Caldwell's Corner

Pelosi and Maddow: Two follies who stand alone

Truth Commissions (video: http://www.youtube.com/user/Meggion)

It�s Friday so it must be the Follies.

�That time once again when we take stock of the inane and foolish put upon us by those forced to navigate life with an amount of gray matter just slightly larger than that found in your average toad.�

And what better example of �gray matter scrambled� than Nancy Pelosi and Rachel Maddow.

While this segment normally includes several stories of �toadism�, Thursday�s �interview� of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) by MSNBC�s resident anchor activist Rachel Maddow includes more idiocy than any sane person should be exposed to in a lifetime, let alone just one day.

So as not to distract from the sheer idiocy of these two women there will be no other Follies this week.

It is in that spirit, that the remainder of this page is intentionally left blank. Consider the empty space a fitting tribute to the level of intelligence these two so illustriously demonstrate in their �conversation�.)

NSA spying (video:� http://www.youtube.com/user/Meggion)

Healthcare Reform (video: http://www.youtube.com/user/Meggion)

Afghanistan (video: http://www.youtube.com/user/Meggion)

Obama in St. Louis: ShowMe the facts please

Another healthcare speech AP/Mel Evans

President Obama comes to suburban St. Louis today for yet another healthcare reform photo op, pitch, speech, rally (pick one or all, the even is an invitation only gathering for about 400 loyal Obamanauts).

If he stays true to form, resident�s of the �show-me� state will be subjected to yet another Obama �forget the facts just roar the rhetoric� lambasting of those evil insurance companies whose only mission is to screw the American public.

Never mind that insurance companies have some of the lowest profit margins of any major corporations in America.

Never mind that those rate increases Obama finds so easy to vilify would:
1. Not be needed if COSTS were being contained
2. Are NOT unilaterally implemented but reviewed and approved by state regulators

Never mind that Obama has refused to incorporate into his �plan� competition across state lines or meaningful tort reform. (Two initiatives that would actually lower the COST curve of healthcare, something Obamacare fails to do.)

Never mind that the deficit �reduction� the President throws around so loosely is only achieved by collecting revenues and fees for ten years while only give six years of benefits.

Never mind that that same deficit �reduction� is only achieved by numerous budget cuts including cutting over 500 billion out of Medicare and then spending that money on new benefits. (Even the Congressional Budget Office says it�s double counting the same dollar and disingenuous, but that matters not to the great one. If he says it can be done, it CAN be done. Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can��.go broke.)

Never mind that as of this writing Congress is proving it will never have the political will to implement Obama�s touted �reforms�. The 140 billion �unemployment extension� bill likely to pass the Senate this week already stops scheduled cuts in fees paid to doctors for treating Medicare patients. If this current Congress doesn�t have the will to stop the record deficits, and this ENTIRE 140 billion dollar bill NOT paid for (PayGo anyone?) how can anyone, especially the President of the United States, say with any credibility that future Congresses will somehow find the fortitude that escapes those in office now?

Obama�s speech today is nothing more than but another rhetorical rant in front of another controlled crowd. Yet another campaign rally now 18 months post election.

And if this afternoon�s assault on the truth isn�t hypocrisy enough for you, remember that by scheduling this speech Obama�s trip becomes �official business�.

Meaning you, the American taxpayer is picking up the majority of the tab for the President�s travel expenses just so he can attend Claire McCaskill�s fundraiser tonight at the Renaissance Grand Hotel.

In the spirit of civility, welcome to Missouri Mr. President.

In that same spirit could you please �ShowMe� some facts this time rather than the tele-prompter template?

If you cannot, then please, kindly �ShowYourself� the door.

More money alone won't solve education crisis

In a recent column, Mort Kondracke calls upon the need for, and hope that, needed education reform will not get lost in the political squabbling currently occupying Congress. He points out:

�...A work-force report by the Business Roundtable warned that the United States is the only major industrialized country with a younger generation that has a lower level of high school achievement than the older generation and is second to last in college completion.

And, as Obama pointed out Monday, speaking to the America�s Promise Alliance, a third of U.S. children fail to graduate from high school � including half of all minority children, condemning most of them to lives of poverty and creating a huge cost to society.....�

So yes, the problem is easily identified. But the solution? Not so much.

