If the Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling then there will be a price to be paid for government not operating within its means. None of the GFY 11 budgets are in place so we have the perfect leverage at this time. I would tie the debt ceiling to:

(1) Cancel all the unspent funds left in the Stimulus Bill
(2) Permanently extending all the current tax rates (no need to call them Bush’s tax cuts, they are OUR current tax rates).
(3) Freezing Obamacare for 4 years until we figure out what it really is doing to us – now that we can read the law the Dems passed.
(4) Put all discretionary funding back to 2006 levels.
(5) Establish a panel to go through each element of government and determine what we can live without, what can be privatized and what can be moved to the states.

If the government needs to pile up more debt, then they have to make some serious commitments to We The People.

I have written extensively about the mistakes made by this administration regarding terrorism. One thing Team Obama fears more than anything else is congressional investigations into how so many terrorists made it through our defenses and just barely failed to kill hundreds of innocent people, from the skies over Detroit to Times Square in NY City. Terrorist acts only stopped because of observant citizens and clumsy bomb making.

But today the incompetence of President Obama and AG Holder shines brightly, for all to see:

Is there any better proof that Team Obama’s preferred approach to fight ing terror — through civilian courts — is dangerously misguided than yesterday’s acquittal of one of the 1998 US embassy bombers on all but one of 285 charges?

Ahmed Ghailani, the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be tried in a civilian court, was convicted of only a single count of conspiracy to destroy government property and buildings using explosives.

Murder? No.

Terrorism? No.

He was up to his ears in a plot that took 224 lives, and he’s not a terrorist?

Preposterous.

One of the reasons Americans are getting a free sexual assault at airports these days is because Obama, Holder and Brennan dialed back our warning systems and took their eyes off our enemies. They naively assumed being political correct was better than being vigilant. Because they relaxed our defenses, going so far as to ban the terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘war on terror’, we have are now facing an increased threat because our enemies sense the weakness in our current leaders.

Now that Holder has proven how dumb he really is, it is time he retire – before someone gets killed.

Update: While reading Jennifer Rubin’s and Rep Peter King’s take on this travesty I had a sad epiphany:

In a case where Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was facing 285 criminal counts, including hundreds of murder charges, and where Attorney General Eric Holder assured us that ‘failure is not an option,’ the jury found him guilty on only one count and acquitted him of all other counts including every murder charge.

It dawned on me why Holder assumed he could use the court system to bring justice – he thought the American people sitting on juries would ignore the rule of law, especially on evidence, and rule the man guilty as charged no matter what! Liberals hate rules and break them all the time (it comes from their lazy intellects). To them rules are what rulers break due to their vaunted status.

I don’t think it ever occurred to Holder that a jury of citizens would follow the rule of law to the ‘T’, and ignore all information not presented as valid evidence in the courtroom. Holder really thought Americans would simply ignore the law and make a mockery of our court system and rule this obvious mass murderer guilty.

What does that say about the man charged to enforce this nation’s laws?

Have begun a new project so blogging will be lighter than it has been the last month or so. Today just wanted to share some dots that, when connected, make an interesting picture for the Democrats.

First, Sean Trende at RCP captures true scope of the Democrats’ debacle in the election.

As you can see, the Congressional Democrats were hit hardest in Appalachian and Deep South districts in 2010. This has been widely reported. But note that Democrats in these areas are also running well behind their 2002 and 2004 showings here. These Democrats were immune to any anti-Obama sentiment in 2008; indeed Deep South Democrats got a bit of a boost from the increased African American turnout produced by the Obama candidacy. But now that we’ve seen Democratic weakness at the Presidential level seep thoroughly into statewide and congressional tickets in these segments, we can probably conclude that these voters are lost to the Democrats, at least in the short-to-medium term.

Less well reported is the weakening of the Democratic coalition in suburban and working class areas of the country. These are areas that weren’t particularly warm to Bush-style Republicans, and had been moving toward the Democratic Party (in the case of working class voters, moving back toward the Democratic Party) since the 1992 election. That movement seems to have stalled, and even reversed.

Democrats in working class districts had their worst showing all decade – perhaps ever.

They are losing ground across the board. And in response to this debacle, they have decided to continue on this self destructive path by electing the same old, tired liberal leaders. If anyone could save the GOP, it was the liberal democrats.

The future of Democrat liberal policies are clearly evident in California – the model of liberal economic destruction:

America’s strapped states and cities took another hit Wednesday, with California seeing tepid demand for its latest bond sale and other governments pulling about $700 million worth of borrowing deals this week as investors continued stepping away from the municipal bond market.

The normally staid market has grown volatile the past week, posting its sharpest selloff in nearly two years, as investors demand higher interest rates to buy paper issued by states, cities and counties to finance their operations. Localities have been hammered by a drop in tax revenue amid the downturn—and unlike the federal government, most are barred constitutionally from running deficits.

