Saturday, February 21, 2009

tax the rich

Obama looks to increase taxes on the rich....
Obama also seeks to increase tax collections, primarily by making good on his promise to eliminate the temporary tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 for wealthy taxpayers, whom Obama defined during the campaign as those earning more than $250,000 a year. Those tax breaks would be permitted to expire on schedule for the 2011 tax year, when the top tax rate would rise from 35 percent to more than 39 percent.

Obama also proposes to maintain the tax on estates worth more than $3.5 million, instead of letting it expire next year. And he proposes "a fairly aggressive effort on tax enforcement" that would target tax havens and corporate loopholes, among other provisions, the official said.

Overall, tax collections under the plan would rise from about 16 percent of the economy this year to 19 percent in 2013, while federal spending would drop from about 26 percent of the economy, another post-war high, to 22 percent.

I've got an idea. Let's see that democrats like Daschle, Geitner et al use better tax preparers. That will make a serious dent in the national debt.

I think the name Joe the Plumber is a misnomer. We should rename him Joe the Prophet.

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American idles

From American Thinker.....
President Obama is auditioning American Idle contestants. These non-producers of our society stole the show at his town meeting in Ft. Meyers, Florida on February 10, 2009. It was like watching a Saturday Night Live skit when a parade of sad sacks asked for handouts. Henrietta Hughes tearfully begged the President for a car, a kitchen and a bathroom. Julio Osegueda, overcome in spontaneous euphoria, asked the president what his plans are for giving him better benefits at his job for McDonald's. A man, who was recently laid off and receiving the forced generosity of the American people through his unemployment check, ungratefully asked why the government did not compensate him for his entire salary.

It's as if these losers of life's lottery were expecting the president to turn water into wine or to take five loaves and two small fish and feed the entire nation. These examples are just the loudest illustrations of people in America growing up with a mentality of entitlement to their every desires.

Where are all the exposés and investigative reports on these characters as on Joe the Plumber? The problem with Joe the Plumber is that he is a producer who dared expose the liberal Marxist, redistributionist agenda. This agenda punishes the successful producers to give to the non-producers, the idle. These idle hands are expecting handouts.

More liberal hypocrisy

Liberals decry the soldiers being killed in Iraq. Yet, it's safer there then going to school in Chicago. You may know Chicago as the test case for all things liberal.....
Three teenagers, including a 13-year-old, were killed Friday in a shooting on Chicago's South Side that authorities believe involved an assault rifle. It appears "several individuals" attacked the teens, and shell casings found at the scene point to at least one assault rifle, said Police Superintendent Jody Weis.

"It's just tragic, based on the guns that are on the streets, that three young men have lost their lives today," Weis said.

"We're bringing out every resource we have, and we'll work this case as hard as we can," he said.

Officials hope at least two surveillance video cameras near the crime scene will lead to clues, said police Cmdr. Eddie Welch, who added that investigators are looking at "multiple scenes."

"They're in great positions," Welch said of the cameras.

No one was in custody as of Friday night, Officer JoAnn Taylor said.

The shooting occurred Friday afternoon about a block from Immaculate Conception School. It is not clear if any of the victims were students there.

What's so "progressive" about being gunned down?

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"progressive" = projection

Liberals suffer so much from psychological projection it's not even funny.

Take a guy like Bill Moyers, Mr. "Progressive". Bill knows all about government back door dealing because he participated in it.
Bill Moyers took it in the shins this week after the Washington Post's Joe Stephens, drawing on FBI files liberated by a FOIA request, reported the liberal lion's role in hunting suspected homosexuals inside the Lyndon Johnson White House.

The Post story's primary focus is on the FBI investigation of presidential aide Jack Valenti's sexual orientation, an investigation OK'd by President Johnson. It also reports that Moyers, then a special assistant to the president, asked the FBI to investigate two additional administration figures thought to have homosexual tendencies.

These weren't the only Moyers White House homo-hunts. On Commentary's blog, Jason Maoz quotes former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Laurence Silberman, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 2005 that weeks before the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater election, Moyers "was tasked to direct [FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater's staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of the files."

Slate has a nice little expose on Moyer's "homo hunts".

Nice of him to use an entire government funded network to utilize is own psychological projection.

Funny, I'm not hearing any outrage in the gay community. I guess outing someone only matters when it's a republican.

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The WSJ

Branch Gorevidians lie again

Isn't it awfully convenient that the Branch Gorvidians are always quick to put out some proclamation like "Arctic Ice the size of Mars is missing on the polar cap". But then there's always a follow up that gets little to no press.

A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.

The error, due to a problem called “sensor drift,” began in early January and caused a slowly growing underestimation of sea ice extent until mid-February. That’s when “puzzled readers” alerted the NSIDC about data showing ice-covered areas as stretches of open ocean, the Boulder, Colorado-based group said on its Web site.