Kondracke continues:

�...Obama wants to replace the NCLB�s goal of having all students �proficient� in reading and math by 2014 with that of having them �college and career ready� by 2020 and having their performance benchmarked against a common international standard agreed to by all states....�

What stands out is the changing from �proficient� in reading and math to �college- career ready�. The current bureaucracy can't even get more than a third of students to graduate under the current grade inflated, anything goes, you're all so special system.

It is naive at best to think that a system that has been failing students for over forty years is all of a sudden going to embrace the �reforms� necessary to get students �college-career� ready by the end of this decade.

While President Obama's goals are to be applauded, the same age old question remains.

Why is it that the only solution ever thought of by government and the unions is more money, more money, more money?

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that for 2006-2007 the United States spent on average over $9600 per student on public elementary/secondary education. (In 1970, the amount was right at $4,000.) Common sense would lead one to believe that such a dramatic increase in funding would see at least some sort of improvement.

Yet instead the system is WORSE today than it was four decades ago!

Somebody needs to remind these idiots that it wasn't laptops and the internet that got Apollo 11 to the moon, it was basic mathematics and American ingenuity.

No matter the latest and greatest new teaching �philosophy�, 2 + 2 is still 4, and reading and writing can still be done with a #2 pencil and a Red Chief tablet.

Multiplication tables are still best learned through old fashioned repetition and memorization that imprints them onto the mind for a lifetime of recall without need for a calculator.

And no amount of �whole word� gurgitating will ever replace the common sense and logic of phonics.

America achieved the pinnacle of her greatness with less money, less technology, and less government than could have ever been dreamed of forty years ago.

Yet all we hear from the unions and the government is more money, more technology, more this, more that, more, more, more, more.

�Trust us, just give us more and THIS TIME (wink, wink), we'll get it right, we promise.� (Pinky swear, really, we really, really will.)

Things may not have been the �best� in all schools those years past. Not all had the �latest and greatest� technology, or even year round air conditioning. Yet students managed to achieve the one thing that they're not doing today: They actually LEARNED something.

And before the �self-esteem, let's not hurt anyone's feelings� attitude took over the classroom students actually KNEW if they were learning or not. A,B,C,D and F were more than just letters in the alphabet, they were guideposts for progress.

Sure there were times the �self-esteem� was bruised, or you didn't get the grade you felt you deserved. But perhaps the most important thing learned in school back than was that life wasn't perfect and it certainly wasn't always fair. And you learned those facts while you still had a support system around you to deal with them.

Absent all the state, federal and union mandates, local school boards were actually in control of their own schools. In turn, the community and students shared in their destiny.

Yes, our educational �system� is broken, but the problem isn't with the students or the vast majority of teachers.

The problem is with the government, the politically correct parasites, and self-serving unions who have hijacked public education for use as indoctrination centers and private retirement plans.

Until the public, parents, and politicians of all parties, acknowledge that it is the entrenched educational establishment not lack of funding that is failing our students today there will not only be no meaningful �reform�, there will be never be measurable improvement.

Arrogance, hypocrisy, and humility - Washington's 2 out of 3

Speaker Nancy Pelosi w/ ABC's Elizabeth Vargas on This Week

If Washington arrogance, hypocrisy and humility supplant your diet than you had a steady dose of at least two out of three this week.

We start off with �out of over 300 million people in this country how does THIS imbecile wind up Speaker of the House� Nancy Pelosi�s interview with Elizabeth Vargas on ABC�s This Week .

On discussing Rep.Charlie Rangle being publicly admonished for taking corporate sponsored Caribbean junkets Pelosi reminded us that what Rangel did �was not something that jeopardized our country in anyway�.

Wow, thanks Nance, so glad to know that corruption in Washington does no harm. (Just how is that whole �drain the swamp� thing coming along anyway?.)

But the �don�t choke on your Cheerio�s moment came when Vargus asked about the Tea Party movement and she (Pelosi) actually uttered the words, �you know, we share some of the views of the tea parties�� (Even my warped mind couldn�t have dreamed that one up, just goes to show: truth truly is stranger than fiction.)

Arrogance 1, The American People 0

Come Monday we have Senate Democrats and the entrenched media painting Sen. Jim Bunning R-KY as just this side of the Anti-Christ.

Just what as Senator Bunning�s �sin�?

Daring to call attention to the fact that though Democrats gave much ballyhoo and press palooza to their passage of PayGo just the week previous, those same Dems saw no need to apply said principal and actually find a way to PAY for the new billions they were wanting to spend.

