100 DAYS, 100 MISTAKES
Two Great Moments in Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy Is the false assumption of an appearance of virtue. To find the really big achievements in this field, we have to look to the actions of our Presidents. One of the greatest and least noticed of these took place during the Bill Clinton years.
The Constitution places the power of the purse in the hands of the House of Representatives. As a result, Presidents always ended up compromising to the benefit of the House on budgets. No President wanted to allow a shutdown of the government and get the blame for it. But Bill Clinton calculated that with the left-slanted communications media in this country – slanted his way, that is – he could allow the government to go to the brink of being shut down and he could blame the Republicans for it. That is just what he accomplished.
At the point of the shutdown he had to find a way to fund some parts of government. So he took an unprecedented action. He dipped into the Thrift Savings Plan funds of government workers. The TSP is a government 401k. Unlike the empty “lockbox” of Social Security, the TSP is a lockbox that really has the money in it, piling up to pay the future demands of the contributors. So here was a huge chunk of funds that Clinton decided he could dip into as he needed at that time. Now at the very same time he did this – not some months earlier, or some months later, but at the very same time – his administration was chastising private companies for engaging in this very practice of dipping into their employees’ retirement funds. This great moment of hypocrisy went virtually unremarked upon.
There was not one word published at the time that I could find that pointed out this glaring, monumental disconnect between the wagging finger of government and the simultaneous action of the government.
Now we come to the latest great moment in hypocrisy, visited upon us by the current president. Oh, my. There are bonuses being paid at AIG. President Obama’s finger will never wag so hard again in his career. Yet what about the enormous and unjustified bonuses paid to his fellow Democrats who ran Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the ground? Where is the call to return those funds and hold people ACCOUNTABLE (a word the Democrats have loved to preach with over the last eight years). The receivers of those bonuses are accountable for pushing our economy into the money pit hell we now suffer on a daily basis.
Oh, but of course. Those swindlers were Democrats. And Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were donating money to Barack Obama and other politicians. (A practice by quasi-government agencies that still makes no sense to me.) The people who need to be chastised are Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick, Daniel Mudd, and James Johnson who cooked the books at those agencies to qualify for tens of millions of dollars of unjustified bonuses.
When efforts were made in Congress to stem the tide of mortgage failures through those agencies, who stood in the way? Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank, the Keystone-Kop Democrats who are still pretending they know what they are doing.
We are told now there are protesters showing up at the homes of AIG executives in Connecticut. The AP report from there reads like a press release from the “activists.” No curiosity about who is funding the busload of people said to be representatives of the working families and middle-class families of America.
Will anyone be funding such protests at the homes of Daniel Mudd and Jamie Gorelick? Of course not. Many talking heads on TV keep trying to cover up for them. If you want to marvel at and contrast circumstances with these former executives, I understand Daniel Mudd has a palatial estate after his time in service to the people. What a way to get rich! Destroy the economy of the free world.
Mark A Hall
March 22, 2009
Joe the Plumber sues Ohio lackeys of Obama
Let us remember that Joe the Plumber was standing in his own driveway when he was approached by candidate Obama who wanted to talk to Joe. When Obama embarrassed himself by admitting that he wanted to "spread the wealth around" Obama took it out on this private citizen. From Joe the Plumber to Rush Limbaugh, private citizens are now the targets of government.
A Dead Canary in the Midwest
Al Franken is the dead canary in the mineshaft. A vulgar clown is about to steal an election and become a senator from Minnesota for six years. His success will be a signal that the USA is in deep trouble.
You might not care much. It’s only Minnesota after all. You don’t hear much about the state’s senators anyway. You almost never hear about the senior senator, Amy Klobuchar. She’s the daughter of a one-time columnist for the Minneapolis STAR newspaper. She and Al will get along fine. Now that I think about it, maybe Minnesota is the dead canary in the mineshaft. This is, of course, an allusion to the old practice of miners keeping such birds around to warn them of the presence of deadly gases before greater damage was done.
Amy’s father is no longer with us. I met him once and we sat down to talk at his office. He was a difficult person to try to converse with. He thought he already knew what you were going to say. So you had a hard time making a point with him. He would stop you and finish your thought and get it wrong. He was like a lot of today’s liberals. They already know best and we should just let them talk and go along with them. Now that Barack Obama and the Democrats will be running the country, we will see this experiment on a grand scale.
