More tax trouble for President Hopenchange

This time the man B. Hussein Hopenchange picked to ram through his Universal Healthcare project forgot to pay his taxes.

Tom Daschle, shortly after being nominated as the newly minted position of director of the White House Office of Health Reform, filed amended taxes to pay an assessed $128,203 in taxes and $11,964 in interest.

First Gov. Richardson is forced to step aside as the noose tightens around his neck in a federal probe of his part in New Mexico's pay-to-play scandal.

Then the man nominated to the post of Treasury Secretary, who will be running the I.R.S., forgot to pay his taxes for 4 years, despite repeated warming and being partially reimbursed for his income tax liability. (American employees of the IMF are given a stipend equal to their estimated federal income tax in order to put their pay on par with the foreign employees who pay no such income tax. But that stipend is also liable for taxes, so his only true out of pocket tax liabilities are on the stipend.)

Now it is announced (six weeks after the fact and on a Friday evening so it misses the weekend newscycle) that Tom Daschle, formerly one of the most liberal Senators to sit in Congress, under reported his income, over reported his charitable contributions, and neglected to claim personal services provides by your employer count as income.
Is this more examples of Obama's poor decision making as demonstrated by his long term friendship with Bill Ayers and even longer term mentoring relationship with Rev Wright?
Or is this an example of Obama's hubris that he believes the corrupt people he surrounds himself with will not tarnish him?

Or in order to get the DNC nomination did Obama relegate himself to a mere functionary position and others are really calling the shots?

In just a few short months we've gone from "We are the ones we've been waiting for" to "They are good people who were sloppy and made mistakes."

I undertand that they are socialists who claim to share my pain as they raise my taxes, but at least these arrogant so and so's can pay their own tax liability. Don't have Biden admonish me that it's "time to join the team" as a prelude to higher taxes when the leaders of the Obama team choose not to pay their's.

Hope? Nope.

Change? Not yet... the game is the same, only the names are different.

Another Beltway Hypocrite

Obama scolds Wall Street on bonuses

President calls the $18.4 billion in bonusespaid last year 'shameless'
Reuters via MSNBC

President Barack Obama said it is irresponsible and shameful for Wall Street bankers to be paid huge bonuses while the American public is dealing with economic hardship.

The president reacted harshly Thursday to reports that corporate employees got paid more than $18 billion in bonuses last year.

Said Obama: "That is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful."

President Hopenchange rightly calls financial firms to task for issuing $18B bonuses when the companies came to the government for taxpayer money, and yet remains silent when Congress proposes an economic stimulus bill with over $200 in earmakrs and non-related spending.

Congressional Democrats are acting irresponsibly by wasting money while "the American public is dealing with economic hardship." The president should speak up now and have this gluttonous allocation bill pared down to the necessities for economic stimulus.

Washington politics as usual.

Remember Adolph Hitler?

A few weeks ago I wrote about the saga of the Campbell family who temporarily lost custody of their three children. I contended that it was another example of abuse of state power and the removed the children based upon the unfortunate and distasteful names they bestowed upon their offspring. I also likened it to the abuse of power that lead to the FLDS raid and the legal, albeit temporary, kidnapping of their children.

The children, Adolph Hitler, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie, were taken, the parents not told of the reason why. The DYFS workers took the children "saying only the children were in danger." No explanation of the type of danger, just "danger".

In defiance of a court order the mother of the children spoke out, saying that her children belong with her and taking her case to the public. This article also quotes the landlord who says he heard the children playing late at night and heard the Campbell's arguing with a relative who threatened to firebomb the house. The landlord also indicated he was planning on evicting the family based upon the threats of the potential fire bomber.

That the pre-school children are up late is subjective and not necessarily a bad thing. And it is certainly not a reason to believe the children were in immediate danger.

And the potential eviction is not a reason to take the children, it is a reason to move the family into public housing if necessary, or refer them to other social service agencies to help them relocate.

That leaves the firebomb threatening relative as the immediate threat. But the only legitimate course of action is to arrest the fire bomber and interrogate them as to the seriousness of the threat. Removing the children is just wrong... and makes no sense allowing the real criminal to remain at large.

So that returns us to the only remaining reason for removing the kids... their names. And the state should not have the power to arbitrarily decide when to seize children and forcibly remove them from their home... especially because they don't like the kids' names.

Additional indicators of bad faith... while en route to court to see if they can get their children they were stopped by the police who addressed him as the Nazi guy. Now the couple displayed judgement as bad as their taste in choosing in names by toting along Granny who was drunk.

