Blog

  • Lou Prichett’s Letter to President Obama

    Lou Pritchett is a former vice president of Procter & Gamble whose career at that company spanned 36 years before his retirement in 1989, and he is the author of the 1995 business book, Stop Paddling & Start Rocking the Boat. In April 2009 he wrote the follow letter to President Obama and copied the New York Times.

    Dear President Obama;

    You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

    You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

    You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

    You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

    You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

    You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don’t understand it at its core.

    You scare me because you lack humility and ‘class’, always blaming others.

    You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

    You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the ‘blame America’ crowd and deliver this message abroad.

    You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

    You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

    You scare me because you prefer ‘wind mills’ to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

    You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

    You scare me because you have begun to use ‘extortion’ tactics against certain banks and corporations.

    You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

    You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

    You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

    You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

    You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O’Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

    You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

    Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

    Lou Pritchett

    In April 2012, the following update was added to the original:

    In April 2009, I sent President Obama and the New York Times a letter titled “You Scare Me” because, as a candidate, he promised to “fundamentally transform America.” Now, after observing his performance for over three years, he no longer scares me, he terrifies me for the following reasons:

    FIRST– He has done more to damage America’s standing in the world, to lower the standard of living in America, to impoverish future generations and to shake our faith in the country’s future than any other American president in history.

    SECOND– With a compliant Democrat congress, a lapdog media and a weak, almost nonexistent Republican opposition, he has shattered the American dream of job security, home ownership and rugged individualism for millions of Americans and has poisoned and divided our civil society with his politics of envy, class warfare, race warfare, and religious warfare which he is using as fundamental building blocks for his ‘socialist’ agenda.

    THIRD– culturally, he remains totally out of touch with traditional American values. This has absolutely nothing to do with race or where he was born, rather it has everything to do with where, how and with whom he was raised, schooled, educated, trained and associates with still today.

    FOURTH– he has surrounded himself with naive academicians, lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats and socialist leaning czars who arrogantly think and behave exactly as he does. People who offer no balanced suggestions or devils advocate positions and think in lock step with him that big government is the answer to all our problems.

    FIFTH– he not only encourages but aids and abets the unionization of all American industry, the albatross around the neck of the free market. In turn, they provide the money and muscle to intimidate his opponents.

    SIXTH– he has increased the national debt by over 30% in just three years. If re-elected and this rate of increase continues, America will be burdened with an unsustainable 20 trillion dollar debt which will result in the Country’s financial death. Recovery will be impossible —- America will be the Greece of 2016.

    SEVENTH– given his fanatical beholding to the ‘environmental’ and ‘man-caused global warming’ fringe, he has deliberately discouraged U.S. fossil fuel exploration and production while wasting millions of tax payer dollars on solar, wind and algae experiments. He refuses to accept that oil, gas and coal are not America’s enemies, they are America’s assets which, properly managed, could make us energy independent within a generation.

    EIGHTH– He views the U.S. as a power in retreat which abused its World dominance. Therefore he systematically apologizes round the world. Last March he whispered to Russian President Medvedev “–this is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility”. Just what is the secret that Obama and Putin are concealing from the American people until after the election? With what other leaders has he made similar secret.

    NINTH—and finally, after all his mis-steps, bad decision making, poor management, and zero leadership, the fact that he has the audacity to seek re-election should terrify every American. I predict that if re-elected, future historians and political interpreters will look back at the eight year period 2008-2016, and conclude “the 44th President of the U.S. allowed the takers to overpower the payers which resulted in the greatest economy in history vanishing from the face of the Earth”.

    Lou Pritchett

    Farewell America, the World will really miss you!

  • ‘Patent Trolls’ Get Biggest Piece Of Patent Pie

    So-called patent trolls – which don’t actually make anything – in recent years received significantly larger damages awards on average than those won by companies that make things, a new report found.

    Critics of “trolls,” or nonpracticing entities, claim they hold huge numbers of patents and make money by simply attacking others with litigation.

    During the 2006-2011 period, these “trolls” received a median damages payment of $6.9 million versus practicing entities’ $3.7 million, according to the study by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

    via Business Insider.

    I know this is not my usual post but it’s important.  These Patent Trolls cost everyone money and contribute nothing to the economy.  They don’t provide jobs.  They provide little tax revenue.  Yet they drive up the cost of goods that we all buy on a regular basis.

    This is a legal problem that must be solved in Washington if we want to get this country moving again.

     

  • For Self-Defense a .22 beats .45

    An excellent video (ok, it’s a tad annoying) about why a .22 beats higher caliber handguns when it comes to self defense.

    via WND.

    Bottom line is you can’t stop what you can’t hit.

  • Several Stabbed At NYC Subway Station

    NYC Subway Stabbing
    NYC Subway Stabbing

    Three people were injured in a stabbing on the escalator of a subway station in Queens Wednesday morning.

    An MTA spokesman said that Dina Saint-Fleur, 25, slashed at least two people after getting into a dispute on a J train around 8:45 a.m. Earlier reports indicated as many as seven people stabbed.

    via CBS New York.