The Democrats are getting a grasp on power again and will be determined to keep it. Their methods are the worst kind. They are a threat to the well-being and continuation of a free republic. Their methods are dishonest.
Here is how the way to steal an election looks to someone living in Minnesota. One thing to know about this state is that the Secretary of State is an elected Democrat who gives every appearance of someone who wants his party to win and sees that above all as what is good for us.
As the recent senatorial election drew to a close in Minnesota, Norm Coleman was leading his opponent Franken by about 700 votes. This margin was too big for the Democrats. Vote fraud of the ACORN type made the election close, but not enough to win a majority. So the crookedness began immediately. Suddenly more Franken votes were being discovered. Some were found in the back seat of a car, but never out of control of the official, we were told, so that was okay. In districts where Franken was popular in the northern part of the state, suddenly more Franken votes had been overlooked but rediscovered at the last moment, a hundred votes here, a hundred votes there. As a result the tally after Election Day came down to a lead by Coleman of under 300 votes. A recount was now mandatory in Minnesota.
In the course of the recount, opportunities were found to discount Coleman votes and validate discarded votes for Franken. A block of Coleman votes had disappeared and could not be counted. Methodically the vote margins switched over a period of days. This was something that I personally expected to happen. The only question was where would the chicanery stop and by what margin would Franken win. It turned out to be about the same total by which Coleman had won, under 300 votes.
Now the whole mess goes into the courts. The only benefit likely to come of this delay is that Franken’s time in office will be shortened by the time spent in the courts. It will take real courage for any judges to get the sense of what is happening and take positive action to stop this theft. Courage is in short supply these days. As someone who expected the vote totals to change as they did, I am expecting that no judges will save our democratic republic from this cancer. Senator Frankenstein will soon appear on the national scene
Our faith in the importance of the ballot box is going away. Crooks are taking over. They have the money to steal elections. They have the means to get their people into office. We see it happening and we cannot stop it. This is bad for Minnesota. It will be bad for you, wherever you live, when it comes to your state. There is a large dead canary here in the Midwest, and you would be well advised to notice what it foretells for an entire nation.
Mark A. Hall
Minneapolis, MN
January 18, 2009
Looks like Obama, Sings like McCain
For once Senator Joe Biden might have known what he was talking about. He surprised everyone during the 2008 campaign by admitting that if elected a new administration under his senior member on the ticket would be tested by our enemies. Biden went on to say their supporters should stand by them even when they did something their supporters did not like at first. Here is a suggested flashback to what might have brought this on.
TIME: Fall, 2008
BARACK OBAMA: Hello, Joe. How is the campaign going for you today?
JOE BIDEN: It’s exhausting, Senator, but we know it will all be worth it.
OBAMA: Good, good. Look, Joe, we have something we need you to do for us. It’s important, and you are just the man for the job.
BIDEN: Certainly, just name it.
OBAMA: You’ve been hearing the charge that we will be soft on defending the country and that some foreign leaders will give us trouble at the start of our administration. I and my closest advisers have come up with a plan to take care of that.
You know how when someone takes over a company that has workers performing poorly, they will fire one of their best workers to scare the others into stepping up their performance. It’s called shock therapy. Well, we’ve come up with some shock therapy for the world.
You and I know from our briefings that the present administration is not going take overt action against Iran by the time they leave office. When we take over as we know we will next January, within two weeks of taking command we are going to bomb the hell of Iran’s nuclear capabilities. This will be a signal to the world to back off and leave us alone. It will put us in solid with the Israeli lobby. Even some of the right wing types will be happy about it. And it will freeze the foreign policy arena in place for a couple of years. So we can get onto changing things on the domestic front, which is where we really want to make change.
BIDEN: I don’t know, Senator. Are you sure you want to do this?
OBAMA: It’s already been decided, Joe. My foreign policy advisers and I have come to the conclusion we need to do this. We’re not going to invade Iran. We’ll take out their nuclear sites and leave them flat-footed. We want you to be the first to signal our resolve and prepare our supporters for what’s to come. Give an interview and talk about the charge that we’re soft. Tell our voters they will need to stand by us even when they might not understand. No specifics. I trust you to use the right words, Joe.
