Why not?

Apparently, Phil Jones, purveyor of global warming hoaxes, has been so depressed he's considered suicide.

Here's what I don't get. Why doesn't he?

Seriously, many of the believers in global warming also believe that humans are just a primordial mistake of protoplasm without any real soul. So why should Phil Jones continue on his life as a carbon releasing world wrecker?

Even worse, this guy procreated, and his children have procreated, thus adding even more carbon spewing protoplasm to the mix.

So let me throw this out to you branch gorevidians. If you truly believe in this "science" why are you still here consuming and ejecting carbon into our beloved eco system. YOU are part of the problem.

Otherwise it's just all talk no action.

Tell voters the truth?

You may know Evan Thomas as just another liberal white guy on MSNBC (don't they all kind of look alike).

But he's actually got a good piece in Newsweek.President Obama's new federal budget proposal projects, with unusual clarity, that the trillion-dollar-plus federal deficits piling up during the current recession are not just a temporary condition necessitated by hard times, soon to be cured by a return to prosperity. Rather, the red ink threatens to drown us. For many years, federal spending remained about 20 percent of the overall economy. But under Obama it's now a quarter of the economy. The national debt has grown to more than 50 percent of GDP, and according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, it could plausibly approach 100 percent of GDP by 2020—a figure not reached since World War II. Unless something drastic happens—like significant tax increases and cuts in those sacred entitlement programs—the cost of the government will continue to outrun revenue by staggering margins.

Well, so what? Can't the government keep on borrowing? During wartime and deep recessions the federal debt has soared and then settled down once peace and prosperity returned. In America, the political classes have always been saved by growth—the wondrous engine of the American economy that has spared the politicians from having to face up to dire choices in taxing and spending.

But a new era of high economic growth is not inevitable. The Next Big Thing—say, the long-awaited green revolution in high tech, alternative energy sources, and the like—should not be confused with the Next Sure Thing. What if government spending really does outrun growth in a way that chokes the economy before it can take off again? Will the Chinese—our rivals for world economic supremacy and the power that goes with it—indefinitely support our profligate ways by buying our debt?

The federal government can, it's true, always print more money. Not so the states, many of which also have balanced-budget requirements. Dominated by the political power of public-employee unions demanding generous pensions and benefits, big state governments—California, New York, New Jersey—are starting to go over the fiscal cliff. California was driven to pay some of its obligations with IOUs, not cash. There are dark mutterings about "failed states"—state governments that are utterly dysfunctional.

Read the rest....

Steyn on sustainability

Mark Steyn in a snark filled tirade.........

Obama’s spending proposes to take the average Bush deficit for the years 2001–2008, and double it, all the way to 2020. To get out of the Bush hole, we need to dig a hole twice as deep for one-and-a-half times as long. And that’s according to the official projections of his Economics Czar, Ms. Rose Colored-Glasses. By 2015, the actual hole may be so deep that even if you toss every Obama speech down it on double-spaced paper you still won’t be able to fill it up. In the spendthrift Bush days, federal spending as a proportion of GDP average 19.6 percent. Obama proposes to crank it up to 25 percent as a permanent feature of life.

But, if they’re “unsustainable,” what happens when they can no longer be sustained? A failure of bond auctions? A downgraded government debt rating? Reduced GDP growth? Total societal collapse? Mad Max on the New Jersey Turnpike?

Testifying to the House Budget Committee, Director Elmendorf attempted to pull back from the wilder shores of “unsustainable”: “I think most observers expect that the government will act, that the unsustainability will be resolved through action, not through witnessing some collapse down the road,” he said. “If literally nothing is done, then eventually something very, very bad happens. But I think the widespread view is that you and your colleagues will take action.”

Dream on, you kinky fantasist. The one thing that can be guaranteed is that a political class led by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, a handful of reach-across-the-aisle Republican accommodationists, and an economically illiterate narcissist in the Oval Office is never going to rein in unsustainable spending in any meaningful sense. That leaves Director Elmendorf’s alternative scenario. What was it again? Oh, yeah: “Some collapse down the road.”

Hey, California has had to make tough budget choices and that's worked out great!

Read the rest of this rib splitter.....

Supporting schools

Last week, Little Miami Schools, a school district in my little slice of Redville, Ohio was in the news as a result of a fourth school levy going down in flames.

