The Other McCain

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FreedomWorks Conference Call On H.R. 3551 With Rep. Jeff Landry

Posted on | February 6, 2012 | Comments Off on FreedomWorks Conference Call On H.R. 3551 With Rep. Jeff Landry

by Smitty

Freedom Works sponsored a conference call with Rep. Jeff Landry (R-LA) on H.R. 3551, a bill that would create an opt-in measure for the Payroll Tax Holiday. Landry is Iraq veteran, and a former Army Sergeant. A genuine Tea Party representative.

HR 3551 Summary:
12/2/2011–Introduced.
Social Security Preservation through Individual Choice Enhancement Act – Amends the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 to allow individual taxpayers an election to claim the 2% reduction in employment taxes under such Act in any calendar year beginning in or after 2012. Amends title II (Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance Benefits) of the Social Security Act to increase the applicable social security retirement age by one month for each calendar year that a taxpayer elects a reduction in employment taxes under this Act.

The payroll tax holiday:
Bad policy, good politics. $120 billion/year out of Social Security. Landry noted that the Federal government has created programs such that people can’t understand them. The SSPICE was quantified by the Social Security actuary, not Landry.

Balanced budget amendment:
During the debt ceiling fight last year, he and about 15 others pushed a balanced budget amendment during the budget ceiling fight. So the will of the people does matter.

What is the next big thing this year?
The payroll tax holiday, the budget. Senator Reid remains a chokepoint.

They used my question: ‘Does John Boehner have a strategy, and could you help him articulate what that is?’
Landry reports that he is kept in the dark. He likened Congress to a baby: “When the toddler is silent, you know they are up to no good.”

Props to FreedomWorks for hosting this call. This is precisely what we need more of in this country: concise, substantive discussion of issues. Request you link, Tweet, and call your Congresscritter with instructions to co-sign.

This silly Landry guy: doesn’t he understand that Washington DC redistributes wealth, not power.

Category: Freedom Works, Louisiana

‘I Just F–king Killed Someone’

Posted on | February 6, 2012 | 22 Comments

Alyssa Bustamante was a 15-year-old high-school sophomore in October 2009 when she wrote this entry in her journal:

“I just f—— killed someone. I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them now they’re dead. I don’t know how to feel atm. It was ahmazing. As soon as you get over the ‘ohmygawd I can’t do this’ feeling, it’s pretty enjoyable. I’m kinda nervous and shaky though right now. Kay, I gotta go to church now…lol.”

The victim, Elizabeth Olten, was 9 years old. The journal entry was read aloud in court today at Bustamante’s sentencing hearing.

Category: Crime

Presidential Paternity

Posted on | February 6, 2012 | 9 Comments

If you want your son to grow up to be president, either:

A. Establish a powerful political dynasty; or
B. Abandon your kid’s teenage mother and die drunk.

That’s what Michael Medved explains in the Wall Street Journal today. The odds are against any of my kids making it to the White House, obviously. My idiot cousin’s 2008 defeat spoiled the “dynasty” motif and I’m probably too old to seduce and abandon any teenagers now. But maybe I can still try for the “die drunk” part, huh?

Category: History

Geriatric Halftime Show

Posted on | February 6, 2012 | 38 Comments

‘Gaze upon my cosmic crotch in awe, earthlings!’

Let me be clear: I never cared much for Madonna’s épater le bourgeois act when she was still considered the hottest thing in show business, dating Sean Penn and making headlines with her various “what-will-she-do-next” stunts. Judged strictly as a musical act, I thought she peaked with her first album — “Lucky Star” had a nice dance beat and a catchy chorus — and after that, she became obsessed with the idea that she was a daring avant-garde figure, a historic personality pushing the envelope with each new MTV video.

There was a vast publicity machine dedicated to promoting Madonna’s delusions of artistic grandeur, but I never bought into the hype.

