The Ramble for 9/5/11

Rochester, NY— I’m home today, but will leave for Allentown PA tonight, for a couple of short hops. Four or five days out., in total. It’ll be a little cooler, and my truck is running well, so it should be a couple of fun days.

Today is “Labor Day”. If you’re looking at your paycheck and it’s smaller because you’re forced to pay dues, thank a union. If you’re thinking that a lot of those dues are going to support the candidacy of liberals you yourself do not support, you’re right…. the USSC’s Beck ruling not withstanding. So much for the leftist respect for the rule of law.

As I look across the nation today, I think perhaps the cruelest of all jokes is the unions participating in labor day parades , marching through the urban blight that they’ve helped cause… a victory lap around the ruins they’ve created.  Places like Detroit for example, where Obama is scheduled to speak today. (No shock for that!)     Look at these pictures from Detroit. Detroit is a prime example of what happens when the unions and the left (Often one in the same)  get their way.   Unions, are to jobs, as Obama is to jobs, and for the same reasons.

There are very few people….  (save union members, of which there are thankfully ever fewer) ….who will even attempt, any more, a logical argument that the unions are not at least partially responsible for the dearth of jobs in the Detroit area.  Between their wage demands, benefit demands, and “work rules”, (Which are really demands for non-work) no sane business owner would have ever signed on to them, absent the force of leftists in government, which is the other proximate cause of our economic troubles today.

And to boot, let’s consider how they managed to get into the position of power that has been so ruinous for our country, shall we?  I note Michelle Malkin’s thoughts on the matter, today, of events just within the last year... With lots of video.

I would suggest to you that instead of honoring unions, we should be honoring work.  Of the two, the latter is far more honorable.

• You missed it, Billy:
  

  

  Billy Beck

  Why should I care? I’ve got a bagful of nice guitars, and when they take them away from me, then I’ll be in the same leaking kayak with the rest of you, with one signal difference: I always told you they were coming, and almost all of you always thought I was out of my mind.Well, I wasn’t. I was way ahead of all of you.

  Billy,  I love ya, but you’ve neglected one salient point. Look back at the Usenet archives and you will find that I suggested to you at least once that when this nonsense occurred it was going to come from the left, and was going to be used as a political retaliation.  I also suggested that the time that it was going to be coming from “environmental” concerns, since green, as I said then, is the new red.

  In my view, identifying where such things are coming from, is crucial if we’re to identify the real problem and solve it. This isn’t just a matter of governmental power, but the abuse of it.  Those who adhere to socialist ideals, simply do not have the integrity required to not abuse power in such a fashion. Indeed the ability to resist such abuse seems to me right on line with the degree to which each tilts left.  That’s the point I’ve made all along. And who, I wonder, will suggest that Obama is not a far-leftist?   Oh, and by the way, have a look at what the president of Gibson had to say about it. 

• Carville: Yes, I’ve seen the comments from that snake in the grass, James Carville.  Let’s remember that there is no love lost between the Obamai, and the Clintonistas.  Thereby, these comments should be no shock at all. Such is the honor among thieves, so to speak. Again, a lack of integrity seems a central point, here.Of course, it’ll be pointed out that the Clintons and their minions are not the only ones distancing themselves from Obama. But why? Simple; Obama is a failure. More correctly, his policies have failed. He has instituted every leftist wet- dream policy and none of it, not one scrap of it, of it has worked. It’s as Geoff Hunt said the other day:
  

  The left are now wringing their hands fearing their agenda is overripe, blaming everyone else for their own spoiled pickling. While Obama’s sinking prospects for re-election are disquieting, the real source of liberals’ despair is their sudden, unexpected realization that the progressive agenda is dead in its tracks and will likely be in full retreat after 2012.

