Suppose you are a parent.  You discover your 5 year old son playing with a live hand grenade.  What would you do?  Would you rush in and try to take it away, risking a struggle that could set off the hand grenade?  I doubt it.  Most parents would try to bribe the child into handing them the hand grenade, as gently as possible.  They might even offer him some ice cream.  They would do whatever it takes, because they cannot risk having him set off the grenade.  When you are the adult it is your duty to protect your child against himself.  It is also your job to make sure the child doesn’t hurt anyone else.  Then, after the child was safe, and you make sure it never happens again.

Now imagine you are John Boehner.  The President of the United States is a child playing with the fiscal cliff hand grenade.  He is giggling and is prepared to blow up the nation’s economy as long as he can blame Republicans.  Speaker Boehner realizes that he is the only adult in the room.  So, he agrees to a plan to bribe the President into giving up the fiscal cliff grenade by increasing taxes on people earning more than $400k per year.  It is the least expensive bribe available.  The President jumps up and down in glee in celebration of his great victory and jets off to Hawaii to celebrate.

Speaker Boehner reports back to his caucus.  They ask him why he gave in to such childish behavior.  Boehner replies that saving the country is more important than winning a political battle.  But, Boehner also reports that he has learned his lesson.  He will never again try to negotiate with someone so childish and irresponsible.  Instead, he will just make sure the President never gets another fiscal cliff grenade.

So, while President Obama is playing golf and swimming in Hawaii, Republicans in congress are working on a plan to take away his power to hold the economy hostage.  That is the problem with people who behave childishly and irresponsibly.  Eventually, the adults figure out a way to regain control.

After Pearl Harbor, Admiral Yamato realized that while he had won a great victory, he had not destroyed America’s ability to fight.  He is quoted as saying:  “I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled her with a terrible resolve.”

President Obama thinks he has destroyed the House of Representatives and stripped it of power.  He now thinks he can do whatever he wants.  But, I think his childish spiking of the football has only awakened a sleeping giant and he is about to deal with a very determined opponent.  Speaker Boehner remains in power today only because he was able to convince the House that he was ready, willing and able to fight back.

Any questions?

TDM

So, here’s the plan.  The incompetent fools in Washington, who created a huge mess, are reduced to gathering in a circle pointing fingers at each other.  There is no real fiscal cliff, just an artificial deadline developed by people who finally admitted that they are incapable of intelligent decision making without a life changing crisis to prod them into action.  So they tried to create their own life changing crisis, but botched that too, because this clearly wasn’t frightening enough to do the job.

The plan for the New Year is for the same clowns who brought us this nightmare to work feverishly into the night to figure out a way to fix the problems they created.  I am not overly optimistic about the process.

So here’s my plan.  Let sign a petition preventing the House or the Senate from passing any legislation for the next twelve months.  Let’s add a provision preventing President Obama from issuing any executive orders, unless we are attacked, for the next twelve months.  Finally, let’s give the Supreme Court a twelve month vacation.  If we can just prevent congress and the President from trying to fix problems themselves, I think we have a real shot.  My hunch is that the really smart people, none of whom live anywhere near Washington DC, will figure this out and get us back on track.

Ronald Reagan pointed this out in his Inaugural Address on January 20, 1981:

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.

This is just as true today as it was in 1981.

The link to the petition is below:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/stop12312012

TDM

TWAS THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS

AND ALL THROUGH THE LAND

PEOPLE WERE WONDERING

WHERE WAS THE PLAN?

THE FISCAL CLIFF LOOMS

IT IS SO PLAIN TO SEE

BUT THAT DOESN’T MATTER

TO FOLKS FROM DC.

OBAMA WANTS TAXES

AND SPENDING GALORE

BUT HOUSE SPEAK BOEHNER

STILL CONTROLS THE FLOOR.

AND GOP MEMBERS

CAN’T TAKE IT NO MORE

SO THEY ROSE UP TOGETHER

AND WITH A LOUD ROAR

SAID LISTEN OBAMA

AND HARRY REID TOO

IF YOU WANT TO FIX THIS

HERE’S WHAT YOU MUST DO!

THERE’LL BE NO MORE TAXES

UNTIL SPENDING IS CUT

THE SOLUTION IS EASY

JUST GET OFF YOUR BUTT!

WHERE’S YOUR PLAN, MR PRESIDENT

WE’RE WAITING TO HEAR

YOU BETTER HAVE  SOMETHING

IT’S AMOST NEXT YEAR!

YOU CAN’T SPEND MORE MONEY

UNLESS WE AGREE

SO TALK ALL YOU WANT

BUT NO SPENDING YOU’LL SEE

THIS TIME OUR PARTY

WON’T PLAY YOUR GAME

THE PEOPLE WANT ANSWERS

THEY’LL KNOW WHO TO BLAME!