“Sensor drift, although infrequent, does occasionally occur and it is one of the things that we account for during quality- control measures prior to archiving the data,” the center said. “Although we believe that data prior to early January are reliable, we will conduct a full quality check.’’

The extent of Arctic sea ice is seen as a key measure of how rising temperatures are affecting the Earth. The cap retreated in 2007 to its lowest extent ever and last year posted its second- lowest annual minimum at the end of the yearly melt season. The recent error doesn’t change findings that Arctic ice is retreating, the NSIDC said.

The center said real-time data on sea ice is always less reliable than archived numbers because full checks haven’t yet been carried out. Historical data is checked across other sources, it said.

Riiiight. But did you ever know the errors are never the other way around.

More....

Friday, February 20, 2009

Man is pulled over by Oklahoma police for displaying an Anti-Obama sign

Hardball: Rick Santelli Responds to Robert Gibbs

Shovel Ready


More ramirez

Amatuer Hour at the House of Obama

At NBC....
Energy Secretary Steven Chu may be a Nobel laureate Ph.D. in physics, but his first forays into energy policy suggest he's a neophyte when it comes to the ways of Washington.

At a forum with reporters on Thursday, the head of the department that has traditionally taken the lead on global oil-market policy, was asked what message the Obama administration had for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries at its meeting next month.

"I'm not the administration," the Cabinet secretary replied. "I will be speaking and learning more about this in order to figure out what the U.S. position should be and what the president's position is."

Chu, who is still without a deputy, said he feels "like I've been dumped into the deep end of the pool" on oil policy.

The day before, reporters asked him about OPEC output levels after a speech to a group of utility regulators. He responded that the issue was "not in my domain."

Later, in a conference call to reporters, he said his answer reflected "more of my naiveté than anything else."


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Quote of the Day

Now that those of us who have been making steady, on-time payments on our mortgages for years will be paying off others' mortgages through our taxes, can we claim a tax-deduction for our neighbors' mortgage interest too?


Edward G. Stafford, responding to
"Dukes of Moral Hazard."



Do we have responsibility for ourselves?


Riding the coattails of Rick Santelli, I have to ask this question. What, if any, responsibility do we have for ourselves?

Here is another violin playing boo hoo article about a guy who thought he could buy a 1.5 million dollar condo on $20,000 a year in income.

When Uzbek hot-dog vendor Danil Kasimov thought of America, he thought of the place portrayed in movies — a Land of Plenty where anyone's dreams could come true.

In 2000, he emigrated to the U.S., settled in Redmond and became a limousine driver, earning little more than minimum wage.

Two years ago, a real-estate agent suggested he consider purchasing a condominium at the luxurious Bellevue Towers. To Kasimov, it seemed his vision of America was unfolding with the ease of the touch-screen showing eventual views from his dream condo on the 32nd floor.

Delighted that he prequalified for a $1.5 million condo on his $20,000-a-year income, he put down more than $75,000 in earnest money he borrowed from a friend.

But that money — and nearly $100,000 from five other prospective condo buyers — soon evaporated. The six filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court this week against Bellevue Towers and JP Morgan Chase Bank, alleging the lender falsified documents, making it possible for them to prequalify for loans they could never actually get.


In the first place, Danil's wife is pretty hot.

Second, did the guy stop to think, hey I can barely make enough income to support my $1500 a month rent payment. How in the world to I support a $1.5 million dollar mortgage?

Third, isn't it incumbent upon each of us to do due diligence on a $100,000 investment?

Granted, if this guy got ripped off, it should be considered criminal theft on the highest order, not a civil case.

But isn't this like feeling sorry for a lifetime smoker who gets lung cancer? Or someone who's car is stolen when they leave the keys in it.

There are plenty of sympathetic figures in this mortgage meltdown; some I'm related to. But I'm not quite feeling the love for this dim wit or the idiot in my previous post.

More....




Life under the Obamunists

Reminders of life in Nazi Germany....
Some community activists could face criminal charges after breaking into a home in Southeast Baltimore.

Police were at the home Thursday night looking for fingerprints and other evidence.

The activists who staged the break-in belong to the Association of Community Organizations For Reform Now or ACORN.

After snapping a lock with bolt cutters, ACORN member Louis Beverly told supporters "this is our house now."

ACORN staged the demonstration to protest the foreclosure crisis sweeping the nation.

The home in the 300 block of Ellwood Avenue used to be owned by Donna Hanks. She lost this home in September, after owning it since 2001. When things got tough she struggled to make her payments. Her mortgage? $1995 a month. Her income? $2200. Donna's story is one that ACORN is taking a stand against.


What standing up for stupidity? Just out of curiosity, I wonder how long this idiot lived in the house without paying anything?

