Demotivational Roberts

The great Judge Andrew Napolitano also nailed it on Brett Bair's show tonight - when, among other brilliant observations, he pointed out this little detail: if it's a 'tax,' than it must constitutionally originate in the House. This monstrosity originated in the Senate, and would be therefore be unconstitutional characterized as a 'tax' (which it isn't anyway). Apparently the Chief Justice was in a such a rush to reach a pre-conceived conclusion, he overlooked this little flaw in his contorted reasoning. What an utter judicial abortion.

Update 6/29/12

I woke up this morning still spittin' mad over this absurd clown circus.

Q: When is a mandate a tax?

A: When the President repeatedly says it isn't to get it through the Senate, the three thousand page bill no one reads uses the word 'm' word, and a single judge bends himself into pseudo-intellectual pretzels to miraculously transform it.

DC has become a dangerously ridiculous parody of governance. Or, perhaps, the final proof of the immutable truth transmitted by my favorite all time political quote: "In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve."

An Open Letter to Chief Justice John Roberts

A ‘tax’ is a levy on voluntary activity. An involuntary directive to do something under penalty of law is a mandate, plain and simple. By your twisted logic a military draft is no draft, it is an 'invitation to serve.' The fact that it is mandatory can be glossed over, right? You just said so. You are an intellectual coward.

You have become the poster child for a much needed constitutional amendment - "Article III, Section 1 shall be amended to limit judicial appointments to two consecutive seven year terms. The second term must be re-nominated by the sitting President and re-confirmed by the sitting Senate."

This amendment is sorely needed since 'Justice' has obviously become a synonym for 'just another kind of politician.'

So, That's It Then ...

Today SCOTUS ruled there are no practical limits to federal power.

Supreme Court upholds individual mandate, ObamaCare survives

Score one for tyranny in the battle of Ameritopia.

The Statists In Black have not only punted in this act of judicial cowardice, they have in fact forfeited their very purpose in our original constitutional system. Having ruled the government has the power to universally mandate something, why wouldn't it have the power to universally mandate anything? So, why even have judicial review of anything at all? Tyranny. Period. End of sentence.

==

It is now up to We The People to use what remains of the constitutional system to repair the damage inflicted upon the republic by this tyrannical ruling.

Are you listening Mittens? Establishment GOP? Repeal *must* be a central campaign theme. Repeal *must* be legislated on day one of the next congressional session, and signed on Inauguration day.

Meanwhile, get some ambitious intern working on Amendment 28 to the constitution - "Congress shall make no law universally mandating the purchase or production of any product or service." Start winding it through the states by next week. Do your job. By my lights 1994-1995 was the last time you did. That's a long time for ceding the field to the statists.

Weekly Status Report

Astute readers of this blog have surely noticed the rate of postings here has dramatically declined during this month of June 2012.  There are several factors at play.

First, there is the professional dimension.  I have been nominated by my boss for two project rescues in a row.  I’ve been doing some big cat herding lately for pay, which means the pro bono blogging needed to take a back seat.

The first rescue is a classic case of a junior Project Manager (the one I replaced) following the form of the administrative process and exercising zero leadership.  Throw in a notoriously difficult executive stakeholder he lacked the chops to go toe-to-toe with, and overworked developers hiding under their desks as a survival response … and people were beginning to notice he couldn’t even baseline a schedule anybody could trust.  The schedule is now base-lined and under my change management control.  The executive stakeholder is sure to continue to be a pain in the a$$ - it’s who she is - but we understand each other now.  I have the attention of the developers, and visible work product is now being created. 

The most interesting relationship on this one looks like it will be with the customer relationship manager.  She’s one of those high-strung obsessive compulsives who likes to tell people what to do in minute detail.  For example, on Friday I had no choice but to put an end to an extended email thread with this: “How many ways are there to say something was written, will be reviewed, and then approved?  Point of diminishing returns reached. J.”  We’re working together as a team just fine so far.

The root cause for the second rescue is the complete opposite.  It was driven into the ground by a know-it-all senior engineer that communicated nothing to no one before unveiling what she assumed was a production ready system to the entire enterprise.  Needless to say … a highly visible crash and burn was the result.  I had the kickoff meeting for the restart this past Friday, to assert my dominance over a managed iterative delivery process.  The key stakeholders are meeting with me on Monday to elaborate the scope for delivery iteration 1.