  It’s far easier for leftists to aver that the failure is directly on the shoulders of Obama, that he’s merely inept, that leftist ideas are sound, that he alone is to blame for the failure, and not Liberal Democrat (say it with me…) Socialist policies. So, despite the fact that all Obama has done everything that the left has asked of him, we now see the mass exodus of support for Obama because of the failure of the very policies the left wanted.  . If you want numeric proof of that exodus, but consider the disapproval levels for Obama.  A little less than half of Americans consider themselves Democrats.  Yet, we see his approval ratings running  far below that.  Last I checked… over the weekend, approval hovered around 19%.  Hunt suggests what we’re witness to is the end of the progressive era.  I think he’s right. it’s as I’ve been saying for twenty years in these spaces, including columns that I wrote for the old syndicated column I wrote for the GT network. … The worst thing you could possibly happen to Liberal idealism is the actual implementation of liberal policies.  Such implementation will destroy any momentum Liberal idealism has.

• Jobs: I’m still firmly convinced that the Republicans in Congress should have nixed the idea of Obama making what is essentially a campaign speech to a joint session of Congress.  The speech a stance a bully is aimed at his low approval numbers.  A lot of those low approval numbers are coming from businessmen.  Most of those businessmen, let’s face it, wouldn’t hire Obama because of his lack of business experience.  So why on earth would anyone consider listening to the man when he starts talking about job creation?  Clearly he has no clue as to how to create jobs.  If  he did, the policies he’s already instituted would have worked.  And he’s out of ideas. He”s simply playing the same tune over and over and hoping it comes out differently this time. the  This is what, the ninth speech on the subject?  Maybe it’s time to stop making Fidel Castro-like speeches, and start admitting that his policies are the point of failure.  Proof? Consider this…. if you want job creation, if you want real stimulus, get government out of the way.  Reduce spending, reduce regulation.  It’s the one thing the Obama will not do.
• vs Green Jobs: one of the reasons that we been doing so poorly on job creation lately is Obama fixation on “green” jobs. Fox:
  

  A green jobs program in one of America’s greenest cities is being called a bust 16 months after a $20 million federal grant to weatherize homes in Seattle ended up putting just 14 people to work in mostly administrative jobs and upgrading only three homes in the area.”The jobs are not there,” Todd Myers, who wrote the book “Eco Fads,” told Fox News. “So we’re training people for jobs that don’t exist.”

  Here again, what we have is the unwillingness to admit the that this isn’t just a situation of an inept leader, but rather, bankrupt policy.

• Fast and Furious Resignations: I will let you read the story on your own, for this one.  I strongly advise doing some serious research on the subject, for more than one angle.  What we have here is an attempt by the White House to “prove” that our second amendment freedoms in this country, are what are providing Mexican drug cartels with firearms.  So intent were they on “proving” this, that they provided guns themselves to these drug cartels, which resulted in at least one American death and lots of violence in Mexico as well, as Bruce explains:
  

  

  Bruce McQuain

  This just gets deeper and wider:

  Just hours after the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, federal officials tried to cover up evidence that the gun that killed Terry was one the government intentionally helped sell to the Mexican cartels in a weapons trafficking program known as Operation Fast and Furious.

  The revelation comes just days after a huge shake-up of government officials who oversaw the failed anti-gun trafficking program and Congress renewed its demand for more answers.

  Also late Thursday, Sen. Charles Grassley’s office revealed that 31 more Fast and Furious guns have been found at 12 violent crime scenes in Mexico.

  Additionally, as mentioned, evidence of a cover up has been found:

  In an internal email the day after Terry’s murder, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Emory Hurley and then-U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke decided not to disclose the connection, saying “this way we do not divulge our current case (Fast and Furious) or the Border Patrol shooting case.”

  Nice.  Wonderful.  Your “transparent” government at work.

  …

  Personally, since we already understand clearly that attorney general Eric holder knew of this operation, and its purpose, I want Holder himself  frog-marched across the White House lawn.  Alas, he won’t be arrested so long as there is a Democrat in the White House.  The number of people that will end up under Obama’s  bus on this one, will I think be staggering in the end. Once Obama vacates the White House, that is.

• Feds to Trucking Company: You Cannot Fire Alcoholic Drivers if you want an example of government run amok, I personally can’t think of a better one than this.  
• Bye Bye, George: George Pataki has apparently decided not to run for President.   That’s  just as well.  The one thing this race does not need RINO trying to claim the mantle of Reagan.