No Runny Eggs

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before but Mrs. Shoe and I are proud parents of twin Shoelets.   Thing 1 and Thing 2 (the Shoelets) turned 10 this weekend and we had a great time celebrating including a viewing of Hellboy II by the Shoelets and myself (they just don’t make movies like that anymore!)   The reason I tell you this, is that working with twins hones your parenting skills early on.  

Mrs. Shoe and I quickly learned that we needed to address issues with the Shoelets  straight on.   If we let issues slide, they knew how to push the rules.   If there was a complex issue, something like why one of their school mates had 2 moms, we needed to discuss it with them giving them enough information to make sense of it with where they were at mentally, without dragging all of the adult jargon and issues along with it.     This method of not avoiding issues, but not over complicating and over explaining them is referred to by us as “talking to two year olds.”

As I posted earlier, President Bush has removed the Executive Order barring off shore drilling.   As expected, Harry Reid came out to snivel about Bush’s action.   Harry’s action plan seems to include three points

• Crack down on “Excessive speculation.” – I’m not against this.   The problem I do have is that the DOPES used to tell us that the “Big, Bad Oil Companies” were gouging us.   After numerous investigations, they have yet to show us $.01 of gouging that has occurred.   If Harry can actually show me “Excessive speculation” I’m with him, until then, this is a red herring
• The “Big, Bad Oil Companies”should drill in all the acreage they already have – What a great idea!   I wonder why those nasty companies hadn’t thought of it?   Could it be that there isn’t any oil there?   That’s non starter two!
• President Bush, tear down that SPOR! – The Dems have said that President Bush should release the oil in the strategic reserve.   The strategic reserve holds enough oil to satisfy replace our  imported oil needs for about  2 months.

Releasing oil from the SPOR has become the new line in the sand for the Dems.   They seem unable to understand why this is a bad idea and why rather than reducing prices, drawing down the reserve could actually increase prices.

And this is where I start talking to the two year olds.

Nancy, Harry –

• You only have 700M Barrels of oil in the SPOR.
• You can only offset Imported oil for 60 days
• You claim it will take 10 years to get any new drilling on line (It won’t, I’m just spinning their illogic back at them)

What are you going to do between 2 months and 10 years?   If you really believe that opening SPOR will bring down prices, what do you do when it runs out?

The problem kids, is that you have offered no solutions that increase oil production, zip, nil, nada.   If you deplete the SPOR without increasing production, you may get a momentary drop but once you run the SPOR down, prices will go back up and that may be the goods news.   With the SPOR  depleted, prices will  likely move even higher than they were before because that “threat” is off the table.

Drill here, Drill now, pay less,

(H/Ts – Allahpundit and Ed Morrissey)

CQ Politics is reporting die-hard Clintonistas want a floor vote on the nomination at the convention. Do remember that neither Hillary Clinton nor presumptive nominee Barack Obama have enough pledged delegates to win on the first ballot; Obama got his presumptive status by virtue of stealing some superdelegates who were previously supporting Clinton.

Trailortrash beat me to the Comment of the Day™ – “i (sic) think i (sic) am going to need a bigger bag of popcorn"¦”

There are very few people whom I am unable to separate their leftist views from the rest of their careers.   While Hollywood is full of the hardcore left, I still see many movies that have well known lefties in them.   Heck, I even see movies that have Tim Robbins or Alec Baldwin  associated with them….I loved them both in “Team America!”   Robert Redford has been an exception to that rule for me.

Redford seems unable to separate his hard left views from his work projects.   This has become more evident as he gets older.   Perhaps the most egregious of his insertion of  political perspective was in his acting and directing of “Lions for Lambs.”  

Now however, I may have to rethink my position on Redford. I think we may actually agree on something.

In an interview over the weekend, Redford stated that if Redford’s Messiah doesn’t win the election in November,

you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye

The facts are these:

• The Dems should be walking away with this election
• The driving force of the Democrats has become the extreme left, think DailyKOS and Huffington Post folks.
• Contrary to what he wants people to believe since he eeked past Hillary, Obama is the poster child candidate of the extreme left.   Every position he took during the primaries (and that he still honestly holds) are unrecognizable to the vast majority of Americans, think late term abortion, gun controls, religious “clingers.”
• Obama won the nomination with support of many new, untested voters i.e. young or previously not voted.
• While taking in the new voters, Obama’s recent attempts to move center have left him “not dancin’ with the ones that brought ‘im.”