So don't get me wrong, I have no sympathy for these people (just the children) and I question their ability to be responsible parents... but that does not make the state's seizure of the children right.

More Global Climate Change Proselytizing

Report: Some climate damage already irreversible

By Randolph E. Schmid, Ap Science Writer – Mon Jan 26, 6:33 pm ET
WASHINGTON – Many damaging effects of climate change are already basically irreversible, researchers declared Monday, warning that even if carbon emissions can somehow be halted temperatures around the globe will remain high until at least the year 3000.
"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide the climate would go back to normal in 100 years, 200 years; that's not true," climate researcher Susan Solomon said in a teleconference.
Solomon, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., is lead author of an international team's paper reporting irreversible damage from climate change, being published in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
She defines "irreversible" as change that would remain for 1,000 years even if humans stopped adding carbon to the atmosphere immediately. [article continued]

*****

So that being her argument. How does she explain the past decade of declining temperatures and the fact that 2007 and 2008 have been the two coldest years individually and combined since the 1950s?

By now every rational adult should understand that the cult of global warming is trying to force their beliefs on the rest of us. Which is fine if they would be honest and admit that man-made global warming... or global climate change, whatever they chose to call it... is a belief system rather than a science based factual occurrence.

Yes, the planet Earth was in a warming period that began 1,500 years ago. But it appears to have ended 10 years ago. Time to move on, Let's return to the 1970's theory of a coming ice age... at least the scientific data supports that.

(By the way science also supports that the ice in Greenland, specifically the Northern Glacier, is melting because of geological, not atmospheric reasons. Similarly data shows the ice in Antarctica is growing, not melting. All of her "facts" are in fact lies.)

It is prostelyzation, not research. Mythology, not science.

Obama: Quit Listening to Rush Limbaugh if You Want to Get Things Done

Obama: Quit Listening to Rush Limbaugh if You Want to Get Things Done

Obama warned Republicans to quit listening to Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats, during a White House discussion on his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.
By NY PostFOXNews.com
WASHINGTON -- President Obama warned Republicans on Capitol Hill today that they need to quit listening to radio king Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration.
"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.
One White House official confirmed the comment but said he was simply trying to make a larger point about bipartisan efforts.
"There are big things that unify Republicans and Democrats," the official said. "We shouldn't let partisan politics derail what are very important things that need to get done."

Essentially what BH Obama saying is that if you disagree with him you are engaging in partisan politics.

Why doesn't he just ban the Republican party? The plan is not a stimulus plan, it is another waste of untold sums of money. They promised oversight on the first $700 Billion and failed to provide it. The promised the first $700 Billion were necessary to avoid a disaster and failed to provide proof that was correct or that it effected matters at all.

It is a FAILout plan and all members of congress should oppose it regardless of party. It is bullying members of congress to vote the way he wants them to that is playing partisan politics.

Based on this he is not going to be the Great Unifier, but rather be as divisive and partisan as Pelosi and Reid.

They DO believe in Santa Claus

New Jersey is in a budget quagmire because of the decrease in tax revenue and bloated spending. To his credit Jon Corzine has been saying for three years we have to do something to increase revenue, but as a typical big government statist cutting spending is not being considered.

So the state legislators, part time positions with full time salary and lifetime benefits, got together with the Governor and decided to do nothing... they are waiting for Obama's bailout plan for the states to see how much they will be getting. It is an election year so NJ legislators are hoping the entire budget deficit will be covered. If the aid is directed, money for schools, money for infrastructure, affordable housing, etc the state will simply reduce the budget for those items by the amount the feds give.

California, Illinois Missouri, and other states are also playing the waiting game with their budgets... instead of addressing the problem, wildly out of control spending, they are waiting to get federal bailout money. But these funds will be one shot deals... and one time budget gap fixes. So this year the states can spend away as planned but net year the deficit will be there again baring a miraculous recovery as a 1 trillion dollar addition to the deficit will raise the total deficit dangerously close to the countries GDP.

Running some deficit spending is a good thing, loans and financing are how wealth is developed. But it takes discipline and self restraint and one must avoid becoming addicted to the idea of easy money.

The problem is the closer a country's deficit comes to it's GDP, the shakier investments in it's currency become. Japan and many western European countries are already in that boat. Japan s a model of what happens when the deficit exceeds the GDP and how the country refusing to cut it's usury tax rates to force some demand-side stimulation.

The current plan being considered is considering further tax breaks with a bunch of spending to try a demand-side and supply-side jump start to the economy. If carefully considered it could work... unlike the $700 billion that was p*ssed away. Actually only $350B was wasted, another $350B remains and will be added to the $845B.