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More on Porkulus

The Weekly Standard on Porkulus... (Thanks to reader Tim for the link)

We live in strange times. The federal budget deficit is higher than at any time since World War II as a percentage of GDP, yet the president and Congress are not in budget-cutting mode. Rather, they are seeking to make that deficit even larger by spending sums that, before now, seemed beyond the realm of possibility. The more obscene the amounts, the better. John Maynard Keynes's famous suggestion--pay some workers to dig ditches and others to fill them up--hasn't made it into any stimulus package, yet. But the night is still young, and politicians are still exercising their imaginations.

Sadly, in the face of record-breaking federal spending, one uncommonly good spending idea has gotten short shrift: Use federal budget dollars to pay for more cops on high-crime city streets. A modest version of that idea--$8.8 billion in federal money over six years--was enacted as part of the 1994 crime bill, and it contributed to the second-biggest crime drop of the last century.

Given that track record and the sheer magnitude of the stimulus spending, one might think that now is the time for an immodest version of the idea: say, $5 billion a year for four or five years. One would be wrong. The House stimulus package included one-shot spending of between $3 billion and $4 billion for urban policing, depending on how one counts. The Senate's more moderate proposal pared that sum down to $1 billion and change--less than "real money" by the Dirksen standard. At that level of funding, the stimulus package would pay for a mere 10,000-15,000 officers for one year only. That number is too small--America has 650,000 local police officers to patrol America's streets; 10,000 more is a drop in the bucket--and too short-term. If the recession lasts more than a year, the new officers will be out of jobs before they have time to do their productive work.

House and Senate alike are making a serious error. For $5 billion per year--five years' funding would be about 3 percent of the stimulus package--lawmakers could put another 50,000 cops on city streets. Doing so would likely both reduce crime and reduce the nation's swollen prison population--a rare combination--and would also help the economy in poor city neighborhoods by making investments in those neighborhoods safer. This is one policy that conservatives and liberals alike could support. If the Obama administration is looking for opportunities for bipartisanship, it should look hard at urban policing.

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Another lobbyist for O

For a guy who campaigned against lobbyists, The Big O sure has a number of them in his staff....
Washington lobbyist Christine Varney is poised to take her third pass through the revolving door of lobbying and government with her nomination by President Barack Obama to be his administration’s top antitrust enforcer.

Also, on Thursday, Obama nominated Derek Douglas, a former lobbyist for the O’Melveny & Myers law firm and Center for American Progress, as special assistant on urban affairs.

As with most of the at least 14 former lobbyists nominated or hired by Obama, Varney and Douglas appear to be not covered by his executive order restricting the official activities of former lobbyists.

Obama’s first executive order forbade appointees who had served as registered lobbyists to “participate in any particular matter on which [they] lobbied within the two years before the date of my appointment” or “participate in the specific issue area in which that particular matter falls.”

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Survival of the unfittest

Their seems to be a certain irony with people who most love to believe in Darwin's "survival of the fittest", love to subsidize those things that don't work in life.

David Brooks....
Over the last few months, we’ve made a hash of all that. The Bush and Obama administrations have compensated foolishness and irresponsibility. The financial bailouts reward bankers who took insane risks. The auto bailouts subsidize companies and unions that made self-indulgent decisions a few decades ago that drove their industry into the ground.

The stimulus package handed tens of billions of dollars to states that spent profligately during the prosperity years. The Obama housing plan will force people who bought sensible homes to subsidize the mortgages of people who bought houses they could not afford. It will almost certainly force people who were honest on their loan forms to subsidize people who were dishonest on theirs.

These injustices are stoking anger across the country, lustily expressed by Rick Santelli on CNBC Thursday morning. “The government is promoting bad behavior!” Santelli cried as Chicago traders cheered him on. “The president ... should put up a Web site ... to have people vote ... to see if they want to subsidize losers’ mortgages!”

Look I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I learn from my mistakes. After my divorce, I went on a $42,000 credit card bender with a bunch of honeys.

I didn't file bankruptcy and/or ask for credit card forgiveness. What did I do? I did this crazy shit like taking a second job and paying for my bender.

Trust me. Every night I was in that grocery store stocking bologna, I asked myself the question "Was it worth it". And self always answered "Hell no". And guess what? It won't happen again.

So excuse me if I have little sympathy for people who won't exhaust every avenue to make their lives work. It's a hard lesson but one that pays dividends in the long run. Something a government program will never do.

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Shovel ready

Dear President Obama

Being a smart business man, I pre ordered 15,000 shovels in anticipation of your "shovel ready" projects in the stimulus bill you signed.

However, I've got a small problem. No one seems to be buying them.

If you could direct anyone who needs shovels to my store, I would greatly appreciate it. Otherwise, my regional manager is telling me I'll be one of the unemployed you're trying to help.

Sincerely,

Leo Tierney,
Store Manager
Circleville Home Depot

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The Messiah's management style

Tony Blankley with a great, bunker buster, beat down of The Messiah's management style....

