Unintended Consequences

The Obama administration has come out in their usual heavy-handed fashion against Fox News. Let's forget the simple fact that a free and open media is one of the pillars of our great nation and challenging those in power was their sole duty; it's unseemly that a sitting president with a 9.8% unemployment rate and soldiers dying daily in a war he supports aims his power at a privately-owned news company.

News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch says that the attacks from the White House have increased viewers dramatically:

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said on Friday that White House criticism of commentators on his Fox News television channel had served to "tremendously" increase their ratings.

"There were some strong remarks coming out of the White House about one or two of the commentators on Fox News," Murdoch told the annual meeting of News Corp. shareholders here.

"And all I can tell you is that it's tremendously increased their ratings," he said.

Murdoch's remarks came after White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told The New York Times earlier this week that Fox News was "undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House."

I still find it humorous that the administration wheeled out a Maoist to lead the charge against Fox as a whole and Hannity and Glenn Beck in particular. The Obamatons are amateurs on all fronts.

Here's the story from Fox News:

Quote of the Day

One hopes Obama reads the Telegraph:

The paper, which recommends that the US return to a more laissez-faire economic system rather than intervening further in activity, has been endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan, who said: "We have learned some things from comparable experiences of the 1930s' Great Depression, perhaps enough to reduce the severity of the current contraction. But we have made no progress toward putting limits on political leaders, who act out their natural proclivities without any basic understanding of what makes capitalism work."

That about sums up the Obamanomics team of Turbo Tax Timmy and the rest of the band of merry idiots:

On the Environment, Capitalism & Reality

As anyone who has read this blog more than once knows, I own an environmental consulting firm. Mostly centered on remediation and training but as any consultant would tell you, I'll do anything that remotely deals with the environment.

That said, there's a big difference between someone in the environmental field and an environmentalist. I'm not an environmentalist but one that believes in sane environmental policy that will actually, well, protect the environment while not forcing industry to pack up and head for foreign climes.

That also being said, I'm also a capitalist and as such will pursue any work that will make me money. So I'm a bit torn on the Obama administrations sudden, yet expected leftward shift on the environment and environmental issues. I mean, it's a niche that could be highly lucrative but also one that could force good American companies to bolt south or north while leaving good American workers in the lurch. I befuddled and perplexed but as a good conservative and capitalist, I have to pursue the money.

So, the Obama EPA has decided to go balls to the wall and declare "greenhouse gases" a threat to human health that could lead to very strict emissions standards:

By Jim Tankersley WASHINGTON — The federal government's declaration Friday that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health marked a first step toward likely regulation of the tailpipe emissions of cars, power plants and factories that scientists blame for global warming.

The decision by the Environmental Protection Agency was a clear break with the Bush administration, which downplayed concerns about global warming, and set the stage for a possible national standard for vehicle emissions and other federal efforts to curb such pollution.

The Obama administration already is developing a plan to make the U.S. auto fleet cleaner by regulating carbon dioxide emissions from tailpipes. But the move Friday also gives it the capacity to either regulate larger emissions producers such as power plants or prod Congress to set limits, which the administration would prefer.

Now that, of course, flies in the face of this, which says that we are not, in fact, experiencing global warming in the frightful way Al Gore and the Obama EPA want us to believe. A quandary to be sure.

So how to play this; I mean, I could use the administrations actions as cause to scare potential clients into compliance or I could leave this idiocy alone and concentrate on my core business.

What to do?

I guess I'll do what any good capitalist would do. It's ironic that the socialistic Obama administration will help this enemy who is both capitalistic and a global warming sceptic.

Thanks dude.

Dissent is Patriotic; Except When It's Against Obama

There are quite a few liberals slamming the Tea Party protests occurring everywhere. Here's the one that begs a fisking:

The Web is buzzing with information about how to throw an anti-Obama Taxpayer Tea Party, something organizers hope will be held today from Santa Monica to South Carolina. But no need to burn up your bandwidth reading complicated instructions. Here's a simpler recipe:

Go to a hobby store. Buy a scale model of a U.N. One-World-Government Black Helicopter and a tube of glue. Toss the model kit. Sniff the entire tube of glue. You're all set for the party.