But the current plan lacks foresight, lacks oversight, and directs huge sums away from the stated purpose of stimulating the economy. In the meantime since 2007 the deficit has grown by $160B (tax stimulus package), $700B (TARP), and now a proposed $845B.

And looking at the proposed plan one is left wondering why so much money is being directed toward non-economy stimulating projects... giving the net effect of expanding government in a time of dwindling revenues... the proposed $145B in tax cuts which do not figure in decreasing tax revenues due to loss of jobs and dwindling revenue from businesses suffering from decreasing sales.

This leads me to believe the government has not only not learned that spending money we don't have led us into this mess. The plan of running up the deficit to the GDP without establishing a revenue source to pay the daily bills is EXACTLY what happened when people ran up debts exceeding their income and could no longer even meet the minimum requirements of their debt service. This will have the net effect of undermining, not bolstering the currency and the markets.

A summary of the proposed $825 billion plan:

• $145 billion in "tax cuts."
• $43 billion for increased unemployment benefits.
• $39 billion for expanded healthcare benefits for the unemployed.
• $20 billion to increase food stamp benefits.
• $41 billion for school improvements, including better buildings, computer upgrades and teacher training.
• $15 billion to increase the maximum Pell grant by $500 in 2009-10; plus, increases to the annual unsubsidized Stafford Loan limits.
• $14 billion in tax credits of up to $2,500 a year for college students with an annual income below $80,000.
• $6 billion for college building improvements.
• $79 billion to help states offset education costs.
• $4 billion for more preventative care programs. (Health care.)
• $1.5 billion for improvements at community health centers.
• $20 billion to computerize health care records.
• $87 billion for states to help pay Medicaid costs.
• $6 billion to weatherize moderate income homes, making them more energy efficient.
• $4 billion for homeowners to take up to 30% of the cost of conservation measures as a tax credit, up to $1,500 per person.
• $300 million for consumers to replace old appliances.
• $500 million to help rural families secure mortgages.
• $16 billion in energy retrofits and improvements for public housing.
• $30 billion for highway and bridge construction projects.
• $10 billion for mass transit, including new lines, buses, trains and stations.
• $3 billion to expand congested airports.
• $1.15 billion for better land and sea ports.
• $4 billion for more police officers and equipment.
• $500 million for better airport screening detectors.
• $31 billion to modernize public buildings, making them more energy efficient.
• $3.1 billion for improvements on public lands, including new roads, trails and facilities at national parks.
• $6 billion for broadband Internet access in rural areas.
• $400 million for flood control efforts, which include buying and preserving open land around the country.
• $6 billion for communities to replace aging sewer lines.
• $4.2 billion for towns to purchase and rehabilitate foreclosed, vacant homes.
• $32 billion for a "smart" utility grid and renewable energy production.
• $10 billion for science research facilities.
  

This is not a stimulus program, this is a spending plan that calls for maxing out the charge card while taking a pay cut.

White people need to learn to use the race card

Three decades of Al Sharpton, four decades of Jesse Jackson, and countless cumulative decades of assaults from other race baiters and white people still have not learned how to use the race card when they can.

A non-white colleague watched the Obama speech and as he finished said... "Well I lost, he finished before being assassinated."

Then I thought back to the media coverage this weekend of the Obamatrain to DC and the 45,000 LEOs providing security through the inaugural festivities and after listening the non-white colleagues and acquaintances mention he at greater risk of any other President of being killed that I realized the blatant racism inherent in their remarks.

Fact is, Obama is at greater risk of being offed by a leftard extremist p*ssed he is not giving them everything they want before the sun sets tonight than a white person who refuses to accept a black President.

Yes there is a fair amount of prejudice in the country, but anyone who believes it is whites as the exclusive perpetrators and never the victim is being either very disingenuous, or they are just totally ignorant, or they are just lying.

Adolph Hitler finally in custody

You may recall a few weeks ago that a family was perturbed that they could not buy a birthday cake with their son's name on it. The son's name was Adolph Hitler Campbell... they only requested his first and middle name be on the cake.

I posited at the time that it would only be a matter of time before DYFS (New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services) showed up for him.

I was therefore not surprised to hear that on 1/13/09 DYFS went to the Campbell's and took Adolph and his two sisters into custody.

DYFS did not release a statement except they would be put in foster care pending a hearing on 1/15/09. Calls to the local police yielded no other information except the police confirmed that they never responded to, or received, any domestic complaints at the house.

