Joel's Rant

Unless you’ve been living on another planet you know the case of Congressman Joe Barton (R, TX) and how he supposedly is an apologist for BP and how he’s being portrayed, along with every other politician in the Republican Party, as caring only about BP and its ability to function as a corporation and to hell with the people in the Gulf whose lives can very well be ruined by this accident.

By now everyone has heard the audio or seen the video of Joe Barton saying this:

“Now I’m going to speak totally for myself. I’m not speaking for the Republican Party, I’m not speaking for anyone in the House of Representatives but myself – I’m ashamed at what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy in the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown – in this case a $20 billion shakedown. The attorney general of the United States, who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the interests of the American people, participated in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund. That’s unprecedented in our nation’s history, has no legal standing and which sets, I think, a terrible precedent for the future”.

“There is no question that BP owns this lease. There is no question that BP made decisions that objective people think compromised safety. There is no question that BP is liable for the damages. But we have a due process system where we go through hearings, and in some cases court cases and litigation and determine what those damages are and when those damages should be paid. So, I’m only speaking for myself – I’m not speaking for anybody else – but I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or corporation that does something that is legitimately wrong, is subject to some sort of political pressure that is again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize.”

What most people did not hear, and what Democrats and the state-run mainstream media are loath to discuss or report is what was deleted from Joe Barton’s full comment, what was in between the 2 paragraphs above:

“If I called you into my office, and I the subcommittee chairman, Mr. Stupak, with me, who was legitimately conducting an oversight investigation on your company and said if you put so many millions of dollars in a project in my congressional district, I could go to jail, and should go to jail.”

What Joe Barton was saying, and what is true and correct, is that what the Obama regime did to BP is seriously against the law.  If the Congressman did it, it would be a crime punishable with jail time.  When the President does the same thing, the media calls it a sweet victory for the people.  How can that be?  Something is very wrong, no?

And here is the problem, a problem which too many people are more than willing to ignore.  We are a nation of laws.  We are a nation of rules and due process.  We have a Constitution that sets out the blueprint of how the government is supposed to operate, what they are allowed to do and under what circumstances they are allowed to do it. 

What Obama and his regime are doing here is once again ignoring the Constitution, and because of the way they and their minions in the media are spinning it, most Americans are delighted that the President is again ignoring the Constitution. 

 Joe Barton is very specific in saying that in cases of corporate or individual malfeasance actions are necessarily brought against the wrongdoers but, and here is the really important part, those actions take place in court, or in some cases in congressional hearings, and there is litigation, and lawsuits, and responsibility is categorized and those responsible are called to account in a public forum.  And in the case where the wrongdoer is required to put money in an escrow the law demands who the money is spent on, whom and under what circumstances the money is spent, and that those believing they have been unfairly treated are provided recourse and on and on. 

And what if the money ends up being spent incorrectly, or used by politicians to promote their own nefarious agendas, the American people have redress for that as well.  That’s what would be spelled out in court or after a judicial judgment, not with some blatant shakedown behind closed doors, where absolutely no details are known.

And that’s what Joe Barton was saying.  That’s why what the President is doing is wrong and even worse, it’s setting a precedent that future presidents can ignore the laws of the land and set terms on their own, with no oversight, or hearings, or discussion and without any accountability except for his own and on his own terms.  And that, my friends, is tyranny.

And there’s more and much worse and here it is.  Where does the President get the power to “shakedown” BP?  Where in the Constitution is the President allowed to call BP to the Oval Office and “negotiate” with them, with some unknown and non-public pressure, and get them to “agree” to terms that no one knows what they are, if they’re even legal, and to whom and under what conditions money will be paid.  As it happens, no one knows what the deal with BP includes and the Obama regime will essentially be figuring it all out as they move forward.  Why am I not surprised?

And no one will ask the President for accountability.  Actually, if you have the temerity to even ask a question, the state-run mainstream media and the Democrats and Marxists will call you a hatemonger, or a racist, or a homophobe or whatever.  The state-run mainstream media definitely won’t ask any questions.  The Congress won’t ask, and in fact they have forfeited their constitutional duty to set these terms themselves.  They have instead abrogated their responsibility entirely.  And that, my friends, is tyranny.