The era of big, bloated and wasteful government is over. As they say, follow the money to see where the new trend will be. And if you follow the money regarding global warming, you find the one year anniversary of Climategate also marks the death of the US carbon trading exchange, a nice little bit of snake oil that was going to rake in billions of dollars for Gore and Obama cronies:

Nothing more poignantly reflects the collapse of the great global warming scare than the decision of the Chicago Carbon Exchange, the largest in the world, to stop trading in “carbon” – buying and selling the right of businesses to continue emitting CO2.

A few years back, when the climate scare was still at its height, and it seemed the world might agree the Copenhagen Treaty and the US Congress might pass a “cap and trade” bill, it was claimed that the Chicago Exchange would be at the centre of a global market worth $10 trillion a year, and that “carbon” would be among the most valuable commodities on earth, worth more per ton than most metals. Today, after the collapse of Copenhagen and the cap and trade bill, the carbon price, at five cents a ton, is as low as it can get without being worthless.

Also to mark the one year anniversary in the total collapse of credibility for global warming alarmists (and their shoddy science with massive hidden error bars), we discover a government-press propaganda cabal that would make the Nazi’s Joseph Goebbels weep with pride:

The story begins in autumn 2004 when the government’s hysterically warmist chief scientific adviser Sir David King successfully persuaded the then Prime Minister Tony Blair to put action on global warming at the heart of UK government policy. This resulted in the creation of a propaganda body called The Climate Change Working Group which in turn sought PR advice from a company called Futerra communications.

Futerra – Britain’s answer to Fenton communications in the US – recommended the following policy:

Many of the existing approaches to climate change communications clearly seem unproductive. And it is not enough simply to produce yet more messages, based on rational argument and top-down persuasion, aimed at convincing people of the reality of climate change and urging them to act. Instead, we need to work in a more shrewd and contemporary way, using subtle techniques of engagement.

To help address the chaotic nature of the climate change discourse in the UK today, interested agencies now need to treat the argument as having been won, at least for popular communications. This means simply behaving as if climate change exists and is real, and that individual actions are effective. The ‘facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken [emphasis added].

The above snippet comes from this UK Article.

Liberal Democrats are crashing on a wide range of fronts – from their shoddy economic ideas, to their shoddy health care ideas, tot their shoddy global warming ideas. The brand on the left is getting hammered – and deservedly so.

Finally, the epitome of vague liberal ideas built upon a foundation of inexperience and naivete is found in our young president. Who seems to have some trouble brewing of his own from the center left portion of his emaciated party.

Team Obama is completely in over their head. Latest example: the whole TSA groping issue as a classic example of how NOT to handle a crisis. Of course, we have yet to see Team Obama correctly handle ANY crisis. So, in response to their arrogant and heavy handed (pun intended) abuse of the traveling public, lawsuits are flying in from all directions as the nation gets an ear and eye full of personal stories of abuse:

“As the TSA agent was frisking plaintiff, the agent pulled the plaintiff’s blouse completely down, exposing plaintiffs’ breasts to everyone in the area,” the lawsuit said. “As would be expected, plaintiff was extremely embarrassed and humiliated.”

TSA workers continued to laugh and joke about the incident “for an extended period of time,” leaving the woman distraught and needing to be consoled. After the woman re-entered the boarding area, TSA workers continued to humiliate her over the incident.

“One male TSA employee expressed to the plaintiff that he wished he would have been there when she came through the first time and that ‘he would just have to watch the video,’” the suit said.

…

Another lawsuit against the TSA involves Ron Corbett, a businessman and frequent traveler who is so infuriated by the plethora of cases where TSA workers have sexually groped passengers, squeezing breasts and genitals, that he has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Miami requesting an injunction against the TSA to prevent them from touching private areas without reasonable suspicion.

TSA has clearly raised its hand as the first government agency to step up to the chopping block. And Janet Dearest should be penning her resignation if I were her. Her chickens have come home to roost.

It is amazing when you see elements of the left and right come together and agree on how this administration is screwing up. Of course, Obama always promised he would build consensus. I am just not sure he meant to do it this way.

The issue of course is the rising backlash against the facade of security surrounding this country’s transportation system. While 3 year old girls are getting patted down because they refused to send their teddy bear through the scanners, our rail and cruise ship systems are at nowhere near the same level of invasive and restrictive requirements. Not to mention sports and music/show venues. The airline security system has been a spectacular failure in many respects, missing shoe bombers and underwear bombers and terrorists. And yet TSA keeps pushing the envelope of personal privacy, as if it immune from the US Constitution. If you claim my rights are forfeited when I buy a ticket, you need my signature to that effect. Credit card receipts don’t count.