DYFS asked the Sergeant in Holland Twp, NJ to help escort the children to the car as they seized the children indicating that the children's names had nothing to do with the removal from their parents' custody, but the Sergeant was not privy to what the real reasons were.

So now the figurative jackboot government nitwits have put me in a position to defend literal jackboot wearing nitwits who chose to name their children:

Adolph Hitler
JoyceLynn Aryan Nation
Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie

As in the case of the Texas CPS raid on the FLDS compound I once again find myself having to defend the rights of people who I don't agree with because of government abuse of power.

Taking children out of a secure home where they are not threatened solely because their parents are prejudiced a-holes is not doing anyone any good. Not only does it violate the rights of the family, it will leave trauma that may very well assure the kids are as jacked up as the parents.

While they may have had a 50/50 chance of growing up to be normal, the state stepped in to lower the odds.

You don't have to like these people, but you just can't seize their children.

Iraeli IDF answers Un calls for cease fire

After enduring two years of daily rocket fire into southern Israel the IDF responded to disarm and disable Hamas.

Since day one of this incursion into Gaza the UN has been asking for, and is now demanding a cease fire (so Hamas can rearm?)

This morning the IDF responded by sending a rocket into the 13th floor of the UN HQ in Gaza.

Israel quickly apologized for the incident. I assume it was similar in sincerity to the apology Reagan offered France when a laser targeted bomb blew out the back fence in their Libyan embassy after denying the US permission to flyover France during the raid.

It should be noted the UN has never issued a correction that the recent attack on a UN convoy that killed the driver was not caused by an Israeli rocket as publicized in the MSM, but rather by non-IDF sniper fire.

Barack Hussein Obama agrees... President Bush was right

Barack Obama: it is no longer essential to kill Osama bin Laden

Barack Obama suggested last night that removing Osama bin Laden from the battlefield was no longer essential and that America's security goals could be achieved merely by keeping al-Qaeda "on the run".

"My preference obviously would be to capture or kill him," he said. "But if we have so tightened the noose that he's in a cave somewhere and can't even communicate with his operatives then we will meet our goal of protecting America."

His comments, in a CBS interview, represent a significant watering down of the "dead or alive" policy pursued by President Bush since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. They also appear to contradict Mr Obama's own statements made in the election campaign.

As recently as October 7, in a presidential debate, Mr Obama said: "We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority."

Yesterday, the President-elect adopted far less aggressive language, saying his "No 1 priority" was to protect America from further attack.

"I think that we have to so weaken [bin Laden's] infrastructure that, whether he is technically alive or not, he is so pinned down that he cannot function," he said. "And I'm confident that we can keep them on the run and ensure that they cannot train terrorists to attack our homeland."

So B. Hussein thinks we should keep doing exactly what President Bush has been doing for the past 6 years... keeping Osama Bin Hiden in his cave.

And don;t by the "I'd prefer him dead" rhetoric. B. Hussein will be granting rights to enemy combatants in Guantanamo and taken elsewhere that exceed the mandates listed in MCA: 2006. Because he, like Clinton, sees Bin Laden as a legal challenge... not a homeland security threat.

AP continues spinning propaganda, officially abandons any pretenses at journalism

Paris area synagogue hit in firebomb attack
By NATHALIE GENTAZ – 20 hours ago
SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — Two Molotov cocktails were hurled at a synagogue north of Paris, the latest attack in what France's interior minister said Monday is a new wave of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim attacks over the violence in Gaza. No injuries were reported.
President Nicolas Sarkozy met with religious leaders and reiterated the need to avoid "transposing" onto French soil a foreign conflict the country has been working to ease, his office said.
Firebombs broke a window and charred the walls of a pizzeria on the ground floor at Chabad House Ohr Manahem, in the town of Saint-Denis, said Isroeil Belinow, the synagogue's assistant rabbi. Belinow said police found 15 other unignited firebombs nearby.
Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said France has faced a "very clear increase" in anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim attacks since Israel started an offensive against the militant group Hamas in Gaza on Dec. 27.
"We must do everything to stop the importation into our country of the situation that's taking place in the Middle East," Alliot-Marie told RTL Radio.
She declined to provide specific figures on the increase, though insisted police have been instructed to protect religious sites and places of worship.
France has Western Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim populations, and Middle East tensions have in the past spilled over into vandalism or other incidents.
In the Chabad House attack, prayers had just finished and the rabbi was getting ready to go home Sunday night when he heard an explosion, Belinow said. Neighbors saw flames and called police.

Lets dissect this...

There was a synagogue struck by a fire bomb. The reporter then went on to say that this is another example of the anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim violence sweeping the nation (France) over the violence in Gaza.

