A week in review…

Let’s look what has been going on lately in American politics and media in the last week (or two).

We have recently had Hilary Clinton taking the Democrats lead position, and spitting venom and attacking Walmart. The good news is that in the latest polls there are more people that would “never vote for Hilary” than would consider every voting for her, by a 2:1 margin. So while it is a long way from elections, her chances of becoming President are probably about as high as Ross Perot’s. But it shows a trend from the Democrats, for those paying attention, “we hate America and American business”.

Walmart is the quintessential American capitalist business; they are more efficient on managing a supply chain, so they’ve been able to sell things for 25% less than most of their competitors. They have a profit margin of 3%, or 1:10th that of Microsoft, and so the Democrats are vilifying Walmart as greedy. Even assuming they are the demons to all their employees that the Democrats pretend they are, that hurts 1.2 million employees ; yet over 100 million people shop there every year and reap the benefits of their efficiency. That’s almost 100:1 in people they help versus hurt. In truth, they are attacking Walmart because almost half the employees are part time workers, and thus don’t receive healthcare benefits — but most of those work part-time by choice, it is a supplemental or retirement job, and have coverage elsewhere. Only 1 out of 7 of their employees don’t have healthcare coverage. And why? Some people have a choice of paying $1,000 per year for Walmart‘s healthcare, or opting for the free government programs they are entitled to (and pocketing that difference) and Democrats blame Walmart for people using the social programs that they setup! That puts the help:hurt ratio to over 600:1, even blaming Walmart for their employees choices. In truth, only a fraction of them get government assistance because they have to, most because they can and would be stupid not to. That ratio is before you look at all the investors (including many of us with pensions that invest in Walmart), or those that provide goods and services to Walmart that they help. And we’re just getting started. Walmart pays its employees an average of $10/hour (in U.S. urban areas), or roughly double the minimum wage. (Many compare them to their urban competitors without factoring in the urban/rural differences between Walmart and the competition). They are mad because Walmart pays twice the minimum? Three or more times the minimum when you factor in benefits, taxes, and their 401K, profit sharing, stock purchase plans, store discounts, and many other things they get. What bastards! ? The anti-Walmart crowd points out that a single parent of two working at Walmart is right at the top edge of the poverty line and might be getting assistance. But they ignore that for each job opening Walmart offers there are like 5-10 applicants, in this era of near zero unemployment. Why is that? They ignore that if you had a two parent household, and both of them worked at Walmart, they’d be nearly double the poverty level! The true problem is Democratic policies that encourage single parent households, which put so many into poverty, not with Walmart. Democrats show what they stand for by who they attack; they don’t like capitalism, efficiency, American business, or the product of the programs they setup, so they finger point to distract the clueless. They want to hurt 1,000 or more people for every person they help, and the consequences of their own policies, in the name of flag waving opportunity and freedom. Welcome to Democrats Amerika, Comrades.

Next we have Democrats like Chuck Schumer attacking “Big Oil” because of their record profits. This demonstrates their completely lack of understanding of basic economics, or worse, they do understand them and don’t care. Oil Companies too have 3-5% margins, for going into the scariest parts of the world, or very dangerous geographies, and managing exploring, pumping, refining and shipping toxic waste and turning it into usable products like fuel. How dare they! Their profit margins are 1/10th of Microsoft’s, those evil bastards. Of course it has nothing to do with the fact that Microsoft contributes more to Democrats campaigns than Oil Companies do, right? If the oil companies are greedy with a 3% margin, what does that make Apple at nearly four times as much? Or Google at double that? Oil companies are distributing a needed product for less margin than Coca-cola and others get for bottling water. You want to remove oil subsidies, or even charge them for the security that the military provides, fine — but stop with the anti-Business attacks based on disinformation. You want to help our energy independence, stop attacking the oil companies and saddling them with regulations and restrict them from using the toxic sludge we have in our soil, but let them utilize it with less encumbrances. The Democrats aren’t attacking big oil because they are greedy, they are attacking them because they aren’t paying enough graft, or because they are free enterprises that help the American people (including all the investors, consumers and employees).