Unfortunately for Bunning the bill he decided to hold up was a 30 day extension of unemployment benefits giving the press a free pass to paint him as evil incarnate.

While video of ABC reporters �fighting the good fight� trapping Bunning at the Senate elevator and bemoaning, �why, why, but why Mr. Senator?� went viral on the networks and cable outlets, they and their minions paid scant attention to the several plans that Bunning proposed be used to actually pay for the spending.

In the end, Bunning gave in and dropped his threatened filibuster.

But he dropped it based upon a promise from Harry Reid that his pay proposal amendment would get an up or down vote on the Senate floor.

Trusting Harry Reid proved to be a bigger mistake than holding up the bill in the first place.

Bunning�s amendment went down in flames thanks to a last minute procedural move performed by none other than that darling of the California Circus �I�m gonna cap and trade your butt all the way to the poor house� Barbara Boxer.

Hypocrisy 1, The American People 0

But alas, the Democrats did not wholly own hypocrisy this week. (Is it ever?)

While many conservative commentators hailed Bunning as some lonely statesman standing on principle for God and Country and the generations to come, the �Paul Harvey� is a bit more revealing.

While Bunning�s stand most certainly needs to be done more often and by more Senators from both sides of the aisle, believing this one was based upon some long held noble belief deep is as hard to believe as Barbara Boxer introducing a bill to allow offshore drilling.

For it was just two weeks previous that the very same Senator Bunning voted AGAINST the �paygo� bill that he was now so "nobly" demanding be followed.

Hypocrisy 2, The American People: 0

And Wednesday brought back that great accentuater of arrogance, that unrivaled purveyor of pabulum, the one...the only....... Barrack Hussein Obama.........reminding all us little people that the time for passage of healthcare reform was now and now it should be done. (Not to be confused with the previous twenty something times he�s made that edict over the past year.)

Completely misrepresenting the Senate procedure of �reconciliation� (if you don�t know what it is look it up, curmudgeons curmudge we don�t teach) as nothing more than a �simple majority� vote, the Great O put out one of the greatest Presidential whoppers of all time.

Only �I did not have sexual relations with that woman�.�, �it depends what the definition of is, is� and �I am not a crook� ring with more arrogance and hubris than Obama�s �I want my healthcare, I shall have my healthcare and I don�t give a damn if you don�t want my healthcare.�

Arrogance 2 The American People 0

So at weeks end we have Hypocrisy and Arrogance comfortably ahead two each to none with regards to the best interests of the nation. (In other words, situation Washington normal.)

And if by chance you thought humility might be given a story this week, please get help and get it soon.

For to think, (no matter how fleeting), that humility could ever be a trait seen in Washington these days, would be nothing less than bordering on the delusional.

As always, have a great weekend and I�ll see ya round the corner on Monday.

Steve Wynn on wealth, jobs and why we should listen

Rush Limbaugh clip of Steve Wynn from www.therightscoop.com

President Obama and politicians in Washington are restraining job growth in America and actually hurting the very workers they claim they are trying to help with their constant bashing of wealth and the evil of being "rich".

At least that's the view of Wynn Resorts Ltd. (WYNN) Chairman and CEO Steve Wynn.

On his company's 4th QTR conference call, Wynn stated emphatically: "it is preposterous that businesses are under attack in the United States of America." and that small business owners "hustling" their businesses are: "yes, they are the enemy now. They are the rich folks."

When asked about his outlook for 2011 and beyond:

I�ve got more questions than answers. I have more pessimism than I have had before. And it�s based upon the political environment in which we are living today. And it definitely is impacting Las Vegas. The President of the United States hasn�t missed one single opportunity to swelch [ph] Las Vegas. In our particular case it�s cost us millions of dollars from companies affected by the President�s remarks that had no connection whatsoever to federal bailouts. But we get phone calls, and I am not going to mention the names of the companies, from Chairmen, who say we don�t want to appear to be profligate because Barack Obama said this or that about Las Vegas. But it�s had an effect on us

Regarding the new Washington parlor game of bashing the "rich":

Anybody that makes over$250,000 in the form of a personal income tax return is now by Washington definition �a rich person� when everybody who has got a college degree knows that the personal income tax rate in the United States of America is the business tax of America. Every subchapter S, every individual proprietorship, and every partnership in the United States of America files tax returns as individuals. And when they do, and they show that they made $2 million, or $3 million or God forbid $4 million, they pay the income tax rate. They deduct their working expenses, their living expenses and then they invest in a new store, a new shop, and most of the time 25% of their �profits� are tied up in accounts receivable or inventory. But all of a sudden, all of those people who make over $250,000 are rich folks to be fleeced. And if that�s job formation stimulation in America, (inaudible) providence.

