Category: Politics

Obama loves Spain. It’s hard to explain. A Limerick.

Let’s follow the pattern of Spain (1)

Go green, go in debt, inflict pain.(2)

Too many are jobless (3)

The Socialists clueless (4)

They got voted out to Spain’s gain. (5) (6) (7)

(1) On eight occasions, the current occupant of the White House (Obama) has referred to the Spanish model as an example to follow.

(2) After a leaked Spanish government report, a newspaper in Spain (La Gaceta) confirms that the country’s “green economy” policies — the model for the Obama administration’s “green jobs” efforts — have been a disaster: expensive, ineffective, and unworkable

(3) The official jobless rate in Spain went from 7.9% in May 2007 to 19% in Nov 2009. It now stands at 22.8% (Oct 2011)

(4) The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Spanish: Partido Socialista Obrero Español [parˈtiðo soθjaˈlista oˈβrero espaˈɲol], PSOE [peˈsoe]) is a social-democratic political party in Spain. Since the General election on 14 March 2004, the PSOE has been the governing party of Spain. The PSOE is a full member of the Party of European Socialists and the Socialist International.

(5) MADRID — Spaniards struggling with high unemployment and a credit squeeze delivered a punishing verdict on almost eight years of Socialist government at the ballot box on Nov 20 2011, turning to the conservative Popular Party in the hopes of alleviating the pain of Europe’s debt crisis. The Popular Party, led by Mariano Rajoy won 186 seats and a governing majority in the 350-seat lower house of Parliament, while the governing Socialists plummeted to 110 seats from 169. It was the Popular Party’s best showing, and the Socialists’ worst, since Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s.

(6) Spain took advantage of strong demand to sell nearly twice as many bonds as initially planned at its final bond auction last year on Dec 15 2011, although market participants expect the country’s borrowing conditions to remain tough next year. The strong response to the auction, which brought much-needed respite to the battered Spanish bond market, helped power the country’s bonds higher, with the yield on bonds due in two years falling to their lowest levels since late October.

(7) Jan 27 2012 Fitch Ratings has resolved the Negative Rating Watch on six Eurozone sovereigns, downgrading the IDRs for Belgium, Cyprus, Italy, Slovenia and Spain while affirming ratings for Ireland. The Negative Outlook on all six countries indicates a slightly greater than 50% chance of a downgrade over a two-year time horizon.

 

 

Is the Main Stream Media the propaganda arm of the White House? A Limerick.

Obama was giving his talking points straight

Before his vacation – he couldn’t wait.

The pundits all left wing

But none from the right wing

To spread propaganda – of envy and hate.

President Barack Obama met with an all-star set of liberal and progressive media people — including three MSNBC hosts — but no conservative voices for a chat over coffee at the White House.

Tim Graham, director of media at the Media Research Center, observed: “In the Bush years, it was considered a major scandal for [Fox News chief] Roger Ailes to send a note to the White House, but MSNBC stars meet with Obama, and it’s just another day of ‘hope and change.’”

Chris Tapper of ABC News reported the Dec. 19 meeting in the Roosevelt Room: “The group chatted with the president about economic messaging, his agenda for 2012, the various campaign arguments against different GOP candidates, the desire among some Democrats for him to highlight his foreign policy accomplishments, fighting corporate influence and the ‘crappiness’ of the Senate filibuster, as one attendee put it.”

Those in attendance included Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes of MSNBC, Frank Bruni of The New York Times, Nation magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, Ezra Klein and Greg Sargent of The Washington Post, Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, Faiz Shakir of ThinkProgress, and Joy-Ann Reid of The Reid Report.

The Inside Cable News blog also found fault with the liberal coffee klatch: “All I’ll say is that if that many of [Fox News Channel’s] hosts and contributors had shown up at the same time for a Bush chat, it would be all over the Web and probably the media as well,” wrote the blog’s author.

“It makes me uncomfortable for MSNBC to let that many of its people have open access to the president. It may be innocuous but at the very least it looks bad/smells fishy. “I want more distance between D.C. and the people that cover it.”

Mitt Romney can’t go after Obama on Crony Capitalism, Sarah Palin can, A Limerick.

The croniest capitalism

Obama’s is sort of fascism.

But Romney can’t say

He is out of the fray.

So Run, Sarah Run, for we can’t have a schism.

Sarah Palin: Criminal penalty if vote traded for campaign contribution. [The Alaska Senate watered down the 2007 ethics bill] The Senate’s action was politics-as-usual. We were determined to keep the pressure on. That pressure paid off when legislators approved an omnibus ethics bill. It included my administration’s ethics proposal, as well as the House’s muscular amendment that imposed criminal penalties on lawmakers who traded votes for campaign contributions. Plus, any legislator convicted of a felony would forfeit his or her state pension. We were pleased that no one could claim pride of authorship on this. Finally the Capitol had pulled together and passed a strong bill. A Democrat lawmaker noted: “This is one of the best pieces of work I’ve seen come out of the legislature because it came out as a policy document and not a political document.” It was music to my ears: POLICY, not politics. From Going Rogue, by Sarah Palin, p.156

Blood Libel, Church Burning and Sarah Palin.

On “Blood Libel” Sarah has one point to make.

Her own church got torched, children’s lives were at stake.

