Thursday, July 23, 2009

The Blue State Meltdown


I don't consider myself a man of many qualities but I do have one quality that seems to be lacking in every liberal I've ever known, read, met, heard, etc...

That is the quality of self assessment.

For instance, don't you think that at some point in time a liberal or two might have the self reflection of "Wow, how is it that every thing we run is a bankrupt, shit hole!"

Somehow, that reflection seems to be missing among those of us who claim to be "progressive".

Here's a piece from the The American Enterprise Institute on the meltdown in Blue State America................
On the surface this should be the moment the Blue Man basks in glory. The most urbane president since John Kennedy sits in the White House. A San Francisco liberal runs the House of Representatives while the key committees are controlled by representatives of Boston, Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and the Bay Area—bastions of the gentry.

Despite his famous no-blue-states-no-red-states-just-the-United-States statement, more than 90 percent of the top 300 administration officials come from states carried last year by President Obama. The inner cabinet—the key officials—hail almost entirely from a handful of cities, starting with Chicago but also including New York, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco area.

This administration shares all the basic prejudices of the Blue Man including his instinctive distaste for “sprawl,” cars, and factories. In contrast, policy is tilting to favor all the basic blue-state economic food groups—public employees, university researchers, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Wall Street, and the major urban land interests.

Yet despite all this, the blue states appear to be continuing their decades-long meltdown. “Hope” may still sell among media pundits and cafĂ© society, but the bad economy, increasingly now Obama’s, is causing serious pain to millions of ordinary people who happen to live in the left-leaning part of America.

For example, while state and local budget crises have extended to some red states, the most severe fiscal and economic basket cases largely are concentrated in places such as New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Oregon, and, perhaps most vividly of all, California. The last three have among the highest unemployment rates in the country; all the aforementioned are deeply in debt and have been forced to impose employee cutbacks and higher taxes almost certain to blunt a strong recovery.

Read the rest of this thoughtful yet powerful piece here......

Chris Rock - How not to get your a** kicked by the police!

An oldie by Chris Rock that Dr. Gates needs to watch.....


Rated R for profanity

Those redneck, racist cops

Since the president seems to have an opinion (without all the facts) on the Gates dust up, I'll throw mine in with a similar experience of the Gekko's.

One afternoon, while I was still dating the lovely future Mrs. Gekko I set off her home alarm system and I couldn't turn it off before the police arrived.

When the officers arrived they asked both of us for our ID's. Since I was not a "secured" person on the alarm system, one officer went through the house looking for suspicious activity while the other asked us questions. Then they asked the lovely Mrs. Gekko out of the house while I remained inside.

After the lovely Mrs. Gekko was outside, the cops asked her if she was under any duress and her relationship to me; the cop questioned me about my relationship to the lovely Mrs. Gekko.

I asked a cop buddy of mine what the deal was with that and he said that when cops show up they don't necessarily know who should be in a residence and who should not. By asking the lovely Mrs. Gekko to provide ID they knew was an appropriate resident but they didn't know if she was being held against her will by me.

Since my ID did not have the residence address they wanted to separate the lovely Mrs. Gekko to make sure I wasn't a threat to her.

Instead of getting all indignant and copping an attitude, I thanked the officer for handling the situation. It took all of a half an hour and the problem (that I created mind you) was handled.

In my mind, the cops played this one straight. They show up on a call made by a neighbor who saw suspicious activity. They weren't out looking to roust a bunch of black guys.

The cops show up and ask for ID to make sure this guy was a resident of that house. How did they know this guy wasn't just saying he was a resident in the middle of a robbery? Especially given the call they received. In addition, the cops also didn't know if Gates or a family member was being held against their will by people who had broken into his house.

If Gates would have simply provided ID to the cops and explained that it was him causing the disturbance it would have been a done deal. Cops head back to the donut shop.

Instead Gates decides to play a classic case of "Do you know who I am?".

"Yes sir, you are an asshole."

Here's what I know now. If I'm a criminal, I'm targeting Gates' house since I don't think the police are going to be all that aggressive to roust a real criminal out of his place. After all, you wouldn't want to be known as a racist by asking for someone's ID.