Music should be about music. Madonna became all about image, and her image-mongering finally jumped the shark in 1992 when she published Sex, a book featuring “artsy” nude photos of her, timed to coincide with the release of her Erotica album.

The album sucked, and the book . . . meh.

She just wasn’t that hot. So if most American were already bored with Madonna 20 years ago, why would we want to watch her prancing around and lip-synching her old songs at age 53? Were the producers of the Super Bowl just trying to prove that the NFL — which has previously featured other geezer acts like the Rolling Stones in their halftime shows — isn’t guilty of sexist age discrimination?

What next for the Super Bowl? Irene Cara singing “Flashdance”? A halftime reunion show for Kajagoogoo or Culture Club, with maybe a guest appearance by Adam Ant singing a duet with Boy George?

The ridiculous pageantry of Madonna’s show Sunday, with a cast of thousands and a budget bigger than any Cecil B. DeMille spectacular from the Golden Age of Hollywood, inspired me to scoff on Twitter, “Madonna needs to be careful. At her age, if she falls down, she could break a hip.” What I didn’t realize when I made that wisecrack was that she nearly did exactly that:

It’s one thing to bring back Golden Oldies acts for a nostalgia trip. But Madonna the Menopausal Sex Goddess, writhing around as if she were still the same 24-year-old whose bellybutton-baring midriff tops inspired a teenage fashion fad? The precedent is disturbing.

Fifteen or 20 years from now, my grandkids might be watching the Super Bowl halftime show and asking, “Grandpa, who’s that fat blonde lady in the funny-looking costume?”

Her name is Britney Spears.

“Grandpa, why is she wearing a plaid schoolgirl skirt and knee socks?”

Uh, well, you see, back in the day . . .

“Oh, gross! Did you see that, Grandpa? She flashed her panties!”

Yup. Same old Britney . . .

P.S.: Just in case you were tempted to feel sorry for Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who lost a 21-17 heartbreaker to the Giants, remember that he went home with supermodel Gisele Bundchen. Loser? I don’t think so.

Category: Celebrities, Football, Music

The World’s Youngest Blogger Can’t Figure Out Why This TV Is Such A Bore

Posted on | February 6, 2012 | 11 Comments

Category: humor, World's Youngest Blogger

Economist Dean Baker Defends Central Banking, If Not The Federal Reserve

Posted on | February 6, 2012 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

Thie is Dean Baker on 03 February at Empire Unplugged. From Wikipedia:

Dean Baker (b. July 13, 1958) is an American macroeconomist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, with Mark Weisbrot. He previously was a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor of economics at Bucknell University. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.

Baker comes out as a proponent of central banking in general, though not necessarily a cheerleader for the Federal Reserve in its present state.
As this is purely audio in nature, I’ll save the vertical space and offer the segments as a block of four:

While I think Baker has done an admirable job defending the idea of central banking, the bigger question is, whether, $15.3 trillion later, that dog hunted, that hog punted, and that wog bunted. Baker’s argument that growth was swell when Happy Days was the “reality” of the U.S. situation may not hold water. What the prosperity then comes at the expense of our dot com bubble, housing bubble, and higher ed bubble?
Baker at least agrees that greater transparency is needed. I’m not sure I concur that Bernanke should be so thoroughly scapegoated. The Federal Reserve is not the fire department, only coming out on an acute basis for specific problems. It is more like air traffic controllers, managing continuous traffic flow. Inflating the currency is like putting more and more planes in the air, and hoping that they don’t try to land several at once, killing not only those onboard the flights, but everyone else in the pattern that can’t get elsewhere.
Whatever our political policy becomes, if we are not balancing the budget and making continual reductions on the debt, we are doomed.
I regret that I may not have time to get Jeffrey Tucker’s response processed and posted.

Category: End The Fed

Gingrich’s Glass Jaw

Posted on | February 6, 2012 | 57 Comments

“Mitt Romney won Saturday’s Nevada caucuses with his highest portion of a state’s vote yet, just over 50%, according to certified results released Monday by the Nevada Republican Party.”
— CNN

Remember this headline from Dec. 15?