Where does the President get the power and authority to take $20 Billion from a private corporation and put one of his own henchmen in charge of doing whatever he wants with it?  Who’s Ken Feinberg and where does he get the power and authority to pay out money to whomever and under what conditions?  He’s unelected and unaccountable yet he’s the one that will set all the rules and cut all the deals.  Why is he judge, jury and executioner all in one? 

There is already talk that Feinberg will allow seafood restaurants in Boston to sue BP because their actions have led to higher seafood prices.  There’s also talk that Feinberg will allow New York State employee pension fund to sue BP because this accident has caused BP’s stock share price to go down.  That kind of acceptance of collateral damage, and we ain’t seen nothin’ yet, my friends, is tyranny.

And what if someone has a complaint, where do they go, who do they talk to?  Does some fisherman have to call Ken Feinberg personally?  No one knows.

And here’s the amazing part that too many people are not thinking about.  The government has squandered every trust fund, every escrow account, every lock box in history, and they have bankrupted every Agency in existence.  Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are already over $60 Trillion in the red, and all the unfunded liabilities the government has amassed through mismanagement and fraud already total over $100 Trillion.  Those are Trillions with a “T”.  And yet too many people have no problem turning all that $20 Billion over to the same government to do with what they like and there are completely no rules to guide them or restrict them.  Does this seem like a nightmare to you, because it should?

And it always comes down to where does the government, the President, get this authority?  It is not in the Constitution.  So where is it?  And why don’t enough people care about that?  What about the 40% of BP’s shareholders who are American citizens and who count on BP dividends for their retirement income or pension income?  Did the President consider them before he decided to shakedown BP for the political grandstanding it provided?  Not likely.

Look how, just last year, the Obama regime shook down the Chrysler secured bond holders and made them settle for pennies on the dollar when he undertook similarly unconstitutional action and nationalized that company.  I don’t know how many laws and contracts were arbitrarily broken by Obama, contracts previously protected by the Constitution, but he didn’t really care as long as his union supporters got control of the company.  That precedent is one of the reasons private investors are not running back into the free market, because Obama has unintentionally set new standards which are that the government can pretty much do whatever it wants at any time, including stealing money from their rightful owners.  Just ask those Chrysler bondholders.  How will other international and foreign investors react to BP’s treatment by the American President?  Will they continue to invest in America; will they continue to create American jobs?  Try and guess.

Or what about the health reform bill for which there is no basis in the Constitution.   Where in the Constitution does it provide for the government to order people to buy a commercial product, with their own money, from some third party that they don’t know and don’t want to know?  What precedent does that set for the future, for your children’s future?

When is the stealing going to stop?  When is the truth going to finally prevail?  When will the tyranny cease?

Earlier this year the Supreme Court struck down the government’s case that private corporations could not support their favorite candidates.  Remember the firestorm and how the Democrats yelled and screamed about the unfairness of that “Citizen’s United” case and even lied to the public about the court allowing foreign companies to support candidates?

Of course the court did nothing at all about foreign companies, as they left that part of the law in place.  It’s still unlawful for a foreign company to provide financial support to an American candidate.  That’s what the video of Samuel Alito, at the State of the Union address, mouthing the words “not true” was all about.  So it’s still unlawful.

But that hasn’t stopped Barack Obama from taking over $1 million in campaign donations from BP, a foreign company, a company that wanted to buy support and protection from the Obama regime.  What Obama and his regime have done by taking that money from foreign owned BP is against the law.  Will he return that money to BP?  Not on your life.

Conservatives know rape when they see it, and they don’t like it.

And that’s all there is to it.

There are so many bad things, all about to be brought to you by Democrats, that I can’t keep them all straight.