    Mayor Bloomberg and his organization Mayors Against Handguns have so far been silent on this event.  New York, much like Chicago, has extremely onerous gun control laws.  However most criminals don’t appear to worry about obeying the law.  And then we have those that maybe can’t afford a gun yet.  So they carry knives.

    Over 500 people get stabbed each year in Chicago.  No word on the knife control policy of Mayors Bloomberg and Rahm.

  • The Real Romney: Mitt Romney, This is Your Life

    Ken Smith runs a hospital for U.S. Veterans.  You won’t believe what Romney does for them.  “Romney’s generosity has helped tens-of-thousands of veterans.”

    Four short stories at the link.

    via TheBlaze.com.

  • Where I Agree With the Teachers

    On the fourth day of the teachers’ strike, protesters targeted school board member Penny Pritzker, whose family owns the Hyatt hotel chain.

    At 3:30 p.m., thousands of demonstrators dressed in red gathered outside the Hyatt Regency Chicago, at 151 E. Wacker Dr., protesting the $5.2 million in TIF money the city provided for a new Hyatt hotel in the Hyde Park neighborhood. Around 4 p.m., they began marching south on Michigan Avenue toward the South Loop.

    Protesters said the TIF money spent on the Hyatt in Hyde Park would have been better used to improve schools in the neighborhood, and avoid budget cuts that have hurt the local schools.

    via CBS Chicago.

    Indeed, the TIF system in broken and the law needs to be repealed in Springfield.  Of that there can be no argument.

    But let’s look at this for just a second…

    $5.2 million for the new Hyatt.  26,000 CPS teachers.

    That’s $200 per teacher.  That would be an average salary increase of 0.000026% for each teacher FOR ONE YEAR.

    And that my friends is why unions suck.  They will keep the kids on the street fighting over mice nuts.  For all their fancy “for the children” rhetoric it’s really about draining every last nickel from the taxpayer.

    Leaches.

  • Ever Hear About the “Green” Old Lady?

    Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

    The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”

    The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

    She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

    Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truly recycled.

    But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

    Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.

    But too bad we didn’t do the green thing back then.

    We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

    But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

    Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

    But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

    Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

    But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

    We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

    But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

    Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

    But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

    Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart-ass young person.

    We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off

    via a Facebook post.

  • Obama Admin Warned of Embassy Attack, Did Nothing

    The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a serious and continuing security breach, The Independent can reveal.

    American officials believe the attack was planned, but Chris Stevens had been back in the country only a short while and the details of his visit to Benghazi, where he and his staff died, were meant to be confidential.

    The US administration is now facing a crisis in Libya. Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the “safe house” in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed “safe”.

    Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.

    According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and “lockdown”, under which movement is severely restricted.

    via The Independent.

    This a story the U.S. media does not want to report.  Currently only the UK papers are touching it.

    And for the doubters…  Consider this:

    U.S. Marines defending the American embassy in Egypt were not permitted by the State Department to carry live ammunition, limiting their ability to respond to attacks like those this week on the U.S. consulate in Cairo.

    Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson “did not permit U.S. Marine guards to carry live ammunition,” according to multiple reports on U.S. Marine Corps blogs spotted by Nightwatch. “She neutralized any U.S. military capability that was dedicated to preserve her life and protect the US Embassy.”

    Time magazine’s Battleland blog reported Thursday that “senior U.S. officials late Wednesday declined to discuss in detail the security at either Cairo or Benghazi, so answers may be slow in coming.”

    via Wash. Free Beacon

    U.S. Marines not even able to defend themselves.

    This story is just at big — or bigger — than Fast and Furious.  The the MSM remains silent; committed to Obama’s reelection.

  • Jobless Claims Jump

    In a separate report, a sharp rise in gasoline costs drove up wholesale prices last month by the most in more than three years. But outside energy and food, price gains were mild.

    Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 382,000, the highest in two months, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The prior week’s figure was revised up to show 2,000 more applications than previously reported.

    via CNBC.

    We all expect this right?

    Is this the new normal?

  • Obesity the Greatest Threat to National Security

    ?!  Really?

    At the link is a quick video of a promo for an upcoming Dr. Oz.  We should get something out of the way early; Dr. Oz (IMHO) is a complete quack and why the FLOTUS would go on such a show is beyond me.  It’s beneath her and the position she holds.  But I guess that the internal polling must not be too good so out Michelle goes to throw herself at the afternoon television watching masses. a/k/a Democrat voters.

    But I digress…

    So Dr. Oz says something like, “I think the greatest threat to national security is obesity.” and Michelle responds, “‘Absolutely.”

    ?!  Not Al Qaeda.  Not radial Islam.  Not any other terrorists e.g. eco-terrorists.  Not global warming.  Not her husband.  Not Wikileaks.  Not right-wing militia groups.  Not crazy Libyans who killed Americans in Benghazi.  Not the Muslim Brotherhood who attacked our sovereign soil in Epygt.  No, none of these.

    Donuts and french fries are our greatest threat to national security.

    Axelrod better get out in front of this and start rolling it back.

    My guess is that when the show airs that segment will be removed.

    via Breitbart.