And Wynn was in no mood to apologize for his sentiments:

And if I sound angry about it, and disgusted, I am disgusted and angry at the apparent ignorance of the administration and the Congress to recognize the fact that the individual tax rate in the United States of America is in fact the business tax of America. And if you keep banging on that, you will destroy in the incentive for job formation in the United States of America. And that�s simple truth. Simple truth. And whether politicians like it or don�t like it, it means nothing to me.

What the future holds:

Well, until we get over this America is in for hard times because what�s going to happen is the people that are going to suffer from what�s going on are the working class of America. My 15 to 20,000 employees they are the ones that are in trouble. The reason they are in trouble is this demolition of the dollar. It�s going to reduce the buying power of the working class of America as sure hell as if we gave them a salary cut of 25%. And that�s another thing that doesn�t seem to be clear to the brilliant people in Washington, D.C. They are not just our customers, they are my employees. And until my employees get the drift of what�s being done to them America is in trouble.

Steve Wynn is not of Washington "elite" stock. As a young man Wynn faced the pre-mature death of his father due to heart surgery complications, was thrust into the family bingo business and immediately had to begin paying off hundreds of thousands in gaming debts incurred by his father.

Why should we care what Wynn thinks?

Because unilke the current occupant of the Oval Office, in Wynn's office he actually creates jobs and pays taxes.

Because quite frankly, Steve Wynn speaks from experience, knowledge and doesn't need a teleprompter to speak for him.

Because, unlike Barack Obama, Steve Wynn knows that every dollar the federal government "re-distributes" to where it deems that dollar is "more needed" is nothing more than sanctioned class warfare that destroys more dreams than it can ever create.

Steve Wynn is what used to be (until the Obama Administration) just another American success story among millions told and retold throughout this great nation's history.

Through hard and focused work adversity is overcome, business grows, prosperity follows and over the course of one human lifetime, thousands of others find jobs and their own wealth because of the dream and vision of another.

Growing a business and creating jobs. Hmmmmmmmm, something Obama and the vast majority in his administration have never done yet they want the rest of us to "trust" that they know what's right for the rest of us. (You know, the "rest of us", those of us out here actually creating the jobs and wealth that they so eagerly bash and so quickly tax?)

But Wynn didn't rely upon just his own observations when asked about long term strength in Vegas:

And as I said before, I think we are on hold for a while unless the government in Washington gives the world a message that America � Lee Kuan Yew, speaking of Singapore, was in the United States and went to visit the President of the United States. The day before he went to visit the President he was on television on Charlie Rose�s Show. And Charlie Rose asked this brilliant, most elder statesmen in the world, the man who founded Singapore; he asked Lee Kuan Yew, what about America and what advice would you give the President of the United States? And this age Mount Rushmore caliber man said on television, on PBS, and I am sure he repeated it in the wine house, but I wasn�t there of course, he said, unless the government and the administration can learn to control government expenditures that are wildly out of control, the value of the dollar will be decimated and destroyed to the detriment of the people, of the world and the United States and the world. That�s what he said. And until we have a signal that such discipline and common sense has regained its footing I don�t know how to answer the kinds of questions that you are asking. And I don�t think any other business man does either.

Charles Kokly of Stifel Nicolaus commented that Lee Kuan Yew, "sounds like Thomas Jefferson, if you do a little reading".

Steve Wynn, a proven and accomplished entreprenuer sees the damage Obama is doing to the economy, Lee Kuan Yew, a man who has proven his intelligence with deeds, not words, sees the financial danger Obama's deficits are putting the country in, and tens of millions of Americans the country over see through the smoke and mirrors.

Why then, cannot the "smartest, most intellectual, most nuanced" President in decades see the swath of destruction his rhetoric and policies is leaving across this great land?

One answer is he's just too arrogant to admit it, another is he knows exactly what he's doing and doesn't give a damn.

Whichever answer you pick matters not.

For the only thing that truly matters if you care about the future of this nation and her grandchildren to come is that the insanity of spending and growth of government in Washington be stopped and stopped sooner rather than later.