The media kept silence

To not promote violence

Christians endure much. How much does it take?

Dec 14 2008. — Andrew Malcolm

Sarah Palin, her husband Todd and up to 1,000 fellow parishioners will worship in a local school this morning after a suspicious fire virtually destroyed the Wasilla Bible Church early Saturday. Some women and children in a crafts group were inside at the time. Larry Kroon said some parishioners were in the church on Nicola Avenue at the time the fire was noticed but no one was injured. Firefighters battled for about eight hours in minus-20 degree temperatures to completely extinguish the blaze that began at the front door.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate went to the church Saturday to apologize to pastors in case the estimated $1 million fire damages, suspected as arson, were “in any way connected to the undeserved negative attention the church has received” since the governor’s involvement with the church.

The 30-year-old congregation in Wasilla, about 40 miles north of Anchorage, had moved into its new church just 30 months ago. Church officials said they expect to hold services at the Wasilla Middle School for the foreseeable future during repairs.

(UPDATE:

Though several federal, state and local agencies were involved in the investigation, no arrests have been made, nor have any solid leads been announced. The media reported the fire and the subsequent determination that arson was involved, but quickly lost interest in the story. The Obama administration closed the federal part of the investigation.

In the ensuing weeks since the fire, there doesn’t seem to have been much media attention or outcry against the anonymous attack on a house of worship. Probably just because Wasilla is so far away. (Yes, that’s probably the reason.)

Blood Libel and Sarah Palin. A most apt term.

The illustration on the left, located at the cult-church of Anderl von Rinn until recently, portrays the “martyrdom” of Anderl, a three year-old boy who became the focus of a blood-libel cult in the seventeenth-century. Anderl is the child being held down and having his throat slit. The killers are clearly marked as Jews by their clothes and turbans (one form of the “special mark” Jews were forced to carry by Church decree).

The third, lower, figure is collecting the child’s blood in a bowl. The myth of the blood libel was that the blood of a Christian child was used to make Passover matzohs.

“Blood Libel” is termed the new phrase of the week.

As ugly as sin and not fit for the weak.

Sarah Palin, she dared

 The apt term to be shared.

For hate is much worse than a slow dripping leak.

While most liberal Jews attacked Sarah Palin for using a term she knew nothing about and was offending them in so doing, the famous law professor Alan Dershowitz defended her use of the term, saying “I myself have used it to describe false accusations against the State of Israel by the Goldstone Report. There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is utterly irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely used term.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/257003/alan-dershowitz-defends-palin-blood-libel-daniel-foster

Arizona Tragic shootings. Blame Sarah Palin First. A Limerick. (and more)

Arizona Tragic shootings. Blame Sarah First. Proverbs 30:15-16 (King James Version) The horseleach hath two daughters, crying, Give, give. There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things say not, It is enough: The grave; and the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water; and the fire that saith not, It is enough.

Hang Sarah in effigy: freedom of speech,  (1)

When Dem’s paint a bullseye, it is but to teach. (2)

The Lib’s are horseleeches,

Cry “Give” in their speeches.

When tragedy strikes – Times first Sarah besmeech. (3)

(1) Sarah Palin effigy.

(2) DCCC map

(3)  During the fall campaign, Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, posted a controversial map on her Facebook page depicting spots where Democrats were running for re-election; those Democrats were noted by crosshairs symbols like those seen through the scope of a gun. Ms. Giffords was among those on Ms. Palin’s map. NYT Jan 8 2011.

In June 2008 The Daily Kos had this bullseye target on Gabrielle Gifford:

And one more blog entry at Daily Kos posted the day before the shooting. It has now been scrubbed. One more entry: This one deals with Candidate Barack Obama. Mobster wisdom tells us never to bring a knife to a gun fight. But what does political wisdom say about bringing a gun to a knife fight? That’s exactly what Barack Obama said he would do to counter Republican attacks “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Jun 13, 2008. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”

And one more: Attacks on Lt.Colonel Larkin supporters in his eligibility challenge. (The American Patriot Foundation). And we must not forget the famous CNN program:

Hard times for Paul Krugman. A Limerick.

Paul Krugman Jan 2, 2011, NYT: The figure at right illustrates Okun’s Law — the relationship between growth and unemployment. (Gah — I’ve tried to remove the connecting lines, to no avail.) The horizontal axis shows annual growth rates of real GDP; the vertical axis shows the year-to-year change in the unemployment rate. Two things are clear. First, the economy has to grow around 2 1/2 percent per year just to keep unemployment from rising. Second, growth above that level leads to a less than one-for-one fall in unemployment (because hours per worker rise, more people enter the work force, etc.). Roughly, it takes two point-years of extra growth to reduce the unemployment rate by one point. So, suppose that US growth is accelerating. Even so, it will take years of high growth to get us back to anything resembling full employment. Put it this way: suppose that from here on out we average 4.5 percent growth, which is way above any forecast I’ve seen. Even at that rate, unemployment would be close to 8 percent at the end of 2012, and wouldn’t get below 6 percent until midway through Sarah Palin’s first term.

Update: This would make unemployment go below 6 % Jan 2019.

Paul Krugman once wrote: “Sarah Palin’s first term”

and all of his readers started to squirm.

You cannot be serious

You must be delirious

 Next thing you tell us: “She is a bookworm”.