The second item, President Obama's performance at the Gitmo executive order, provided brief but revealing insight into the president's personal involvement in vital decision making. He had campaigned hard on closing Gitmo. His first public signing as president was that executive order to close it down. The central issue of Gitmo's closing was and is: What do we do with the dangerous inmates? President Bush kept it open primarily because his administration couldn't figure out an answer to that question.

Thus, it was breathtaking that at the signing ceremony, President Obama didn't know how -- or even whether -- his executive order was dealing with this central quandary.

President Obama: "And we then provide, uh, the process whereby Guantanamo will be closed, uh, no later than one year from now. We will be, uh. ... Is there a separate, uh, executive order, Greg, with respect to how we're going to dispose of the detainees? Is that, uh, written?"

White House counsel Greg Craig: "We'll set up a process."

To be at the signing ceremony and not know what he was ordering done with the terrorist inmates is a level of ignorance about equivalent to being a groom at the altar in a wedding ceremony and asking who it is you are marrying.

More of a must read here....



College kids entitled...naaahh

If college kids didn't think they were entitled to something because they "tried hard", they'd be the only Americans who weren't.

Prof. Marshall Grossman has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes at the University of Maryland.

“Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard and deserve a higher mark,” Professor Grossman said. “Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.”

He attributes those complaints to his students’ sense of entitlement.

“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”

A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.

What in the hell do you expect when we're afraid to score Junior's soccer games for fear he might be upset for getting his ass kicked? Or trophies for everyone? Or free mortgage payments? Or digital TV?

Are you kidding me?

More....

Lazy Iraqi Police get motivational speech

Rick Santelli and the

What's wrong with Helen Thomas?

Helen Thomas' days as a cougar must be over since it appears she's the only journalist in DC not looking to bed the Messiah.

President Barack Obama is already back-tracking on some of his high-road campaign stands and is copying some of former President George Bush's dubious policies.

A couple of weeks ago the Obama administration invoked the controversial state secrets act in the case of Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian native, and four other detainees. They claimed they were victims of the Bush administration's rendition program under which terrorism suspects were secretly taken to other countries where, they say, they were tortured.

The Bush administration's position has been that the case should be dismissed because even courtroom discussion of their treatment could threaten national security.

When the case was heard earlier this month before a panel of Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges sitting in San Francisco, the Obama administration made the same argument.

One judge asked the Justice Department lawyer if the change in administrations had any bearing on the case.

"No, your honor," came the reply.

Career tip to Helen.... You're never going to get a job at the Times with that kind of reporting.

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The news fit to print...except for the NY Times

I apparently offended a reader for commenting on the NY Times because I, in fact, don't read the rag.

Well, it looks like I'm not alone. From looking at the company's stock price, they're are plenty of hypocrites out there who have an opinion on a paper they don't read; and it's really not that favorable.

Today it closed at 3.51 or the price of one of their Sunday papers. In other words, overpriced.

Article you won't read in the NY Times right here.....

Home ownership has its privledges

You know what a good idea it would be to help people already having issues with their home loans.

Let's re do them

Unfortunately, that hasn't worked out so well.

From the WSJ
President Obama yesterday announced his plan to prevent home foreclosures, saying he wanted to be "very clear about what this plan will not do: It will not rescue the unscrupulous or irresponsible by throwing good taxpayer money after bad loans . . . And it will not reward folks who bought homes they knew from the beginning they would never be able to afford."

We really do wish he were right. In fact, the details released yesterday suggest the President's plan will do all of the above. The plan will help some struggling homeowners. But by investing in failure, the Administration will also prolong the housing downturn and make financing a home purchase more difficult for future borrowers. Meanwhile, the plan isn't likely to slow the continuing decline in housing prices.

Let's focus on the plan's effect on the individual borrower. Anyone with mortgages owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be able to refinance to lower rates if his mortgage is between 80% and 105% of the value of the home. This is a sweet deal that is not available, for example, to many renters looking to buy homes now. Sadly for those who deferred the gratification of homeownership, the 20% down payment has now become industry standard. But at least their taxes will allow other people to stay in homes they can't afford.


Remind me again how we got into this mess to begin with. Doing contortion types mortgages for people who couldn't afford them to begin with.

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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Is there a non corrupt democrat in the house

Another day in Chicago politics........
Ho hum! Another day, another Chicago politician sentenced to prison , this time for mail and tax fraud. No, not former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D). Or recently appointed President Barack Hussein Obama's (D) replacement senator, Roland Burris. (D). Oh maybe they'll eventually join the long parade of Illinois and Chicago politicians marching off to the Big House but this was a more common occurrence.

Alderwoman Arenda Troutman received four years after finally admitting that

prosecutors had been right after all and that for several years she had solicited cash from developers to back projects in her ward. (snip) In her 33-page plea agreement, Troutman admitted it was "the general practice" of her office to direct staffers to solicit donations from developers seeking to do business in the 20th Ward. Prosecutors laid out payoffs totaling $21,500 in the document.