Ha, get it. We're all conspiracy theorist's and insane. No wonder the LA Times is about a week away from dissolving with inane writers like this assclown Marc Cooper.

He continues the drivel:

So, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor, what's the beef behind today's protests? The Obama administration is cutting taxes for all except the very richest of Americans. Reduced withholding is already showing up in millions of paychecks.

Libs just don't get it. "Reduced witholding" that results in a weekly savings of a twelve pack and a pack of Marlboro's is not the point. The point is that we are in debt to an extent we've never even considered. Obama will have a larger deficit than the entire budget from 96-99. China now owns us and has us by the balls if they decide to call in our loans. We will see a depression that will make the current situation look like an improvement beyond words. Does the intellectually-stunted Cooper really believe that Obama won't raise taxes? He'll let the Bush tax cuts lapse and hit the middle class with a double-digit tax increase that will stunt economic growth for a decade until we finally get smart and oust Obama.

Then again, this rash of tea parties is being organized not only by the pseudo-journalists at Fox News (with Glenn Beck, Neil Cavuto and Sean Hannity actively stoking the flames) but also by FreedomWorks, a conservative lobbying outfit headed by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. I suppose it was Armey's constitutional if morally dubious privilege to have built an entire political career out of defending the wealthy.

I get it, if Fox News is involved, it's automatically evil and favors the rich. Did Cooper see any pictures? They sure as hell weren't the wealthy standing in the rain. The entire Fox News line of attack is a red herring. Plus, Fox is crushing the competition in every demographic. Perhaps if Cooper's employer could grab 5% of the Fox audience he wouldn't be a day away from the unemployment line in between writing free posts on Daily Kos or the vile FiredogLake.

But are common folks actually going to dump Earl Grey into Santa Monica Bay because they are outraged, simply infuriated, by the marginal tax rate rising 3% for millionaires?

Again with the class warfare incitement. Has Cooper looked around and seen what's happening in the country? What about his deeply troubled state? The Wall Street meltdown has destroyed the economies of NY and NJ--the very same people who are paying the majority of the taxes in the country. I'll put it in simple terms for Cooper: Imagine if Hollywood lost 50% of it's income tomorrow. What would the effect be on LA? Where is the money to feed, clothe, house and provide medical treatment for illegals going to come from? Priorities here Cooper, priorities.

And so it goes throughout the liberal media. We have elitist's like Marc Cooper who piss on the great unwashed and won't even take a second to ponder why these people stood in the rain and cold. He is so smug and self righteous that he can't fathom why people would be upset that Obama is spending money we could never pay back.

Oh well, liberals never understood Reagan either and he pummeled them in two straight elections and carried enough carryover clout to get the RINO George HW Bush elected. This time, it will be twenty years before we elect another Democrat.

Update: More from Karl posting in the Hot Air Green Room.

Liberal Verbally Whoops Another Liberal; Liberals Excited

The buzz of the leftosphere today is the supposed ass-kicking suffered by CNBC's Jim Cramer at the hands of John Stewart. I guess their thinking is that it was the voice of capitalism getting beaten by, what, the voice of socialism? Something along those lines I imagine.

Anyway, what people fail to realize is that Cramer is an Obama supporter and supports large portions of his policies from socialized medicine to withdrawal from Iraq. Many liberals are Wall Streeter's--like half of BHO's administration and left-winger's like Jon Corzine, the governor of New Jersey. Most people at places like Goldman-Sachs and other huge brokerages are classic New York libs and always have been. They're not these deeply conservative "greed is good" types that many libs suppose them to be.