Billionaire Prepared to Spend $20 Million
on My Blog Newt Gingrich’s Campaign

That was the report that Vegas mogul Sheldon Adelson had pledged his wealth in support of Newt’s “Winning Our Future” super-PAC. However, the New York Times had another headline Saturday:

Gingrich Patron Could Have a Plan B: Romney

Adelson would be perfectly willing to support Romney as the GOP nominee, and that story also explained that some of Romney’s supporters have reached out to Adelson, urging him to pull the plug on Gingrich’s campaign. This exposes Newt’s glaring weakness: With his campaign’s viability so dependent on the super-PAC largesse of a single donor, if Adelson sneezes, Gingrich gets the flu.

Now, let me remind you of what I wrote Friday:

Newt’s current “frontrunner” status is far more fragile than it looks.
Newt’s campaign can only survive a few more humiliating defeats before it implodes from the enormous weight of its utter implausibility. Whereas by contrast, Santorum has always been a long shot. Santorum’s expectations are lower, and he is therefore able to “succeed” with results that would be a bitter disappointment to the supporters of a big-budget frontrunner like Newt.
Gingrich will get stomped Saturday in Nevada. A few weeks from now, when Gingrich’s supporters have seen their man defeated over and over, without a significant win since South Carolina, Newt will quit and endorse Romney.

CBS has a report on the billionaires who have given to super-PACs, and Adelson is the only one backing Newt. Given the hints from Adelson, isn’t is now obvious why Gingrich will ultimately endorse Romney? Newt wouldn’t dare double-cross the patron whose multimillion-dollar donation was the only reason Gingrich wasn’t forced to quit after his fourth-place finish in Iowa and his fifth-place finish in New Hampshire.

So, how long until Newt quits? During his bizarre Saturday night Vegas tantrum, Gingrich predicted “he would emerge as the GOP front-runner again by the Texas primary,” currently scheduled for April 3.

This was evidently an attempt by Newt to push his make-or-break point past Super Tuesday, March 6. And of course, he vowed to take the fight all the way to the August convention in Tampa.

But has Sheldon Adelson signed off on that plan? Or, as I strongly suspect, is Adelson’s multimillion-dollar commitment to the Gingrich campaign likely to end — and his financial support shift to Romney — on or before the morning of March 7? The possibility that Newt might not even make it to Super Tuesday is reflected in this headline:

Tea party leader implores Newt
to get his act together

Will Gingrich and his supporters denounce Judson Philips of Tea Party Nation as part of the “GOP Establishment” and the “elite media”?

No one can say that about Professor Glenn Reynolds, who seems to be supporting someone named “Zeeba.”

Category: Election 2012, Newt Gingrich

Ed Morrissey, Phyllis Schlafly, Michelle Malkin, David Limbaugh, Tom Tancredo: Gosh, Everybody’s for Santorum Now!

Posted on | February 6, 2012 | 19 Comments

Show of hands: Who remembers the “Earthquake in Vanuatu” on Dec. 1? Who remembers “Santorum Express Sunday” on Dec. 4? Who remembers when I had to scrape around to find articles from Iowa newspapers to put together Santorum campaign updates, back when a CNN/Time poll showed Santorum in sixth place in Iowa, at 5%?

OK, so having endured those lean, lonely and seemingly hopeless weeks of early December, I am not even slightly daunted now, and am in fact greatly encouraged to see that more and more conservatives are climbing aboard the Santorum Express. The latest is Ed Morrissey of Hot Air:

Why Santorum?  In my estimation, Santorum is the last consistent conservative standing, and the only one both promoting the conservative agenda and campaigning as a conservative in the race.  . . .
Santorum has demonstrated a level of personal integrity in this race that outshines the rest of the field.  Santorum has campaigned with blue-collar Reagan Democrats in mind, pushing for an economic plan that would revitalize manufacturing and small business.  He could easily have tipped over into class-warfare populism while Gingrich and Romney bashed each other over their work at Bain and Freddie Mac in order to ingratiate himself with that sector by playing on latent envy.  Instead, he defended capitalism and both of his competitors on the campaign trail more effectively than either could defend themselves.  In contrast, Romney keeps demonstrating a lack of fluency in conservative politics and philosophy, while Gingrich has conducted a personal, angry campaign that threatens to reinforce every negative stereotype about conservatives, both at times putting themselves and their ambitions above the party they seek to lead.

