There's a Big Game this weekend

Apparently, there's a big game this weekend. I'm not sure what it is given that the Super Bowl is going on as well.

But all the restaurants, electronic stores and everything else is advising us to get in early and often for "The Big Game".

So whatever you need to do this weekend, get it done early because you wouldn't want to miss The Big Game, what ever, when ever and who ever that is.

Barbara Boxer: Explain to me how Congress works again. . .

That's Senator Clueless to you

It's not about me. It's about the woman buried in my T-shirt

Soon we'll be renaming psychotic narcissism, obamanism.

Yes, those are the words of the president, last night at the Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Washington. After listing his administration's accomplishments and vowing that "our most urgent task is job creation," Obama pledged to keep fighting for a national health care system. "We knew this was hard," Obama said. And then he described a letter he received from a campaign worker who suffered from breast cancer and has since died:

I got a letter -- I got a note today from one of my staff -- they forwarded it to me -- from a woman in St. Louis who had been part of our campaign, very active, who had passed away from breast cancer. She didn't have insurance. She couldn't afford it, so she had put off having the kind of exams that she needed. And she had fought a tough battle for four years. All through the campaign she was fighting it, but finally she succumbed to it. And she insisted she's going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt.

Many observers have noted that the president often seems extraordinarily self-referential. It's all about him, they say. But even those critics might be a little taken aback by the "buried in an Obama t-shirt" remark. Is it really that much about him?

Seriously.

Read the rest.

Liberal projection

This is hilarious..........

So who at NBC thought it would be a good idea for the special today to be, among other things, fried chicken, “in honor of Black History Month”?

Because, spoiler alert – it wasn’t a good idea at all. And now NBCU employee Questlove is bringing it to the attention of his 1 million plus Twitter followers.

Questlove, the band leader and drummer for The Roots (the house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon) tweeted this picture from the NBC Commissary at 30 Rock, with the comment: “Hmm HR?”

Look, I think this is all a bunch of hubbub about nothing. Let's face it the people at MSNNC probably didn't even realize what they were doing.

But you'd think someone would have asked one of the black hosts or contributors about this before they proceeded.

What? You mean they have no black hosts or contributors?

C'mon you have....

Keith Olberman,
Ed Schulz
Rachel Maddow
Joe Scarborough
David Shuster
Mike Barnacle
Jonathan Alter
Howard Fineman
Chris Matthews
Chuck Todd
David Gregory
Brian Williams
Dylan Ratigan
Mika and Willie
Norah O'Donnel
Lawrence O'Donnell
Arianna Huffington

Whoa, now that I think about it. Do they even allow blacks on their staffs?

Maybe Fuzzy Zoeller did the menu up.

FOLLOW UP

Apparently MSNBC does have a black employee, she's the cook.

A challenge to conservatives

Given that liberals have such an infatuation with trains; so much so that they're willing to blow billions of scarce taxpayer dollars on them. I'm throwing out a fundraiser to all conservatives for a cause.

Let's pay for any liberal with this train fetish to go to to Thomas and Friends function........

It’s a wall-to-wall Thomas The Train celebration the entire month of February at EnterTRAINment Junction in West Chester.

The world’s only train-themed family entertainment center will celebrate “Everything Thomas” throughout February, saluting the kids’ mega-star Thomas (the most famous tank engine in the world) and his friends with Thomas train layouts, walk-around character, storytelling, sing-a-longs, videos, scavenger hunts, and crafts. Plus, all Thomas merchandise in the Main Street gift shop will be discounted to the lowest prices of the year.

The “Everything Thomas” event will be held February 2-March 1. Special pricing is $12.99 per person and includes all of the Thomas activities plus the world’s largest model train display, kids’ interactive play area, the American Railroading Museum, expo center, and the seasonal walk-through maze experience reminiscent of an amusement park fun-house.
EnterTRAINment Junction is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. and noon-6 p.m. Sundays (closed Wednesdays January through April.)

“It will be Thomas & Friends everywhere you look,” said EnterTRAINment Junction General Manager Bill Balfour. “Thomas the Tank Train and all his friends are among the best-loved and most enduring icons for children today, and the entire Thomas event fits perfectly with our train-themed family entertainment center.”

Maybe if we can send a liberal to a fun packed day with Thomas and Friends they'll give up on their obsession with choo choo's across the country.