ITS TIME TO MAN UP

AND SHOW US YOUR STUFF

WE’RE TIRED OF THE NONSENSE

WE’VE HAD QUITE ENOUGH!

YOU GOT WHAT YOU WANTED

YOU ARE THE MAN

SO PLEASE, MR PRESIDENT

WHAT IS YOUR PLAN?

On December 22, 1944, the 101^st Airborne was surrounded by German troops in Bastogne.  A German surrender party, showed up carrying a white flag.  The message was as follows:

To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.

The fortune of war is changing. This time the U.S.A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armored units. More German armored units have crossed the river Our near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and reached St. Hubert by passing through Hompre-Sibret-Tillet. Libramont is in German hands.

There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note.

If this proposal should be rejected one German Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne. The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hours’ term.

All the serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well known American humanity.

The German Commander

General Anthony McAuliffe responded with the following reply:

“To the German Commander, ‘Nuts!’ The American Commander”

The 101^st Airborne didn’t surrender then and they didn’t surrender later.  The weather started to clear and on December 23, Allied air force units were finally able to attack and also drop desperately needed supplies of medicine, food, blankets, ammunition and even volunteer surgeons who flew in by military glider.  On December26, Patton’s Third Army arrived ending the siege.

Last night, the Republicans in the House of Representatives sent a similar message to Speaker Boehner and President Barack Obama.  They said “Nuts.”  They weren’t sent to congress to surrender on their core principles.  It is ironic that this happened almost exactly 68 years after the siege of Bastogne.  Obviously, there is no comparison with the incredible courage of the 101^st Airborne standing up to the German Army and House Republicans standing up to President Obama, but it may be an equally important moment in defending our country.

To those brave men and women who ran for congress with a vow to stand up for their core principles we all owe a debt of gratitude.  More importantly, we owe them our support.  For the first time, in a very long time, real leaders have surfaced and they said “Nuts” to more taxes.  They said “Nuts” to more spending and they said  “Nuts” to business as usual.  They will pay a severe price, in the short run for this decision.  They will be painted as naive and irresponsible fools who put politics above principle.  Republicans in the House will get the majority of the blame for going over the fiscal cliff.  They will also be assaulted and insulted by RINOs in their own party who believe that the courage to compromise is the highest form of valor.  But ultimately, I think that if they stay the course, they are the ones who win, and by winning they will change history.  Even those who disagree are ultimately impressed with those who stand up for what they believe.   Real leadership and courage is never out of style.

TDM

For weeks we have been watching Speaker of the House John Boehner negotiate with President Obama to no effect.  It seems like every day Boehner caved a little more.  It was becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between his plan and the most liberal Democratic proposal.  But yesterday, John Boehner was on his game.  He called a press conference and made the following statement:

Tomorrow, the House will pass legislation to make permanent tax relief for nearly every American,” Boehner said. “Then the president will have a decision to make. He can call on the Senate Democrats to pass that bill or he can be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history.”

The Republican proposal will raise taxes on only people whose income is above $1 million.  The Bush tax rates continue for everyone else.  He proposed no spending cuts.  No deal on the debt limit.  No new stimulus spending.  The only thing being proposed is what Obama said was his principle objective:  increasing taxes on the rich.  It is identical to what Nancy Pelosi proposed last year.  Then he challenged the President to either sign that bill or let the Bush tax cuts expire.  Suddenly, the only person in a position to stop us from going over the fiscal cliff is the President of the United States.  The only action he is required to do is sign a bill doing exactly what he proposed in the first place.  

Boehner sure looks like a man who is fed up.   It is going to be extremely difficult for President Obama to veto that bill.  It is also going to be difficult for Harry Reid to block that bill.  This is a brilliant political move.  Boehner called the President’s bluff.

Boehner just put Obama between a rock and a hard place.  I don’t know if we got here because of a brilliant strategy on the part of John Boehner, or mere incompetence on the part of the President.  Perhaps it doesn’t even matter.  What matters is that John Boehner just made the President an offer he can’t afford to turn down.  It’s a beautiful thing.

TDM

Most people remember Kenneth Starr as the man who investigated Bill Clinton with regard to the Monica Lewinsky fiasco.  They conveniently ignore the other things that Starr investigated.  In order to understand Hillary, you need to look at her record through the Hubbell telescope.

Following is the link to the Wikipedia.org article on Webster Hubbell.  This appears to be consistent with other reports about him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster_Hubbell

I will summarize some of the “interesting facts” about Mr. Hubbell.

Webster Hubbell was a close friend of the Clintons.  He was a partner in the Rose Law firm that also included Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster.  He was appointed by Bill Clinton to be the Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court.  He was later appointed to Associate Attorney General.  Hubble was also one of the key people responsible for vetting Clinton Cabinet appointments.