Try this on for size:

Why did the Obama regime loan Brazil $2 Billion in August, 2009 for them to develop their off-shore oil drilling industry?  Why wasn’t he developing our off-shore oil drilling industry or maybe even building wind mills or repaying debt or something like that?  That’s interesting by itself, no?  But here’s where the plot thickens.  I realize Obama’s not clairvoyant, so even I know he could not have predicted a disastrous oil spill in the Gulf, but look at what’s going to happen.

Because of the spill, the Democrats are going to try to get climate and energy legislation passed under the guise of developing non-fossil based resources.  Hey, nothing like not wasting a crisis.  Obama has already called for a 6-month moratorium on continued off-shore drilling and even falsely and fraudulently and despicably used the names of 7 expert engineers in the field to “document” his plan (lying has certainly become a staple of this regime’s modus operand, no?) and provide the “substance” it would not have otherwise had.  These oil drilling platforms cost about $½ million each day to operate, even if they’re sitting idle, like during a moratorium, and no oil company can afford that so they’ll be moved, and their likely destination will be……Brazil. 

Now oil is a fungible product, meaning it costs the same everywhere in the world, whether it’s developed in the United States or Angola or Iran or Brazil.  It makes no difference.  Once the drilling platforms are moved to Brazil, or wherever, they’re not coming back, at last not for a very long time.  Definitely longer than 6 months, maybe longer than 6 years.

Good riddance, right?  Wrong, you idiot!  The United States presently gets 30% of our national oil production from the Gulf.  If that oil is not replaced the price of gasoline will rise, meaning there’ll be less driving to the mall, meaning less spending money on stuff, meaning more layoffs of people normally selling that stuff, and leading directly to more unemployment and welfare payments and that’s money that is taken directly from you.  You get the idea, right?  It’s a simple calculus that cannot be denied.

Or the oil will be replaced by buying more from foreign sources, causing more and higher dependence on foreign oil, which is what our political class has been railing against for decades.  A bit of a conundrum, no?

But we can be developing “green” fuel resources so good riddance, right?  Wrong, you idiot!  Anyone who believes that is not thinking in reality.  Take a look at Spain, which dumped billions into restructuring themselves into a “green economy” and have recently announced publically their complete and total failure and which helped bring on their near-collapsed economy.  Those resources, if ever commercially viable, will not be ready for prime time for decades or longer.  Contrary to what Democrats think, developments in science and technology cannot be legislated.  If there was a possibility of their coming to market it would have happened already through the free-market, in the same fashion that petroleum oil beat whale oil, and cars beat horses, and computers beat typewriters and on and on.  That’s the genius of the free-market.  How many innovations and useful developments in technology have come out of central planning in China or Cuba or old East Germany, for crying out loud?

Oh, and let’s not forget the economies of 3 Gulf states, in which Gulf oil drilling is either the state’s single largest or second largest industry.  Those economies will be decimated, causing more of the previously mentioned unemployment and welfare payments and that’s money that is taken directly from you.

So why are Obama and the Democrats planning these political moves that will only cause economic destruction and misery on a grand scale, instead of just concentrating on plugging the oil leak?  Maybe because they’re Marxists?

Let’s look beyond merely BP.

Are you aware that the Democrats in Congress voted just two weeks ago to allow the EPA to set carbon limits for all industries nationwide?  Well, good riddance to carbon, right?  Wrong, you idiot! 

What that does is allow unelected bureaucrats, who are accountable to no one, and in most cases have no real-world experience beyond government, to set industrial policy throughout the entire economy of the United States.  The last time we saw this kind of central planning, on a scale that affects every commercial exchange in a nation, was during the Politburo days of the old Soviet Union.  Yes, the Soviet Union. 

By controlling carbon you control energy.  If you are the kind of person that turns on a light bulb, or drives a car, or takes public transportation, or likes heat or air conditioning, or likes to buy products of any type or uses services of any type, or eats food, or needs health care, or lives indoors, you’re going to be directly affected, which means you’ll either be paying much more or you’ll be doing without.  You get the point, right?  It’s a simple calculus that cannot be denied.

