Happy New Year

We hope everyone everywhere has a happy, healthy new year.
Here is one for all the people.

Thomas Sowell sets the record straight on FDR's policies and unemployment

Thomas Sowell, one of my all-time favorites, shatters the myth once again, of FDR's policies helping America out of the Great Depression.

The prevailing view in many quarters is that the stock market crash of 1929 was a failure of the free market that led to massive unemployment in the 1930s — and that it was intervention of Roosevelt’s New Deal policies that rescued the economy.

It is such a good story that it seems a pity to spoil it with facts. Yet there is something to be said for not repeating the catastrophes of the past.

This is where the liberals park their beliefs.
Read the entire article here, especially "Monsignor Capabella."

William Leiner Jr and "Monsignor Capabella" are the PIE's IDIOTS of the Week

These two idiots were found in the Allentown Morning Call editorial section. Isn't that where we usually find our Idiots of the Week? Of course, they both blame Bush for everything so of course they are our Idiots of the Week.
This first bit is from William Leiner Jr. Penn State will not get our money if this is the kind of intellect they are turning out. Leiner is not one of the great ones from Penn State with respect to becoming educated. Hint for ya William, quit listening to your dogmatic professors in Happy Valley and do some reading/research on your own.

The right-wing Republicans are fond of pointing out deadbeat workers and are very critical of labor unions. I wonder how they view our deadbeat President Bush? Bush and his useless crowd should leave Washington today, as we taxpayers are paying dearly to keep these do-nothing check collectors there.

When I learned Secretary of State Condi Rice was traveling to India after the terrorist attacks I wondered why. This check collector has done nothing but have expensive photo ops.

I will be celebrating the day they leave, Jan. 20.

William Leiner Jr.

Monsignor Capabella writes this crap.

And I will be celebrating with you when GW Hoover & Co are history. Let the record show that this dimwit was the idiot he is and was the past 8 years, and may his face adorn MAD mag forever!

Mr Leiner and the Monsignor are intellectually vapid.

Here is my reply. All from RCP.

From the fourth quarter of 2001 to the fourth quarter of 2007, real GDP grew 17%,labor productivity increases have averaged around 2.5% which is more than in the 70's,80's or 90's.
Real after-tax income increased more than 11%, there was an increase of new business by 4.7%.
The mortgage crisis was forseen by the administration way back in 2001. In Bush's first budget he warned about the financing of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Again in 2003 the Bush administration told congress to reform the GSE(Fannie and Freddie) but Christopher Dodd, Maxine Waters, Rep. Meeks, and Barney Frank all said that was a racist idea and nothing was done.
When it comes to taxes Mr Leiner and Monsignor, Bush increased the burden of taxes on the top level earners from 67% to 70% thus the rich paid more.
The problem with both of you is that you read the MCall and others and actually believe that nonsense. These facts are available to anyone who cares about reality. Until then Mr Leiner and Monsignor, keep reading the MCall with it's dwindling revenue and tinfoil hat wearing editors. For your posts, Mr Leiner and the Monsignor are the Idiots of the week at shoe fly pie dot blogspot dot co.
Oh by the way Monsignor, FDR carried on mostly the same policies that Hoover began only FDR expanded them.
That is why the depression became the Great Depression, all because of FDR's policy of taking money away from private individuals and having the government spend it. Sounds much like Obama.

Myths about the Bush Presidency

Here is another installment from RealClear Politics. Busting the liberal media myths one post at a time.

Myth 2: President Bush's tax cuts only benefitted the wealthy and were paid for by sacrificing investments in health care and education.

Reality:

There are not 116 million "wealthy Americans," but that's how many taxpayers benefited from the President's tax relief. The across-the-board tax cuts provided tax relief to every American who pays income taxes, created a new bottom 10 percent bracket rate, doubled the child tax credit to $1,000, and actually increased the share of the Federal income tax burden paid by the top 10 percent of individual earners from 67 percent in 2000 to 70 percent in 2005. Furthermore, this Administration removed 13 million low-income earners from the income tax rolls completely.

The economic growth spurred by tax relief also spurred growth in Federal tax receipts. In fact, the Federal Treasury realized the largest three-year increase of revenue in 26 years, and tax receipts grew more than $542 billion between 2000 and 2007. And yes, much of that money went to investments in health care and education.

President Bush provided more than 40 million Americans with better access to prescription drugs by creating the market-based Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. And it is one of the rare government programs that actually costs less than expected. Projected overall program spending between 2004 and 2013 is approximately $240 billion lower, nearly 38 percent, than originally estimated, thanks to the market-oriented principles included at President Bush's insistence.