But then again, they do have a five year old's mentality so we'll probably have to deal with some Bob the Builder infatuation after that.

More....

Trivia Question

Do you remember Bill Johnson, the first US skier to win an Olympic Alpine Gold?

Starting in 1984, Johnson had the world by the tail and shook it every chance he got. The things he pulled on the U.S. Ski Team would make the notorious Bode Miller look like a cupcake.

"We traded flesh once or twice," his former coach remembers. "It was like the bully on the playground. Once you stood up to him, he respected you."

But hard as he skied, Wild Bill partied harder. After a series of disappointing finishes, he was left off the 1988 Olympic ski team. By the end of the decade, six years after his gold-medal moment, his career was all but shot.

Then life got worse. His 1-year-old son drowned in a backyard accident in 1992 and, though he and his wife, Gina, would have two more sons, the marriage would collapse in 1999. He squandered the endorsement money. At age 40, Johnson did that most-American of things -- he attempted a comeback.

"I was broke," he explains of his longshot bid to make the 2002 Olympics at Salt Lake. "I needed to get back my wife and kids."

Johnson's life would be a tragedy in three acts. First, the fall from Olympic grace, then the loss of his young child, then the comeback that almost killed him.

Act III began near Whitefish, Mont., on a stretch of mountain called Corkscrew.

"I was just going fast, trying to win," he says now. "I needed to get points."

A horrible run it was -- a bad cocktail of inertia, impatience, metallurgy. The sound of bricks in a blender. The ax handle flew and flew, finally slamming into a fence. A 60-mph car wreck minus the car.

Here's the trivia question.

Who should pay for his health care and disabilities now that he's partially paralyzed as a result of his risky profession?

Read the rest of his story here.....

Why not to hire employees

From the NY Tines small business blog............

After my last post, some readers suggested that I was exaggerating the potential cost of paying unemployment insurance when you hire the wrong person. Fred from Florida wrote, “Payroll tax rates that fund unemployment insurance are affected by the company’s history, but it’s not a dollar for dollar payout.” Actually, in Illinois, it’s even worse.

The unemployment insurance tax may be the most confusing and misunderstood tax there is. It is run by the states, and the rules can vary as much as the weather from one state to another.

Here’s how it works in Illinois. The important point for business owners to know is that when the state pays out claims to a company’s former employees, that company’s unemployment tax rate goes up. For each business, the state calculates how many dollars have been paid in compensation over the previous three years and adds on about 48 percent through various calculations. The result is that in Illinois, you end up paying for incremental compensation claims at a rate of $1.48 for every dollar that a former employee collects.

Read the rest.....

More on the Branch Gorevidians

A classic from Michael Barone.......

Unfortunately, the cadre of climate scientists who have dominated public discussion and have controlled the IPCC have been demonstrated to be far, far less than trustworthy. Like the theorists who invented epicycles to explain away the failure of Ptolemaic theory to account for astronomical observations, they have distorted science in the interest of something that resembles religious dogma.

The secular religion of global warming has all the elements of a religious faith: original sin (we are polluting the planet), ritual (separate your waste for recycling), redemption (renounce economic growth) and the sale of indulgences (carbon offsets). We are told that we must have faith (all argument must end, as Al Gore likes to say) and must persecute heretics (global warming skeptics are like Holocaust deniers, we are told).

People in the grip of such a religious frenzy evidently feel justified in lying, concealing good evidence and plucking bad evidence from whatever flimsy source may be at hand.

The rest of us, and judging from polls that includes most of the American people, are free to follow a more rational path. In his State of the Union Address, Barack Obama alluded to "the overwhelming evidence on climate change." But he felt obliged to add, "even if you doubt the evidence" -- an admission that the evidence is less than overwhelming. On a par with, it seems, the claims of trial lawyers and the assurances of used car salesmen.

I WANT TO BELIEVE!

Get out your purple Nike's

Read the rest......

When government runs a.......

Pension plan?

So what does a government run pension plan look like. Well class it looks a lot like this.......

Don't look now. But even as the bank bailout is winding down, another huge bailout is starting, this time for the Social Security system.

A report from the Congressional Budget Office shows that for the first time in 25 years, Social Security is taking in less in taxes than it is spending on benefits.

Instead of helping to finance the rest of the government, as it has done for decades, our nation's biggest social program needs help from the Treasury to keep benefit checks from bouncing -- in other words, a taxpayer bailout.