Whether it was to change zoning, allow alley access or approve the sale of city-owned property, Troutman made it clear her support "would either not be forthcoming or would be delayed" if she weren't paid, the plea agreement said.


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Who will they vote for? #440

Meet the basketball teams of GW Carver and Valley High schools

Why are they in the news?

The day after a semifinal basketball game made national headlines for ending in a huge brawl charges are being filed.

So far, eleven juveniles are facing multiple charges including assault, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct, which includes inciting a riot as well as failure to disperse. More suspects and charges could be named in the coming days as investigators review WSFA 12 News video of the chaos.

Chambers County School Superintendent George C. McCulloh, didn't need to see the video to understand the impact. He was watching the game from the stands.






When 2012 comes will these young men vote for the reelection of one hope and change candidate or a republican?

For some reason, my imbed code won't transfer. Read the article and see the video here.

Shovel Ready Stimulus

So we've got "shovel ready" stimulus.

Where's the shovels? What are they going to do with the shovels? I assume they'll start on the projects tomorrow. Where?

Any of those shovels near the Brent Spence Bridge? You know a bridge that's need replacing for the past 20 + years.


Thought of the day

I guess the country got stimulated yesterday.

But why do I keep thinking my stimulation feels like the shower scene in American History X?

They called it paradise II


They called it paradise
I don't know why
Somebody laid the mountains low
While the town got high.

Why is California sliding right into the ocean?

Just look at the chart.

Pictures speak louder than a 1000 words.....

From rothcpa

Corrupt Democrat du jour

It's getting to be somewhat farcical; another democrat in trouble with the law.

Today it's none other than Ray "Chocolate City" Nagin.
Orleans Parish Civil Court Judge Rose Ledet delivered a stinging rebuke to Mayor Ray Nagin's administration Tuesday after learning that virtually all of the e-mails sent and received by Nagin last year and much of the information on his 2008 calendar have been erased in an apparent violation of the state public records law.

Clearly disturbed by the revelation, Ledet ordered the Nagin administration to immediately halt the practice of "destroying correspondence" by the mayor and members of his executive staff.

The tense scene played out during a hearing in Ledet's court on a lawsuit filed against the Nagin administration by WWL-TV news anchor Lee Zurik, who sought the e-mails and calendar information in a public records request filed in January.

Mary Ellen Roy, an attorney for the station, told Ledet that to date, the administration has provided only 15 of Nagin's e-mails and no part of his scheduling calendar. Nagin sends and receives between 50 and 100 e-mails daily, according to information provided to WWL's attorneys by the administration.


More...

By the way, I wonder if Jill considers me a hypocrite for not putting republican scandals on my blog? For the record, I would but the democrats seem to be cornering the market on corruption.


Finally

Finally, no more mortgage payments.

I knew The Messiah would deliver.

The Gekko's are kicking back now

They called it Paradise

They called it Paradise
The place to be
They watched the hazy sun
Sinking in the sea


So what does the world look like when "progressives" rule.

You need look no further than that "progressive" paradise, California. Where all things "progressive" rule.
If you thought Washington's stimulus debate was depressing, take a look at the long-running budget spectacle in California. The Golden State's deficit has reached $42 billion, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to furlough 20,000 state workers (go ahead, make our day), and as we went to press yesterday Democrats who control the legislature had blocked lawmakers from leaving until they finally get a deal.

It's sad to watch. The Golden State -- which a decade ago was the booming technology capital of the world -- has been done in by two decades of chronic overspending, overregulating and a hyperprogressive tax code that exaggerates the impact on state revenues of economic boom and bust. Total state expenditures have grown to $145 billion in 2008 from $104 billion in 2003 and California now has the worst credit rating in the nation -- worse even than Louisiana's. It also has the nation's fourth highest unemployment rate of 9.3% (after Michigan, Rhode Island and South Carolina) and the second highest home foreclosure rate (after Nevada).

Roughly 1.4 million more nonimmigrant Americans have left California than entered over the last decade, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council. California is suffering more than most states from the housing bust, but its politicians also showed less spending restraint during the boom.


What's so "progressive" about bankruptcy?

more.......

The Times demise

The NY Times continues to slide into the abyss but that won't keep their love affair with Obama muted.
As the paper itself admitted on February 8, the cash flow squeeze has The Times’ parent company “looking to raise money by trying to sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox and arranging a sale-leaseback of its new headquarters building.” The financial picture has become so bleak that the Times accepted a $250 million cash infusion from Mexico’s wealthiest man, billionaire Carlos Slim Helu (profiled in the paper’s February 16, 2009 business pages), and at a rate of interest most would consider “usury.”

A large part of the problem is that The Times can no longer be taken seriously. Consider the “Domestic Disturbances” penned by every Friday for the Times Web site by Judith Warner, heretofore best known as the author of “Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety.”

In one recent column Warner mused openly about her apparent sexual attraction to President Barack Obama: “The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs,” it begins — and then only gets worse as Warner explains she launched an email survey of women to see if she was the only one having such dreams. Apparently not, she reports.

