Hog Tied

Joni Ernst has jumped into Iowa politics with a bang-up commercial which has pushed her to the front of the pack of Republicans vying for the nomination to replace, if elected, the retiring Tom Harkin in the U.S. Senate … see: Washington Post Story. She claims in this “break-through” television ad that she grew up on a Iowa farm castrating hogs and so she will know how to “cut the pork” in Washington.

I must confess that she is a compelling candidate just on the basis of her chutzpah, great smile and her vow for fiscal austerity. However, I too have spent some time on a farm as a youth … and, as I recall, the castration process for hogs did not involve any cutting. The way that it was done in Pennsylvania was to place a very strong, tight rubber band around a shoat’s scrotum which cut off the blood supply. After a few weeks this piglet’s testicles turned black, dried up, and fell off.  Nice and neat … and bloodless.

So perhaps, if Ms. Ernst is nominated and elected, she might take a goodly supply of strong rubber bands with her to Capitol Hill.  Nah! Most males at that venue are eunuchs anyway.

Stealth Socialism

While our nation's attention is diverted toward the Scott Brown upset victory in Massachusetts, the White House and the Senate are quietly pushing forward more of their stealth socialist agenda. Not satisfied with owning two auto companies, keeping the banking industry under its thumb, attempting to become the country's only health-care insurer, and maneuvering to tax the U.S. utility industry out of existence (with Cap-and-Trade), the Obamites are now on the verge of grabbing the $100 billion per year student loan business. See student loan takeover ... and also please click through to the "Wall Street Journal" article to read more of the details.

This sotto voce move by Tom Harkin (with the clear approval of President Obama), will finish what comrade Nancy Pelosi started back in September and will surely squeeze the private sector out of the student loan business in a very few years. To paraphrase P.J. Clark, "If you thought student loans cost the U.S. taxpayers a lot of money, wait until our government runs everything."

By the bye, what makes these transplanted Chicago thugs who currently run our Obamafied government think that they can ever manage the U.S.'s $14 trillion economy when they have never have run so much as a corner candy store?