Despite the heated rhetoric over children's health insurance (S-CHIP) legislation last year, estimates from a 2007 Federal survey show that the number of uninsured children under the age of 18 actually declined by 800,000 from 2001 to 2007. From 2007 to 2008, the number of people covered by affordable and portable Health Savings Account-eligible plans increased 35 percent. Additionally, since President Bush took office, more than 1,200 community health centers have opened or expanded nationwide, which has helped provide treatment to nearly 17 million people.

Federal spending on education has increased nearly 40 percent under President Bush. Additionally, Pell Grant funding nearly doubled during the Administration, which is expected to help more than 5.5 million students attend college in the 2008-09 school year, 1.2 million more students than were assisted by Pell Grants in the 2001-02 school year. This financial aid assistance also helps account for the fact that 66 percent of high school graduates from the class of 2006 enrolled in colleges, compared to 63 percent in 2000.

Perhaps more importantly, the President's No Child Left Behind Act has delivered tangible results to students. Since the law was enacted, fourth-grade students have achieved their highest reading and math scores on record, eighth-grade students have achieved their highest math scores on record, and African-American and Hispanic students have posted all-time high scores in a number of categories, narrowing the gap between minority students and white students.

Merry Christmas

The staff here at the PIE wishes all a very Merry Christmas. This picture is from the laying of the wreaths at Arlington National Cemetary. God Bless.

Myths about the Bush presidency

This is over at Real Clear Politics.
We will post it in segments here to rebut the ignorant liberals.

Myth 1: The last eight years were awful for most Americans economically and President Bush's deregulatory policies caused the current financial crisis.

Reality:

President Bush's time in office is ending as it began, with our economy under stress. The recession President Bush inherited as he entered office ran through the attacks of September 11, 2001, but during the recovery that followed, and due in no small part to the tax relief President Bush worked with Congress to provide, this country experienced its longest run of uninterrupted job growth - 52 straight months, with 8.3 million jobs created.

This reflected six consecutive years of economic growth from the Fourth Quarter of 2001 until the Fourth Quarter of 2007. From 2000 to 2007, real GDP grew by more than 17 percent, a remarkable gain of nearly 2.1 trillion dollars. This growth was driven in part by increased labor productivity gains that have averaged 2.5 percent annually since 2001, a rate that exceeds the averages of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. In the same period, real after-tax income per capita increased by more than 11 percent, and there was a 4.7 percent increase in the number of new businesses formed. The current economic challenges, which the President and his Administration have responded to aggressively, threaten to reverse some of these gains - but the gains cannot be denied.

As for the current crisis, the President and his economic team have taken unprecedented actions to stabilize the financial sector and avert a collapse. While there are a number of causes of the housing and credit crises that are at the root of our current economic troubles, deregulation by the Bush Administration is simply not one of them. In fact, one of the circumstances that contributed to the crisis was the failure of the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which President Bush long tried to subject to greater regulation. In April 2001, three months after taking office, the President warned in his first budget that the size of the two GSEs were a "potential problem" that "could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting Federally insured entities and economic activity." In 2003, the Administration began calling for a new GSE regulator, and over the next five years, the Administration continued to call for GSE reform only to be accused by Democrats in Congress of creating artificial fears and advocating for ill-advised proposals. By the time Congress finally acted in 2008 to provide the oversight the President requested, it was too late to prevent systemic consequences. Had the Administration's initial reform proposals been adopted, some of today's turmoil in our financial markets may have been averted.

White House responds to NYT article

Pinch and the other asshats at the NYT owe the Administration an apology.
The White House responded to the article with a boot to the ass of the NYT's staff.

Most people can accept that a news story recounting recent events will be reliant on '20-20 hindsight'. Today's front-page New York Times story relies on hindsight with blinders on and one eye closed.

The Times' 'reporting' in this story amounted to finding selected quotes to support a story the reporters fully intended to write from the onset, while disregarding anything that didn't fit their point of view. To prove the point, when they filed their story, NYT reporters were completely unfamiliar with the President's prime time address to the nation where he laid out in detail all of the causes of the housing and financial crises. For example, the President highlighted a factor that economists agree on: that the most significant factor leading to the housing crisis was cheap money flowing into the U.S. from the rest of the world, so that there was no natural restraint on flush lenders to push loans on Americans in risky ways. This flow of funds into the U.S. was unprecedented. And because it was unprecedented, the conditions it created presented unprecedented questions for policymakers.