“Many women — not too surprisingly — were dreaming about sex with the president,” she writes about the responses she received to her informal survey, adding helpfully that “In these dreams, the women replaced Michelle with greater or lesser guilt.”

There’s more, but you get the idea.

In any event, columns such as this, full of liberal fawning and self-love, are inappropriate when appearing under the auspicious of what purports to be the nation’s most important broadsheet. It contains “too much information” and cannot be considered serious journalism.

Warner, while doing nothing to restore the Times reputation, may have inadvertently shown the ruling Sulzburgers a way out of the paper’s financial woes. It suggests the start of a new section, one in which each piece begins, “Dear New York Times: I never thought any of the things I read here were true … until one day something just like it happened to me.” Call it the “Letters to the Times,” charge $25 a month for on line access and the paper would be back in the black in no time.

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Change you'll never know about

From Politico...
In his first weeks in office, President Barack Obama shut down his predecessor’s system for reviewing regulations, realigned and expanded two key White House policymaking bodies and extended economic sanctions against parties to the conflict in the African nation of Cote D’Ivoire.

Despite the intense scrutiny a president gets just after the inauguration, Obama managed to take all these actions with nary a mention from the White House press corps.

The moves escaped notice because they were never announced by the White House Press Office and were never placed on the White House web site.

They came to light only because the official paperwork was transmitted to the Federal Register, a dense daily compendium of regulatory actions and other formal notices prepared by the National Archives. They were published there several days after the fact.

A Politico review of Federal Register issuances since Obama took office found three executive orders, one presidential memorandum, one presidential notice, and one proclamation that went unannounced by the White House.

Two of Obama's actions on regulatory reform were spotted by bloggers, lobbying groups and trade publications after they emerged in the Federal Register.


C'mon I'm sure the NY Times would have gotten on this as soon as they exposed Sarah Palin for that library book she never returned 18 years ago.

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Blago, Burris, 'bama

Reader Mark says this more eloquently than I can.

My spin on this is that this sort of thing happens all over the country with democrats, but it's almost never exposed. This whole sordid affair would all have been tamped down by the democratic party but for one fact: this is all centered around Obama's seat. Under any other circumstances reporting on these crimes would have been hushed and Blaggo would still be governor. But Obama is the crown jewel of the democratic party and Blaggo slipped up when Obama was still too close. The dems didn't want any Chicago political stink on their anointed one. So the party machine took him down with a strike of lightning; before he even had a chance to grab hold and drag Obama down. Seriously, could one even imagine a democratic state congress impeaching a democratic governor in 2 years much less 2 months?

Now there's more stink coming out about Burris. Did someone say perjury? I'd be worried if I were him. I think the party bosses are going to want him out for the very same reason. It's democrats taking down democrats. A very rare occurrence. Like a
solar eclipse.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Camille Paglia on the fairness doctrine

Four more years of Bush

So President Bush is going to send in another 17,000 troops into a country that had absolutely no connection to 9-11.

Uh, Gordon, once again you keep forgetting that Bush is no longer the president.

Then it must be Cheney

Uh, No.

Jeb Bush?

No.

McCain?

Uh, No. The president is Barack Obama.

Not possible. See the Barack Obama I saw during the campaign never would have committed to invading a sovereign country that had nothing to do with 9-11.

President Obama will send an additional 17,000 American troops to Afghanistan this spring and summer in the first major military move of his presidency, White House officials said on Tuesday.

The increase would come on top of 36,000 American troops already there, making for an increase of nearly 50 percent. In issuing the order, Mr. Obama is choosing a middle ground, addressing urgent requests from commanders who have been pressing for reinforcements while postponing a more difficult judgment on a much larger increase in personnel that the commanders have been seeking.In a written statement issued by the White House on Tuesday evening, Mr. Obama said that deteriorating security in Afghanistan demands “urgent attention and swift action” to address a problem that “has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires.”


Sounds like that war monger Bush to me.

More....

From the party of Main Street

So another Madoff Like pyramid scheme is exposed in Texas and, just like Madoff, who do you think this guy was giving political contributions too.
The Texas financier accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday of “massive ongoing fraud” was a generous political donor who gave more heavily to Democrats.

Since 2000, R. Allen Stanford, the chief of the Stanford Financial Group in Houston, his wife and company gave $2.2 million in political contributions – $1.7 million to Democratic candidates and committees – according to Federal Election Commission records.

The most recent donation on record was $300,000 from Stanford Financial Group to the Democratic Governors Association, a so-called 527 group not subject to campaign contribution limits.

Other big beneficiaries included the Democrats’ congressional campaign committees, which received $1.2 million over the years, and their Republican counterparts, which got $322,000, including a $28,500 personal donation last year to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Stanford and his companies gave $128,500 to the Republican National Committee, plus $2,000 to Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), $4,000 to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), $4,000 to Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas), $4,000 to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and $4,800 to the committees of Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), among other contributions.