Wrong! This is an example of anti-Jewish violence, this is not an attack on Muslims.
Nor does she cite one example of anti-Muslim violence... she just brings it up... for no valid reason. Twice.

The second example is the paragraph quoting the Interior Minister:
Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said France has faced a "very clear increase" in anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim attacks since Israel started an offensive against the militant group Hamas in Gaza on Dec. 27.

Giving the AP reporter credit that the Interior Minister's name is Michele Alliot-Marie, apart from the three words in quotes the AP reporter invented the rest of the sentence.
Articles that cite the anti-Semitic violence without inventing the anti-Muslim violence:

Reuters
Xinhua
Sun Times / AFP
Washington Post
Ottawa Citizen

oh yes... and Aljazeerah.

Some of the more vocal anti-Israeli media sources, including Aljazeerah, reported the story without the fictitious report on anti-Muslim violence... it shows you just how far off the reservation AP has wandered.

And the picture above?

A Palestinian protester at the San Francisco "peace" rally shows his feelings.

The picture below? Apparently Santa is a Marxist anti-Semite... who'da thunk it?

Think you have it bad? Try living in New Jersey!

Think New Jersey and you think of the Sopranos, ingrained government corruption, or the wonderful aromas wafting off the northern end of the NJ Turnpike.

Our Governor Jon Corzine, in what I can only assume is an effort to show that not all Democrats are hooking up with other men for anonymous sex in Turnpike rest stops decided he would instead hook up with the woman who happens to be the head of the Communications Workers of America local that represents the overwhelming majority of state workers.

Now while the New York Times and legions of leftards will insist the economy has been in a recession since January 2001 the economic downturn did not begin until November 2007. And no one should dispute that by June 2008 when foreclosures, oil prices and grain futures were peaking we were facing the beginning of a period of dire economic straights.

The governor himself was under fire by people from all sides of the political spectrum for his plans to cut spending and raises fees (taxes) to try to offset the state's mounting deficit of debt load, out of control spending and devaluating pension plan funds... which were reflecting the declines in the market and the situation was exacerbated by being underfunded in the first place.

In the midst of this firestorm of criticism that Corzine found himself in he managed to reach an agreement with his girlfriend for state worker contracts. In the heart of this economic correction, which by July 2008 economists redefined the word recession so it could be applied, Corzine agreed to give state workers annual contract raises averaging 3.25 percent annually, or 13% over that 4 year period.

And if giving away 13% over four years at the beginning of an period of economic uncertainty that saw the company where he was formerly Chairman and CEO go from being the last investment bank in America to a traditional bank holding company wasn't bad enough he wasn't through lining the pockets of the union.

You see these contract raises occur on July 1st of each year, the beginning of the state budget year, and are independent of the annual January 1st raises for that same time period of 4% each for every worker who is not already at the maximum salary for their range.

So a state worker who is in the bottom 50% of their pay range will get, automatically, seven raises in the course of this 4 year contract.

July 2008: 3%
January 2009: 4%
July 2009: 3.25%
January 2010: 4%
July 2010: 3.25%
January 2011: 4%
July 2011: 3.5%

So the bulk of state workers will see their pay raise by 25% in the next 48 months.

While Jon Corzine had the audacity to blame the state's fiscal woes on his predecessors Christie Whitman and James McGreevey he was in bed (literally) with the union on driving the state even further into debt. Guaranteeing 25% raises while the country was in the midst of economic uncertainty should be a criminal act... at the very least impeachable.

The silence is deafening

The fictitious Office of the President Elect has issued statements daily since November 6th on a great number of topics, albeit most were cabinet positions.

The President-elect himself has been working on an economic stimulus package and he is going to meet with Pelosi today to discuss details such as when he wants it introduced etc. But he is making it clear it is his stimulus package.

Now he (as leader of the Office of the President Elect) has also chimed in on other matters, such as state budget crises, the Minnesota senatorial race, Blagojevich, a federal gasoline tax, etc.

However, the Office of the President Elect has not commented on the Israel - Hamas conflict. Not even Joe Biden the self proclaimed smartest man in the Senate and foreign relations expert has anything to say... and it is not easy to shut Biden up when he wants to be heard.

The economy is by far the biggest issue facing the nation, but internationally the Israeli - Hamas conflict is one the the most volatile and yet not a word, nor a hint of direction. The disingenuous argument being offered is that he is not yet the President, but that did not stop him from making foreign policy statements and meeting with foreign leaders when he was stumping for the DNC nod or as a Presidential candidate.

Ignoring major events, or hoping someone else does something first, is not a leadership quality.