The point is that the extreme left is what the Democrat party has become and this election will be a competition about allegedly running away from Republicans and running to their ideology.   With the supposed built in “anti-R” sentiment, what message gets sent if Obama loses?   I’d say a worse message that what was supposedly sent to the Republicans in ’06.   If Obama loses, the left will have permanently alienated some portions of their core base and will never again see many of the “New Voters” who are involved simply based on emotion.

I’ll quibble with Redford in that while I think it would be a huge setback for the left’s ideology, Obama’s defeat, by itself won’t be “The End” of the Democrats.   However, if you add the gas price issue to the mix, and Nancy and Harry continue to tell Americans to “Pay more, Do less and Shut up,” I think the risk to the Dems could well be as severe as Redford paints.

Come to think of it, I may not change my position on Redford, but not because of ideology.   I can’t remember any of his films that I’ve been interested in since “The Sting.”

Thursday of last week, Michelle Obama was in Kansas City.   Her speech, made to a group of mostly women, was focused on reinforcing the empathy that her Baby’s Daddy has for women’s issues.   As part of her remarks she said:

His own mother, she said at the beginning of her remarks, was “very young and very single when she had him.” And, Obama added, he has observed his wife’s attempts to reconcile motherhood with her career aspirations.

As Michelle is wont to due, she attempted to make herself appear “one of the club” by saying:

He sees me, his wife, who struggles every day with that guilt that we all hold deep in our hearts as women,” she said. “That guilt that you don’t have the choice to stay home, and even if you do, you feel guilty

Michelle, just another victim in a campaign and party full of victims. Michelle, so full of guilt from not having a choice to be a stay at home mom.

What the hell?

In 2004, the Obamas had gross income of approximately $207K. I’ve never heard that they had financial issues so I’ll have to assume they were able to “get by” on that income. At the time, Barack was still an IL legislator and a “Constitutional Professor” and made about $85K. Michelle was a hospital administrator and made, around $122K gross. After tax, they made about $167K

In 2005, things got much better for the Obama’s. Barack’s income rose to about $154K as a US Senator, Barack’s book brought them about $1,141K, Michelle made about $361K. Their after tax income rose significantly to $910K.

Even in 2006 the Obama’s did well. Of a total gross income of $984K, Barack made $157K as a US Senator and $551K from his book. Michelle made $333K.

If $167K after tax was getting them by in 2004, they would have had $743K of excess income they could have invested from their 2005 after tax earnings and $530K from 2005. They could have had nearly $1.3M invested from those two years alone.

Barack now makes $162,500 a year as a US Senator. Let’s bake in a little inflation and say that the Obama’s gross of $207K in 2004, would now need to be about $220K. To make up the difference between Barack’s Senator salary and the  inflated gross, they would need to take, let’s call it, $60K each year from their savings to make up the delta if Michelle chose not to work.

Wow! if they had $1.3M in the bank and drew it down at the rate of $60K each year, they could do that for 20+ years and not run out of money….even without considering interest.

Yes they could, except for this one other little event of 2005. The Obama’s decided to trade up a bit. They decided they needed to trade up to a $1.65M home! The result of that one transaction increased their annual expenses for mortgage interest and real estate taxes from $18K in 2004 to $76K in 2006.

I have no doubt that Michelle feels guilty. Michelle probably even feels guilty due to her choice. However, for her to suggest that her guilt is because she doesn’t “have the choice to stay home,” is preposterous and shows her again to be nothing but a pandering elitist.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a neandrathal who thinks women should be chained to a stove. Women should make career and family choices that are the best for them and their families, whatever they and their families think that should be.

Michelle’s choice, was to buy an expensive house. Michelle’s choice could have been to be satisfied to live in the home they had, invest their gain and allow her to stay home with her children…if she had chosen to. If Michelle had chosen not to buy the big house, stay home and use savings…if they really couldn’t get by on $165K each year, the Obama’s would use about half of their savings as income supplement by the time their youngest daughter had graduated from high school.

Yes, Michelle had a choice.   However, unlike the claims of her speech, for Michelle, material goods and personal fame won out over her desire to be a stay at home mom.

Building on yesterday’s favorite elected Republicans list over at Right Wing News, Shoebox, 40 other bloggers, and I chose our least-favorite elected Republicans (they had to be current governors, Congresscritters, or Presidents, so I couldn’t throw in Trent “Cave-A-“Lott, Mike Huebsch or Jeff Wood). Like the favorites list, I decided on sending 8 John Hawkins’ way:

– Arlen Specter
– Lindsey Graham
– Chuck Hagel
– Tom Petri
– Ray LaHood
– Christopher Shays
– Ted Stevens
– Don Young

To see which ones (if any) made the top 20, as well as the full top 20, head on over to Right Wing News.