The interesting twist on this one is my boss is a key stakeholder, another is his political rival, who oversaw the disaster, and the executive stakeholder is boss to both of them.  Should be loads of fun.

==

My personal life has also required a good deal of attention to detail lately.  This is not the space to go into further detail. 

So, that’s it … the report from the brick and mortar world; the oxygen, carbon dioxide, and H2O world; explaining the blog’s diminished pace for delivering the conservative rants my loyal readership has enjoyed since December 2009.

==

But, even with these real world considerations, the plain  fact is the need for this blog’s mission – “Because the only good Progressive is a failed Progressive” – is disappearing before our very eyes.  By this standard, the Empty Suit Known as Barack Hussein Obama is on a rocket slide toward becoming the best Progressive ever.

The economy still sucks and even gives signs of turning downward again.  This condition is due to the Progressive and Keynesian policy program inflicted upon the republic by the Alinskyite Socialist in the White House:  tax, spend, borrow, and zealously regulate.  When these policies are reversed, by his removal from office, an economic boom will be touched off as trillions of spooked investment dollars currently on the sidelines come roaring back into the economy at large.

Iran’s nuclear weapons program continues apace, due to Barry’s typically defeatist and inert Progressive approach to foreign affairs.  Lucky for western civilization Israel is under management that has no delusions about the need to defend itself.  If and when Israel does what it needs to do, this will not be good political news for the Empty Suit that Began His Worldwide Apology Tour with His Islamic Appeasement Speech in Cairo.

Speaking of Cairo, and naïve Progressive notions about the world at large, the so-called Egyptian ‘Arab Spring’ has resulted in the election of a President beholden to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB).  That’s not the Islamic Shriners, by the way … more like the Islamic MS13.  IMHO, it is fortunate for western civilization that the professional Egyptian Army, very Americanized due to close military-to-military relations for decades, has assumed the powers of the dissolved parliament that was also MB dominated after popular elections.  If the MB wins this power struggle with the Army brass, Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel will be worthless, and there will likely be war in the Sinai desert.  We need new management in DC willing to back the Egyptian Army for the cause of peace.

Returning back to the domestic scene, the #OccupyWhatever mob, behind whom Barry foolishly threw his prestige and sympathy, has reached the stage of terminal irrelevance.  Despite the corrupt and biased liberal media’s best efforts, the #OccupyWhatever mob shall be accurately recorded by history as not much more than a garden variety youth gang crime wave.  Unofficially funded by the Democrat party, that is. 

==

Well, you get the picture … Jimmy Carter writ large, for those of you old enough to remember that national disaster - with a side of Saul Alinksy for an extra kick.  Botton line: there is not a snowball’s chance in hell Barry gets re-elected.  Part 26 of the “Newton’s Three Law’s” series will explain further.  LAS has been collecting links to collate into Part 26.  It’s not hard.  All I have to do is browse my way down my blog roll and the myriad of epic failures attributable to the Progressive in the White House jump out at me, as does the growing awareness of the American public, despite the mass hoodwinking being attempted by the corrupt and biased liberal media.

I twice abandoned this month a Jack Wiley Dithers piece, lacking the capacity to fully draft and edit it.  Earlier in the month, when the Campaigner-In-Chief was jetting off on Air Force One to west coast fundraisers while ignoring the D-Day anniversary, I had an idea for a desperate private campaign meeting on the airplane captured by a JWD operative … a flight attendant plant brought on to the JWD payroll for her … ahem .. unique assets.  Later in the month the idea morphed into a long string of desperate campaign conservations captured by a recording device injected into Barry’s favorite basketball … delayed by tedious editing required to remove all the background noise … you know, with all the dribbling.

Try to hang on a little while longer patriots, adult supervision will be coming back to DC soon.

Update 6/27/2012

The old conservative standby, American Spectator, has an excellent blog posting today fleshing out the adult view of conditions in Egypt.

An Intersection ...

So, I was rambling down the Schieffer Blog Roll as I sometimes do, and I came across the Backyard Conservative possibly predicting negative job growth in the June report.

Holy Instant Chaos, Batman!

