Sarah Palin: “‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows’”
A splash of cold water on a hot summer day.
Conquering the Storm
In the coming days we’ll sort through the repercussions of S&P’s downgrade of our credit rating, including concerns about the impact a potential interest rate increase would have on our ability to service our suffocating $14.5 trillion debt.I’m surprised that so many people seem surprised by S&P’s decision. Weren’t people paying attention over the last year or so when we were getting warning after warning from various credit rating agencies that this was coming? I’ve been writing and speaking about it myself for quite some time.
Back in December 2010, I wrote: “If the European debt crisis teaches us anything, it’s that tomorrow always comes. Sooner or later, the markets will expect us to settle the bill for the enormous Obama-Pelosi-Reid spending binge. We’ve already been warned by the credit ratings agency Moody’s that unless we get serious about reducing our deficit, we may face a downgrade of our credit rating.” And again in January, in response to President Obama’s State of the Union address I wrote: “With credit ratings agency Moody’s warning us that the federal government must reverse the rapid growth of national debt or face losing our triple-A rating, keep in mind that a nation doesn’t look so ‘great’ when its credit rating is in tatters.”
One doesn’t need a Harvard Law degree to figure this out! Just look across the pond at Europe. European nations with less debt and smaller deficits than ours and with real “austerity” plans in place to deal with them have had their ratings downgraded. By what magical thinking did we figure we could run up perpetual trillion dollar deficits and still somehow avoid the unforgiving mathematics of a downgrade? Nothing is ever “too big to fail.” And there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Didn’t we all learn that in our micro and macro econ classes? I did at the University of Idaho. How could Obama skip through Columbia and Harvard without learning that?
Many commonsense Americans like myself saw this day coming. In fact, in June 2010, Rick Santelli articulated the view of independent Tea Party patriots everywhere when he shouted on CNBC, “I want the government to stop spending! Stop spending! Stop spending! Stop spending! STOP SPENDING!” So, how shamelessly cynical and dishonest must one be to blame this inevitable downgrade on the very people who have been shouting all along “stop spending”? Blaming the Tea Party for our credit downgrade is akin to Nero blaming the Christians for burning Rome. Tea Party Americans weren’t the ones “fiddling” while our country’s fiscal house was going up in smoke. In fact, we commonsense fiscal conservatives were the ones grabbing for the extinguishers while politically correct politicians and their cronies buried their heads in what soon became this bonfire.
With S&P and others now warning that we could face another downgrade if we don’t get serious about our debt problem (i.e., recklessly spending money we don’t have), Washington needs to wake up before things get worse! We’re already hearing murmurs about QE3, which is just madness and will further debase our currency at a time when the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency is already being questioned. The loss of the dollar’s reserve currency status would adversely impact us in every conceivable way. Our standard of living would decline as imports become more expensive (including imports of foreign oil), government wouldn’t be able to finance deficits as cheaply, and American corporations — employers — would lose a competitive edge. It would be another crack in our status as a financial superpower.
Last May, I gave a speech at Westhills Community College in Lemoore, California, to an audience that included farmers from California’s Central Valley. I tried to paint a picture for them of where all of this was heading. The following is an excerpt from my prepared remarks:
Now we’re all getting hit with rising food prices too. Back in November of last year, I predicted this would happen when the Federal Reserve dropped a $600 billion money bomb called QE2 on us! That’s short for “quantitative easing 2.” It’s a fancy term for running the printing presses and creating money out of thin air — which drives down the value of the dollar and makes the price of everything more expensive.
As I predicted six months ago, these policies will lead us down a path where for the first time in our history our fate will be taken out of our own hands and placed in the hands of the world’s capital markets. They will force us to make the responsible decisions that our leaders are unwilling to make. Just as the destinies of the Central Valley farms have been taken out of your hands by the federal government’s overreach into your water rights, so the destiny of our nation will be taken out of our hands because our leadership has failed to get our financial house in order.
