Obama's Repeated Vacations

Hat tip to Will, at whose site I found the following graphic:



And 2010 hasn't yet ended.

How many vacations do the Obamas need? Sheesh.

Well, at least while Obama is on vacation, perhaps we won't have to hear from him as Scolder-In-Chief. I, for one, am getting mighty weary of the tone he often uses when he speaks. He is supposed to be our elected public servant.

Now, about our national debt (also from Will's site):

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Quote Of The Day

From this thread, at Infidel Bloggers Alliance, a comment by SamenoKami, upon the news that the United States Senate voted to extend unemployment benefits:

"Insurance is paid by the employer/employee to cover 26wks of unemployment, after that it's welfare. The gov't is going deeper into debt to pay people's bennies so that money will be put into the economy and people will think that they can get by and get thru this and there will be a better day. Ha! The borrowed money digs the hole deeper and screws us, our children/grand and great grandchildren and guarantees that things will be worse than if the gov't left it alone. We are approaching a point where the interest on the debt will take up all the collected taxes. If/when that happens there will be NO- SS, Medicare, Medicaid, public housing, food stamps, unemployment, etc. etc. They have to keep the game going as long as possible, otherwise it all goes belly up (which it will eventually anyway) and those who were screwed get the tar, feathers and rope and head to DC."

Detailed information about how unemployment benefits work HERE at About.com:US Government Info.

Quite the reality check, huh?

In my view, most Americans right now don't see the train wreck coming. But it IS coming, and The Nanny State cannot save us.

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White House: "Recovery Summer"

(With a hat tip to LA Sunsett for the link below)

From the White House web site, dated June 17, 2010, clearly pandering for votes:

WASHINGTON, DC – The Administration today kicks off “Recovery Summer,” a six-week-long focus on the surge in Recovery Act infrastructure projects that will be underway across the country in the coming months – and the jobs they’ll create well into the fall and through the end of the year. The Recovery Act has already funded tens of thousands of projects and put about 2.5 million Americans to work, but summer 2010 is actually poised to be the most active Recovery Act season yet, with tens of thousands of projects underway across the country that will help to create jobs for American workers and economic growth for businesses, large and small.

Now, there's nothing unusual about such projects shortly before an election. However, the BHO administration is going to try to make all of us so grateful for his profligate spending of our tax dollars that we'll want to fall to our knees and worship him. Just as any other demagogue on a power grab has done.

Meanwhile, the federal government's plan to solve foreclosure problems, a huge part of the present ailing economy, is a dismal failure.

Are Americans smart enough to see through the ruse and sham of "Recovery Summer"?

You can bet your last dollar that BHO will pay more attention to "Recovery Summer" than to the oil-spill crisis and consequent suffering in the Gulf.

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Debt At All Levels

From Roxie of Independence Lost
Household finances are in a similar, sad shape. From this editorial by Mortimer Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report:

Yes, there are weapons of mass destruction. They are "financial weapons of mass destruction," to quote the famous investor Warren Buffett as he surveyed the morning-after wreckage of the subprime mortgage lending crisis. The continuing destruction can now be called a credit crisis—a significant escalation because credit has been the high-octane fuel powering the American economy for the past half dozen years.

[...]

People and companies are trying to cope with the debt accumulated during several years of profligate lending and spending. The real danger from a credit crunch is that everyone, from banks to corporations to households, may retrench simultaneously.

Read the entire article,"The Credit Crisis Grows," in which Mr. Zuckerman explains the vicious cyle in which our nation is enmeshed.

What remedies can be applied? Mr. Zuckerman opines as follows:

What should our economic policy be? The Federal Reserve must get ahead of the curve. Its priority must be to maintain the viability of the credit system and the flow of credit; our postmodern economy is dependent on an ongoing flow of credit.
A start—and it is no more than that—is the proposed federal effort to help the mortgage industry deal with subprime mortgages....

I have a problem with the idea of bailing out in-trouble home buyers who should have read the fine print on the mortage documents they signed and had the financial wisdom to curtail their spending. Who's going to pick up the tab of this bailout? The banks? Such a move penalized savers by proxy. The government? The government has no money except for what the government takes from the taxpayers' pockets? Yes, I feel sorry for all those whose homes are on the line. But what about those of us who have been following sound economic policies in our financial lives? Does our frugality count for nothing?

A nation cannot continue to run in the red. Neither can a household. Nevertheless, Americans today seem to think that the most basic rules of finance don't apply and turn to the government to solve their problems for them. Mistake — huge mistake.

The time comes for insolvency. Living beyond one's means cannot continue forever. Furthermore, government intervention at the personal level of financial management will only serve to increase taxes and to promote nanny state.

At the end of his editorial, Mr. Zuckerman concludes with the following:

The collapse of values and the risks of the credit squeeze are the worst since the Great Depression. We are going to put the economy's resilience to a severe test.

As I see it, America may fail the test, thus no longer being a world leader in economic power. Then what?

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