So Cramer gets verbally bitch-slapped by Stewart and the lefties rejoice as if he actually beat a formidable foe. Anyone with half a brain knows that liberals are notoriously horrible debaters and Cramer is just another in a long line. I suggest Stewart move up to the big leagues and try the same thing against Rush Limbaugh or Karl Rove and he'll see that it's a bit different debating those heavy hitters then beating up an intellectual minor-leaguer like Jim Cramer. If Stewart wants to go at it with a real free marketeer capitalist who has the facts to smoke him, let him try his luck against Neil Cavuto or better yet, Ann Coulter.

So enjoy this moment libs and Mr. Stewart, you've beat up on the intellectual equivalent of a 90-pound sixth-grade girl. You should be proud.

Thanks For the Compliment, Moron

The media machine has managed to make an unprepared, unqualified, solipsistic millionaire seem as though he's the greatest man of the people since Cesar Chavez. Obama has done what he rants against, divided us into two classes: the haves and the have-nots.

Check this out:

I love this big financial meltdown. At last, Republican-voting, suit-stuffing, briefcase-toting, almighty-buck-worshiping, strip-club-frequenting, slave-driving, law-flouting, power-abusing, wheeling, dealing, profit-stealing yuppies are getting hurt, too - just like the rest of us have been for decades.

J. Andrew Smith
Bloomfield, N.J.
mailto:N.J.jasmith4@comcast.net

Set aside the joy this idiot is enjoying watching 401K's disintegrate and the life savings of people erode, he's the typical guy who cheered every American death in Iraq because it made President Bush look bad. No, I'm more appalled by his statement "Republican-voting, suit-stuffing, briefcase-toting, almighty-buck-worshiping, strip-club-frequenting, slave-driving, law-flouting, power-abusing, wheeling, dealing, profit-stealing yuppies" being written as though that's a horrible thing.

Let's see:

Republican-voting? Check. Straight down the ticket every year.

Suit-stuffing? Er, not sure exactly what that means. I guess it means we're all fat or something. Being as Mr. Andrew probably sent this to the Inquirer written in Crayola, I'll just have to guess.

Briefcase-toting? I guess he means supporters of the GOP carry briefcases. I assume that Mr. Andrew is a union tradesman or something that would preclude him from utilizing a briefcase and hasn't actually taken the time to realize that his take-home pay is about to be slashed by an Obama administration. But hey, the local said to vote for him so, by golly, he will...mindlessly.

Almighty-buck-worshipping? Well, yeah, we are Republicans. I've never been able to pay my mortgage with my astoundingly good looks or pesos. Perhaps Mr. Andrews' employer will withhold his paycheck for a few day and we'll see exactly who worships the almighty buck. Better yet, I recommend that Mr. Andrews' employer start taking out 10% more of his paycheck as Obama will do and give it to the homeless guy sleeping on Broad St. We'll call it practicing for inauguration day. Mr. Andrews doesn't care about that almighty buck so it shouldn't be of concern to him.

Strip-club-frequenting? He says it like it's a bad thing or something. We choose to see it as frequenting small businesses to help boost the economy. If we stop going to these establishments, hundreds, if not thousands of college women will be unemployed. We look at it as our civic and fiscal duty. I guess Mr. Andrews is not a fan of working women, hot ladies or small business. He must be a communist.

Slave-driving? I'm guessing he meant this in the racial sense and thought he'd be oh-so-clever in adding this. My guess is that Mr. Andrews feels that he's being forced or pushed to work long hours, or more likely that he's forced to work at all. Here's a news flash, sport; you can leave your job and get another. You can go to college and earn a degree and get a job where you don't have to work for a "slave-driver". Or better yet, you can start your own business and be your own boss, but don't expect too much from your employees as they'll call you a "slave-driver".

Law-flouting? I see the law broken by politicians in and around Philly on a daily basis. Wayne Bryant, Robert Torricelli and others. Hmmm...it seems as if they're mostly Democrats with strong union ties to boot.