This isn’t some theoretical threat any more. It’s already happening. The world’s biggest bond investment fund PIMCO announced last month that it was dumping U.S. Treasury bonds. The head of PIMCO, Bill Gross, one of the world’s preeminent debt investors, warned that the U.S. is in serious risk of default with our trillion dollar deficits and no end in sight. And last week, credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded our credit outlook to “negative” — that’s the first time that has happened to us since the attack on Pearl Harbor. The IMF has even given us formal notice that, unless we do something to deal with our debt problem, we could tip the world economy into another recession.
It is a disgraceful and embarrassing situation when the United States finds itself justifiably chastised in the same tone normally reserved for near-bankrupt economies.
And in this, like in shutting off your water, the federal government has failed you. Their reckless spending and destruction of the dollar will make access to available credit for farmers and small business owners harder to get. And it will make transportation costs higher because it will hit everyone at the gas pump. You see, because the Obama White House won’t let us drill domestically, we’re forced to import oil that we pay for in dollars. So, when the value of the dollar drops, the price of gas goes up. And if you think $4 a gallon is bad, wait till you see what life is like at $6 or $7 a gallon.
Last November, the so-called smart people all laughed at me when I warned them of this. They told me not to make such a big deal about rising prices. Well, guess what — it became a big deal all on its own.
In fact, there was an editorial in the New York Sun that said — and I quote: “As gasoline is nearing six dollars a gallon at some pumps, the cost of groceries is skyrocketing, and the value of the dollars . . . has collapsed to less than a 1,500th of an ounce of gold. Unemployment is still high. Shakespeare couldn’t come up with a better plot. But how in the world did Mrs. Palin, who is supposed to be so thick, manage to figure all this out so far ahead of the New York Times and all the economists it talked to?”
Well, I’m sure the New York Times writers will remember the famous line: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” And right now the American economy is in the howling, hot headwinds of a gathering storm. We’re printing up and buying up our own notes at an unprecedented rate, and the Fed is artificially holding interest rates down to nearly zero. Anyone with commonsense could see what was coming. Unfortunately, common sense is in short supply among our leaders. It’s like they never believe that the rules of common sense apply to them. They think somehow we’ll escape from the consequences of their policies. It’s the same magical thinking that allows them to run up trillion dollar deficits and still think that we can “win the future.”
Every other generation has weathered recessions by sacrifice and belt tightening. But our leaders today decided that they could magically paper over the tough decisions by running the printing presses. A little history lesson might have showed them how well that worked out for Germany in the 1930s. The Weimar Republic inflated its currency so much that it took a wheel barrel full of paper money to buy a loaf of bread. That might be the main thing I remember from Mr. Crum’s history class at Wasilla High, but it told me all I needed to know about the inflationary dangers of a weak currency and why we must avoid it. What a shame Mr. Crum didn’t teach at Harvard.
That was just three months ago, and things have already gotten worse. We have to face this storm head on. It won’t be easy, but there are real solutions to grow our economy and reduce our debt.
First, we need to get serious about our deficit. No more accounting gimmicks. No more cuts in “out-years” that never materialize. The permanent political class in D.C. might be fooling themselves with these Enron-like accounting games, but they’re not fooling the world’s capital markets. And we don’t need any more happy talk from the White House about “investing” in solar shingles and really fast trains. The White House shouldn’t even bother floating these new spending programs. We can’t afford them. Period. We need to stop this deficit spending, balance our budget, repeal Obamacare, cancel all unused stimulus funds, and reform our entitlement programs. We have to have an adult conversation about our spending commitments; circumstances have changed, and we must adapt. I know none of this will be easy, but, “thick” or not, the average American outside the D.C. politico bubble knows that we no longer have a choice! We will have entitlement reform and a balanced budget; it’s just a matter of how. We can do it ourselves in a calm, methodical, and responsible manner, or we can wait for the world’s capital markets to ram it down on us. Let’s be responsible and do it ourselves. And let’s get serious about reducing the size of government across the board and rooting out waste. How many more reports (that today are destined to merely gather dust on the shelf) do we need about duplicative and unnecessary programs before we actually do something about government waste?
