Thinking Right

By Ragnar Danneskjöld

March 9, 2009 8:57 AM | Link to this

Good morning all. WSJ today calculates “greenhouse emissions per capita” and ranking by state. The implication of the chart is that the costly leftist cure (“cap and trade”) for a non-existent problem (“global warming”) will be borne primarily by 10 mostly-red states. And the primary beneficiaries will be 10 mostly-blue states. Thus, as is the case with most leftist schemes, this is a simple transfer of wealth from mostly middle- and low-income entities to relatively wealthier states.

Cap and trade remains mysterious to all for two reasons. First, the program is broadly undeveloped, or, in less charitable terms, it remains half-baked and subject to change. Secondarily, our leftist friends do not want an honest disclosure of the consequences of any form of cap and trade.

The most reasonable analysis of cap and trade is that it will impose new consumer costs in either of two ways:

(1) in the form of higher fees paid by industry to government, and passed on to consumers, or (2) in direct prohibition on production. The leftists usually don’t talk about the Carter-like shortages they would knowingly inflict on us, “for our own good.”

The way the program will likely work is that bureaucrats will arbitrarily determine exactly how much carbon dioxide shall be tolerated. Government will then auction off that quantity of pollution rights. Those who fail to buy rights will be punished severely for polluting thereafter.

One might assume that the auction proceeds would be distributed among the true owners of the country, America’s taxpayers, but one would be wrong. Leviathan will retain the proceeds in slush fund, to reward friends of the overlords, and to punish enemies of the overlords.

Most of the elitists who advocate for cap and trade have a potential financial interest in this latest of the leftist hidden taxes. I think I have previously noted the general similarity of “cap and trade” to the Saddam-era “food for oil” program that eventually proved corrupt at the highest levels of the UN.

Another way to view the theft is that the productive states of Wyoming, North Dakota, Alaska, West Virginia, and Montana will be taxed most heavily, in order to subsidize Rhode Island, New York, California, Vermont, and Connecticut. Rich leftists stealing by impoverishing the poor - change we can believe in.

We can end on a hopeful note – today’s WSJ also has a 12 page “environment” report that opens noting that the green-energy industry is one of the hardest-hit “victims” of the economic distress. It is a sad world when inefficient thieves, who survive only by taxpayer subsidy, are “victims.”

By Chris Broe

March 9, 2009 8:58 AM | Link to this

How about that new legislation to stop any more liberals from becoming Octomoms? I’m for it if it could have prevented the Jonas Brothers.

By Ragnar Danneskjöld

March 9, 2009 9:03 AM | Link to this

It is undoubtedly bad form to discuss articles in another newspaper, but there are extraordinary WSJ pieces getting no public discourse, thus my effort to rectify.

Hope you all saw the striking – well, actually, jaw-dropping - article in the Saturday WSJ on Ronald Reagan’s personal effort to convert the baptized agnostic Mikhail Gorbachev. The article was based on notes by two witnesses to the effort, who hold differing views of the intention. One affirms that Reagan saw it as his Christian duty to bring home a lost sheep; another affirms that the purpose was a clever distraction by Reagan to take Gorbachev off his agenda. Sounds like a two-fer to me. The story is nearly unbelievable if one ponders all of those implications, yet is incontrovertible.

By Redneck Convert

March 9, 2009 9:09 AM | Link to this

Well, it was a great day down at the track and all I got to say is if more people would follow NASCAR we wouldn’t have so much nastiness on this blog. Most people on this blog would be alot better off and get along better if they gulped a few PBRs and took a laxative.

Anyhow, I don’t know what Wooten means when he talks about new and improved. Us Libraritarians and Republicans hate change unless it’s headed backward toward the 1930s. For Wooten to threaten us with improvement and something new just throws sand in our eyes. If I wanted new and improved I would go over to Bookman’s blog and read his librul trash.

We don’t need improvement. Most of us done made up our mind many years ago and nothing will change us. All we need from Wooten is writting that helps us beleive we’re right in our beleifs.

That’s my opinion and it’s very true. Have a good day everybody.

By Chris Broe

March 9, 2009 9:13 AM | Link to this

Nancy Reagan had a similar standoff with Gorby’s wife when they were viewing priceless medieval paintings about Mary and Jesus.. Nancy remarked that she couldn’t understand how anyone could not absorb the religious significance of the image, yet Gorby’s wife steadfastly refused to acknowledge any ecclesiastical spin on the painting. This was in front of news cameras and thus much more striking in it’s similarity to the Nixon/Kruschev kitchen debates. “We will wave, “Bye Bye Capitalists. Bye Bye.”

