Home Depot Co-Founder Blasts Obama
IBD: What's the single biggest impediment to job growth today?
Marcus:
THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. Having built a small business into a big one, I can tell you that
TODAY THE IMPEDIMENTS THAT THE GOVERNMENT IMPOSES ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO DEAL WITH. HOME DEPOT WOULD NEVER HAVE SUCCEEDED IF WE'D TRIED TO START IT TODAY. Every day you see rules and regulations from a group of Washington bureaucrats who know nothing about running a business. And I mean every day. It's become stifling.
If you're a small businessman, the only way to deal with it is to work harder, put in more hours, and let people go. When you consider that something like 70% of the American people work for small businesses, you are talking about a big economic impact.
IBD: President Obama has promised to streamline and eliminate regulations. What's your take?
Marcus:
HIS SPEECHES ARE WONDERFUL. HIS OUTPUT IS ABSOLUTELY, INCREDIBLY BAD. As he speaks about cutting out regulations, they are now producing thousands of pages of new ones. With just ObamaCare by itself, you have a 2,000 page bill that's probably going end up being 150,000 pages of regulations.
IBD: If you could sit down with Obama and talk to him about job creation, what would you say?
Marcus:
I'M NOT SURE OBAMA WOULD UNDERSTAND ANYTHING THAT I'D SAY, because he's never really worked a day outside the political or legal area.
HE DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE A PAYROLL, HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEMS BUSINESSES FACE. I would try to explain that the plight of the businessman is very reactive to Washington. As Washington piles on regulations and mandates, the impact is tremendous. I don't think he's a bad guy. I just think he has no knowledge of this.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/578920/201107201835/Marcus-Home-Truths-On-Jobs.aspx?src=HPLNews
Second day in a row, Obama gets an F from a business person. You don’t have to be a psychic to tell who won’t win a second term in November 2012.
The Fear based Economy
Finally, someone has publicly said what everyone has long known.
On Monday, during his company’s second quarter earnings call with investors, Wynn Resorts
CEO STEPHEN WYNN ENDED THE THREE-YEAR TRUTH EMBARGO OVER WHO IS HOLDING BACK THE U.S. ECONOMY.
In July 2008, yours truly christened the economic conditions America began facing roughly a month earlier as the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, named after its primary creators: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In a comment at that original post, I noted that the economy’s job and wealth creators were “genuinely frightened by the lack of seriousness and presence of abject irresponsibility in Congress and in Obama.”
THIS FRIGHT WENT VIRAL LONG AGO BUT REMAINED WHISPERED IN CAREFULLY CHOSEN COMPANY UNTIL WYNN BROKE THE SILENCE. When an earnings call participant asked why his firm hasn’t expanded its meeting space in Las Vegas, Wynn responded:
I’M AFRAID TO DO ANYTHING IN THE CURRENT POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT IN THE UNITED STATES.
… my customers and the companies that provide the vitality for the hospitality and restaurant industry, in the United States of America, they are frightened of this administration. And it makes you slow down and not invest your money.
… THIS IS OBAMA’S DEAL, AND IT’S OBAMA THAT’S RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS FEAR IN AMERICA.
Why shouldn’t the economy’s key players be afraid? In 2-1/2 years, Barack Obama and his administration have shown that they will do anything in their power — even if not in their constitutional power — to further their far-left redistributionist and science-free environmental goals.
IF IT MEANS SUBVERTING THE RULE OF LAW TO FAVOR BANKRUPT UNION-DOMINATED CAR COMPANIES, SO BE IT. IF IT MEANS SHUTTING DOWN OIL DRILLING AND EXPLORATION IN THE GULF OF MEXICO AND RESTORING IT IN SLOW MOTION AT A COST OF TENS OF THOUSANDS OF JOBS, WELL, THAT’S UNFORTUNATE COLLATERAL DAMAGE. IF IT MEANS REVOKING AN ALREADY-ISSUED PERMIT FOR COAL MINING, TOO BAD, SO SAD….