We need to get this economy moving again, and the real stimulus we’ve been waiting for is domestic energy development. We must reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign oil by responsibly developing natural resources here. This will provide good paying jobs, reduce our trade deficit, increase federal and state revenue, ensure environmental standards, and actually stimulate our economy without incurring any debt. That’s real stimulus! Affordable, plentiful, and secure energy is the foundation of every thriving economy. Let’s make it the foundation of ours. Let’s do the opposite of President Obama’s manipulation of U.S. energy supplies. Let’s drill here, build refineries, and stop kowtowing to foreign countries in asking them to ramp up energy production which makes us even more beholden to them as we rely on their foreign product. Let’s move on tapping our massive domestic natural gas reserves. Natural gas is the perfect “bridge fuel” to a future when more renewable sources are available. It’s clean, it’s green, and we’ve got a lot of it. Let’s drill. Let’s build an infrastructure for natural gas cars and power plants. Energy development can help kick start our economic engine.
In addition to energy security, I embrace a pro-growth agenda that can make American corporations far more competitive on the global stage. (I will be writing more about this in the coming days.) We need to tell the world, “America is open for business again!” And let’s welcome industry by reducing burdensome regulations. The Obama administration keeps strangling businesses in red tape. From the EPA’s rulings to that nightmare known as Obamacare, the Obama administration is hanging one regulatory albatross after another around the private sector’s neck. Let’s get government out of the way and give the private sector room to breathe, grow, and thrive. We can provide businesses confidence to expand and hire Americans in a stable environment.
Be wary of the efforts President Obama makes to “fix” the debt problem. The more he tries to “fix” things, the worse they get because his “solutions” always involve spending more, taxing more, growing government, and increasing debt. This debt problem is the greatest challenge facing our country today. Obviously, President Obama doesn’t have a plan or even a notion of how to deal with it. His press conference today was just a rehash of his old talking points and finger-pointing. That’s why he can’t be re-elected in 2012.
Our economic news is disheartening and the task before us can seem daunting, but we must not lose our sense of optimism. People look around today and may see only the negative. They see a culture and a nation in decline, but that’s not who we are! America must regain its optimistic pioneering spirit again. Our founders declared that “we were born the heirs of freedom.” We are the heirs of those who froze with Washington at Valley Forge, who held the line at Gettysburg, who freed the slaves, carved a nation out of the wilderness, and allowed reward for work ethic. We are the sons and daughters of that Greatest Generation who stormed the beaches of Normandy, raised the flag at Iwo Jima, and made America the strongest and most prosperous nation in the history of mankind. By God, we will not squander what has been given us!
Our destiny is still in our own hands if we pick ourselves up and act responsibly and quickly. We must all get involved. Concerned Americans must seek truth, work harder than ever, and be willing to sacrifice today to ensure freedom tomorrow. Please get engaged in 2012 electoral politics and support experienced, vetted, pro-free market fiscal conservatives who will dedicate all to preserving our Republic and protecting our Constitution.
Posted by WM on Tuesday, August 9, 2011, at 8:28 am | 
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Sadly, she’s married. What a breath of fresh air.
The question is why can’t the bozos in DC be as clear and succinct? That’s right, they want to get along.
Cowdude
“How could Obama skip through Columbia and Harvard without learning that?” Because he did just that…
Well done, Sarah. You hit the proverbial nail square on the head.
Hear, hear!!! Mama Griz speaks words of wisdom. ANYONE in DC who isn’t repeating the same, should be GONE! As soon as possible! Our survival as a republic depends on it.
Is it just me or is the Left’s newest parroting point, “Tea Party downgrade” falling flat? There is hope. Truth always triumphs over lies, especially when the lies become more and more ridiculous. Even the most saturated of Kool Aid drinkers eventually has to stop swallowing.
You can tell the Sister Sarah didn’t actually write this article because it’s grammatically correct.
Common sense rules…or at least it should. Thanks, Sarah.
She became a GrandMother for the second time yesterday, Her oldest son and his wife of three months had a baby girl..
The news is making sure everyone knows they had pre-martial unprotected sex.
Like that makes her a bad person, because her kids have chosen to do what most children do,and thats exactly what they want.
Of course in order for her to be President, both children should have had abortions other wise and this is so sick, she will never get the RESPECT??? from the left or Independents. How sick is that???
P.S.