In December, 1994, Hubbell pled guilty to federal mail fraud and tax evasion charges in connection with his position as partner of the Rose Law firm.  The same firm which had Vince Foster and Hillary Clinton as partners. In March, 1995, he was sentenced to 21 months in prison.  As part of his guilty plea, Hubble signed an immunity agreement with independent counsel Kenneth Starr in exchange for his cooperation in the Whitewater Investigation.

During the 16 months after Hubble resigned, he received more than $450,000 in consulting fees from 17 consulting contracts.  An amazing coincidence!  The independent counsel found that Hubble did little or no work for the consulting fees paid under these contracts but not find sufficient evidence to conclude that the money was intended to influence Hubbell’s testimony with regard to Whitewater.

Part of Hubbell’s plea deal was that he would testify before a grand jury regarding the production of 11 categories of documents regarding Whitewater.  Instead, Hubbell invoked the Fifth Amendment.  Ultimately he did release some documents and the result was a second indictment.  Hubbell appealed to the Supreme Court and won.  The second indictment was thrown out.

On November 14, 1998, Hubbell was indicted a third time for fraud and lying to the House Banking Committee and federal banking regulators.  On June 30, 1999, he entered a new plea agreement with Kenneth Starr, pleading guilty to two charges.

On May 22, 1998, the New York Times released excerpts from the tapes of Webster Hubbell’s prison phone conversations from 1996.  While you read these, you will note frequent references to the 1996 Presidential election:

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/02/us/excerpts-from-the-tapes-of-webster-hubbell-s-prison-phone-conversations.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Ironically, Hillary gets heat from the far left and the far right.  The following link to Progressive review gives an example.  I could easily provide numerous conservative blogs with similar information:

http://prorev.com/legacy.htm

This is a lot of smoke if there is no fire.  Obviously the media knew all about this, and they knew it stunk to high heaven.  Yet they did nothing.  Now Hillary Clinton is mysteriously ill, just when it was time to answer some hard questions, under oath, with regard to Libya.  Once again, an amazing coincidence!  Once again, the main stream media will probably yawn and keep promoting Hillary as the most popular and respected politician in the world.  I suspect most people know very little about Hillary’s personal history.  But if you look at her record through the Hubble Telescope, the picture becomes a lot clearer.

TDM

Eventually, the truth overwhelms all spin.  My dog, Molly, is not a climate scientist.  She never made it that far in school and her research skills are pretty spotty.  But Molly figured out something that the global warming crowd seemed to miss.  It is warmer in the sun.  Molly follows the sun around our house, and where ever there is sunlight, she goes and lays there to get a little warmer.  Molly figured out that it is warmer when the sun shines.

There is a new article explaining that “some” scientist have now learned that sun impacts our global temperature more than carbon dioxide:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100194166/man-made-global-warming-even-the-ipcc-admits-the-jig-is-up/

Of course this is after the global warming crowd spent BILLIONS trying to convince themselves it was CO2.  Since CO2 is about .04% of our atmosphere, I have always been more than a little sceptical.  This is like believing that if you put a dime on a football field, it will slant the field in your direction.

At a time when we desperately need to cut spending in Washington, I have a simple suggestion.  Let’s all recognize the obvious fact that it gets warmer when the sun shines and refuse to spend one more dime studying global warming.  If the government needs more research, I will “loan”them Molly.  They can watch her on any day when the sun shines and she will show them the way.

Here comes the sun!

TDM

The wise voters of Washington State voted to legalize marijuana.  The law went into effect last Thursday at midnight.  There were the predictable news reports of people blissfully smoking away.   It is now legal, in Washington State, to possess up to an ounce of useable marijuana, 16 ounces of marijuana infused product in solid form or 72 ounces of marijuana infused product in liquid form.  The state intends to regulate and TAX the sale of marijuana.  The tax will be used to fund substance-abuse prevention, research education and health care.   It seems as though they are wisely trying to prefund the predictable problems created by encouraging more pot smoking.

In addition, laws prohibiting driving under the influence will be amended to include maximum thresholds for THD blood concentration.  Some activists are concerned because if this is set too low medical marijuana users will be at risk of a DUI charge.  The logic escapes me.  It really doesn’t matter why you are taking a drug.  If it impairs your ability to drive, you shouldn’t drive.  Apparently activists think we should be more tolerant of dangerous drivers if they are smoking pot for a good reason.

Marijuana is still illegal under federal law and subject to federal prosecution.   The federal government does not need the state’s permission to prosecute for a federal crime.  Nice!