At the very same moment, my personal favorite cover of Dylan's 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' - Zevon's - was being piped into my ears by my Pandora radio feed.

It fit for me. Just for today.



Update 6/20/12

Saving today's "Post By Somebody Else" feature for the historical archive ...

A Post By Someone Else, Randomly Selected By Your Humble Editor ...



Is the US bleeding jobs again?
Rick Moran

Bottom line: "The weakness in this report, particularly in the job openings figure, serves as a reminder that the labor market remains far from healthy."

Recall that net new job growth was 77,000 in April and 69,000 in May. But without private sector gains, those numbers would be negative. So if private-sector job growth is weakening, as the JOLT report suggests, not only might those April and May numbers be revised lower, but June might come in negative. (Oh, and don't forget the rise in jobless claims.)

Not only would that news be bad for U.S. workers, but it would be a political bombshell that would dominate the economic narrative for the next month.

The whole enchilada ...

LAS comment: If official jobs reports go negative, you ain't seen nothin' yet from the Demagogue-In-Chief. The Empty Suit's desperation to bitterly cling to power will bring mayhem and sorrow to the republic.

==

Throw in Eric "My People" Holder continuing to stonewall Congress on the Fast and Furious scandal (now with Barry sticking his nose into the fray - bad move for the Empty Suit's 'plausibile deniability'), and ObamaCare on the ropes ... and Newton Part 26 is literally writing itself.

Aye, yii, yii, yiiii, I am the Barry Bandito.

Charles Krauthammer has his soap box with its millions of viewers to decry the Lawless President ... I have my staff cartoonist.



Meanwhile, the Pundies ably cover this latest outrage from the Lawless President.

Of course, this isn't the first time we have observed the Lawless President shredding the constitution, and it certainly won't be the last if my republic buys the Faustian bargain offered by the petty little tyrant. Memo to Undocumented Democrats: what this year's Empty Suit can giveth, next year's Empty Suit can taketh away.

Update 6/18/2012

Time for a quick rant. Today, as is often the case in my professional life, I have occasion to work in close proximity to a sizable number of legal immigrants from India and Pakistan. (And strangely enough, the Indian and Pakistani ex patriates always seem to get along just fine in the gentile surroundings of an American office space. But I digress.)

If people on the other side of the globe can figure out how to acquire legal employment here, then I have no sympathies for scoff laws who share a physical border. This is nothing but an election year pander from a lawless demagogue to a lawless voting constituency.

Demotivational Demagogue-In-Chief

Really, this is becoming embarrassing for everyone.

Update 6/15/12

The Empty Suit himself, or maybe his teleprompter, or maybe some other dopey hopenchanger campaign proxy on his behalf; sent out a terse fundraising email with *no subject* this morning.

The dead on sign of a campaign in a state of desperation and chaos. It's too bad there's no "recall" key on the Intertubes for this sort of embarrassment.

Democrat Circular Firing Squad (June 2012 Edition)

Graphic dredged up from the Newton's Three Laws (Part 7) post, and updated for the current state of affairs inside the Donkey Party. Click to embiggen.



Remember when we thought the GOP convention was going to be the wild one? Seems like a million years ago already. As usual, it will be the Donkey Party that comes through with maximum entertainment value.

Update 6/11/12

More examples of a self-imposed publishing deadline diminishing the quality of the final work product.

Example 1: "Resurrected" and "refurbished" would have been better phrasing than "dredged up" and "updated" for the LAS blogging character.

Example 2: The Blinky Pelosi speech bubble should have been "Unconstitutional? Are you serious?" in honor of her infamous and flippant 2009 response to a reporter's question on ObamaCare.



Example 3: I should have found a way to include Richard Trumka and Andrew Stern as symbols of dinosaur union hackery in the wake of the Wisconsin recall vote. So many crazy and corrupt Lefties, so little blog space.

But I still give myself a good solid B-plus!

Newton's Three Laws (Part 25)

Yes, I know I implied Part 24 might be the last of the Newtonian F=M*A series - but you could say I've had a change of heart (or, stated differently, a "recall" of the cardiac organ). I won't be as expansive or thorough as I was in 2010 and 2011 with this series - when I chronicled virtually every important detail of the buildup to the death of American Progressivism. Instead, going "forward" (stupidest campaign slogan ever), I'll reserve the use of this title for the plainly obvious seismic events leading to the final nail in the American Progressive coffin that will be "Shellacking II" on November 6th of 2012.