The Wall Street Journal did a piece on the district and the difficulties the district has in passing levies.

I won't go on about how we don't need to pass a levy to "support" our schools. That fashionably liberal concept of "I won't pay unless my neighbor does".

But I will offer this tip to Little Miami leadership, who spent all of about one day before announcing that they'd put another levy, with an increase, on May's ballot. Clue...... That one's going down in flames as well.

The School District has failed at passing a levy FOUR times and each time it comes back with an even larger levy.

What alternative universe are these people living in? People reject a levy and you think a larger one will be more likely to pass. You folks need to quit hitting that meth pipe.

The next levy will result in an increase of $1000 on a $200,000. Think about that. How many people in this economy have an extra grand laying around?

I talked to a number of seniors who live in the district and have determined that there is no chance of a levy passing in this district.

The Little Miami leadership has exhausted whatever confidence it has with the residents of the area. That's not going to come back with a cry for more.

Until you folks get that, I hope you enjoy the rejection because that's all you're going to get from this community.

Why I'm a conservative? #448

Because I understand that governments cannot produce or employ anybody without a vibrant private sector to pay taxes.....

Bizzyblog a breakdown of the current employment figures.

There’s a reason why Americans who don’t happen to work for the government or directly benefit from its largesse are not sensing an economic recovery. For them, it’s mostly not happening. ADP’s January employment report showing 22,000 private-sector jobs lost, the latest available jobs-related information available when this column was written, only confirms that feeling.

A look at what has happened to the nation’s inflation-adjusted Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the value of all goods and services produced in the economy, during the last six quarters is sadly instructive. Comparing the fourth quarter of 2009 with the second quarter of 2008, we see that:

• Even after six months of “recovery,” the economy as a whole has shrunk by almost 2%.
• Uncle Sam’s level of annualized consumption and “investment” has grown by 8.5%.
• Despite the incessant pleadings of poverty by most state and local governments, their consumption and “investment” have hardly changed.
• What remains, i.e., the private sector, is 3% smaller.

The private-sector shrink is really about 1 percentage point higher than indicated, because the above data treats General Motors and Chrysler as if the government and a meddling Congress aren’t in control of them. This of course is nonsense.

Consider that there are currently 4.8 private sector workers for every government worker on the payroll; a number that continues to decline.

Assuming that all workers make the same wage (of course private sector employers make less). Then it would take 5 workers paying a fifth of their wages just to support one fat ass government employee; and it's getting worse all the time.

It's a system that just cannot sustain itself.

What's amazing that the people most inclined to believe in suspect global warming "science" can't seem to get their arms around something more provable. It's as though they are either so stupid they can't comprehend this or don't care.

If you are a liberal maybe you can educate me how a government can employ someone without a tax base to pay for it.

Or you'll just continue on being a dumbass.

Tax Fraud R Us

An income tax fraud scheme discovered during a drug raid Thursday night is expected to lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal tax refunds.

“I wouldn’t be surprised it went into the millions,” Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin said during a news conference Friday.

Agents went to a mobile home on Sligo Road, just off Egypt Road in the Rockledge community, Thursday night to raid a suspected methamphetamine distribution ring and discovered more evidence than expected in the tax scheme.

Lori Lei Bodden, 41, her husband, Carlos Cardona-Herrera, 36, and Juan Hernandez-Telle, 22, were charged with trafficking in methamphetamine. Bodden is expected to be charged with distribution of methamphetamine.

Three-fourths of a pound of methamphetamine in its purest form, ice, was found hidden in a baby wipes container. The drugs have a street value of about $40,000.

Three children under the age of 4 were in the mobile home when agents raided it Thursday night and the Etowah County Department of Human Resources was called.

The drugs, along with guns, swords, cash, vehicles, a boat and several computers, were seized during the raid.

Those computers are expected to provide more information about the tax scheme, Entrekin said.

It is believed Bodden was filing income tax returns from her mobile home, primarily tax returns for illegal immigrants, and claiming the first-time home buyers tax credit of $8,000.

If someone is using a Social Security number and paid taxes through an employer, income tax returns can be filed.

I guess if I really want to grow my tax business, I need to offer a little free meth.

More....

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.