No one has officially announced that Social Security will be cash-negative this year. But you can figure it out for yourself, as I did, by comparing two numbers in the recent federal budget update that the nonpartisan CBO issued last week.

The first number is $120 billion, the interest that Social Security will earn on its trust fund in fiscal 2010 (see page 74 of the CBO report). The second is $92 billion, the overall Social Security surplus for fiscal 2010 (see page 116).

This means that without the interest income, Social Security will be $28 billion in the hole this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

Yeah, and we want these guys to run health care.

More.....

The government can

A great way to brighten up your day.

Click here.......

Judd Gregg and Peter Orszag Confrontation

PCN - PA Progressive Summit 2010 - Specter/Sestak Moment

A socialist's worst nightmare

Socialism cannot exist in a vacuum. It can only exist where free market capitalism can provide the services to citizens that the government cannot.

Take Canada. Canada spends almost no money on it's national defense. Why? Because they know that Uncle Sam will be there to bail them out if they were ever invaded by, say, Iceland. The same is true of Europe.

The Canadian government's worst nightmare is that we adopt their single payer health care system.

Why?

Because then their government will be held responsible for providing the medical services many of their citizens get in the US. But more importantly, the political elite will have to travel on south to get that medical care............

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is set to undergo heart surgery this week in the United States.

CBC News confirmed Monday that Williams, 60, left the province earlier in the day and will have surgery later in the week.

The premier's office provided few details, beyond confirming that he would have heart surgery and saying that it was not necessarily a routine procedure.

More......

Why I hate republicans

I don't follow state politics as much as I should. Apparently, I need to start.

About 40 protestors - many of them from the Tea Party movement, others activists in social conservative causes - stood outside Ohio Republican Party headquarters in downtown Columbus, angry over what was going on inside - the formal endorsement of Yost for auditor by the state party's central committee.

The Tea Party people and the social conservatives were angry for two reasons. One is that the Yost-Morgan primary contest pitted two conservatives they like against each other. The other is that the Yost switch gives DeWine - a Republican they don't like very much - a free ride in the May 4 GOP primary for Ohio attorney general.

Let me put this to the Ohio GOP as succinctly as I can. I wouldn't vote for a DeWine if they were running against the ghost of Howard Metzenbaum.

These guys are the scum you have to bleach off of your toilet bowls.

That's my GOP endorsement for the day.

More.....

A depressing beginning

I'm all of about a week into tax season and it's really ugly out there.

In a typical season I might have 10-15 people receive unemployment benefits during the year.

This year, I already have five.

I've already met with three people who have had homes seized in foreclosure.

And I can think of at least five people who have had some kind of debt forgiveness during the year.

That doesn't even count the people who are living by threads. Like the couple who made $60,000 with $18,000 in mortgage interest. How they're doing that I have no idea.

It's going to be a long, long season.

I think what we really need in this country is the tax increase as outlined by Team Obama in their budget presented to congress.

An Incorrigible Way of Counting Unemployment

Global Warming challenge

Like those manatees freezing to death in Florida, Gordon sure wished we had a nice spell of global warming here in Ohio.

For the month of January, the average warm temperature was 33.5 degrees v an average historical high of 38.00 degrees. The average cool temperature was 20.4 degrees v an historical average of 21.3 degrees.

That makes the score Cool - 2, Warm - 0.

I know I'm not a true climate scientist like Phil Jones, which is why I'm willing to share how I came up with my calculations.

More climate lies....

Amazing that even the liberal rag, The Guardian, notes this..........

Phil Jones, the beleaguered British climate scientist at the centre of the leaked emails controversy, is facing fresh claims that he sought to hide problems in key temperature data on which some of his work was based.

A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.

Jones and a collaborator have been accused by a climate change sceptic and researcher of scientific fraud for attempting to suppress data that could cast doubt on a key 1990 study on the effect of cities on warming – a hotly contested issue.

Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information requested under freedom of information laws. Subsequently a senior colleague told him he feared that Jones's collaborator, Wei-­Chyung Wang of the University at Albany, had "screwed up".

From the Dan Rather "fake but true" school of journalism.

I'll be waiting on my liberal brethren's apologies soon.

More.......

Another view of the National Debt

In my mind, here is a very liberal view of what the national debt means.....