By Chris Broe

March 9, 2009 9:20 AM | Link to this

Jeff Gordon and Junior are the only names that can save Nascar. They have to be in the points lead or nobody watches. We dont care. we dont know these other guys. For some reason, they just dont play. Even that guy who flips backwards doesn’t sell. So stop flipping backwards. Hey, it’s not a field sobriety test. “Yes, sir, I want you climb upon your window and flip backwards.” It’s that or say, don’t sing, your ABC’s.

By Chris Broe

March 9, 2009 9:47 AM | Link to this

Have you seen Mike Huckabee’s Fox News Show? A recent visitor is this 13 year old boy (Johnathon Krohn) who has written a book trying to form new language to define Conservatism. What is the point? Will they quote this kid during the campaign to make debating points? This has to be the bottom. The Grand Old Party has devolved into Jonas Brother Conservatism.

Buy.

By Glenn

March 9, 2009 10:16 AM | Link to this

Yep, Ragnar. Sounds like something Reagan would do. I think I smell Casey in there somewhere too, with top notes of sacerdotal incense wafting from Rome.

By lwwmm7

March 9, 2009 10:25 AM | Link to this

I would like to repeat my previous invitation of our big blogger family to have a pot-luck dinner and get to know each other. Catch is we have to wear nametags with out screen names on them. It’s easy to make fun of disfunctional family members when they aren’t right there in front of you. That’s why us good southreners always try to be first to arrive at the fambly reunion and the last to leave. Keeps the rest from talkin about us too much.

By William Trapnell

March 9, 2009 10:41 AM | Link to this

When is the Jim Wooten’s final day? I don’t want to miss it. Will definitely find some way to celebrate. I do hope his successor will have an open mind.

By lwwmm7

March 9, 2009 10:47 AM | Link to this

Can’t say that I have ever seen anyone on this blog with an “open mind”, myself included.

By Ragnar Danneskjöld

March 9, 2009 10:59 AM | Link to this

Dear lwwmm7 @ 10:47m by “open mind” I assume you mean “one who has not thought through issues.”

By Margie Lumpskin

March 9, 2009 11:09 AM | Link to this

Thinking Right won’t be new and improved until an actual conservative starts writing it.

• Taxpayer-funded coupons for private school tuition
• Regulating how many chillun people can birth
• Government restrictions on how people can develop their business and spend their money at Underground Atlanta

This Wooten is an anti-freedom, nanny state socialist.

By Ragnar Danneskjöld

March 9, 2009 11:25 AM | Link to this

Taranto published a shocking story of heartless government Friday, quoting The Las Vegas Review-Journal:

Baudelia [Quezada] was getting her children ready for bed. Someone began pounding on the front door. Two men and two women, dressed mostly in black, stood on the front porch of the family’s east Las Vegas home, holding a photo of a man Baudelia had never seen before.

They told her in Spanish that they were looking for the “dangerous man” in the photo and believed he was hiding in the family’s backyard.

Baudelia called to her husband that police were at the house. She ushered her frightened children into a back bedroom.

When Raymundo opened the door and stepped outside, he was pushed against the side of the house and handcuffed, Baudelia said.

“They said, ‘He’s the one we’re looking for,’ ” she said.

One of the four people handed her a card that read: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The agents lied to Mrs. Quezada. They were there to arrest her husband, who is accused of no crime save for violating immigration regulations. In doing so, they tore a family apart:

Four-year-old Celeste Quezada came bouncing into the living room Tuesday morning and, with a soberness far beyond her years, said something that had her four pig-tailed sisters quickly nodding in agreement: “I want my dad back.”

But the girls’ 34-year-old father, Raymundo Quezada, won’t be back anytime soon. He’s stuck in Mexico, where he was deported last week… .

“His name is Raymundo,” 10-year-old Geovana said while her sisters watched “Tom and Jerry” reruns on the family’s television. “When he went outside, the police got him.”

When federal agents seized Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint nine years ago, the Clinton administration justified it on the ground that they were reuniting Elian with his father in communist Cuba. In the case of the Quezadas, the Obama administration does not even have that excuse.

