. Obama wants these closed to force our move to "greener energy." 

This Obama-led diktat will result in a decrease of coal-fueled energy by approximately 7% in the next four years, driving energy prices higher (you are being taxed again) and forcing over $150 billion in new plant construction or technology upgrades. Care to guess who is going to pay for these? It will be passed directly onto the consumer. In this way it is a regressive tax, as it will hit the poorest hardest -- unless he also enacts handouts for energy.

But this does not even rise to the level of honest "tax-and-spend." No, Mr. Obama is a tax cutter. And the failure to vote on the extensive of the Bush tax-cuts until after the election is meant to confuse the voters: the Dems didn't by inaction let taxes rise, did they? I mean they haven't voted on it yet? Make no mistake about it, letting taxes rise through failure to extend or make permanent the rates and levels pre-existing is the same thing as raising taxes. But the media is not likely to dwell on that piece of sophistry,

As Democrats have said for years -- with reference to Ted Kennedy and cohort of tax cheats in the Administration and House -- you have to look at the person's voting record. Do you agree with what they stand for when it counts? For my taste, we should vote out every single member of the House and Senate.

I think I know what's happening

Obama / Dems is/are going to lose control of the House and maybe the Senate. Or maybe not, but their hay days are over. So Obama or the Obamunists are planning for the future -- that may include the string pullers behind the curtains (Soros et al.).  But what might also be happening is something even more threatening...

You see Clarence Thomas is once again in the spotlight. His wife called and asked for an apology from Anita Hill.  Common Dem-wisdom is that Clarence Thomas is a porno reading lech, an idiot and a threat to all sane Americans.  And since there appeared to be some traction in the renewal of the Thomas farce in an election cycle, they have dug up another claimant to cast some more poop over the story.

This has two purposes: (1) take away attention from the Demo-defeat about to descend on Pelosicrats everywhere; and (2) possibly try to get Thomas to resign, allowing Obama to appoint another anti-Constitutionalist to the Court.  And that would be the big prize indeed. Get enough public steam together to oust Thomas and that could do more damage than any mid-term election defeat.

Watch this.

Back to politics

What is happening in France is really quite amazing -- and a lesson to us Americans what happens when socialism -- Obamunism runs out of control. The French are rioting about having the retirement age raised from 60 to 62. For us Americans, this is really a joke: most of us cannot even dream of retiring at 62 and nor would we really want to. Why go live in one of God's waiting rooms with others who have also given up? The full pay retirement age would go up from 65 to 67. In the meantime, since 1970, the average age expectancy went from just over 70 years for men to over 80. Essentially, that means funding another 10 years of retirement, part of which is going to be extremely medical-intensive. Expensive.

But, the French are different in that regard, they tend to be more active and pursue their hobbies and things like that, whereas Americans maybe play golf or fish. Cards? But the real point is that with modern medicine that means about 20 years of living off of pension money. And in the French case, that means a long time with full health care, mostly generous benefits, more or less full pay after you consider that working expenses are eliminated ... this is simply unsustainable. They do not produce enough in their working lives to justify this and France cannot afford it. With a dropping birthrate in France -- at least among those who actually work and produce goods and services, as opposed to the great unwashed and veiled in the city suburbs -- there is no way to support this system.

This brings me to the mystery of the Euro. It can't be good value. Germany cannot support the whole underfunded and overspending mess. France is up to its nose in debt, and it looks VERY good compared to the PIGS. But confidence there is much higher (why not... it takes that same sort of disassociation from reality to believe that they can afford their pension schemes), so the Euro sails on blithely. As an aside, with Merkel coming out and describing the failure of multi-culturalism, I would not be surprised to see Germany do something extraordinary like pulling out of the Euro unilaterally.

And now to the United States. Up to 100 Democrat congressional seats are now in play according to relatively neutral pollsters. And spending IS the issue. Almost everyone that will vote an incumbent / democrat out knows that the goal is to cut spending and that people are going to get "hurt." It is not that these people are "haters" or evil people, it is that (perhaps the small majority of) Americans know that you have to pay for what you get. Europeans have completely forgotten this -- except for the Germans.

There is no magical solution that will make everyone happy, that will provide for everyone equally. America is not the land where opportunity is thrown in your lap, it is the land where you can seek opportunity without relation to birth status, color or gender. More so that ANY other country on Earth, no matter what Obama says. Socialism does not pay for itself, it depends on there being another pocket to remove wealth from.  Once you have removed enough wealth that it is no longer self-sustaining, or promised enough to others to remove enough to prevent people from going out to make it in the first place (what's the point in killing yourself to get ahead?), you arrive at France and the PIGS. The USSR proved that it could not be done the hard way.

California is in the same boat as France and the PIGS. Nobody wants to have fat cut from their budget, they bought off the public sector unions for years -- it worked while people still flocked to California and growth kept the debt collector at bay .... But now when the red ink has become a tsunami and not merely a tide, people are unwilling to play along.  Retirees from these pubic union systems easily remove more from the system than they paid in, by any measure. So where is the balance going to come from? Am I meant to say that it is okay, take it from me because they had lower paying jobs all along, and that they served me? While I had all the risk, worked twice as long hours, no job security, far fewer holidays, no benefits ... no double dipping after 20 or 25 years, no overtime, no final three or three years with the most pay as the retirement average? Years with low income with no safety net, years with high income taxed to death? That is all a bargain I made? I don't think so. The great unwashed have always been able to vote unto themselves more that they have contributed. Now there's nothing left.