Are you aware that the unemployment rate in the United States will, with Democrats controlling the White House and Congress, never again fall below 9% or 10% for any extended period of time (yes, if only we had that same GWB economy where “under 5% unemployment” was common)?  Sure, maybe if the government decides to hire another million census workers or hole diggers and hole fillers it may drop below, but not for long.  Do you want to know why?  Because Democrats have made it their business to sow the seeds of instability and chaos throughout the business community.

They forced the passing of so-called health care reform, using diabolical methods of coercion and fraud, which even the Obama regime’s own estimates assume 51% of all employers will need to change their present employee health plans to the new government plan because they don’t meet the definition of a “government approved plan.”  So much for keeping the plan to you like.  But the point here is that businesses don’t know what to do until all the policies have been written….by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.  Until then, no hiring.  And what about the uncertain impact on business of cap and trade, and “card-check” legislation and the coming increase of corporate, personal, estate and capital gains taxes that will hit everyone and everything that generates income when the Bush tax cuts expire on January 1, 2011.  Everyone person, and every business, that presently pays taxes will see a tax increase.  And what about the energy tax that’s sure to come out of this Democrat Congress because of the Gulf spill and what about the VAT tax that’s surely being planned?

All of those taxes and actions conspire to create an environment in which viable employers, those that need to make a profit to stay in business, as opposed to government that doesn’t have that handicap, will not do any hiring now, and maybe won’t in the future.  How can they? 

And needless regulation upon stupid regulation.  As if regulators caught Bernie Madoff before he did severe damage, even though the SEC knew about him and his potential for ponzi schemes years before that disaster hit.  They did nothing until then.  And the Department of the Interior knew there was trouble at the Deepwater Horizon rig days before that disaster hit, and they did nothing until it exploded.  And even then did nothing.  And the regulators of Fannie and Freddie knew a disaster was coming and they did nothing as well.  And the regulators on both the Senate and House Finance Committees not only did nothing to forestall the coming sub-prime mortgage and financial crisis they exacerbated it by encouraging and codifying bad banking policy and even in some cases shared in the greed they wrought.  That’s why unemployment is high and will remain high.  It’s a simple calculus that cannot be denied.

And now there’s a call for more regulation and ceding more and more power and control to government regulators that have proven over and over that they can’t regulate, can’t be trusted and often only make things worse, much worse.

And that’s your modern Democrat Party in action.

And there’s more, all being brought to you by those same Democrats.  Will your 401k be taken over by the government?  Will you lose your mortgage tax deduction?  That’s all being talked about now in the halls of the Democrat Congress as they search for every dime they can in an effort to slow the inevitable rise in interest rates.  You see, as the nation goes higher and higher into debt, at some point the people or countries presently lending us money will stop unless interest rates go up.  That’s what happens when a lender smells a bad loan risk.  We’re like the guy whose credit card debt balance is higher than his yearly earnings.  Those people all eventually go into bankruptcy or otherwise fail in some other fashion.  And if interest rates on that $13.5 Trillion in debt go up we’re not going to be able to pay and risk defaulting and bringing the entire economy of the United States to its knees, just like Greece.  And don’t forget the potential for civil unrest a defaulting economy brings; when government retirement payments and all other entitlement payments and Medicare and Medicaid payments to doctors can’t be made and so on, just like Greece.  To forestall that, the government needs a different source of cash so it won’t need to borrow at the same “40 cents per every dollar spent” rate it’s been borrowing over the past 18 months.  That’s what’s generally meant by the phrase “unsustainable borrowing and spending.”  That new infusion of cash could well be your 401k and mortgage tax reduction.

What about a $165 Billion union pension bailout?  That’s on the table in Congress now, brought to you by Democrats.  What about dumping 30 million more people into Medicaid?  That was part of the Democrat health care reform bill and is a shared cost with the states, so look at your state treasury being drained because of this Democrat plan as well.

What we’re seeing here is the destruction of a once great country by the people that are bringing every conceivable economic insult and injury to you and your family, the Democrats.

(Just for the record, Republicans either voted or opposed virtually all of this stuff, even going so far as to try to reign in Fannie and Freddie during the GWB administration.  Sorry, that’s true.)

