The Scope of Democrat Gridlock Continues to Grow

The Democrat Party has controlled both the US House and Senate since the 2006 midterm elections, but 420 bills passed by the current House elected in 2008 continue to languish unactioned by the Senate, which the Democrats presently control with an effective majority of 59 seats (which includes two independents) vs. 41 seats held by Republicans.

In February the number of unactioned bills had stood at 290. During the summer it climbed to 372.

Isn't there a pill for impotence?

TheHill.com has the story here.

Daniel Gross: "To Spend Money We Don't Have is Vital"

Ah, no, but for some Americans there is no choice.

Daniel Gross for The New York Times here protests that he's witnessed a "frugality" kick twice in America and has lived to see us shake it off both times. He points to signs which he thinks show that Americans may be doing that once again because total debt is up, and boy is he happy about it.

What he won't say honestly, however, is that total debt continues its inexorable rise because while consumers have in fact cut back, government has stepped into the breach to make up for it. A good little Keynesian that Daniel Gross.

Unfortunately, it's the poorest Americans who are spending more, and it's because they must.

Sara Murray for The Wall Street Journal here points out that for the poorest quintile, spending rose 5.6% in 2009 from 2007 while experiencing at the same time a 5.5% drop in their after-tax income. Food spending alone for this group went up 15.4% in 2009 from 2007, because of rising prices. To make ends meet, they are using up what little savings they have left, and . . . tapping credit!

Meanwhile the middle quintile's spending in 2009 is down 3.5% from 2008, and 3.1% from 2007. Overall, Americans are spending 2.8% less in 2009 than in 2008, including the rich.

Many of these statistics are "firsts". And if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, another first will be inflicted on the poorest Americans by benevolent, compassionate liberalism: a 50% tax increase when the 10% bracket disappears and reverts to 15%.

In Everlasting Debt

The recent decline was almost completely the result of defaults written off by banks and credit card companies, not of consumers paying down their debts:

Kenneth Rogoff on Gold

Kenneth Rogoff for Project-Syndicate.org here weighs in on the increased interest in gold, adding the not often heard warning that rising interest rates could cause the price to fall as investors invest elsewhere seeking return in the form of cash flows which an American Gold Eagle in your safe simply cannot provide.

He also notes that the long-term inflation adjusted price lags current gold prices:

At $1,300, today’s price is probably more than double very long-term, inflation-adjusted, average gold prices.

Adjusting the price of gold for inflation from its price in 1913 to 2009 would put gold at $462 the ounce last year, so at $1,300 an ounce the price is 2.8 times that already, and climbing.

Are ya feeling lucky? Well are ya?

On Suffering Women's Suffrage

In a dull stream, which moving slow,
You hardly see the current flow;
When a small breeze obstructs the course,
It whirls about for want of force,
And in its narrow circle gathers
Nothing but chaff, and straws, and feathers:

The current of a female mind stops thus,
and turns with ev'ry wind;
Thus whirling round, together draws
Fools, fops, and rakes, for chaff and straws.

-- Jonathan Swift, 1713

Making Afghanistan Safe For Pedophilia

I don't know how I overlooked this story from the end of August, but the effeminate church I narrowly escaped this morning set me to surfing when I got home, and Voila! Our forces as presently constituted find the pedophilia revolting, which must be why the Obama regime is working so hard to repeal DADT. Fag forces will be positively begging for deployments to the theatre:

For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means "boy player." The men like to boast about it.

"Having a boy has become a custom for us," Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter. "Whoever wants to show off should have a boy."

Baghlan province is in the northeast, but Afghans say pedophilia is most prevalent among Pashtun men in the south. The Pashtun are Afghanistan's most important tribe. For centuries, the nation's leaders have been Pashtun.

You'll find the rest of "Afghanistan's Dirty Little Secret" here at The San Francisco Chronicle, where  it must have found considerable local interest. In it you'll also learn that there are more pedophiles per capita in Afghanistan than in any other place in the world, even Rome!

I found the way Muslims are said to explain this away as not being homosexuality, which they forbid,  poignantly reminiscent of the kind of text-trimming you will meet with in just about any church or synagogue in America: It's not homosexuality because they don't love the boys.