In his address the President also explained in detail the failure of financial institutions to perform normal and necessary due diligence in creating, buying and selling new financial products -- a problem that almost no one saw as it was happening.

That the NYT ignored such an important economic speech to the American people and the complex causes of the crises is gross negligence.

The Times story frequently repeats a charge by the Administration's critics: a 'laissez faire' attitude toward regulation. We make no apology for understanding the concept of regulatory balance. That is, regulation should be stringent enough to protect the greater public good and safety but not overly strong so that it unnecessarily inhibits innovation, creativity and productivity gains that are the sole source of increasing Americans' standards of living. But while repeating this charge, the reporters gave glancing attention to the fact that it was this Administration that pushed for strengthened regulation and oversight, greater transparency, and housing reform.

The story also gives kid glove treatment to Congress. While the Administration was pushing for more transparent lending rules and strengthening oversight and supervision of Fannie and Freddie, Congress for years blocked attempts at stronger regulation and blocked reform of the Federal Housing Administration. Democratic leaders brazenly encouraged Fannie and Freddie to loosen lending standards and instead encouraged the housing GSEs to play a larger and larger role in the housing market -- even while explicitly acknowledging the rising risks. And while the story notes the political contributions of some banks to Republicans, it neglects that political contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac overwhelmingly supported Democratic officials -- in particular the chairmen of the banking committees. In fact, even in the midst of what by then was a housing crisis, it took Congress nearly a full year to pass specific legislation called for by the President in the summer of 2007, especially legislation to reform oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

There are many more reporting failures in this story -- failure to consider the impact of monetary policy; ignoring the regional nature of housing markets; and ignoring the Bush Administration's historic proposal to overhaul the nation's regulatory system, for example. But then a review of these issues would wave complicated the reporters' myopic point of view that only Bush Administration policies could possibly be responsible for the housing and finance cris

Blame Bush for the Housing crisis begins

The blame Bush for everything game continues in today's NYT/IHT. Bush is responsible for the housing crisis, which led to the mortgage crisis, which led to the banking crisis, which led to the securities crisis, which led to the Detroit car industry crisis which led to Sue's lemonade/hot chocolate stand being closed down.
The New York Times is inherently dishonest so you can not believe much of what is written.
Here is the entire seven page article. What this really is that the press is trying to set the story here. We will not let them.
Here is an article pointing out the lies and distortions the press is using when it comes to reporting on this issue.This is from Investor's Business Daily.

Take, for instance, a recent front-page article in the Washington Post, under the headline, "How HUD Mortgage Policy Fed the Crisis." The piece correctly fingers HUD for helping fuel risky lending at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But the newspaper starts its analysis in 2004 (in fact, the first sentence begins, "In 2004 . . . "), making it seem as if the Bush administration crafted "affordable housing" policy and created the subprime market.

The Post knows better. The Bush HUD merely continued a politically correct policy launched by the Clinton administration. For the first time, President Clinton ordered HUD to set quotas for Fannie and Freddie to buy huge portions of Community Reinvestment Act loans and other low-income mortgages made to borrowers with poor credit. The Post failed to mention this key fact.

"Failed to mention this key fact" is the epitaph they will using on the Allentown Morning Call and other newspapers. This is why they are losing readers.

A recent story in the Associated Press was equally tendentious. It blamed Bush for not cracking down on loose lending standards that had become the norm in the mortgage industry, while completely ignoring the systematic dismantling of those standards during the previous decade under Clinton.

"The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of its governing philosophy, which trusted market forces and discounted the value of government intervention in the economy," wrote AP Washington correspondent Matt Apuzzo.

Reality check: "Government intervention" is what planted the seed to this whole crisis. As we've noted, Clinton in 1995 revised CRA regulations to pressure banks into adopting "flexible" lending standards to increase minority homeownership. In a 1,389-word story, AP cited that easily verifiable fact not a single time.

There is more.

In effect, the media are blaming Bush for Clinton policies. Whoever controls the debate in Washington controls the truth. Right now, it's Democrats and their press courtiers. And so far, they've managed to shade the truth about the root causes of this epochal financial crisis.

Read the entire article here at IBD.

Watch the video of the democrats working against the administration with regards to regulating the lending institutions. These democrat shitheads are responsible for this mess.