And that’s all there is to it.

When was the last time all the countries in the world got together to condemn one single country.  Yes, there have been times when the United Nations, that well known cesspool of dictators, thugs, killers, and other assorted miscreants, was able to pass a resolution with the majority of the voting states condemning some nation for something or other.  Usually that denunciation meant bullcrap, and the world went on as usual, the condemned generally not stopping to even take a breath or giving a damn.

But I’m talking here about the entire freaking world voting as a block, even including those genius inventors of socialism, communism, Nazism and fascism, the Europeans, whom we can’t wait to emulate.  Even the United States of America agrees to condemn this one single country.

Maybe that one single country was North Korea.  They certainly deserve to be condemned.  Didn’t they just recently attack another country by deliberately and wantonly destroying a capital warship without any warning, killing 46 sailors and injuring many others, in what was actually an act of war?  And didn’t they secretly try to build a nuclear weapons production plant in Syria?  No, that’s not the one.

Or maybe it was Iran.  They also deserve to be condemned.  Aren’t they in the process of building a nuclear weapon that they will likely use to blackmail the rest of the world and aren’t they, along with North Korea, the most aggressive and transparent supporters of world-wide terrorism, including the proactive killing of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan?  And haven’t they stated flat out that their goal is the destruction of a specific western democracy and member of the United Nations?  No, that’s not the one.

Could it be Sudan?  Talk about deserving to be condemned.  Isn’t their leadership responsible for the deliberate killing, starving and actually selling into slavery of about a million of its own citizens in Darfur over the past 20 years and have not yet stopped even to eat a sandwich?  No, not them either?

What about Cuba or Venezuela, subjugating their own people and exporting Communism and supporting terrorism in Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil and other Latin American nations and otherwise attempting to create instability everywhere?  They deserve to be condemned too.  But no, neither of them are “the one.”

Or what about Burma or Belarus or Zimbabwe or any number of other countries led by disgusting and degenerate leaders?  Nope, don’t be a fool, fool!

No, “the one” could only be tiny Israel, the land of the Jews.  So here’s a country of 7.5 million souls, not all of them Jews by the way, that occupies land about the size of perhaps New Jersey, surrounded by 1.5 billion (that’s billion with a “b”) Arabs and Muslims occupying land stretching from the banks of Western Africa to Indonesia, and all those latter people’s fondest wish is to see all the Jews dead.  And with all the malice that can be mustered, now it seems that the rest of the world feels the same way.

How else can the events of the past two weeks be explained?  How is it that Israel is not universally viewed as the victim here?  Any rational and thoughtful person should normally see it that way, no?  Why is it that Hamas, the Palestinians or the Turks are not being condemned? 

The killers in Hamas and Hezbollah, both proxy armies of Iran, have been engaged in war against the civilian Israeli population for the past several decades.  A summary of the atrocities perpetuated against Israel could literally fill a book, but one need not concentrate on that to get the full flavor of the injustice here.  Hamas and Hezbollah have been firing rockets indiscriminately into Israeli population centers for years with the intent of killing as many innocent civilian men, women and children as possible.  Over 10,000 rockets have been fired by Hamas alone, which makes perverse sense since the Hamas charter calls for the elimination of Israel no matter how long it takes.  It actually says that.  It’s like part of their depraved constitution.

To put that into some perspective, what do you suppose the response of the United States would be if a terrorist army in Tijuana began lobbing hundreds of mortar shells into downtown San Diego?   What is it you would expect the leaders of the United States would do?  Would you expect no action, maybe just talk and negotiation with the bad guys?  I personally would expect, assuming Barack Obama were not president, an American military response, directed by a conservative American Commander-in-Chief that would be immediate and adjudicated with ferocity and maximum prejudice.  That would seem about right to me, and hopefully to you too.