BIDEN: Okay, Senator. Or should I say, Mr. President, as I know I will be addressing you in a few months. You can count on me.
END OF FLASHBACK
After the election of Lyndon Johnson, a joke made the rounds. It went this way: “They told me if I voted for Goldwater, we would invade Vietnam. I did. And we did.”
In 2009 some might be saying: “They told me if I voted for McCain, we would bomb Iran. I did. And we did.”
WILL THE WAR ON TERROR CRUMBLE UNDER OBAMA ?
The two unprecedented struggles to seat senators from Illinois and Minnesota are a foretaste of what the Obama-Biden era is going to deliver up to the dismay of the American people. There will be other chilling effects: on your personal tax bill, on a weak and faltering American economy, on the conduct of foreign affairs, on the future makeup of the Supreme Court, on our continued exercise of Freedom of Speech, and on the leftward slide of the education of our young people. Surpassing all those, however, will be the likely downturn in our success in national security.
We are in danger of serious reversals in the war on terrorism, which is not confined to Iraq and Afghanistan as the superficial treatment in the left-wing media would have you believe. As cited previously on this page, consult the February 2008 issue of AMERICAN LEGION Magazine for an overview of the world-wide nature of our efforts during the Bush administration. We have had successes and part of that successful effort is not to spell out in detail what we are doing world-wide. That would only aid our enemies. But if we cannot keep secrets in this new administration we will see reversals and failures. Men and women will die on the ground in combat theaters and disappear in the course of covert operations everywhere.
The threat comes not from the very top of the new administration, not from the president or from a new secretary of state. Rather it is the people they will appoint to high places in the government who will have a chance to leak vital information. Barack Obama and his close advisers during the past two years have had ties to Hamas. Also, Obama has been a close friend to William Ayres and Bernadine Dorn, people who have attacked America and its way of life. These are troubling associations that now become perilous. Too many people who wish this country ill will have access to secrets as Obama advisers.
History shows us that people find different reasons for betraying their country: ideology, stupidity, revenge, and especially the desire for more money. We can already see some of these threats coming with the Obama crowd.
Will this administration vet its office-holders to keep out weak links? Will leaks be plugged once they start? Will there be any active interest in detecting and stopping harmful leaks? I have little confidence that the answers to these questions are positive ones.
Has the leaking already begun? In early November the Pentagon expressed its displeasure at the leak of news about the use of a previously secret executive authorization to attack the al Qaeda network anywhere in the world, in any country.
I don’t trust the likes of the New York Times to be honest about where the leaking begins for their scoops. They will protect their sources with misdirection and cover themselves by saying they talked to a dozen people.
The most damaging leaks are likely to be those you do not read in the newspapers. The most deadly could be those that quietly pass to Hamas and then to al Qaeda and are shared among the nations that wish us ill. Those betrayals would show up as failures among our efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the rest of Asia, in Africa, and elsewhere. There could be serious losses of lives and reversals of hard-won gains.
The inherent weaknesses in the Obama administration could lead to a long and slow crumbling of what we have gained in the last seven years in the war on terrorism. Who will give us the oversight to catch leaking from within? Will our allies trust us when things start to fail? Who will lead the fight on world-wide terrorism when we falter because of poor security?
Some might ask: What about Obama’s choice for Secretary of Defense? Isn’t that a good sign?
Obama is well aware of the value of window-dressing. At the start of his campaign he paid off his old parking tickets from his Harvard days. And most of what he did personally afterwards up to the election was an effort to dress up his image as someone he wasn’t. So now he is appointing one member of his cabinet as a hold-over from the previous one. And we are hearing rapturous praise in his stable of media hacks for his bipartisanship based upon this one appointment. Remember also that if Obama governs like Bill Clinton, he will expect his cabinet members to fall on their swords if things don’t go well.
The greater part of his willingness to keep Secretary Gates for only one year probably lies in his fear of what will take place in foreign affairs during his first year in office. Our avowed enemies are certain to seek to take advantage of an inexperienced hand at the top. A President Obama could try to curtail those tests with an action like bombing the Iranian nuclear threat. His reasoning to the world could be that it was a justified response to Iranian meddling in Iraq that has harmed American forces. Why would he of all people do this? I would say because he really doesn’t care about the whole situation. He simply wants it go away and leave him alone. If he can stave off international tests by blowing up a few Iranians, he will order it. I am suggesting these are Obama’s views on Iran, not mine.
