18. May 2009 by David A. Peterson.

Have you ever looked at someone and thought “there is something wrong with that person, I can’t put my finger on it but there is something not quite right?” I believe we saw that look last week with the escalating war of words from our Speaker of the House.

In-case you didn’t notice the person 3rd in line, the one that will lead the country if a catastrophe happens is… Nancy Pelosi our Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Yep she is the same person who looked into the cameras last week and lied through her teeth. Something is just not quite right with her.

Politicians in general garner a little suspicion when they speak about any topic. You typically have to take what any politician says with a grain of salt. This time you can throw out the salt and skip the suspicion, the Speaker of the House, the 3rd in line to the Presidency has been caught in a sensational lie.

What makes it sensational is that she is such a bad liar. You can look at her and tell she doesn’t even believe what is spewing from her own mouth. Her bottom lip starts twitching and you about have to tie yourself into the chair to keep from falling to ground from laughter.

B, b, b, ba, ba, ba, blah, blah, blah! This poor person is so shook she can’t get 3 words out that sound like an actual sentence. Imagine if she ascended into the Presidency through some despicable act. Can you image how she would handle her 1st crisis?

Is this person ready to lead?

Her greatest problem is that she looks back and blames Bush for everything. Never mind that President Bush and his Executive Branch was only 1 of 3 legs of our national government. She has been our nation’s 3rd in line to the most powerful post in the world for several years now, she has been at the top of the 2nd leg of government for a very long time. But she takes NO responsibility for the country’s past direction.

Her 2nd greatest problem is that she now says that she distrusts the CIA. The CIA is the group that looks forward for potential threats. This is the group that works behind the international scenes trying to predict who, what, why, and when.

So she has a suspicious view of history, and she now has no one to help her predict the future. Yet the Democrats think she is fit to lead if a catastrophe happened?

This person is 3rd in line and obviously not ready to lead.

Ms Pelosi could have stood up a few weeks back when the torture/interrogation questions aroused and stated that she knew everything and at that moment in time the “torture” or “enhance interrogation techniques” were appropriate.

Or she could have said “Yes I knew, but I believed that these were despicable techniques. I should have spoken up.”

She could even have said “Yes I thought I heard them say it but I must have miss heard them because no one in their right mind would do such a thing to another human.”

Instead she said B, b, b, ba, ba, ba, blah, blah, blah, lie, lie, lie.

Had she done any of the above three I would be writing and entirely different article. I still think that she has radical far left views but she and her fellow Democrats were elected. Fair and square she won her party’s top spot in the House. Had she not lied and stood up for what she believed was right at the moment then this would be an entirely different post.

No kidding I wanted to write about the debt this week but no… Ms Pelosi opened her mouth a little too wide and I couldn’t ignore it.

The difference in my thinking now is that she may not be capable of leading. That’s being too nice. There is no way this person could lead the country until the next general election if a catastrophe happened.

Let’s face it, if Leon Panetta will not go to bat for her and the current President is conveniently unavailable for comment then the Democrats have already figured out what to do: Dump the dummy and move on.

Republicans need to stay out of this. I’m sure she has enough enemies in the Democratic Party to finish her off. Republicans need to sit back and let them clean their own house (no pun intended).

Really, there is no way that any one from the Democratic national leadership can think that this person can stay 3rd in line. No way - no one is that ignorant. They know it… She has got to go.

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4. May 2009 by David A. Peterson.

Forrest Gump called it “stupid is as stupid does.”

Last week the Obama Administration did an incredibly stupid thing, they sent Air Force One on a photo op. Well they called it an official photo op but it had to be an incredibly stupid movie stunt.

I’m not going to dwell on where the plane went. I’m not going to comment on just how insensitive the Obama Administration was to fly over that particular city.