... wheeling, dealing, profit-stealing yuppies?
First off, most "yuppies" nowadays are liberals and second, who has even used "yuppie" to describe anyone since 1988? Now what's wrong with wheeling and dealing? I would imagine Mr. Andrews' boss is a wheeler-dealer and by being so can give Mr. Andrews a paycheck. Now the profit stealing thing is amusing as liberals seem perplexed that a company would actually be so callous as to turn a profit. How dare they. No, in Andrews' perfect world, the company management would bust their asses on a daily basis, take heavy financial risks, pay higher taxes and then be rewarded with minimum wage (while Mr. Andrews would keep his same amount of pay of course).

This sums up the liberal ideology so damn well. Play the class card while simultaneously trying to get ahead and make more money than the other guy. In my world it's called hypocrisy, in Mr. Andrews world it's called Democratic politics.

Plotting the Genocide of 25-Million Capitalist's

Who would discuss such a thing? Pol Pot? Saddam? Hitler? Stalin?

It couldn't be the people who "launched" Barack Obama's political career, could it? I thought I'd have read something about it in the paper.

These are the people who Obama has chosen as mentors and who he blurbed a book for. They are not just acquaintances. They have no qualms about discussing the liquidation of those they ideologically disagree with on a scale unheard of.

One flaw I see in their thinking was that they planned on putting the "re-education camps" in the Southwest. I'm currently in Houston and I would say that there's no way in hell that Texans would just drop their weapons and surrender to scumbags like Ayers and Dornh. I imagine those 25 in the Weather Underground would have ended up as deceased Ivy League grads.

Watch the video below.

A Reasoned Approach to Abandoning the Bailout

As written by a "Libertarian economist":

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.

In other words, rewarding those who made poor decisions with the ability to make more poor decisions. This is what got us into this mess; banks--with pressure from the government--gave mortgages to those who had no business getting them. Someone making minimum wage has no business buying a $300,000 house yet the Democrats, through Fannie and Freddie, changed the idea of owning a house from a privilege that is earned through hard work and education to a right. Owning a house is not a right.

I'm steadfastly against the bailout at this point after being on the bubble until yesterday. It goes against Conservative principles completely to essentially nationalize private businesses. If Republicans vote to allow a bailout, we will have lost any high ground we may have had on fixing social security, extending the Bush tax cuts and fighting against socialized medicine. You can not be for socialistic policies on one hand and against them on the other. Selective capitalism is a recipe for disaster.

Update: More along these lines in this essay by John Montgomery in The Australian.

Example #458,098,565 Free Markets Work

Democrats have been telling us that drilling off the coasts or in ANWR would do nothing and not produce any price reductions for a decade. Here's proof that more supply equals lower prices on another needed commodity, natural gas, which we've been tapping into domestically with fervor of late. Here's the supply news:

Natural-gas prices, which were 50 percent higher in May than they were a year earlier, have dropped so much that early fears of a winter of high prices and short supply are melting away.

A milder summer, strong production of the fuel, a slow economy, and forecasts for a mild early winter have pushed down prices and spurred talk by some analysts of a natural-gas glut.

"You have a combination of two things: some milder-than-normal summer weather and also we're anticipating an 8 percent increase in natural-gas production over last year," said Neil Durbin, a spokesman for Dominion East Gas Co. in Cleveland. "It has had the effect of moderating prices."

Emphasis mine. Now how fast does that take to translate to lower prices? Try less than a day:

Peco Energy Co. said Thursday it will lower its natural gas rate on Sept. 1 because of a projected decrease in gas supply costs in the wholesale market.

The Philadelphia-based electric and gas utility said its gas rate will decrease by 9 cents per hundred cubic feet to $1.59 per hundred cubic feet from $1.68 per hundred cubic feet, which will lower the bills of a typical residential customer by 5.1 percent or $7 per month.

But drilling for oil domestically would have no effect given what we've heard from Speaker Pelosi and other Democrats. It shows they still don't understand free markets.

Cat Scratch Fever?

This story gives new meaning to making an appointment get pussy cat checked out:

Authorities charged a Hackettstown man with running a prostitution business from his desk at Novartis in East Hanover. The services allegedly took place at a veterinarian clinic in Bedminster Township.