By Ragnar Danneskjöld

March 9, 2009 11:28 AM | Link to this

Dear Margie @ 11:09, your prejudices aside, surely you will acknowledge that vouchers give freedom to parents rather than restrict it? It is the state education lobby that opposes such freedom.

By Mr. Snarky

March 9, 2009 11:33 AM | Link to this

Couldn’t get any worse.

By AmVet

March 9, 2009 11:55 AM | Link to this

New, Improved Thinking Right?

Jimbo, along the lines of Common Sense, Conservatism, that is an oxymoron if ever there was one!

First her dad - the ONLY man of honor that this new and improved GOP could trot out last year as a candidate - and now his daughter.

Baby steps in the Flat-Earth, Old White Guy Party of Dixie:

In a new blog post for the Daily Beast as Ann Coulter and HBO host Bill Maher are kicking off a week-long debate tour today in New York, McCain calls President Obama “the hippest politician around” and says being a Republican is “about as edgy as Donny Osmond.”

And she blasts Coulter for helping to “perpetuate negative stereotypes” about Republican women. “I straight up don’t understand this woman or her popularity,” says McCain. “I find her offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time.”

Most rational people agree, Meghan. She is merely political pornography…

By Big Bucks GOP

March 9, 2009 12:01 PM | Link to this

“During the Great Depression, the Dow plunged 89 percent from the 1929 crash to July 1932. Then it went through some big swings before losing 49 percent in 1937-38 as the economy tanked again. World War II, which grew in part out of financial stress around the globe, followed. The Dow didn’t get back to its 1929 high until 1954.”

LONG WAIT AHEAD: “[T]his bear market likely won’t rival that of the Great Depression.” But the return could be agonizingly slow. University of Maryland professor Carmen Reinhart, who studied 21 bear markets around the world, tells the mag: “In the best-case scenario, you are looking at six years or longer” to return to past highs. The writers adds: “Bad as that sounds, it would compare favorably with Japan, whose Nikkei index reached 38,900 in 1989 and now trades at around 7,200.”

By Big Bucks GOP

March 9, 2009 12:06 PM | Link to this

Newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. said Monday that it will shrink its work force by an additional 15 percent as it contends with sharply declining revenue amid a deepening recession.

The 1,600 job reductions should help the publisher of The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee and other newspapers meet previously announced plans to save up to $110 million over the next year. McClatchy Treasurer Elaine Lintecum said the company will likely exceed that target, but the company did not release a new estimate.

“The effects of the current national economic downturn make it essential that we move even faster to realign our work force and make our operations more efficient,” Chairman and Chief Executive Gary Pruitt said in a statement.

Pruitt will take a 15 percent cut in his base salary, while other executives will see their pay reduced by 10 percent. Pruitt got a $1.1 million salary in 2007, the last year for which McClatchy has disclosed his pay.

Cash compensation to the company’s directors will decline about 13 percent. Senior executives are also forgoing bonuses in 2008 and 2009, while directors are declining stock awards.

Other wage cuts are planned, but the company did not provide details.

By Big Bucks GOP

March 9, 2009 12:09 PM | Link to this

FRDAY’S GOOD NEWS

King & Spalding, one of Atlanta’s oldest and largest law firms both by number of attorneys and revenue, laid off 37 lawyers and 85 staff on Friday.

“While we have been working hard in many different ways to manage the firm to respond to the reduction in demand, the continuing decline in the U.S. and global economies has unfortunately made it necessary for us to make some reductions in our lawyer and staff ranks,” said King & Spalding chairman Robert D. Hays in a statement late Friday afternoon.

He said a severance package was being offered to the laid-off workers.

King & Spalding spokesman Les Zuke, based in New York, would not say how many of the firm’s cuts were from the Atlanta office and would not make anyone available to comment. King & Spalding has 13 offices, including outposts in Dubai and Frankfurt.

King & Spalding was founded in Atlanta in 1885. Its clients include Georgia blue chip companies, from Coca-Cola and Home Depot to SunTrust, as well as General Motors and Ernst & Young.

Like many industries, law firms have not been immune to the effects of the recession. The National Law Journal reported that in February major law firms laid off an estimated 1,100 attorneys. On Thursday, one of the nation’s largest firms, New York-based Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, laid off 55 lawyers and 100 staff, or 12 percent of its nonpartner ranks.