More....

That's a biggun'


I know you're thinking...... "photoshop"

Go to this link and read the whole thing.


HT Mike McConnell

Another ethics issue for the Obamunists

It's a good thing the Obamunists don't have lobbyists in his staff otherwise, The Messiah might have someone like this as his chief of staff.....
NEWS broke last week that Rahm Emanuel, now White House chief of staff, lived rent- free for years in the home of Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn.) - and failed to disclose the gift, as congressional ethics rules mandate. But this is only the tip of Emanuel's previously undislosed ethics problems.

One issue is the work Emanuel tossed the way of De Lauro's husband. But the bigger one goes back to Emanuel's days on the board of now-bankrupt mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

Emanuel is a multimillionaire, but lived for the last five years for free in the tony Capitol Hill townhouse owned by De Lauro and her husband, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg.

During that time, he also served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee - which gave Greenberg huge polling contracts. It paid Greenberg's firm $239,996 in 2006 and $317,775 in 2008. (Emanuel's own campaign committee has also paid Greenberg more than $50,000 since 2004.)

To be fair, Greenberg had polling contracts with the DCCC before - but each new election cycle brings its own set of consultants. And Emanuel was certainly generous with his roommate.

Emanuel never declared the substantial gift of free rent on any of his financial-disclosure forms. He and De Lauro claim that it was just allowable "hospitality" between colleagues. Hospitality - for five years?


Is this four more years of Bush?

More....

First, they came after cigarette smokers.....

Now they're after me. A beer drinker....
Five Oregon state lawmakers want to impose a hefty tax on beer and have introduced a bill that brewers say would cripple them.

Four Portland legislators joined a Springfield senator to introduce Oregon House Bill 2461, which would impose a $49.61 tax on each barrel of beer produced by Oregon brewers.

The tax would raise revenue for the state at a time when budgets are running in the red. Specifically, the bill says it would fund prevention, treatment and recovery programs for those addicted to alcohol and other substances.

The bill's language defends the tax by arguing alcoholism and “untreated substance abuse” costs the state $4.15 billion in lost earnings as well as more than $8 million for health care and nearly $1 billion in law enforcement-related expenditures.


More....

I want my DTV

How do you expect a government to run an entire healthcare system when this is how they run a simple transfer to DTV?

From the WSJ.....

Don't change that channel. If you've turned on a TV in the past six months, you've probably heard that today, February 17, 2009,
is the day that broadcast television is supposed to switch to digital signals from analog. After the transition, older televisions that are not hooked up to cable, satellite or fiber-optic service won't work.

But here's the rub. Today was the day the big switch was supposed to happen. It was written into law back in 2005. But two weeks ago, Congress delayed the transition to June 12. So the digital revolution will be televised, but not until late spring -- at least for that small fraction of Americans with rabbit-ear antennas still perched atop
their TV sets.

That's right -- after all that advertising, all those public-service announcements about February 17, and despite nearly four years to
plan for that date, Congress itself switched at the last minute.

The official explanation is that the Department of Commerce ran out of money to issue coupons for digital-converter boxes to people who applied for them. These boxes cost between $40 and $80. And Congress, in 2005, decided to subsidize the converters by issuing a $40 coupon.

Then last November, Commerce warned that it might run out of money to issue coupons if Congress didn't lift a $1.34 billion financing cap. Congress did nothing. Commerce also suggested that, since nearly
50% of the coupons were expiring unused, Congress could amend the law to allow more coupons to be issued under the cap by taking into account the actual redemption rate. Congress declined to do that too.

More....

That George Bush is at it again

So George Bush decided today to launch a unilateral, unprovoked attack against Pakistan, an ally of the United States.

It's just so typical of Bush to attack a soverign nation whom we have no issues with; just like Iraq!!!! Actually Pakistan is even an ally right?

Uh, Gordon, you keep forgetting that Bush is no longer president.

Sure he is, I mean no other president would have his finger prints on something like this.....


Just two days after a Predator strike in South Waziristan, the United States conducted yet another strike, this time in the tribal agency of Kurram. The target was a camp run by an Afghan Taliban commander who trains fighters inside Pakistan for attacks against NATO and Afghan forces. More than 30 have been reported killed after several Predators launched multiple Hellfire missiles at the camp.


More...

Monday, February 16, 2009

Bike stolen on camera at Byrd Institute

From taxprof.....

What you should not do if you are a Vice Dean of Research earning a $269,280 salary with an $115,000 administrative stipend: steal a student's bike in full view of a security camera:

I'm going to go out on a limb here and bet lots of money said dean voted for Obamanation

Peter Van Doren on 'Green Jobs'

They called it paradise

They called it paradise
I don't know why
You call some place paradise
Kiss it goodbye

More drama in California.....