The USA to this point has been supportive of Iran’s better half, those Iranians who want to modernize and are willing to join the twenty-first century. But the other half hates us, hates Israel, and will drag us all into conflict if they can. Time is running out for those Iranians who would use nuclear weapons on a whim.
My measure on Obama is that his goals have been reached. He has had two main goals. The first was set for him when he was backed to run for the presidency against Hillary Clinton. Get elected and award pardons to Cook County felons, like Tony Rezko, who will need them. As the presidency got closer, Obama’s personal goal was solidified, to get his face on a postage stamp. That is, once bitten by the presidential bug he wanted to be known in history as having the ultimate political office in the USA. His goals are now within his grasp. The rest – his term in office – is almost anticlimactic. Does he really care about what happens? I have to wonder.
Don’t get me wrong on this. Because the left-wing media worked hard to choose the candidates in 2008, we had two other leading candidates who could do no better for their primary goals. Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain had the same primary goal: getting their face on a postage stamp. None of the three leading candidates – Clinton, Obama, McCain - had a program of solutions for the nation. They were each part of the problem, not part of the solution. It was a poor choice and the voters simply chose the most cosmetic of the three.
Barack Obama, now the President-Elect, has had a talent for running for office, but he has shown no talent for actually using an office once he reaches it. Instead, he has only used that place as a springboard to the next higher office. Well, to borrow a phrase, the Obama stops here. There is no higher office for him now. He will have to stop and truly govern for the next four years. Will he spend them simply running for a second term? I fear that will be the case.
Mark A. Hall
January 11, 2009
We Need to Replace Congress
Are we suddenly a nation of optimists? Obama voters certainly sound like they are expecting great things. Of course, they are only projecting onto him their fantasies about the future, just as Obama intended them to fantasize. His voters have remained blind and deaf to how Obama and his advisors participated in creating a spiraling down economy. His flunkies in the left wing media, like Clarence Page, are telling us it is a bad rap to point to the deadly trigger of bad mortgages and the associated government institutions that made some Democrats rich while at the same time contributing money to Obama.
Names like Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick, James Johnson, and Daniel Mudd ought to be familiar to every American by now as people who became fat cats when they raided Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But no, you are not going to see an expose in the New York Times Magazine of the damaging roles played in government by a Jamie Gorelick. Those hacks at the Times are too busy doing an expose on Cindy McCain. Our left wing press should turn the stomachs of decent and informed people everywhere. Some wonder how big newspapers can be failing. One of the reasons is that they have lost touch with journalism and become piles of smelly propaganda.
The trouble with that press is not going to change. They cannot see the problem, let alone find their way to changing the way they are failing in business. Ah, but now they can demand a bailout from their favorite candidates, the Democrats who have taken over the Congress and the White House. More taxpayer money and added deficit-burden down the drain. You see, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And Obama voters have given the Democrats the power to deliver up fresh horrors. Decriminalize marijuana? Just wait until you see the consequences in your personal life of that idea. Like maybe rush hour traffic with a lot of drivers lighting up. But wait, won’t this be a big revenue-enhancer for the government. All those taxes collected on weed? This WILL be change. The government will solve a drug problem by becoming a drug problem. Yes, this will surely be a Brave New World.
If only the out-going President George W. Bush had good ideas like these. He had his chance at greatness, and all Bush did was rally a depleted Department of Defense to begin fighting back at terrorists around the world, lead the defeat of two despotic governments and replace them with burgeoning democracies, erect a homeland defense by way of the Patriot Act and a new department, and keep us all safe from further terrors like 9/11 which was plotted and prepared before he took office.
With Obama coming into office, the American voters (and probably a large number of ACORN-created bogus ballots) have put a new machine boss into power. This cannot be undone, only experienced. By hook, crook, and bogus ballot low-lifes have taken over. And a lot of legitimate voters said we don’t care about their poor quality, just give us a smile and big promises and we’ll follow you anywhere. As I wrote before the election, I think Obama voters should make good on this vote by signing up to serve under Commander-in-Chief Obama. But I expect that they don’t have that kind of courage of their convictions.
One train wreck after another will appear before us with Obama and the bumbling Congressional Democrats. It has already begun with the exposure of the former-bookmaker governor of Illinois.