This is such a time. Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin has slayed the public sector union dragon in epic teutonic battle. Part 25 ... tailor made.

Of course, I can't guarantee I'll really be in the mood for pro bono blogging when these times roll around. This is such a time. I will therefore be brief, and rely heavily on links.

Stephen F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard explains just why Walker won. Simple ... he got the job done. I've heard much pseudo-intellectual analysis around how and why Walker's 2012 margin of victory was greater than his 2010 margin of victory. It's not hard to understand. In 2010, the voters saw a crisis and took a chance on a guy who presented plausible plans for solutions. By 2012 his plans were manifestly working. That's it.

Hack Wilson of Hack Wilson catalogs the Left entering its terminal state of denial.

Hyscience links to Charlie Spiering at the Washington Examiner to hone in on the reaction at one particular hot bed of Leftist lunacy - MSNBC.

Next up for Newtonian collisions are the Supreme Court decisions on ObamaCare and Arizona SB 1070. Team Obama has a losing record in that particular body.

Memo to Lefties ... Bam!

Update 6/7/12

Also in the Newtonian 2012 queue ... holding Eric "My People" Holder accountable for the Fast and Furious cover up.

Update 6/8/12

The great Charles Krauthammer puts it all in full historical perspective. I forgive him for apparently shamelessly lifting the Icarus imagery from the 'Stick a Fork in Him, He's Done' post, immediately below. ;)

Stick a Fork in Him, He’s Done

I recall Gorilla Monsoon using this stock phrase a lot in the eighties, when he announced for the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). Monsoon was straight man to Bobby “The Brain” Heenan (aka “The Weasel”) in what was really a LOL wrestling commentary comedy team at the time.

Here’s a taste:



Anyway, Monsoon, while calling a match, would often say ‘stick a fork in him, he’s done!’ – especially when a favored superstar would put away a jobber opponent with a signature move. This phrase was awakened from the deep recesses of my mind when I applied Friday’s dismal jobs report to the electoral future for the Empty Suit Known as Barack Hussein Obama.

I have a mental image of the realities of market economics body splashing into Barry O’Bama from the top rope as Heenan (always favoring the ‘heel’ in ring match ups by design) yells ‘oh no!’ and Monsoon gives us his charcoal grilling related cliché.

==

As we all know, since James “The Crazy Cajun” (that would be his pro wrestling persona) Carville told us in 1992, ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ when it comes to a sitting President’s re-election fortunes.

Well, the economy sucks. It sucks due to Barack Hussein Obama’s policies.

BHO is a dyed-in-the-wool statist who believes the state is the sole source of wisdom, wealth and well-being. His hard Left ideology fundamentally holds individuals, private institutions (i.e. institutions not under the state’s thumb), and the free market in contempt. This ideology assumes all of you are too stupid and too selfish to live a properly ordered life without the state dictating and mandating even the tiniest aspects of how you lead it. Mayor Nanny Bloomberg and his war on soft drinks in servings larger than 16 ounces is but one recent example.

==

BHO took this ideology into office flying high on Icarus-like wings given to him by the republic’s bout with temporary insanity over the empty slogan ‘Hope and Change’. The hype only encouraged the inexperienced narcissist to tack hard left, too close to the sun if you will, and the result is now he is nothing more historically than yet another cautionary tale about the folly of statist economics. He and his corrupt gang of American Progressives join the Soviets, Maoists, Euro Zone Socialists, and others, as prime examples of how command driven cradle-to-grave nanny state economies inevitably spread the most misery to the largest number of people.

==

This blog project set out in December 2009 to make the case against this ideology – you know, “Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive.” 245 posts later (counting this one), by far the most read post, according to Google Analytics, was posted August 27, 2011 – “In a Democracy, the People Get the Government They Deserve.” It’s one the better examples of the quirky, intentionally humorous (in a sarcastic way), intentionally Obama-mocking (in an intentionally Alinskyite way), literary style I developed here. I especially like the concluding visual of the ‘Deserve’ post, as a pithy statement of where we’ve come since the last Presidential election. It is an image of somebody else’s bumper sticker with the statement “If you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove you are not racist, you’ll have to vote for someone else in 2012 to prove you’re not an idiot.”