When I teach economics, I try to drive home the lesson that words are supposed to mean something coherent. If you want to be rewarded for stringing together a bunch of empty phrases, you should go take an English class.

I was therefore maximally sympathetic to the poor XM radio host (I think it was Pete Dominick but I’m not sure) who was stuck interviewing a man named John Sakowicz last Friday. Sakowicz, who hosts his own radio show in northern California, was there to warn about the dangers inherent in our growing national debt. He was very clear about this much: the debt and its associated dangers are massive, explosive, perhaps even apocalyptic. He was entire unclear, however, about exactly what those dangers are.

Pressed for an explanation, Mr. Sakowicz rather breathlessly announced that every child born in America today is born with a $45,000 share of the national debt. (He should have said the average child and $45,000 is probably not the right number, but those are minor quibbles). The host, bless him, asked exactly the right question, namely “What does that mean?”. To which Mr. Sakowicz attempted to clarify his meaning by repeating the $45,000 figure in a considerably more agitated tone of voice. To which the host calmly replied: “Okay, but what does that mean?

Take my daughter, for example. Exactly how does this affect her life? Does it meant that she’ll pay that much more in taxes…..or what?”. To which Mr. Sakowicz replied that $45,000 is a really big pile of money.

As an accountant, I have to fall back on what debt really means. Debt by itself doesn't mean anything until you compare it to assets.

What makes personal credit card debt so heinous is that people end up with lots of it with know corresponding asset to show for it.

The fed is no different. I have yet to see a balance sheet of the federal government that lists all the assets owned by the feds; real estate, oil rights, gold reserves, etc.

When taken in this context, the debt may or may not be hideous. However, I'm thinking that along with the 30 trillion in unfunded pensions, social security, and medicare liabilities, I don't believe the feds own 40 trillion in assets.

Thanks reader Tim for the link.

More.....

Party of the People

Because in fly over America your average democrat always drinks Johnie Walker Red.....

Meet the Pelosi family! Using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, Judicial Watch uncovered thousands of pages of travel documents related to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's use of military aircraft.

What hasn't been revealed thus far is that military aircraft are being used to shuttle Pelosi's kids and grandkids between DC and San Francisco time and time again, which appears to be a violation of the appropriate rules (see above). Put simply, the United States Air Force is serving as a multi-billion dollar chauffeur- and baby-sitting service for Nancy Pelosi's kids and grandkids -- presumably because commercial travel is beneath the families of the autocrats.

But this couldn't be a waste of resources because the U.S. military really isn't engaged in any other significant activities around the world.

Here's a bar tab receipt posted by Doug Ross........



Funny, I don't see a Bud Light on the whole list.

You'd think the national media would be all over this.

Thanks reader Jeremy for the link.

Roger Ailes defends Becks Stalin reference as accurate

Party of the people

Nancy Pelosi, D, Hypocrisy, and her travel charges to the country...........

• Speaker Pelosi used Air Force aircraft to travel back to her district at an average cost of $28,210.51 per flight. The average cost of an international CODEL is $228,563.33. Of the 103 Pelosi-led congressional delegations (CODEL), 31 trips included members of the House Speaker’s family.
• One CODEL traveling from Washington, DC, through Tel Aviv, Israel to Baghdad, Iraq May 15-20, 2008, “to discuss matters of mutual concern with government leaders” included members of Congress and their spouses and cost $17,931 per hour in aircraft alone. Purchases for the CODEL included: Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey’s Irish Crème, Maker’s Mark whiskey, Courvoisier cognac, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewars scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey, Corona beer and several bottles of wine.
• According to a “Memo for Record” from a March 29—April 7, 2007, CODEL that involved a stop in Israel, “CODEL could only bring Kosher items into the Hotel. Kosher alcohol for mixing beverages in the Delegation room was purchased on the local economy i.e. Bourbon, Whiskey, Scotch, Vodka, Gin, Triple Sec, Tequila, etc.”
• The Department of Defense advanced a CODEL of 56 members of Congress and staff $60,000 to travel to Louisiana and Mississippi July 19-22, 2008, to “view flood relief advances from Hurricane Katrina.” The three-day trip cost the U.S. Air Force $65,505.46, exceeding authorized funding by $5,505.46.

Judicial Watch with the details.

Doug Ross with the photo evidence

Cafferty on Pelosi