We also had Howard Dean attacking the Drug Companies of late; braying like the party of the Jack-Ass that he represents. How dare they save millions of Americans lives each year by investing billions of dollars. It takes nearly $900M and over a decade to bring a drug to market, most of that because of the FDA, and the Democrats blame the drug companies for following the laws that they setup, and blame them when anyone dies of a unintended effect of the drug, despite the warnings and billions gone into preventing such things. Something like 97% of Vioxx users said they continue taking the drug, even knowing the risks (blown out of all reasonable proportion by scare tactics), because it was so beneficial. For this, the drug maker must be vilified? The truth is that the Democrats get paid more by the trial lawyers, so will screw the drug companies, and thus every American who counts on those drugs and R&D, for the sake of fattening their own wallets. If that doesn’t scare you, it should. They demonstrate they are anti-Business, and for things (like trial lawyers) which hurt Americans.

We had Nancy Pelosi representing the stupidest political district in America, with the stupidest statements as well. The current Vice President has a hunting accident, and because the National Press has made it a personal crusade to attack him at every opportunity, he wasn’t eager to rush to them for his ritualistic crucifixion, and instead let family members of the victim be informed (before the Press got to blow the story out of proportion), and let the owner of the property and witness explain what happened. For that, she mouths off, about all sorts of irrelevancies and takes glee demonstrating to all her bias hate-filled partisanism — all while ignoring a far more significant and relevant events from her side of the aisle. The ex-Vice President, and Presidential Candidate (?) for 2008 (polling ahead of Hillary), Al Gore, goes to the country that gave us 15 of the 9/11 terrorists, to a conference meant to discuss how to increase diversity and competitiveness of Saudi business markets, were he rants incoherently and completely off-topic about how, “Arabs were indiscriminately rounded up… and held in conditions that just unforgivable [by America]”. Hello, clueless windbag; have you been paying attention at all? The Arab street is ignorant enough, and America has been spending millions (if not billions) trying to teach them that we aren’t against Muslims/Arabs. And one of the leading and highest ranking Democrats goes to foreign soil, during a time of war, when there’s rioting going on against the west over CARTOONS, and says something so far from the truth and so like to aid the enemy against us? Come on, the clueless are burning down Kentucky Fried Chicken’s and American flags because the Dutch said something stupid, and you want to incite more of that? The government admits that in the aftermath of 9/11, we were trying to get terrorists and due to the usual bureaucratic SNAFU’s and mixing up of names (or bad tips), and they made a whopping 13 mistakes — and have long since let them go. But that’s 5 year old news and hardly indiscriminate round-up or persecution. The good news is that will probably blow any chances of a future Presidential run, we can hope, but that the Democrats didn’t verbally crucify him, and distance themselves from his ignorant rant, reflects on their position. They support undermining the U.S.’s positions abroad, and saying treasonous things, while attacking the kicking the current Vice President when he is down, because he didn’t pay proper homage to the Democratic Press.

So what can we learn about the Democrats and their positions, based on what has come out of their own mouths just this last week? They detest the very profit system (Capitalism) that has made our economy the envy of the world. They want to reduce opportunities, and de-stimulate the economy with more big government solutions to problems that aren’t problems at all. They want to run our oil companies and retail distribution centers with all the efficiency of FEMA or Homeland Security — and remember the latter was created under their behest, and the former was subjugated to the latter in the name of efficiency (which Katrina clearly demonstrated for all to see). All while the Democrats are simultaneously hiding from the real problems and flaws in the programs they created in the first place; like attacking Walmart for their employees using the healthcare safety net that they setup. If you are a big corporation, or small, that employs lots of people and is efficient and has low margins, they will attack you. If you are a larger corporation with higher margins and worse practices, they will ignore you — as long as you pay your graft to them. They are for empowering the enemies of the U.S., and weakening our own position (here and abroad). They stand for saying stupid things, and doing worse ones. Basically, they want to make us more like the French; neo-socialist appeasers without a foreign policy. But that also means they want the 11% unemployment, lousy economy, less opportunity, less freedoms, and other things that go with those policies; as long as they get the power in the process.

Every tyrant has built his society on envy and “hating the rich”. The Democrats are still trying to follow in those footsteps. They offer no other policies but punitive ones against Capitalism, against the Rich, against America, Americans and opportunity. No you can’t attack business, and not attack opportunity as well. You can’t aid our enemies, and work against our interests, without harming Americans. They have become the party of cowards. And they are cowards because they won’t admit what they stand for or will fight for (socialism); instead they stand around sniping at everyone else, hoping that we will collapse into a French-esque, politically-correct utopia. A utopia where the truth doesn’t matter, only their rhetoric and it’s ability to deceive the government educated, economically illiterate, “We the gullible”. Me, I’m for education, information, truth, honesty, and fighting against what the New-Democrats seem to be standing for — at least if you take them at their word.