Snowy morning music selection

It's snowing and sleeting here in the Lehigh Valley.
Time for some Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The staff and some friends saw them last week at the NJ Meadowlands. Steven Tyler from Aerosmith joined on stage as they ripped through Sweet Emotion and Dream On.
If you have a chance to see the TSO, go for it. Our second time and a great show again.
Wizards In Winter.

Democrats are going to limit free speech

Congresswoman Anna G. Eshoo is talking about reintroducing the Fairness Doctrine.
From the San Fran Peninsula Press Club we have this.

I’ll work on bringing it back. I still believe in it,” Eshoo told the Daily Post in Palo Alto.

The Fairness Doctrine required TV and radio stations to balance opposing points of view. It meant that those who disagreed with the political slant of a commentator were entitled to free air time to give contrasting points of view, usually in the same time slot as the original broadcast.

Another typical California liberal bitch with some power.

Eshoo said she would recommend the doctrine be applied not only to radio and TV broadcasts, but also to cable and satellite services.

“It should and will affect everyone,” she said.

She called the present system “unfair,” and said "there should be equal time for the spoken word."

"It should and will affect everyone" is just fascist. Who the hell is she to decide what is fair and what isn't fair. Fair is a liberals favorite word. What it means is that only their views or desires are to be taken into account. That makes it "fair." I am sick and tired of liberals and their "fair" bullshit. Most of the pathetic liberals/socialists could not compete in any fashion so they want everything to be "fair."
Eshoo is also one of those Islamic terrorist sympathizers. She is against monitoring phone calls between terrorists in foreign countries and has consistently worked to undermine the security of the US of A.

Here is Rep. Anna G. Eshoo's pertinent information. Please give her a call or two.

WASHINGTON DC OFFICE
205 Cannon Building
Washington, DC 20515
p: 202.225.8104

CALIFORNIA OFFICE
698 Emerson Street
Palo Alto, California 94301
p: 650.323.2984 or
p: 408.245.2339 or
p: 831.335.2020
f: 650.323.3498

Why NOT bankruptcy for the "Big Three?"

Todd Zywicki makes the case for letting Detroit automakers declare bankruptcy.
No bailout, restructure and cut the UAW contracts.

Multi-polar world

The planet has become Sybil. After the colapse of the USSR and most other communist states, the US and like-minded western countries "ruled" the hood. Today it seems the hood has become more than bi-polar, more like multi-polar.
One pole is the US with the UK, Australia, and other nations which understand the need for a defense of democracy everywhere.
Another pole is made up of France,Germany,most of western Europe, along with other socialist freeloading types. Yet another pole is that of Russia and her friends along with China. These countries want the US weakened so they work toward that end. These "friends" include Venezuela, Ecuador,Cuba and other dictator-states.
The last major pole is that of Iran, along with Muslim countries in the Middle East.
These countries want the destruction of the US along with Israel and other western democracies.
I remember the good ol' days when it was just a bi-polar world.
These next four years will hopefully be peaceful.

Obama friends torch Palin's church

The ATF is reporting that accelerants were used to start the fire in Wasilla.
This is typical from the left. The intolerant left, socialist brats, racist/sexist thugs, and smelly hippies are the cause for this.
Women and children were inside the church so this is more than destruction of property.
Obama and his followers are directly responsible for this type of behavior.
My friends, it is time to fight back.

4 Years of Blogging

It has been 4 years since the first post. It was a Thanksgiving post to the troops serving America. Much has happened over the past 4 years, including the defeat of the Iraqi insurgency, over 50 million people freed from tyranny, zero attacks on US soil, the death of most of the top leadership of AQ, and the tracking of many more terrorists.
Along the way mistakes were made, which is expected if you remember your history, and Americans came together and then grew apart. This is the responsibility of the democrat party, DailyKos, Huffington, the NYT, and other dominant media types.
They have turned President Bush into a monster, using their words. This in turn has supposedly turned the world against us. This is not true.
Many countries have elected leaders who are not socialist or liberal, in fact many leaders in Europe are now considered conservative. France, Germany and Italy all have a more conservative leadership than 5 years ago. Europe may come up with new political ideas rather quickly, but it takes Europe quite a while to come around to what is right. This is also clearly evident by looking at history.
American media types on the other hand want to be more like Europe. These media types have alway been starstruck by Europe and want to be more like it. This doesn't work and America will pay for this in the next few years.
The past 4 years have gone quickly, have been fun, and have been enlightening. The staff hopes to keep up with the times and hopefully improve on what we have started. We have a long way to go.
Thanks for stopping by and enjoy your holidays.