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-fear-based-economy/
The truth is bubbling to the surface. 2012 may make the 2010 look like a walk in the park for the Democrats.
Other Business Leaders Speaking Out
3M's George Buckley, who blasted Obama last February as anti-business. "
WE KNOW WHAT HIS INSTINCTS ARE," BUCKLEY SAID. "We've got a real choice between manufacturing in Canada or Mexico - which tends to be more pro-business - and America," he told the Financial Times.
Boeing's Jim McNerney, who in the Wall Street Journal last May called Obama's handpicked National Labor Relations Board's suit against his company a
"FUNDAMENTAL ASSAULT ON THE CAPITALIST PRINCIPLES THAT HAVE SUSTAINED AMERICA'S COMPETITIVENESS SINCE IT BECAME THE WORLD'S LARGEST ECONOMY NEARLY 140 YEARS AGO."
Intel's Paul Otellini, who told CNET last August that the U.S. legal environment has become so hostile to business that there is likely to be
"AN INEVITABLE EROSION AND SHIFT OF WEALTH, MUCH LIKE WE'RE SEEING TODAY IN EUROPE - THIS IS THE BITTER TRUTH."
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/executive_truth-tellers_about_obamas_disastrous_policies.html
It appears Atlas is awakening. Will he shrug anytime soon?
Obama predicts his record will decide the election
President Barack Obama said Wednesday that he'll be re-elected for a second term if voters feel like he's been on their side, working as hard as he can and getting things done.
"IF THEY DON'T," THE PRESIDENT SAID, "THEN I'LL LOSE."
The blunt political assessment from Obama cast next year's presidential contest as a referendum on his leadership rather than a choice between him and whoever his GOP opponent will be…..
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700164678/Obama-says-election-assessment-of-his-leadership.html
At last something I agree with Obama on. I’ve said before, I’d vote for Donald Duck against BHO. But imagine if you are a liberal how this must make you feel. Their strategy depends on making the Republican nominee the issue.
Young Hispanics skeptical of big government
An outfit called Generation Opportunity (which boasts 842,000 friends on its “Being American” Facebook page) commissioned an online poll of adults age 18 to 29 in April from the Polling Company/Woman Trend Inc.
THE MOST INTERESTING RESULTS ARE FROM YOUNG HISPANICS. THEY PREFERRED “REDUCING FEDERAL SPENDING” TO “RAISING TAXES ON INDIVIDUALS” IN ORDER TO “BALANCE THE FEDERAL BUDGET” BY 1 69%-27% MARGIN. Of these young Hispanics, 57% agreed that “if taxes on business profits were reduced, companies would be more likely to hire” and 56% agreed that “the economy grows best when individuals are allowed to create businesses without government interference.”…
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/07/young-hispanics-skeptical-big-government#ixzz1SkYg5LFT
Obama appears to be the Jimmy Carter of this age. Carter’s disastrous presidency soured a generation of young people in the 1980s to the Democrat Party. It appears that Obama may be doing that as well to the 2010 generation.
Murdock, Hacking, and Hypocrisy in the News Media
In December 1996, a Florida couple, John and Alice Martin, who sounded suspiciously like union goons, claimed to have inadvertently tapped into a phone conversation between then House Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Republican leadership.
According to these Democratic and union activists,
THEY WERE JUST DRIVING AROUND WITH A POLICE SCANNER IN THEIR CAR, PICKED UP A RANDOM PHONE CONVERSATION AND SAID TO THEMSELVES, "WAIT A MINUTE! I COULD SWEAR THAT'S DICK ARMEY'S VOICE!"
LUCKILY, THEY ALSO HAD A TAPE RECORDER AND CASSETTE IN THEIR CAR, so they proceeded to illegally record the intercepted conversation and then turned the tape over to Democratic Rep. James McDermott -- the top Democrat on the Ethics Committee that was at that very moment investigating Gingrich.
