Hard Times (3/23/09)

Stop the presses!  Venezuelan Obamunist dictator Hugo Chavez and I are actually in agreement about something!

In the most general sense, you understand:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday called President Barack Obama "ignorant," saying he has a lot to learn about Latin America.

That concludes the concurring portion of this bullet point.

"We ask only for respect for Venezuela, nothing else," Chavez said. "If Obama respects us, we'll respect him. If Obama tries to keep disrespecting Venezuela, we will confront the U.S. empire."

Uncle Hugo speaks of "respect" while repeatedly calling us an "empire".  But then he knows he doesn't have to respect us with a sap like Red Barry in charge.  To the contrary, the more he craps on us, the more eager B.O. will be to grovel at his feet to try and "make amends" for George Bush's "hostility" and "aggression" in mounting little more than token rhetorical opposition to spreading Castroism throughout northern South America, undermining the neighboring U.S.-allied regime of Alvaro Uribe in Colombia, and pretty much offering up his country as a staging area for Putinical Russia, North Korea, Red China, Iran, and any other American enemy that wants to open up shop near our "soft underbelly".

This is what the Little President refers to as "restoring America's image in the world".  It's what I, nearly two years ago, called the World Prostration Tour 2009.

That's probably the second thing on which Uncle Hugo and I agree.

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Retiring GOP Senator Judd Gregg on the Obamunist Manifesto:

Hard to believe this is the same man that was considering becoming Red Barry's other token RINO.

Here's more on the Social Security/Medicare actuarial facts of doom of which I (among a host of others) have been warning for years (h/t: Viking Pundit). 

If only Al Gore had devoted his hysterical crusading to a civilization-destroying cataclysm that is actually going to happen....

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Those who believe last week's manufactured furor over the AIG executive bonuses that were inserted into the Hogzilla jamdown at Red Barry's specific insistence was an Obamunist work to create the momentary public support for nationalizing the determination of every American worker's salary, go to the head of the class:

The administration of President Barack Obama will move to increase oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, the New York Times reported.

Citing unnamed government officials, the newspaper said on its website that the plan was expected to be unveiled this week in preparation for Obama's first foreign summit next month.

The proposal would seek a broad new role for the Federal Reserve to oversee large companies, including major hedge funds, the report said.

It will also propose that many kinds of derivatives and other exotic financial instruments that contributed to the crisis be traded on exchanges or through clearinghouses so they are more transparent and can be more tightly regulated, according to the paper.

And it will call for federal standards for mortgage lenders beyond what the Federal Reserve adopted last year, as well as more aggressive enforcement of the mortgage rules, the Times said. [emphases added] 

If this power grab makes it into law, say goodbye to innovation, productivity, creativity, entreprenuership, dynamism, growth, prosperity, freedom, liberty, and America as we and our ancestors have known it for 232 years.  This crackdown won't be limited to banks that took TARP funds, or banks period, or Wall Street; this is the grand bull moose gold medal winner of camel noses in the proverbial tent.  It will be applied to every business regardless of size.  Nobody will have any incentive to pursue pretty much any career or excellence therein.  Neither will anybody have any incentive to start their own small business.  This crackdown will all but make "incentive" a dirty word.  The most basic economic right - to sell one's labor at a mutually agreed-upon price - will cease to exist.  And the American workforce will cease to be the most innovative and productive in the world (one of those economic "fundamentals" that Christina Romer was claiming is "sound") and degenerate into a nine-figure-strong DMV staff, and the rest will be selling apples on the street corners they're sleeping on.

And there will be Barack Obama, like Ebenezer Scrooge of old, hiding behind his teleprompter from the endless line of Bob Cratchets asking for their raises, or begging him not to cut their wage pittances further before he taxes away even more of them, or God help us, a small Christmas Winter Holiday bonus to perhaps purchase an extra government ration card or food stamp or make a campaign contribution with which to obtain a turkey drumstick from Lucifer's White House party tray after Scheherezade and the girls are finished with it.

Am I laying it on a little thick?  Brother Trunk doesn't think so.  Neither does Double-H.

The mission is clear: stop it now, because there won't be a later.

Mission Impossible?  No wonder SJ is depressed.  But we stopped HillaryCare in similar circumstances fifteen years ago; we can stop "My Pay Or The Highway" now.

Can't we?