It is still illegal to grow your own marijuana in Washington, other than medical marijuana, and it is illegal to sell marijuana to the public because no rules have been established and no licenses have been issued. Technically, it is still illegal to use marijuana publicly, even in Washington State.   So I guess you can smoke pot, in your own home, but only if you don’t purchase it or grow it.  This seems more than a little confusing; but I suspect most marijuana users are used to being confused.  If this makes sense to you, you probably work for CNN who considers this law to be a model for other states to follow.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I suspect that the end result will be pretty similar to the status quo.  All that really happened here is that the state is going to step and compete with drug dealers.  A 25% tax is going to tempt a lot of people to find a way around the problem.  Since marijuana smokers already know how to get the stuff illegally, the black market is already up and running.  In the future drug dealers in Washington State will probably still go to jail, they just will be charged with tax evasion.

Of course Washington State also became the first state to vote to make gay marriage legal on the same day they voted to legalize marijuana.   I, for one, am really sick of all the gay marriage stuff, from both sides.  They can change the definition of marriage, but that won’t change the laws of nature.  It doesn’t take a lot of research to learn that marriage has always been about a man and a woman joining together to create a family.  Children are part of the deal.  That is why it is still illegal in most states to marry if you should not have children.  That is why they used to require blood tests to rule out syphilis before you could get married.  So my message, to both camps, is they can have the word.  Let’s just stop calling marriage, “marriage” and call it something else.  There are several choices:  wedlock or matrimony would be good.  Then, in the end, gay couples get the word, but nothing else changes.  We keep the institution of marriage, they get the word.  Problem solved and we can all move on.

TDM

Jim DeMint is resigning from the U.S. Senate to become President of the Heritage Foundation.  Almost everyone has a strong opinion about this.  Some of the comments are very illuminating.  The following article from the Washington Post is an example:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/06/jim-demint-and-the-death-of-think-tanks

“He’s not known for bridging the worlds between academia and politics, the way Reps. David Price (a former political scientist) or Rush Holt (a former rocket scientist) are.”

(Both Price and Holt are extreme left wing liberal democrats)

A bridge between “academia and politics,” is actually a bridge between nonsense and reality.  Academia is incapable of actually solving problems.  George Bernard Shaw explained this in “Man and Superman.”  He writes about a man who was discouraged because his writing teacher said his novel was hopeless.  The response was:  “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” 

The cultured elite are often too blinded by their own arrogance to recognize true brilliance.  Abraham Lincoln was despised by the intellectuals of his time. When Lincoln was, grudgingly invited to make a few remarks at Gettysburg, he was politely informed that the “Oration” would be delivered by a far more capable man, Edward Everett:  Everett spoke for over two hours with a 13,607 word oration.  A short example follows:

“Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed; — grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy.”^[

Lincoln needed no more than 270 words to give one of the most famous speeches in history.  Few people even know the names of those who considered him to be so inferior.  True brilliance is not in the eloquence of words or the sophistication of academic research.  It rests with the man who figures out what to do and then does it.  The really brilliant man is the one like Ronald Reagan who summed up the cold war in one sentence:  “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War:  We win, they lose.”   Reagan was too busy defeating the Soviet Union to realize that people much smarter than him were trying desperately to explain why this could never work.  .

Our economic problems are not nearly as complex as academia and the Washington Post would have you believe.  They do not require political scientists to develop carefully nuanced and sophisticated programs that strike the perfect balance to keep the world in harmony.  What the academic world fails to understand is that if something is perfectly balanced it doesn’t actually move.  You can’t accomplish anything if you can’t move.

Jim DeMint is no an academic, but he gets it.  There is probably no elected official who understood the core principles of the Tea Party movement better than DeMint.  He had no patience with moderate Republicans and they had little patience with him.  I suspect he has accepted this new position for one obvious reason.  He knows that one of him in the Senate can accomplish very little, but if he can help get conservatives elected all over the country, he can have a major impact on this country.

I hope he is right.  We could use a little more cream DeMint in congress.

TDM

Economists disagree about a lot of things, but there is one basic law of economics that is pretty much the foundation for all others:  People respond to incentives.

We all know that incentives work.  Some incentives are positive, some are negative.  Any parent knows that there are two basic ways to affect children’s behavior.  You either reward them when they do something good, like wash the dishes, or you punish them if they do something bad, like staying out after curfew.

Now it seems like our country is determined to raise taxes on the rich.  The goal is to get more revenue by socking it to the rich, who have more than enough.  If that actually worked, it would appeal even to me.  After all, I certainly don’t qualify as rich.  But the problem is that we are actually taxing success.  Sometimes, when you tax success, the only result is less success.  That appears to have happened in Great Britain.  They raised taxes on millionaires and now they have about half as many millionaires.

Some of them just moved out of England.  Perhaps that explains why so many obnoxious liberals with British accents now live in the U.S.  Others don’t appear to have moved, but they are reporting less income.  It is hard to tell if this is because these millionaires are no longer millionaires or they just stopped declaring income.  Either way, if the intent was to raise more tax revenue, it failed miserably.  England actually lost tax revenue with this brilliant strategy.

Sometimes if you are successful in taxing success, you succeed only in getting less success.

TDM