To be fair, we don’t know how many liquid bombs were stopped cold that summer day when intelligence agencies learned of a new method of bringing liquid bomb components through security in drink bottles. And clearly, something has the TSA bloody spooked to be so aggressive in trying to find variants of the underwear bomb. I hope all this invasion of privacy without cause is for a good reason and has the desired effect – stopping an attack.

Because this kind of exercise is probably a waste of time. Nearly all the time it is. The problem with powder or putty based materials is they can be distributed into any shape an density. Unless you are going to scan bras, computer cases, etc for the material it could be hard to discern the difference between padding and explosive. I always hesitate about posting on how it is a waste of time because these systems can be thwarted various ways. I just don’t want to help the bad guys sneak an attack through by explaining how to do it. But the flip side is the duty to bring to light the fact there are simple ways to thwart the kind of security checks going on right now in airports. This is not as fool-proof as the TSA and DHS claim.
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Tags: Pat Downs, Scanners, TSA

Major Update: If the TSA allows an exemption for Muslim women to these invasive and uncalled for “pat downs” (more like the forced gropes Iraqi women used to get from Saddam Hussein’s thugs) all hell will break lose. If a woman from Pakistan or Yemen can get a waiver but a 3 year old girl from America must be forced to be patted, this country will rise up and take action. There is a lot of civil disobedience available to bring this nation to its knees. The liberals in DC are heading towards and even worse shellacking than the November elections. There will be mass resignations for incompetence and idiocy if Team Obama does not get itself on the right track here. – end update

TSA is bungling along with the same arrogance and deafness that caused the voters to eject the Democrats en masse in the 2010 elections. Only through blind arrogance could an agency charged with our security become the wrath of broad and deep anger. Incompetence helps, along with rigid thinking bolstered by a bunker mentality. You will note our police and military do not suffer the same anger as TSA does. And there is a reason for the difference.

First off, the Obama administration has been talking out of both sides of its incompetent mouth on terrorism. These leftists spent two years pretending there was no threat and we could relax our guard. They attempted to censor the use of terms like “War on Terrorism” and “Islamic Terrorists”. They even began to dial back our alert status, making it harder to investigate potential risks, all in the naive idea that less harsh talk would sweet talk al Qaeda into ending their bloody ways. This relaxation meant we took our eyes off Anwar al Aulaqi, the American JIhadist in Yemen who was the nexus of the Ft Hood Massacre, The Christmas Day Bomber, the NY Times Square Bomber and much more.

Thanks to this momentary blindness implemented by Team Obama/Holder/Brennan, we lost track of countless individual Jihadists heading to America to kill Americans. All we know from the ones we have caught and who so far failed their mission is that more on here or on the way.
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When I came up with this idea to reduce the government through a specific privatization effort, I wanted to market it, to be a part of it, because it represents so much money. Is still do want to be a part of it, so I remind people of the terms of this website, where any intellectual property or invention that I propose is still mine. Sharing these inventions and concepts with people (i.e., marketing them) does not imply or mean I waive those rights, anymore than a televised football game is then the property of the public who viewed it. Anyway – fair warning with a hope those interested will be interested in a fair partnership.

Many elements of the government have become useless or redundant as the private sector has literally left them behind. Those parts of government that have been overtaken by the private sector are different from elements that have been useless pretty much from their inception (The Department of Education comes to mind here). For one thing, they are a both a massive cost to the taxpayer and a potential revenue maker from which to cut the deficits and debt.

The prime example of this is the US Postal Service, which has been fighting a losing battle to Fedex, UPS and DHL to name a few. Personal and business correspondence and documents are now moved electronically, mainly because now they are multimedia in nature and electronic transfer makes more sense. The Postal Service has served this nation admirably – but it is no longer needed in its current form.
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When you see how Cody Alicea drew hundreds of supporters to drive him to school today with his American flag on his bike, all you can say is “God Blessed America”. Wish I could have ridden my FJR 1300 in that parade!

Update: Lots of pics here at Moonbattery

While some find this video funny, I find it maddening. The fact The Federal Reserve is buying US Treasuries via Goldman Sachs so they can charge the American People high prices and skim some profits as well seems to me to be a criminal act. Especially since the Fed Officer doing the buying is from Goldman Sachs!

If the GOP wants to run investigations – begin here!

One thing George W Bush did was stick with his convictions and risk his personal success to do what he believed was right for the nation. The fact is our last President changed the face of Islam and the Middle East in profound ways – all for the better. After 9-11 al Qaeda was the future of Islam in places like Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. When President Bush left office it was the enemy of Islam in these places and around the world – once the brutal and bloody nature of the movement was exposed in the wars we waged to change the course of humanity. These wars were costly, but necessary.