The weekend breakdown suggested that Sacramento faces continued partisan conflict of the kind that turned the budget debate into a bitter 15-week stalemate that has stung an already-crippled state economy facing rising unemployment and foreclosure rates.

With the state set to run out of cash in weeks, state leaders have already shut off funding for $3 billion in construction projects and delayed $3 billion in tax refunds, welfare checks and other payments. Officials said that, without a budget, the state faces shutting down another $4 billion in construction on Wednesday and possibly issuing IOUs to keep the state solvent.

By the way, what color is California?

More....

"Progressive" logic

So the court orders a city water department to rebate customers for an overcharge on their bill.

How do you do this.

If you are a "progressive", it's simple. You simply raise the fees on the very people getting the rebate.
The Seattle City Council is expected Tuesday to approve a surcharge on city water customers to help cover the cost of a $22 million court-ordered rebate to water customers.

The rebates are for fire hydrant costs that were wrongly charged to water customers. Fire hydrants are a basic city responsibility and have to be paid for from the general fund, the state Supreme Court has ruled.

It's the same logic behind the porkulus bill. Let's borrow money and spend it rather than borrowing money and give to the taxpayer's who will spend it on the things they need personally.

More....

Who runs abandoned cities?

Forbes has out it's list of the top abandoned cities in the US.....

For decades, Las Vegas, full of new construction and economic development, flourished, while Detroit, once the backbone of American industry, deflated.These days, it's the worst of times for both.Las Vegas edged Detroit for the title of America's most abandoned city, according to Forbes Magazine.Atlanta came in third, followed by Greensboro, N.C., and Dayton, Ohio.

The rankings, a combination of rental and homeowner vacancy rates for the 75 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country, were based on fourth-quarter data released Feb. 3 by the Census Bureau. Each was ranked on rental vacancies and housing vacancies; the final ranking is an average of the two, Forbes said.


Question. Who runs these cities?

If you guess republicans, someone needs to take your crack pipe from you.

In fact, these cities are all run by, no surprise, the progressive people.... democrats.

Here's the list

Las Vegas - Oscar Goodman, Democrat
Detroit - Kwame Kilpatrick*, Democrat
Greensboro - Keith Holliday, Democrat
Dayton - Rhine McLin, Democrat
Atlanta - Shirley Franklin, Democrat

*Currently ex mayor soon to be reelected, once he's out of jail.

Here's a novel thought, if these cities want to turn it around, why not do something radical like ....... put a republican in the office. Hell, New York put in a couple of RINO's and their city is 100 times better off than the Ed Koch/David Dinkins day.

What's so "progressive" about abandoned cities?

Sunday, February 15, 2009

What about those five days

From Jake Tapper






What happened to those five days?

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter Embarrasses Dem Colleague On Not Reading Stimulus Before Vote

Signs of the coming depression

With the last name of Valentine and an office in Loveland, on Loveland Ave., the pressure is always on old Gordon to show up as a hopeless romantic at least once a year.

If yesterday's shopping environment was any indication of the coming depression, don't sweat it.

Every good restaurant was booked, the traffic on Fields Ertel road rivaled anything dished out in LA.

I even ran into a few help wanted signs on retailers windows.

It's either that or every man in the metro area was in a big time doghouse looking for that wonderful make up gift.

President Bush sighting


People are hurting, soldiers are dying in Iraq, the public is skittish about their retirement accounts and yet that George Bush has the audacity to go out in public and party it up; all while the stimulus bill he's been saying can't wait is sitting on his desk for a signature.

Uh, Gordon, George Bush is no longer president.

He's not? Surely he must be, no democrat would have the balls to flaunt his night out at one of the most exclusive restaurants in Chicago.

I think the lighting must be bad in this shot. That has to be George and Laura and they probably plan to use that doggie bag to feed the homeless.

More at the NY Post...

Subsidies for crack dealers

Apparently, the bill headed to The Messiah for his blessing has rolled back many of the welfare reforms started by Bill Clinton....
RONALD REAGAN started it, Bill Clinton finished it and last week Barack Obama was accused of engineering its destruction. One of the few undisputed triumphs of American government of the past 20 years – the sweeping welfare reform programme that sent millions of dole claimants back to work – has been plunged into jeopardy by billions of dollars in state handouts included in the president’s controversial economic stimulus package.

As Obama celebrated Valentine’s Day yesterday with a return to his Chicago home for a private weekend with family and friends, his success in piloting a $785 billion (£546 billion) stimulus package through Congress was being overshadowed by warnings that an unprecedented increase in welfare spending would undermine two decades of bipartisan attempts to reduce dependency on government handouts.

Robert Rector, a prominent welfare researcher who was one of the architects of Clinton's 1996 reform bill, warned last week that Obama’s stimulus plan was a “welfare spendathon” that would amount to the largest one-year increase in government handouts in American history.


Here's a Gordon prediction. If you thought the gang and drug violence in our inner cities was bad before, wait until billions get rolled into the hands of welfare recipients.