ALTHOUGH THEY SWORE THEY HAD NO IDEA THAT WHAT THEY WERE DOING WAS A CRIME, IN THEIR COVER LETTER TO MCDERMOTT, THEY REQUESTED IMMUNITY -- just as you probably do whenever you write somebody a letter. (They later pleaded guilty to a crime under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.)
MCDERMOTT PROMPTLY TURNED THE TAPE OVER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES and other newspapers. The Times' headline on the story, "Gingrich Is Heard Urging Tactics in Ethics Case," might as well have been titled:
"TAPE SHOWS GINGRICH CONSPIRING TO ACT WITHIN THE LAW."
John Boehner, one of the participants in the Gingrich call, sued McDermott for violating his First Amendment rights, which resulted in
A COURT ORDERING MCDERMOTT TO PAY BOEHNER MORE THAN $1 MILLION.
And yet, more than a dozen news organizations, many of the same ones demanding the death penalty for Rupert Murdoch right now,
FILED AMICUS BRIEFS DEFENDING MCDERMOTT'S DISTRIBUTION OF THE PIRATED TAPE.
http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2011/07/20/media_mogul_charged_with_first_degree_murdoch
Hypocrisy isn’t confined to one side of the aisle. It happens on both, but the left likes to pretend they don’t do it (kind of hypocritical in itself).
BBC isn’t Bias enough claims Dr. Steve Jones
….Sometimes, in his enthusiasm to put all these evil “deniers” in their place, Dr Jones appears to forget the basic rules of science altogether. For example,
HE DESCRIBES HOW MEASURED LEVELS OF ATMOSPHERIC C02 HAVE INCREASED SINCE 1959, AND HOW “BASIC PHYSICS SHOW THAT CARBON DIOXIDE IS A GREENHOUSE GAS” AND HOW “THREE INDEPENDENT SETS OF RECORDS OF GLOBAL TEMPERATURE AGREE THAT 2010 WAS ONE OF THE THREE HOTTEST YEARS SINCE FIGURES WERE FIRST COLLECTED.” Dr Jones might be surprised to learn the “deniers” agree with him on this. Where they differ is over a fundamental scientific concept:
“CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION.” We are, remember, emerging from the Little Ice Age. So the rise in global temperatures is perfectly explicable in terms of natural climatic cycles. Furthermore, you could reasonably argue that the theory of anthropogenic CO2 as a driver of catastrophic global warming has already been “falsified” (or, as I prefer to think of it, torpedoed below the waterline, hit in the magazine and blown out of the sea). That’s because, as even
THE GREAT DR PHIL JONES OF THE CRU HAS ACKNOWLEDGED, “GLOBAL WARMING” STOPPED IN 1998 (EVEN AS ANTHROPOGENIC CO2 LEVELS, NOTABLY IN CHINA) CONTINUED TO RISE.
Another category error Dr Jones falls into is in his use of the ARGUMENTUM AD VERECUNDIAM, the appeal to authority. He tells us:
The IPCC concluded that it is beyond doubt that the climate is warming and more than 90% likely that this has been driven by human activity.
And he cites an open letter to the journal Science by two hundred and fifty members of the US National Academy of Sciences:
“(T)here is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.”
But as both Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn could have explained to Dr Jones,
SCIENCE DOES NOT ADVANCE THROUGH “CONSENSUS”; and as Einstein could have told him, science is not a numbers game.
WHEN HITLER COMMISSIONED THE BOOK 100 AUTHORS AGAINST EINSTEIN, EINSTEIN COOLLY REPLIED THAT IF HE WERE WRONG, ONE AUTHOR WOULD HAVE BEEN ENOUGH….
….AS BIASED BBC NOTES, IT HAS BEEN FIVE YEARS SINCE THE BBC OFFICIALLY ABANDONED ALL PRETENCE THAT IT WAS ADOPTING A NEUTRAL POSITION ON “CLIMATE CHANGE”. In a 2007 BBC Trust policy report, it wrote:
The BBC has held a high level seminar with some of the best scientific experts (on whose and what measurement) and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of consensus….