I believe millions of Americans saw the television images of hundreds of people scared to death, running for their lives from this potential treat. People from two states dropped everything that they were doing to call their loved ones. The message - Get out now! People were streaming out their buildings in an orderly manner, frightened but composed enough to get on the phone to call others about the cities impending crisis.

In the end it was just a silly joke. I mean really this had to be a joke; no one in their right mind would have authorized a flyover of this city. Imagine the chaos that would cause. The only thing that I can figure is that the President authorized some of his movie buddies to begin filming a new Airplane movie starring O.J. Simpson. What better place to do the filming but a real airplane, with a real fighter escort, and a whole lot of really scared people. You don’t even need to pay the extras in the crowd, they would automatically come running to the set.

Okay I’m done with my rant…. stupid is as stupid does. My issue with this incredibly stupid movie stunt is obviously the insensitivity to that particular city. However I would also like to give a “shout out” to all of the hard working taxpayers that were forced to finance this stunt.

Let me put the costs into perspective.

The problem with Washingtonians is that they don’t understand how much money was involved in the making of this movie. Even the media doesn’t get it. How many times in the past few months have we heard that $19.6 billion in earmarks is just a “drop in the bucket” to the entire bill? Or that “I’m worried that we are not doing enough in terms of spending…” Or even “…we are given Chrysler $4 billion dollars so they can avoid bankruptcy - bankruptcy is NOT an option…”

Let me do a small test before I work through the calculations. Can you say out loud to the person standing next to you this number: $2,978,354,143,102.16? I wonder how many people had to stop and think about it in order to say it out loud? By the way that is a rough estimate of how much our TARP program will end up costing the American taxpayer. But that is another story.

Today’s story is to put into perspective the cost of that incredibly stupid movie stunt.

The cost is expected to be somewhere around $330,000.  Not even a drop in the bucket by Washington standards. Just a drip from the spigot.

It may be a drip from the spigot but did you know…?

The Bureau of Labor puts the average weekly earnings of production and non-supervisory workers (preliminary results non-farm payrolls) in March 2009 at $614.20. That equals $31,938.40/year. That grosses out to $3,938 dollars in 2008 federal taxes owed for just one single average taxpayer. I’m just talking federal taxes, not the additional taxes on cigarettes, alcohol, gasoline, social security etc. I’m just talking money that would probably be allocated to the fuel, maintenance, and the crew of that incredibly stupid movie stunt.

Now our gracious government will also give this person some tax relief on the $32k that he earned in the form of exemptions and maybe interest on his home ownership. But to lower the $31,938.40/year amount would really skew my result so lets keep it where it is…

Here we go:

• Total federal taxes paid: $3,938/year
• Total  cost of this incredibly stupid movie event: $330,000/one time (hopefully)
• Number of years this person will have to work to clear this one bill: $330,000/$3,938 = 83.79/years

Yep I calculated it right. The average wage earner WILL NOT be able to pay off this bill in his lifetime. It will take almost TWO full-time employees their entire working careers to pay off this one stupid movie stunt.

If there is ever going to be some form of fiscal constraint in Washington then it will take people who have some sense of money. What is the real cost to society for one incredibly stupid movie stunt? If it is going to take 2 people their entire working careers to pay for this event is it worth it to society? Can society afford these types of luxuries?

I heard and read that the President was furious over this event. Maybe he is sensitive to the demons haunting this particular city. I wonder if he even gave the costs of the event another thought? What is your best guess? Did the President give the costs of the incredibly stupid movie event a 2nd thought? Do you think the President can say $2,978,354,143,102.16 without thinking about it?

Would someone please ask anyone of importance in the Obama Administration to rent the movie Forrest Gump? I mean really even Forrest knew that “stupid is as stupid does.”

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Authors Footnote: The Obama Administration couldn’t keep letting our money burn a hole in their pocket for long… they also flew Air Force One to Missouri in the same week. Now we need 4 or 5 average income earners to work their entire lives just to pay for one week’s worth of jet fuel.

Posted in Economics | 304 Comments »