By Margie Lumpskin

March 9, 2009 12:33 PM | Link to this

Actually, government backed education coupons give money to parents who have the freedom to put their kids in private schools with or without said coupons.

Surely, you are not turning socialist, too?

By Buford T. Pusser

March 9, 2009 12:40 PM | Link to this

If I can hitch a ride on a C-5 to South Korea, I’ll walk up there and end the little saber rattling problem.

By Ragnar Danneskjöld

March 9, 2009 1:16 PM | Link to this

Dear Margie @ 12:33, perhaps we have between us an issue of semantics. You are using “socialism” where I would use “welfare.” If you argue for abolition of the state-subsidy or state management of education, I would agree that you undermine socialism. If you argue for maintenance of state management of education, I think that is socialism.

On the unrelated issue of directing how people shall spend welfare checks - my “freedom” issue - I would disagree with you that people ought to be compelled to spend such “education welfare” checks on a government-managed education. My objection to that erosion of freedom should not be taken as an endorsement of government-managed education, i.e., socialism.

By Ragnar Danneskjöld

March 9, 2009 1:22 PM | Link to this

Dear Bucks @ 12:01, great post. As President Obama is implementing an almost perfect mirror of the Hoover-Roosevelt policies that caused the 1929 hiccough to last for 16 years, I think you have forecast the future accurately.

By Margie Lumpskin

March 9, 2009 1:32 PM | Link to this

Like your friend, Glenn, I am for public education, %&*$#ed up as it may be. Taxpayer-funded education coupons are probably not socialist, they are more like the Soviet-style Party perks the ruling class gave itself.

Now, get on over there and check out Wootie’s new blog. You wouldn’t want to miss Political Foreskin’s first 94 posts would you?

By El Jefe

March 11, 2009 9:32 AM | Link to this

In today’s AJC, there was opinion piece that made the statement regarding the reformation of health care in this country

“In the short run, health care spending creates jobs and generates income.”

This statement, I do not understand and the article did not back up this inane statement.

TO my way of thinking, BHO is taking a big chunk of money out of the economy and aiming it toward health care. How will this create a single job, except to expand a government toadies fiefdom. More public sector jobs, no private sector job, but a growing government pool of unionized incompetence.

A perfect example is Medicare. The IRS can not give you a solid answer to your tax questions. FDA, does it really protect you?

In talking with my Doctor, he says that the medicare folks are the slowest payers around, and the reimbursement is not enough for the services rendered. Sounds like a real winner.

By "Charles", The Original

March 11, 2009 11:37 AM | Link to this

New, Improved Thinking Right?

Now that concept sends shock waved throughout my soul, mind, spirit, and body. And here’s why. Thinking Right is one of few mediums that are open to people with the ability to think… Trust me; so-called black radio employees etc are extremely intolerant of thinking people. And after forty years of neglect, the art of thinking in the black community has been replaced by the art of unfruitful destructive arguing.

I hope and pray that the new and improved thinking right doesn’t run parallel to the new and improved America, black or white. But we’ll see.

Y’all had better send a prayer up. Thank God that “Charles”, The Original is Conservative born and Conservative bread. And when he takes his last breath, he’ll be Conservative led!

God is a Conservative.

By "Charles", The Original

March 11, 2009 1:06 PM | Link to this

Black boys and girls etc. shoot and kill each other because so-called educated elitist black men and women have betrayed black people in the interest of money, fame, status, etc., and the imagined beloved community, or The New World Order. And through the media provided by Jews and others, the elitist black people encourage the masses via surrogates to betray their own interest. Consequently, there is no exclusive black community to groom and influence a black human being from infancy to adulthood. The individual family is too small and impotent. That job is tailored for an exclusive environment.

The masses of Europeans had better be ware; the New World Order is in the process of destroying your community as we speak. And you have black people as a living example of your outcome.

By "Charles", The Original

March 11, 2009 2:33 PM | Link to this

I can’t believe that people didn’t realize the stock market is rigged. How do you think Oprah Winfrey made her money? Oprah Winfrey is supposed to be worth a billion dollars or more. Right? You know she didn’t make her money producing widgets or anything else… No, she made her money in the stock market. As a result, there are black women across the nation especially in the media, radio, television, etc lending their support to Oprah Winfrey. They are hoping to get the attention of the white collar criminals on Wall Street who made Oprah’s success possible. In a sentence, they are offering their services to do whatever is on the New World Order agenda for an opportunity to be successful like Oprah.”