Then why does the world expect Israel to act differently, to not act in self-defense, to not protect their population and sovereignty?   Why is it that Israel must compromise while their enemies do not and, in fact, never have?  Why must Israel unilaterally return land, taken in war to provide a buffer for protection, to those that then immediately use that territory to assault their civilian populations?  Why does the world make excuses for the terrorists and condemns Israel for “atrocities?”   Why isn’t Russia ever held to account for their treatment of the people of Chechnya, or China for the people of Tibet?

The reason is simple.  It’s because the all the world hates the Jews.

Even here in the United States, our leaders and mainstream liberal media condemned Israel with the smartest woman in the world, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying our government supports the UN resolution calling for condemnation and investigations into Israel’s untoward actions, as if we would allow the UN to investigate our actions in Afghanistan, for instance.  In her statement on the subject Clinton asked absolutely nothing of the Turks or their radical Islamist leader.  She only asked Israel to account.  And what I found to be particularly insidious was Clinton’s repeated uses of the phrases “peace activists” and “humanitarian aid” to describe what was supposedly being delivered to the Palestinians.  That was a total fraud.  Only stupid people, or willfully blind people, or those that hate Jews would continue to use those deceitful and duplicitous descriptions since the flotilla represented absolutely nothing of the kind.   

So why would our government buy into this hateful effort to hurt a trusted and long-standing ally?

My guess is the Obama regime has no use for allies or friends or western coalitions.  He’s just simply more comfortable with socialists and Marxists.  Obama’s apology tour of the world, ending with his Cairo speech in which he denounced America, reveals his contempt for the United Sates and its exceptionalism and allows him to seek friendships with enemies and antagonism toward friends.  It’s the Chicago way, or maybe it’s worse.

Maybe that’s why Obama double-crossed the Poles and Czechs by embracing instead Russia’s attitude toward missile defense, for which he received absolutely nothing in return.  Maybe that’s why Obama chose to directly align himself with the dictators Hugo Chavez and the Castro brothers and against the lawful actions of the democratic Honduras Supreme Court when they ousted their communist leader.   Maybe that’s why Obama had no problem siding with the Argentines, and against the UK, in the recent trouble over the Falkland Islands, and also humiliating Nickolas Sarkozy of France by continually blowing him off instead of meeting with the French as Sarkozy requested.    

And how could anyone forget the humiliation foisted on Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who among other acts of arrogance and disdain for Israel, was left by Obama, alone in a White House anteroom, while Obama went to dinner with his family with instructions that Netanyahu think over his own stubbornness, as if he were a petulant child.  How Netanyahu, a no-nonsense former Israeli commando who has actually faced death straight-out, had the presence of mind not to reach over and smack some sense and manners into Obama is beyond me.

But what we’re seeing here is the serious weakening of the United States, with dangerous implications and consequences for the future.  Brazil and Turkey make a deal to help Iran constitute uranium and neither country doesn’t care a whit what the United States thinks. That would have been unthinkable under either of the Bushes or Reagan or possibly even Bill Clinton.  But our enemies are watching this spectacle unfold; they’re taking notes, they sense weakness of Obama and blood in the water, they know the United States is afraid to act, even in its own self-interest.  Our allies meanwhile sense a lack of trust and commitment and discipline of purpose, and are justifiably very worried.

And that American weakness is what leads to efforts by the forces of evil to send flotillas to arm Hamas right out in the open, or sink ally warships, or kill American soldiers, because the entire world knows the United States has become a paper tiger under Barack Obama.  The entire world knows we will do absolutely nothing.

Does the world believe the United States would retaliate or come to the aid of Israel if it’s attacked with nuclear weapons by Iran?  The answer would have to be no, no?  Does anyone actually believe Obama would lift a finger to save the Jewish State from total destruction (or for that matter, save Taiwan from a Chinese invasion)?

And that’s what the bad guys think too.  And that’s what makes Iran becoming a nuclear power so dangerous.  And don’t the Jews really deserve universal and world-wide condemnation anyway?

So what Hitler ultimately failed to do, the Iranians might actually get away with.  All the green lights point that way.  The runway is being cleared.  No one will try to stop them.   The world has reconciled their hatred of the Jews.  The Final Solution is only moments away.

And that’s all there is to it.