And the Taliban? I'm sure they're more than ready to blame it all on Alexander the Great.

Priceless.

Govern Your Self

"It is the proper business of every man, who is governed by laws, to study into the nature of those laws; and wherever he finds an error, point it out, in order for amendment."

-- A Countryman, 1765

Q2 GDP 2010 Revised Up To 1.7% From 1.6%

The story was reported here.

A second and final revision will follow.

Z Backscatter Vans Caused Snarled Truck Traffic in Atlanta This Week

According to this source, vehicles equipped with the same scanners now being deployed in airports to provide full body scans were tested by Homeland Security and the TSA in Atlanta this week at a weigh station on I-20.

More than 500 Z Backscatter Vans have been produced so far for use abroad by the military and at home by the regime, according to the report.

This story from September 28th did not identify the scanners as backscatter vans, nor does the photo provided in the story show a van which looks like the rolling surveillance unit depicted in this post.

Do you feel secure in your person, house, papers, and effects, against unreasonable search and seizure? Where is the probable cause, and where is the warrant issued by a judge, describing the particular place to be searched, and the particular person and the particular thing? Your Fourth Amendment rights are being shredded before your eyes.

Gridlock, Despite Democrat Control of Everything!

No budget, no tax bill, no jobs, no more!

Individual Charitable Giving Declines Nearly 5% Between 2008 and 2009

Caroline Baum reports some interesting figures for Bloomberg.com about the relatively puny contributions people have made to the US Bureau of the Public Debt:

Last year, the Treasury received more than $3 million in gifts, the biggest annual take since 1995’s $7.3 million. ...

Public Law 87-58, “Gifts to Reduce the Public Debt,” was passed on June 27, 1961, in response to a generous bequest of $20 million dollar from an estate. ... Since then the single largest gift was $3.5 million in 1992, also a bequest from an individual’s estate.

In the first 10 months of fiscal 2010, which ends today, Treasury received $2.7 million in gifts.

For all the handwringing that goes on about the growth of deficit spending, you'd think the numbers would show a little more civic-mindedness, but they don't. Compared with giving to private charities, this tells you all you need to know about where people think their money will do the most good, and it sure isn't the government.

Boston College's Center on Wealth and Philanthropy reports the latest numbers:

Individual charitable giving in 2009 amounted to $217.3 billion . . . $228.5 billion total in 2008. ...

The American people still believe there is a huge need out there which government spending through forced taxation is not meeting, and despite that taxation they open their wallets to address it. But what should disturb more people is the recent decline in giving due to the financial meltdown, a casualty of this country's war on the middle class:

[T]he total decline in inflation adjusted dollars [was] $25.3 billion between 2007 and 2009.

Follow the links for the stories.

On The Theory of Evolution

"There is no other explanation for the existence of the Democrat Party than descent from the apes."

-- Imam John

"The Economy Has Slowed . . . to Near-Stall Speed"

Rosie wonders here why the administration continues to propose more stimulus spending, why the Fed again is signaling it's ready for more quantitative easing, and why credit unions suddenly needed a government bailout last week if in fact the recession ended in 2009 and we are in a recovery.

Well yeah.

You Can Always Tell A Harvard Man, But You Can't Tell Him Much

Writing for The Providence Journal, Bruce Bartlett of Reagan administration fame relates an illuminating episode for the character of President George W. Bush, who intended from the beginning that his tax cuts sop up the Clinton surplus:

One morning in 2001, one of President Bush’s most senior economic advisers walked into the Oval Office for a meeting with the president. The day before, the adviser had learned that the president had decided to send out tax-rebate checks to stimulate the faltering economy. Concerned about deficits and the dubious stimulatory effect of such rebates, he had called the president’s chief of staff, Andy Card, to ask for the audience, and the meeting had been set.

As the man took his seat in the wing chair next to the president’s desk, he began to explain his problem with the president’s decision. The fact of the matter was that in this area of policy, this adviser was one of the experts, really top-drawer, and had been instrumental in devising some of the very language now used to discuss these concepts. He was convinced, he told Bush, that the president’s position would soon enough be seen as "bad policy." This, it seems, was the wrong thing to say to the president.