The full results of President Bush’s bold and decisive actions will not be know for years to come. But that is the sign of a leader and a historic figure. I am not directly comparing Bush to Lincoln, but both men took on very unpopular wars in order to bring the nation to a new and better place. Lincoln’s war was the most devastating on this nation ever, and included the suspension of many of the rights we take for granted today – and yet he is revered today as a national hero. I am sure a good chunk of the people did not think so while Lincoln was in office.

They were of course wrong.

President Obama is not like President Bush. His beliefs are rooted in the fiction of liberal government and how great he is – and by extension, how mediocre our nation is. He is, after all, ‘the one’ we all have been waiting for! Sadly, he is currently at a loss on how to prove to us (and himself) this greatness. Look at how he is grappling with his midterm debacle:

President Obama must decide now how he wants to govern in the two years leading up to the 2012 presidential election.

In recent days, he has offered differing visions of how he might approach the country’s problems. At one point, he spoke of the need for “mid-course corrections.” At another, he expressed a desire to take ideas from both sides of the aisle. And before this month’s midterm elections, he said he believed that the next two years would involve “hand-to-hand combat” with Republicans, whom he also referred to as “enemies.”

It is clear that the president is still trying to reach a resolution in his own mind as to what he should do and how he should do it.

The fact President Obama cannot face up to the reality that this nation abhors his liberal policies and the disaster of Obamacare is just another in a long list of indicators that he does not get it. He has to understand this nation is not liberal, not even liberal leaning, if he hopes to get right with the voters. He is showing no signs of enlightenment.

Obama and his team need to wake up to what the nation told them:

Near the midpoint of his presidency, Barack Obama’s diverse voter coalition reveals giant cracks and he faces major work repairing his standing among independents in states crucial to his re-election chances. Catholics. Older people. Women. Young adults. They shifted toward Republicans in this month’s elections and failed to support Obama’s Democratic Party as they did in 2008.

Two years before voters render judgment on his tenure, Obama’s most critical task may be winning back those who aren’t affiliated with a party but who hold enormous sway in close contests. National exit polls from the midterm elections show these voters broke heavily for Republicans after helping elect Obama and Democrats in the two previous elections.

As for those independents, the damage to the Democrats is deep and broad:

The advisers are deeply concerned about winning back political independents, who supported Obama two years ago by an eight-point margin but backed Republicans for the House this year by 19 points.

That is a 27% swing – a third of independents. No President has lost so many in such a short period of time since Richard Nixon. And yet our young inexperienced President dithers and denies, hoping to find some way to prove he is right and the nation is wrong:

Advisers also said it will probably take months, if not longer, to develop a strategy for restoring some of the early promise of the Obama presidency, particularly the notion that he was a different kind of Democrat.

…

The changes, however, will not come in a dramatic fashion, as President George W. Bush’s firing of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld right after the 2006 midterms did. Outsiders expect the changes to feel subtle, given the Obama track record.

“There isn’t going to be a reset button. That’s not their style,” said a Democratic strategist who works with the White House on several issues. “They don’t like pivots, and they also believe they’re right.”

President Obama is in this mess because he has no idea what the private sector does or how it operates. He has been raised on liberal mythology regarding what it means to run or work for an American business. Therefore he has to either admit he is naive and get people in there to help him out of his mess, or he must work to convince himself and us you don’t need anything more than a Disneyland view of the world to be President of the United States. This, of course, is impossible to do.

The Democrats only thought about packaging in 2008. What would be the coolest minority to win election. They did not care about credentials or experience or a real vision for America (“the waters receding” is not a real vision, it is grandiose delusion). They thought this through like they think all their grand ideas through – that is to say not at all. Now they are stuck with this political albatross – for another 2 years.

In any other job in America the liberal leaders in DC would be shown the door for their performance. In the case of Nancy Pelosi we got close enough, in the case of Harry Reid we did not. When you hand the keys to the nation over for four years you have to make sure the person can handle the ship of state.

In 2008 we let our exhaustion with the challenges George W Bush laid at our feet lead us to believe in an easy and vague way out. We wanted out of the hard and painful work we had taken on after 9-11. And so we allowed a bunch of malcontents to wave Candy Land visions at us and lure us into thinking we could simply ignore the challenges facing us. A harsh lesson to learn, but we are learning. The 2010 elections proved that.

The truth is we have grown way to accustomed to dumping problems on the government to fix. It only makes the problems worse. We need to roll up our sleeves, take care of ourselves and shrink government down to the bare minimum. We must strive each day to find another federally funded chunk of wasted effort that we can do without and turn the lights out on it.

We need to get back to the basics. We need to get back to America. We need to get back to work and stop handing our lives and our money over to scam artists.

Update: President Obama spouts an “Are You Kidding?” observation:

President Obama offered a lesson for Republicans that he learned the hard way during his first two years in office.

“Campaigning is different than governing,” Obama told reporters Sunday when asked about his meeting with GOP leaders later this week.

Really?