Foreign affairs are about to spin out of control. Our allies will suffer first.
Watch the Obama administration shut down voices of dissent as they have been trying to do from Joe the Plumber to national talk radio.
See the marijuana smoke billowing out of homes, offices, and automobiles.
Hear the tramp, tramp of the legions of the Obama Green Force of make-work jobs. Shall we call them the Green Shirts? Will they be used to serve the political needs of Obama?
As these and other actions become inescapable parts of your life, you will wonder what you can do about it.
Let us begin to plan now for elections two years away when there will be a chance to unseat any and all Democrats who have visited this curse upon us all. The Democrats are worn out, corrupted, and making the same mistakes over and over, as exemplified in Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank.
Whoever you were before 2009, even if you were an Obama voter, consider joining the Republicans. They are already a very diverse group as you can see by the candidates they considered for the top of their ticket in 2008.
The Republicans now in high office are no great shakes. Many of their elected stars are old and ineffective. They are in need of replacement by younger women and men. Let us hope that more people like Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal will remain willing to serve and try to fix the mess that is still in the making.
The American voters have been slow to learn. They have voted back in the very people who left us unprotected before 9/11 and who were cooking the economic books during the last years of the Clinton administration. Robert Novak did a column exposing the fraudulent economic numbers, but Clinton was already out of office by then. Nobody seemed to care, and most will have forgotten if they ever knew.
We need to replace our present error-prone legislative body. The Democrats in Congress know how to get elected but do little to correct problems. They make them worse. We should start now on the road to elect Republicans from among us. We need people who will work to turn back this kind of change.
Mark A. Hall
January 4, 2009
THE ATTACK OF THE CENTRAL PLANNERS debuts January 2009. The people who brought you THE TOWERING INFERNOS 2001 and THE MONEY PIT 2008 have spared no expense to produce this third disaster epic. Viewers will again see unprecedented happenings that will leave them breathless with amazement.
If you thought there could be no greater disasters than those already seen, you are in for a treat. In a new twist, beginning in 2009 the Central Planners take control of everything. We have seen glimpses of what is in store. Those who object will simply be destroyed. It doesn’t matter if you are running for political office or just a humble worker (like a plumber). The forces of the Central Planners will try to take you apart.
In the empire of the Central Planners, Constitutional freedoms that have been taken for granted will be granted only to those who behave. You are free to speak as long as you speak well of the Central Planners. Want to have a gun? You can do so only by getting in line with the uniformed legions of the Central Planners.
And those uniformed legions grow in this new world. The Central Planners believe in having a civilian force as big as the military. In the new age of environmental awareness they are known as the Green Shirts. They are everywhere filling make-work jobs. They are especially impressive guarding the polling places to keep out those people they see as undesirables.
The Central Planners believe in attacking the domestic front but not the world outside of the homeland. The Central Planners know best. They turn over those problems to the United Nations. They trust the UN to do the right thing.
Untold amounts of foreign cash (crudely but sufficiently concealed) have helped to make this epic possible. But more money is needed. A big pool of people exists to contribute more. They are called American workers. You fill out your tax return and pony up more and more at the end of each year.
THE ATTACK OF THE CENTRAL PLANNERS is likely to be the biggest disaster ever seen in modern times. It will be so big it might go global as people around the world have encouraged this new way, this vision that will come to life under a messianic leader. We can be sure that the media people who encouraged this production at every step of the way will continue to cheer it on.
You won’t have to find a theater near you to see this epic work. This one will find you where you live. The votes have been tallied. The Central Planners have taken over. Now it is time to pay and pay.
He looks good in a swimsuit.
He’s more spellbinding than John McCain.
He’s able to read a teleprompter better than anyone.
Look! Up in the sky!
It’s a bird! It’s a plane!
No! It’s Obamaman!
Yes! Obamaman!
Who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.
Obamaman!
Who can change the course of mighty America.
Turn back rising sea levels with the force of his will.
And who, disguised as B. Hussein Obama,
A mild-mannered community organizer,
Fights a never-ending battle for youth, pardons for Cook County felons, and the way of Karl Marx.
OBAMAMAN is rated R for Bad Actors, Corruption, and Prevarications. Coming soon to communities everywhere, whether you want to see it or not.