Every time a blogger endorses Rick Santorum, an angel gets his wings, and Ed has now added his name to a growing list of worthies in support of the Consistent Conservative. While I was in Florida last week, I missed David Limbaugh’s endorsement:

I don’t believe that the science of electability is as certain as those promoting it would have us believe. . . .
I reject the conventional wisdom that Rick Santorum could not win the general election, because I believe he represents the best contrast to Obama and is the least vulnerable to attack, among other reasons.
I will support whoever emerges as the Republican nominee, but I do not apologize for supporting Rick Santorum.

Michelle Malkin endorsed Santorum a week ago, Phyllis Schlafly says she’ll vote for Santorum in Tuesday’s Missouri primary, and Santorum also got the endorsement of former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo. During his years in Congress, Tancredo was the “gold standard” for immigration enforcement, and his endorsement of Santorum makes perfect sense when you look at the Numbers USA immigration report card on current presidential hopefuls. (Newt Gingrich? D.)

On “Fox News Sunday,” Santorum said: “I think we’re  going to do very well here in Minnesota. I think we’re going to do very well in  Colorado, and we’ve got a one-on-one match up against Mitt Romney in Missouri, while there’s no delegates, it is a key state, it is a primary. And we think we can do exceptionally well in the state of Missouri.”

Despite placing third in Florida and fourth in Nevada, Santorum actually had a very good week and his campaign is now more hopeful than ever. In a press release summarizing the week’s developments, Santorum campaign communications director Hogan Gidley said, “Time brings clarity, and this week proved that former speaker Gingrich was simply not up to the task of being the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. Rick Santorum has a long, tried-and-true track record of unapologetically standing up for the conservative principles that make America great. He’s the full spectrum conservative who’s never wavered on our core principles. It is Rick Santorum who conservatives can rally around as their standard bearer, and poll-after-poll is now showing that the two-man race is now between Santorum and Romney.”

Gidley cited polls showing Santorum leading in Minnesota and ahead of Gingrich in Colorado:

Minnesota:
Santorum: 29%
Romney: 27%
Gingrich: 22%

Colorado:
Romney: 40%
Santorum: 26%
Gingrich: 18%

Meanwhile, a national poll by Rasmussen Reports showed Santorum the only GOP contender leading Barack Obama.

Santorum will speak Friday morning at CPAC, and his supporters are hoping to get a big boost as the campaign moves forward, with the next debate (Feb. 22 in Arizona) still two weeks away. Finally, while this isn’t quite an angel-wings endorsement, Dan Blatt of Gay Patriot offers some words of respect for Santorum:

Maybe Santorum is doing well because he comes across as a nice guy. He enjoyed that reputation when he served on Capitol Hill.  Although, to be sure, the Senator has said some strange things about gays, he has treated the one member of his staff who has been publicly “outed” as gay with dignity. Indeed, his one-time spokesman Robert Traynham said “was open with Santorum about his sexual orientation” and that he had “never heard Santorum voice an anti-gay or bigoted comment” in the ten years he had worked for him.

Many people disagree with Santorum on issues, but still respect his sincerity and consistency and, like a lot of other Republicans, Dan was disgusted by Newt’s Nevada meltdown.

So we await further developments and who knows? By this time next week, the headlines may be all about the latest Santorum Surge. There was another earthquake in Vanuatu last week. I’m just sayin’ . . .

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Category: Election 2012, Rick Santorum
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