Ramirez makes a subtle comparison between the 2012 O-budget and a credit card consumer making an outrageous request of his creditors.

The President’s 2012 budget proposal contains 43 tax hikes. All of them are utterly unnecessary. They will burden Americans with $1.5 trillion in taxes over the next ten years. He proposed to raise taxes and spending as a higher percentage of GDP in history. This will be a disaster for the economy. It will slow recovery, hurt job creation, will make American companies less competitive, and will burden all of us with higher taxes and, worse yet for seniors, it will increase consumer costs — a real problem for people on fixed incomes.

[Cross-posted from TWM.]

Unemployment has been at or above 9 percent nationwide, yet when presented with seventeen genuine job creating bills, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D - NV) says “No” to the House of Representatives.

House Republicans have passed job-creating bills that are being stalled by Harry Reid and the Democrat-controlled Senate, who refuse to even bring the bills to the Senate floor for a proper vote. Senate Democrats refuse outright to work with their Republican counterparts to get jobs created.

Here is a list of the seventeen measures which would all have a positive effect on reducing unemployment and is being stalled by Reid and the Democrats:

1. H.R. 872—Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act
2. H.R. 910—Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011
3. H.J. Res. 37—Disapproving the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission with respect to regulating the Internet and broadband industry practices
4. H.R. 1230—Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act
5. H.R. 1229—Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act
6. H.R. 1231—Reversing President Obama’s Offshore Moratorium Act
7. H.R. 2021—The Jobs and Energy Permitting Act of 2011
8. H.R. 2018—Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011
9. H.R. 1315—Consumer Financial Protection & Soundness Improvement Act
10. H.R. 1938— North American-Made Energy Security Act
11. H.R. 2587—Protecting Jobs From Government Interference Act
12. H.R. 2401—Transparency In Regulatory Analysis Of Impacts On The Nation
13. H.R. 2681—Cement Sector Regulatory Relief Act
14. H.R. 2250—EPA Regulatory Relief Act
15. H.R. 2273—Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act
16. H.R. 2433—Veterans Opportunity to Work Act
17. H.R. 674—To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the imposition of 3 percent withholding on certain payments made to vendors by government entities

The preceding list of measures provided by Congressman Trent Franks (R - AZ).

Watching the stock market indices could make you seasick these days. So much for stimulus jobs and economic recovery. It’s more like shipwreckovery. Ramirez nails it again . . .

As a president, Barack Obama has been a force for mediocrity. He has banked more on the hopeless interventions of government than on the exceptionalism of the people. His greatest weakness as a president is a limp confidence in his countrymen. He is afraid to ask difficult things of them.

– Hoover Institution’s Shelby Steele

Double dipping in a dry pool?

Sorry about the frequent cartoons instead of blogging for real. We’re on a road trip and there’s FOOTBALL on the tube.

Anyone who reads our other blog will know how heartbroken that we lost our giant saguaro cactus to root rot this morning. Add to that the 419+ point loss on the Dow today and the day is off to a rotten start.

After all this heartbreak and aggravation, we got all of our gear and other stuff loaded into the truck at the Arizona house to take to California only to hear stuttering clicks when trying to start the engine; the battery was almost completely dead. We like to get an early start when making the six hour trip and this would add at least another 1.5 hours to the ETA to get Triple-A out to jump us and for a short trip to the automotive shop for a new Interstate Battery.

Of course, on traversing greater California in the Los Angeles and Orange County areas, the afternoon stagnant traffic (due to the miserable infrastructure vs. population syndrome) slowed our ETA even more.

The good news is that we’re in the California house (which we deem ‘the albatross’ for now) safe and sound and we will shortly be joined by family members anxious to see us before we head back after a very short visit.

I hope someone gets a picture of this heavy-hauling behemoth as it crosses the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge. I honestly don’t know how this rig will be able to navigate through the two traffic circles in Wickenburg but I guess they have thought it through.

Photo Credit : Precision Heavy Haul.

PHOENIX – What weighs 285 tons, moves uphill at 15 mph and takes eight days to travel from Hoover Dam to the mining town of Miami, east of Phoenix? It’s a huge anode used in the electrical process for refining copper.

The largest oversized load to cross the new Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge will enter Arizona from Nevada [tonight] and start a 380-mile journey that’s expected to create significant travel delays for some drivers who wind up traveling behind it.

A Phoenix-based hauling company, Precision Heavy Haul, is carrying the anode on a specially-designed truck and trailer rig stretching 225 feet long. The oversized load started its trip from Salt Lake City on Aug. 2.

It is now scheduled to cross the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge just after midnight Tuesday morning (Aug. 9) and continue a slow trek to its destination – the Freeport-McMoRan mine in Miami – about 80 miles east of downtown Phoenix.

Motorists should expect delays in the vicinity of the oversized load, which will take up to two lanes, and will be escorted by Department of Public Safety officers and pilot cars. There will be no traffic impacts for weekend travelers.

A complete travel schedule may be found here.

Lord, I just hope this is the forecast - riding the wave of failure . . .

Problem is, they’re going to crash US and not THEM - Dow was -198 and S&P -27. They’re all idiots in Washington (with very few exceptions).

The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly rejected a bill to increase the debt ceiling by trillions of dollars. That cramps the spendthrift-in-chief’s style somewhat . . .