As grandma used to say, it’s a damn crying shame.

By "Charles", The Original

March 11, 2009 3:55 PM | Link to this

This is my last post for the day. I’ve got to attend to some business. I hope people are leaning something.

A group within my circle of immediate influence met to update a survival strategy for tens of thousands of people that we are directly responsible for. After our business was completed, one sister mentioned a brother named Sarasutenseti. Seti produced a short video entitled, have our elders failed us, along with several others. Most of us didn’t know the brother, but we brainstormed his video found on the web. To make a long story short, Seti appears to be a young black man obviously coming to his senses. He mentioned that the white man should come get him if they want him. We all agreed that Seti is far too critical of white people. Most white people are just as delusional as the masses of black people. And should law enforcement should come to take Seti to prison or worse as Seti suggested, they definitely won’t be white policemen. They most likely will be the blackest of the black and others ethnicities. Black sell-out integrationist are more of a threat to Seti than white people.

And should a white person demand that the government defend the Constitution from enemies foreign or domestic, the New World Order law enforcement crowd is not going to send a cast of white men to subdue or arrest him, but an integrated group of police with white officers in lesser authority.

When the United States government decided to invade Iraq, a sovereign country, Iraqi government officials reasoned that the United States government had sent a group of mercenaries (soldiers) from every ethnic group on the earth to attack their country.

Welcome to the psychological warfare of the integrationist New World Order crowd.

I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow; God willing.

By "Charles", The Original

March 12, 2009 12:02 PM | Link to this

Good morning everybody. I woke up this morning with more food for thought for the people. Take a good dose of this medicine, it will heal you.

Lord, we went to Central Georgia last Tuesday to visit my mother-in-law. And usually on visits, my wife and I just hang out around the house and chat with relatives and neighbors. Well this time, we decided to cruise through my wife’s old neighborhood and black areas in general. And listen, I pride myself with having poise, self control. So I’m rarely visibly moved by anything. But after looking at the appearance of black people, I almost lost it. There is no question about it, black people are dying. Almost all of them didn’t look human. Their faces were contorted. Most of the women were obese. The light in their eyes are completely out, and the body looked like half is barely making it and the other half is in the grave. And I said to myself, the so-called educated integrationist Negroes should be held accountable for the crimes they have committed against this helpless people.

Let me tell you Negroes who can at least talk on the radio something. If you continue to accept the life destroying teachings of these low life integrationist Negroes like Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, and their surrogates, you will die fifty years before they bury you. Negroes on television and radio don’t represent the interest of any black person. They work for other people. Do you think that other people will use their money and resources to provide black radio, television, or anything else for the interest of black people? Hell no! I wouldn’t do it either. Negroes are placed in the media and other areas by elitist of other racial groups for the purpose of controlling and misleading the masses of black people. And the shameful Negro sell-outs get paid for their assistance.

By the way, they are using the same integrationist New World Order system against white people. Even the politicians don’t represent the interest of white people. It’s a good idea for states like Texas to secede from the union. It can save the masses of white people from experiencing a living hell exemplified in the lives of the masses of African Americans.

By @@

March 12, 2009 1:18 PM | Link to this

Dang, Jim! Seventy-five hours and counting is the longest DAY? I’ve ever witnessed.

Charles:

Are you in charge over here?

By "Charles", The Original

March 12, 2009 4:36 PM | Link to this

@@,

I’m in contact with the AJC main office. And Jim Wooten won’t be with us for several days. But I want everybody to know that, “I’m in charge here. I’m in charge here. I’m in charge here…

By "Charles", The Original

March 12, 2009 5:37 PM | Link to this

@@,

Instead of clicking on New, Improved Thinking Right, go to the AJC.com to opinion>>, Thinking Right: Free Choice Act Kill Jobs to access Jim Wooten’s latest blogs.

By "Charles", The Original

March 12, 2009 6:02 PM | Link to this

And true to my conservative nature, I don’t like Jim Wooten’s new-format, Thinking Right. Well, I’ll just do what black people did when mandatory integration took effect in the South. I’ll learn to live with the horrors.

By Ms. Tified

March 13, 2009 3:29 PM | Link to this

Great idea here - why not have mandatory randomn urine tests for people who receive welfare??? This would cut down on a lot of mess going on I think!!

by the way, I’m black so black and conservative can go together guys!!