Palin/Rubio 2012-2020.
tadcf….Is that the only thing you learned from reading it? You missed the point huh???? Haul ass loser!!!
No the point tadcf is, that unlike you and the other progressives still mainlining LSD, the majority (check the polls retard) of Americans are conservative (that means Classical Liberal for those unfortunates who have to struggle with an elitist education) and they know in their guts that this Lady is a commonsense breath of fresh air to the sewage pit within the borders of the District of Columbia.
The problems the country faces aren’t unsolvable
Thanks Sarah!
This wisdom is universal, not cute manipulations of speech
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
— Cicero
Nobody else out there is as direct, consice and honest as Palin. If she runs she will win and all liberals should be required to wear helmets so we don’t have to clean up the mess when their heads explode.
A true conservative. A true American.
The left calls her an idiot; then counters with Debbie Wasserman-Test. I don’t know whether to laugh or vomit.
Keep up the fight, Sarah.
“How could Obama skip through Columbia and Harvard without learning that?”
His transcripts would probably reflect that. But we’ll never know.
Well as ive known Sarah for years, I also know she writes her own speeches and this was one of her best..I am looking forward to hearing more and when she runs for President she has my vote
More common sense from Sarah Palin. She gets it and has the courage to say it. No wonder the Democrats are scared shitless of her.
Why? Because the USURPER was shooled in islam and Karl Marx.
“tadof” should be “tad off” his rocker.
Cowdude
Sarah must be a Bob Dylan fan, that’s a line from “Subterranean Homesick Blues” . . .
Mixing up the medicine
I’m on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he’s got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off
Look out kid
It’s somethin’ you did
God knows when
But you’re doin’ it again
You better duck down the alley way
Lookin’ for a new friend
The man in the coon-skip cap
In the big pen
Wants eleven dollar bills
You only got ten.
Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot
Talkin’ that the heat put
Plants in the bed but
The phone’s tapped anyway
Maggie says that many say
They must bust in early May
Orders from the DA
Look out kid
Don’t matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes
Don’t try, ‘No Doz’
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows.
tadcf says:
August 9, 2011 at 8:52 am
You should go to the Left side..they really could use you. You would make a great tool for them. Us? We really don’t want you or need you, but thanks anyway. You jerk.
Sarah Palin is a spy.
A Coup d’etat began with Sarah Palin’s run for office in the 2008 presidential election.
She was planted as McCain’s running mate for a reason. Everything about her is a total fabrication. If you think McCain and Sarah planned on “reforming Washington” by getting elected you’re wrong. In addition, when a Coup happens the military doesn’t announce it on the front page of the news. They try and keep a lid on it.
Whether you believe it or not it’s the truth. Obama is not the president, he’s the acting president. He disappeared for 2 weeks after his election win only to reappear looking exhausted sitting next to John McCain, with a bad poker face, for a press photo shoot. Obama is now a Pentagon puppet.
Here’s what Obama, Osama, Biden, Bin Laden, the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists, and Sarah Palin had to do with the last presidential election and the military’s overthrow of our government.
http://ElectNoMoreSpys.blogspot.com/
sarah is my candidate.
obama said he was going to change America.
this has been his plan all along, dragging America to her knees.
he and his anti-american ilk need to go, immediatly!
blahblahblah I knew she would spend the weekend having her ghost writers concoct a statement
ok i’ll read it…
Intelligent, lucid, and beautiful. Damn what a woman.
Also, I demand a ‘shop of bs playing the fiddle. Bonus points for flames in the background.
Simply Stimulating stuff. Sarah! nails it again.
Aaron and Merrimac are having a very bad liberal week, their hero is now acknowledged even by the far left wing as being a failure and a clown. Soon even the propaganda media will not be able to provide cover for the “Whimper in Chief” and the liberal heads will begin to explode, knowing that for years the enemies (Conservative) were right and that there socialist dreams are dying. They must find some way to save their very fragile egos with pitiful and laughable excuses (Pentagon takeover) or the standard excuse (Sarah is stupid).
Predictable and stupid is the way of the liberal
Here lies our sovereign King
Whose word no man relies on
Who never said a foolish thing
Or ever did a wise one
Earl of Rochester
John if you read any of my other posts here you will know O is NOT my hero
I read it-I liked it very much, nice work SP
(yes I am serious)
There is no way in hell that Sarah Palin wrote this.