But the best LAS post to explain why the economy still sucks this far into BHO’s so-called recovery is “Stuck on Keynesian Stupid” – posted here on May 11, 2011. The following excerpt is the meat of the matter.

Keynesian economics is a top down, centrally managed, command driven, theory that assumes "experts" can direct capital where it is most needed in a complex market system. Hayek’s competing framework is a bottom up model based on the idea that trusting individuals to make independent decisions in their own self-interest produces the most good for the greatest number of people.

According the macro-economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, the $862 Billion stimulus package that was BHO’s first significant act should have had the US economy humming along beautifully by now. According to the theory, public “experts” pumping huge amounts of public cash into the private economy revitalizes the private economy - and BHO's stimulus was the biggest money pump in human history.

It didn’t work in the Great Depression of the 1930’s, it didn’t work for Japan in the 1990’s, and it’s not working now. The reason it never works is the false premise that government money pumped into the private economy is somehow “new” to the economy. A moment’s reflection exposes the fallaciousness of this premise. Governments only have two ways to raise revenue: (1) print new paper money, which is not actually new wealth, and is therefore inflationary (unless interest rates are artificially held down - which is the building stress fracture in US monetary policy right now), or (2) tax existing wealth out the private economy – which merely redistributes wealth from one set of private hands to another, with overhead built into the transfer to fund the government intervention itself. Governments simply produce no new wealth, ever.

Hayek, on the other hand, based his macroeconomic theories on the far more subtle notion of spontaneous order. That is, for my purposes here, the complex system of exchange between self-interested consumers and producers does something truly magical – it actually creates new wealth in the economic system merely via the exercise of economic activity. Every time a producer supplies a valuable product or service to a consumer, the fair market value the consumer provides back in exchange is economic activity. When government policy encourages and rewards economic activity, over time it results in measurable economic growth, which is good to one degree or another for everyone.

I then went on, in a spasm of pure genius, to set up a direct measurement of real world results comparing and contrasting the economic performance of the Leftist Obama with the man who won the Cold War without firing a shot.

It turns out our 40th President – Ronald Reagan - implemented policies inspired by the Hayek school of thought. It also turns out Mr. Reagan “inherited” a deep recession very similar to the one Mr. Obama told us at the beginning of his term he would fix with his Keynesian Stimulus package.

The Wall Street Journal recently compared the growth in GDP during the two officially measured “recoveries,” and found Messrs. Keynes and Obama to be lagging Messrs. Hayek and Reagan considerably. I took the Journal’s numbers, covering the first seven quarters of official “recovery,” and captured them in a very sophisticated charting system known as MS Excel. Here’s the chart for quarters one through seven. (I think I’ll bring this chart back, updated, each quarter moving forward. The trend will not change, trust me on that.)

==

Here’s the updated chart, folks. Hint: Longer is better.



BHO and His Corrupt Gang of Progressives are Keynesian statists through and through. These plainly measurable results mean nothing to them. They are sooooooooo stuck on Keynesian stupid their only policy proposals seem to be stuff like tax credits for businesses to hire for the mere sake of hiring and “targeted infrastructure” spending.

AYFKM?

The first proposal belies a complete lack of understanding of how the market economy works. There is no tax break big enough to convince any business to hire someone to sit on their hands. Businesses hire when they grow, and a legitimate internal demand for help develops. When such need develops, there is no tax break small enough to deter the hiring transaction. The employee that costs more than he or she creates in revenue has a label – “layoff” - unless they’ve scored a public sector union gub’ment position of course, at least up until now (oblique reference to tomorrow’s historic Wisconsin recall referendum).

The infrastructure thing is so LOL funny it’s sad. The only beneficiaries are a narrow band of specially trained, union connected, construction laborers. Trust me, they are already busy. Every f*ck*in exit on the DC Beltway has a construction project that never seems to finish, snarling traffic like only Communists could. The unions really screwed up when they became a giant pain in the a$$ for everybody else.

One more time, just to make sure it sinks in …



Footnote

The staff cartoonist has been given his assignment.

Adventures on YouTube #1

Am I the only one seeing a resemblance to Greta Van Susteren from the neck up?