David Baker, 35, of Hackettstown, was arrested following a two-month investigation dubbed "Operation Net-Vet Harlot" that began with an ad on the Internet classified Website, craigslist.org., offering "erotic services," Somerset County Prosecutor Wayne Forrest said.

Bedminster Det. Sgt. Craig F. Meyer responded to the ad, and ultimately set up an appointment to meet with Cathy J. Rosania, 50, of Lebanon Township, at a veterinary facility located on Route 202-206 North in Bedminster.

An undercover detective with the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force responded to the appointment and met with Rosania on July 11.

During the meeting, Rosania led the detective into a veterinary examining room and propositioned the undercover detective, Forrest said. Rosania was then arrested and charged with prostitution.

I'll leave the "doggie style" jokes to y'all. No pictures but, dude, the chick is 50. Maybe that's not so old in the Viagra age age but just saying.

Comcast Gets A Tutorial in Capitalism

Comcast is the largest cable company in the US. Their meteoric rise was something to watch as they gobbled up other companies in a frenzy. The were cutting edge in offering Internet, phone and TV all in one package then adding instant and recordable viewing. They had the government on their side as well as competitors were not allowed to edge in on the monopoly.

As so happens with companies who have a monopoly, Comcast got a little too full of themselves and their pricing structure went through the roof. It didn't matter to them, if you didn't like them, the only option you had was satellite, yet that left other issues such s Internet service, etc.

In an example that should give big government liberals pause (but will not), the government relented and allowed Verizon to start running fiber optics through the state and offer all the services that Comcast does. Comcast was cocky though, the people will pay us and stay with us because they were Comcast and the best.

A funny thing happened, Verizon dug up neighborhoods and started running those lines and offered better services including a higher quality picture and people started listening to their aggressive sales pitch. I, personally was a huge advocate of Comcast, they are a local company who keeps a lot of people employed and I've been with them since I returned to the East Coast. I paid their exhorbitant fees because I'd heard horror stories about satellite TV.

But then I switched to Verizon. They offered comparable Internet, better TV channel selection and my phone service was already with them. They changed the cable lines in my house at no or little cost and every single TV I have (enough to give Al Gore the cold sweats) has a picture that looks brand new. All this for less money than it cost for inferior service with Comcast.

The cable behemoth is feeling the pinch:

Comcast Corp.'s shares were slammed on the stock market yesterday after the company acknowledged that the housing slump and new competitors - mainly AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. - were slowing its growth even as its costs climbed.

The shares of the nation's largest provider of cable TV and high-speed Internet plunged more than 12 percent yesterday.

"This is not a robust economy," Comcast chief financial officer Michael Angelakis said yesterday, speaking at the UBS Global Media conference in New York. The company, based in Philadelphia, had predicted this year that it would add 6.5 million subscribers in 2007, but Angelakis said yesterday that growth would amount to 6 million.

"We will fight in the streets and do everything we can for retention" of customers, Angelakis added. "But when you have a company like that throwing those kinds of resources - not just Verizon but other competitors - we will lose some basic subscribers."

As happens with so many companies on top, they let service slide, charged more and expected you to pay regardless. I saw a definite decrease in Comcast's quality of service and their near ambivalence towards customers. Evidently, I wasn't the only one. Think back through America's long history and the names that fell before the mighty will of capitalism are legion--Sears, K-Mart, the entire American automotive industry, etc.

Comcast is in first aid mode right now, trying to stop the bleeding. They told my wife, you should have called us before and we'd have made a deal--they of course disregard the fact that if they provided a better service at a better price I wouldn't have even contemplated switching. They're in a pitched battled and they are going to suffer pretty dramatically before it's over.

For those who are anti-capitalist, this lesson is probably falling on deaf ears, yet it's proven time and again that when the government tries to regulate business as they did by allowing Comcast to maintain a monopoly, the public suffers. If they allow competition to flourish, everyone wins. This is just the latest example but one that occurs repeatedly. The simple formula is to keep the grubby fingers of the government beast out of industry and the citizens win. Let's hope they heed this advice when it comes to the mortgage and petroleum industries.