Let America Be America Again

American Autumn

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/279534/american-autumn-mark-steyn

...If you don’t like to think of Jobs as a corporate exec (and a famously demanding one at that), think of him as a guy who went to work, and worked hard. There’s no appetite for that among those “occupying” Zuccotti Park. In the old days, the tribunes of the masses demanded an honest wage for honest work. Today, the tribunes of America’s leisured varsity class demand a world that puts “people before profits.” If the specifics of their “program” are somewhat contradictory, the general vibe is consistent: They wish to enjoy an advanced Western lifestyle without earning an advanced Western living. The pampered, elderly children of a fin de civilisation overdeveloped world, they appear to regard life as an unending vacation whose bill never comes due.

Can we have our $2 trillion back?

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/12353758/can-we-have-our-2-trillion-back

Felonious Munk Presents: Stop It B! OBAMA PAY YOUR &*%$#% BILLS

[Video]Gene Simmons: I Take Back Vote for Obama

http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/992233387001/gene-simmons-i-take-back-vote-for-obama/

Oh, To Be a Teacher in Wisconsin

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703408604576164290717724956.html

The showdown in Wisconsin over fringe benefits for public employees boils down to one number: 74.2. That's how many cents the public pays Milwaukee public-school teachers and other employees for retirement and health benefits for every dollar they receive in salary. The corresponding rate for employees of private firms is 24.3 cents.

Gov. Scott Walker's proposal would bring public-employee benefits closer in line with those of workers in the private sector. And to prevent benefits from reaching sky-high levels in the future, he wants to restrict collective-bargaining rights.

The average Milwaukee public-school teacher salary is $56,500, but with benefits the total package is $100,005, according to the manager of financial planning for Milwaukee public schools. When I showed these figures to a friend, she asked me a simple question: "How can fringe benefits be nearly as much as salary?" The answers can be found by unpacking the numbers in the district's budget for this fiscal year...

[Video]Quantitative Easing Explained

Stop Bashing Business, Mr. President

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704361504575552080488297188.html

Although I was glad that you answered a question of mine at the Sept. 20 town-hall meeting you hosted in Washington, D.C., Mr. President, I must say that the event seemed more like a lecture than a dialogue. For more than two years the country has listened to your sharp rhetoric about how American businesses are short-changing workers, fleecing customers, cheating borrowers, and generally "driving the economy into a ditch," to borrow your oft-repeated phrase.

My question to you was why, during a time when investment and dynamism are so critical to our country, was it necessary to vilify the very people who deliver that growth? Instead of offering a straight answer, you informed me that I was part of a "reckless" group that had made "bad decisions" and now required your guidance, if only I'd stop "resisting" it.

I'm sure that kind of argument draws cheers from the partisan faithful. But to my ears it sounded patronizing. Of course, one of the chief conceits of centralized economic planning is that the planners know better than everybody else.

Hating the government finally goes mainstream

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Hating-the-government-finally-goes-mainstream-90852389.html

Three years ago, the Republican establishment piled scorn on the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul.

Today, he is in a statistical tie with President Obama in 2012 polling. His son, an ophthalmologist who has never run for elective office, is well ahead of not only the GOP's handpicked candidate for Senate in Kentucky but also both Democratic contenders -- all statewide officeholders.

What happened? Did America suddenly develop an insatiable appetite for 74-year-old, cranky congressmen from Texas? Is the gold standard catching on?

Paul will not likely be the next president. And his son still faces the most arduous part of his journey as Democrats spend millions to paint him as soft on defense, lax on drug enforcement and too radical on welfare programs.

But there's no doubt that hating the government and the powerful interests that pull Washington's strings has gone from the radical precincts of the Right and Left to the mainstream.

It turns out that watching Goldman Sachs, the United Auto Workers, public employee unions and a raft of other vampires drain the treasury at America's weakest moment in a generation will make a person pretty hacked off.

[Video]Detroit in RUINS!

[Video]Milton Friedman - Greed

"I'm Tired"

Full post (here).

I’m tired of being told that I have to “spread the wealth around” to people who don’t have my work ethic. I’m tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy or stupid to earn it.

I’m tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to “keep people in their homes.” Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I’m willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the leftwing Congresscritters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them—with their own money.

I’m tired of being told how bad America is by leftwing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the religious freedom and women’s rights of Saudi Arabia, the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Gay people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela. Won’t multiculturalism be beautiful?

Are you better off than you were 4 weeks ago?

From a recent anti-"stimulus" protest.

Obama’s State of the Union: The Foreclosures-burg Address

Full post (here).

Four to seven years ago, our fathers scored and brought forth on this continent, some new homes, conceived in stucco, and dedicated to the proposition that all men can get second mortgages.

Now we are engaged in a great economic crisis, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated to overspending -putting in built-in pools - blowing a wad in Vegas- buying way too much crap on eBay, then stepping up to a “C” class - can long endure.

We are met on a great battlefield of this credit crisis. We have come to dedicate a portion of this field, as a final resting place for those who did the right thing; paid their mortgages, lived within their means and gave of their livelihoods, so that jackasses that didn’t put ANY money down, and still spent more than they had, might walk away from their homes scott-free and punk an entire neighborhood of innocent families. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this, until it doesn’t work- and we need to do it again.