I met Sarah Palin when she was about a year or so into her run as governor. This was the spring of 2007. Our unit (f-16′s were participating in “Red Flag Alaska” exercises as part of joint PACAF exercises. The first F22′s would be deployed to Elmendorff a few months later and one of Alaska’s ANG pilots noticed we were eyeballing an attractive woman who had a small crowd around her.
“That’s our ‘Guv,” he said. We had a chance to chat with her. To a man, we were all very impressed with her. None of us knew her name or much of anything about her but her knowledge of Alaska’s role in the nation’s air defense was considerably more impressive than that of a few congressman we had met on other occassions.
It was kind of surprising when it was announced that she would be running with
McCain but what really had us scratching our heads was the concensus on the left that she was dumb. That was totally inconsistent with the woman who spoke to us with complete authoprity about PACAF issues concerning the Straights of Hormuz, the potentially incindiary Sino-Japanese conflict over the Senaku Islands, and the obvious relation between national defense and America’s acces to foreign energy.
I am not surprised at all that she would have seen the handwriting on the wall about the downgrading ofthe nation’s credit rating. To do a riff on a line from Isaac Asimov, not only is Palin smarter than the left believes; she is more intelligent than it can imagine.
That new baby girl – gotta think she is going to be very pretty.
Agreed with absolutely everything Sarah said. Not one word could I find that I did not. How great it will be when she is president, and how great America will be, and all can feel pride again !
I read somewhere that Sarah Palin’s writings had been compared to Obama’s. The professionals that did the comparison said that Sarah Palin wrote on a higher grade level than both Obama (8th grade level) and Michelle Obama (7th grade level). Palin knows what she is talking about, and I am always impressed with her.
Those who are more willing to make fun of how she speaks, as opposed to listening to what she is saying, are probably the same people who think Obama is a great “orator”, and don’t have any problem with the fact that he is as much out of place in the WH as a mannequin is in the desert!
but how can you tell which face she’s talking out of..??
WOW. Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! Like a sharpshooter knocking down every target, Sarah just scores with every single sentence. Awesome. And I love her clever little digs at Obama/Harvard/Ayers – zing!
Palin Power!
Really crusader? THAT’S the best you can come up with?
You aspire to merely suck.
Jack: You obviouslt missed John McWhorter’s anlaysis of Palon’s e-mails: he’s got a ph.D. from Berkely, I think, and may teach linguistics there or at Harvard. By HIS standards–he also leans hard left–Palin’s writing abilities were on par with those off CEO’s and far superior to that of the average graduate student.
Your problem is you have a pathological need to maintain the illusion that palin is illiterate, even after respected scholars (again, from the left) like McWhorter and Camilia Paglia give her high marks for her written and oral communication skills, respectively.
If Palin should throw her hat in the ring and win the nomination for the republicans, she may win or lose to Obama–despite the meaning less polls taken this far out–but I can assure you, with the gloves off and none of McCain’s people muzzling her, you’re going to be in for a very rude awakening if the two debate.
As much as Palin’s communication skills have been underrated, the Presdent’s have vastly been overrated. This will be the first time since he ran for a major office that he will be taking on an opponent that will take the gloves of and give as much as he or she gets.
He had the cunning to dispatch three opponents running against him for congress with a combination of a clever legal parry and on two occassions releasing court-sealed divorce records–a dispicable act–of opponents which forced them out of the race.
McCain, for whatever reason, rolled over, and in truth probably made his run eight years to late.
In 15 months Obama is stepping into the ring with opponents who are on the top of their game, feral, and willing to do whatever it takes to show America that he was not the one the country was waiting for.
It’s not going to be pretty.
The Palin vs. Obama debates. That is what I’m looking forward to.
The most watched in history I figure.
I’m watching – big screen – popcorn, snacks, beer, soda.
I figure she’ll land body blows of facts in the early rounds to soften him up.
Take him out with a sharp right uppercut calling out his lies in the eighth.
With no teleprompters to save him, the arrogant-ignorant one has no chance against her