…..DR JONES NOTES WITH CONCERN BRITAIN’S GROWING SKEPTICISM:
A poll carried out by the Cardiff University Understanding Risk Group in early 2010 showed in contrast that one in seven among the British public said that the climate is not changing and one in five that any climate change was not due to human activity. Fewer than half considered that scientists agree that humans are causing climate change.
THE CONCLUSION, HOWEVER, HE DRAWS FROM THIS IS NOT THAT THIS IS A FAIR REFLECTION OF THE LACK OF EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT CAGW THEORY – BUT THAT MEDIA ORGANISATIONS LIKE THE BBC AREN’T DOING ENOUGH TO PROMOTE THE “CORRECT” VERSION OF REALITY. “The divergence between the views of professionals versus the public may be seen as evidence of a failure by the media to balance views of very different credibility. The BBC is just one voice but so many in Britain gain their understanding of science from its output that its approach to this question must be considered.”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100098066/bbcs-biased-climate-science-reporting-isnt-biased-enough-claims-report/
A well written article but with a couple of flaws. While scientists talk about 2010 being the warmest year on record, even by their numbers it was .05 degrees warmer than 1998 which is beyond the accuracy of the readings making up the number. And that temperature is very much questionable.
James Hansen is the director of GISS. Hansen is an outspoken advocate of man-made global warming. Hansen recently stated that “THE 12 MONTH RUNNING MEAN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE IN THE GISS ANALYSIS HAS REACHED A NEW RECORD IN 2010. THE MAIN FACTOR IS OUR ESTIMATED TEMPERATURE CHANGE FOR THE ARCTIC REGION.”
There is a MAJOR PROBLEM WITH HOW GISS MEASURES TEMPERATURE IN THE ARCTIC. THEY DON’T HAVE ANY THERMOMETERS THERE! Despite this complete lack of accurate information, GISS shows that the ARCTIC NORTH OF EIGHTY DEGREES LATITUDE WAS UP TO FOUR DEGREES WARMER THAN THE LONG TERM AVERAGE.
Science
New hope for heart disease
The revolutionary technique could transform the lives of ¬many thousands of people in Britain with ailing hearts.
Scientists have found a way to make hearts beat stronger and to even overcome the damage caused by previous heart attacks. The gene injection takes just 12 weeks to start working….
….It works by raising levels of a calcium-controlling protein in the diseased heart muscle cell to normal. A gene – called S100A1 – makes the protein which is vital for regulating the heart’s contraction. Research has shown that, in heart failure patients, the protein is massively depleted.
In the new study, researchers at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, US, injected the gene into pigs with heart failure. Twelve weeks later, the protein created by S100A1 had improved their heart function….
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/260168/Simple-jab-that-can-cure-heart-disease
We live in an exciting age.
Liberal insanity
First we have this
WITH AN OPPRESSIVE HEAT COMES THE IMMEDIATE DEMAND FOR RELIEF — and Con Edison, the electrical utility for the New York City area, is the first one to hear those pleas from the humid masses.
A sustained heat wave means the utility sees a marked spike in electricity usage from homes and businesses. With no relief in sight — Friday’s temperatures will feel worse than Thursdays —
CON EDISON OFFICIALS ARE BRACING FOR WHAT IS LIKELY TO BE A SERIES OF OUTAGES AROUND THE CITY.
http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2011/07/21/con-ed-braces-for-outages-as-heat-wave-continues/?mod=google_news_blog
Then we have this story
NEW YORK CITY MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG SAID HE WILL DONATE $50 MILLION TO THE SIERRA CLUB, AN ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY GROUP, TO PROMOTE THE ORGANIZATION’S FIGHT AGAINST COAL-FIRED POWER PLANTS.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/07/21/bloomberg-gives-sierra-club-50-million-to-fight-coal-plants/
So we have NYC facing rolling blackout even while it’s mayor funds an organization lobbying to stop the building of power plants that could avoid the blackouts. Don’t let anyone tell you that liberals are on your side. They’re there to do what they consider is best for you.