According to senior administration officials who learned of the encounter soon after it happened, President Bush looked at the man. "I don’t ever want to hear you use those words in my presence again," he said. "What words, Mr. President?"

"Bad policy," President Bush said. "If I decide to do it, by definition it’s good policy. I thought you got that." The adviser was dismissed. The meeting was over.

The rest should not be missed, here.

Obama The Lazy: No Intellectual Curiosity

Ulsterman for NewsFlavor.com claims to have the following from a White House insider, there from the beginning but recently out:


Obama the tireless, hard working candidate became a very tepid personality to us. And the few news stories that did come out against him were the only things he seemed to care about. He absolutely obsesses over Fox News. For being so successful, Barack Obama is incredibly thin-skinned. He takes everything very personally. ...

I’ll tell you this – if you want to see President Obama get excited about a conversation, turn it to sports.  That gets him interested. You start talking about Congress, or some policy, and he just kinda turns off.  It’s really very strange. I mean, we were all led to believe that this guy was some kind of intellectual giant, right? Ivy League and all that. Well, that is not what I saw. Barack Obama doesn’t have a whole lot of intellectual curiosity. When he is off script, he is what I call a real “slow talker”. Lots of ummms, and lots of time in between answers where you can almost see the little wheel in his head turning very slowly. I am not going to say the president is a dumb man, because he is not, but yeah, there was a definite let down when you actually hear him talking without the script. ...

Bill Clinton is a smart guy – he would run intellectual circles around Barack Obama. ...

When you take away the crowds, Obama gets noticeably smaller. He shrinks up inside of himself. He just doesn’t seem to have the confidence to do the job of President, and it’s getting worse and worse. Case in point – just a few days before I left, I saw first hand the President of the United States yelling at a member of his staff. He was yelling like a spoiled child. And then he pouted for several moments after. I wish I was kidding, or exaggerating, but I am not. The President of the United States threw a temper tantrum. The jobs reports are always setting him off, and he is getting increasingly conspiratorial over the unemployment numbers. ...

Obama is not up to the job of being president. He simply doesn’t seem to care about the work involved.  You want to know what? Obama is lazy. He really is. And it is getting worse and worse. Would another four years of Obama be the best thing for America? No it would not. What this country needs is a president who is focused on the job more than on themselves. Obama is not that individual. I actually hope he doesn’t run again. ...

Much more here.

Foreclosure Crisis Not Even Half Over

Based on Richard Suttmeier's take on the data here:

About 2.5 million homes have been lost to foreclosure since “The Great Credit Crunch” began in March 2007, and another 3.3 million homes could be lost to foreclosure or distressed sale before “The Great Credit Crunch” comes to an end.

Wal-Mart Moms Think Obama is Overwhelmed by the Presidency

Pretty stupid when you consider that he's finally having the time of his life. Golf every Sunday. Parties every Wednesday. The world is his oyster.

Call it female projection syndrome. They are the ones who are overwhelmed, so he must be too.

They don't know the truth, don't see it, don't have time for it, don't have the money to find out about it, nor the inclination. And if the truth breaks through occasionally, they think "If it could only be me."

And that is precisely what the Democrats continue to count on. The effeminate party is an easily distracted party.

The story is here, in USA Away. 

Congress Votes to Purge Phrase "Mental Retardation"

According to this report:

Disabilities advocates are applauding Congress for passing legislation that eliminates the term "mental retardation" from federal laws.

The phrase can still be used on this blog according to the editor, especially as a synonym for "member of Congress," as in "A congressman who thinks an island can tip over if it gets too populated on one side of it is a mental retard."

Decline in Household Debt Due to Defaults, Not Deleveraging

So concludes Mark Whitehouse for The Wall Street Journal, here. Of a decline of $610 billion in debt, only $22 billion is due to deleveraging. The vast majority of the decline is due to default, over a half trillion dollars.

Michael Pento here apparently hasn't gotten the message, but points out that whatever else may be said about consumers not adding to their debt profile, the government has picked up the slack, and stratospherically so. For that reason he abjures all talk of debt deflation.

A.A.R.P.: Armed And Really Pissed