Related articles tipped by Jeremy......

Here

and Here

What Party are They?

Thanks to reader Mark for the tip.........
The mayors of three New Jersey cities, two state legislators and several rabbis were among more than 40 people arrested Thursday in a sweeping corruption investigation that began as a probe into an international money laundering ring that trafficked in goods as diverse as human organs and fake designer handbags.

Among 44 people arrested Thursday were Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini, state Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith and state Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt.

Ridgefield Mayor Anthony Suarez, who is also an attorney, is charged with agreeing to accept an illegal $10,000 cash payment for his legal defense fund.

The number of arrests was noteworthy even for New Jersey, a state that has seen more than 130 public officials plead guilty or be convicted of corruption since 2001.

"New Jersey's corruption problem is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation," said Ed Kahrer, who heads the FBI's white collar and public corruption investigation division. "Corruption is a cancer that is destroying the core values of this state."

More......

Erin Andrews gets the Palin treatment

Who better to attack a woman in a largely dominated male field than another woman..........

The controversy over the videotaping of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews in her hotel room, has ricocheted around the internet in every form.

ESPN has banned anyone from the New York Post from appearing on the network after the paper ran Andrews photos.

USA TODAY columnist Christine Brennan has gotten a strong reaction to her postings on her Twitter account with the tweets linked to Facebook.

Tweeted Brennan:

Women sports journalists need to be smart and not play to the frat house. There are tons of nuts out there.

Erin Andrews incident is bad, but to add perspective: there are 100s of women sports journalists who have never had this happen to them.

So Andrew's biggest sin is to be smokin' hot? Hey Christine, there's a reason no one's ever sent a fiber optic camera into your hotel shower; no one really wants to see it.

Nothing like a woman to blame the victim. Brennan must be a liberal. After all, since Erin Andrews doesn't really look like a babe you'd see at your average NOW convention, she's not allowed on the feminist team and that's how it plays for libs like Brennan.

I'll have to check over at Bitch magazine to see their mainstream feminist opinion on the matter.......

More

Saving Healthcare

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

They called it paradise

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

It’s no wonder the state of California is bankrupt.

CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, is now paying annual retirement benefits of more than $100,000 to 5,115 employees, including nearly $500,000 to the most highly-compensated former employee.

This idiocy will only get worse, because the state government has grown so dramatically in the last few years. More current grossly overpaid bureaucrats lead directly to more more future grossly overpaid retired bureaucrats.

CALPERS’ most highly-paid retiree is Bruce Malkenhorst, former city administrator of Vernon, California, whose pension pays $499,674.84 per year.

Never heard of Vernon, California? Well, no wonder. It the smallest incorporated city in Southern California with a population of just 91. Yes, you read that correctly. 91 total residents. The city is best known for sprawling industrial facilities and massive corruption. Malkenhorst was paid $600,000 per year to manage a city with 91 people. But that apparently was not enough for Malkenhorst, because he’s been charged with misappropriating $60,000 of city funds for his personal use.

(One of the largest firms headquartered in Vernon is Claugherty Packing’s “Farmer John” company, which made the news yesterday for landing a “stimulus” contract that paid far above the going rate for ham.)



More........

Life in "Progress" state

From the state of Michigan, who hasn't had a conservative run the state since Antony was dealing on Cleopatra...............
The Michigan Democratic Party is considering asking voters to raise the state's minimum wage to $10 an hour.

The minimum wage currently is $7.40 an hour.

The potential 2010 ballot initiative was among a few discussed Wednesday by party chairman Mark Brewer.

The Democratic Party also is researching ballot proposals to reduce utility bills, require employers to provide health care and impose a one-year moratorium on home foreclosures.


You go Michigan. Let's see what happens on that little social experiment.......

More......

Who did they vote for? #4176

Three people have been accused of letting rats bite a 6-week-old girl and chew off her toes at their cluttered Ohio mobile home.

Pike County prosecutor Rob Junk says the baby's toes on one foot were gone when sheriff's deputies went to the home Sunday after receiving an anonymous tip.

The baby is in fair condition at a Columbus hospital.

A married couple and the 18-year-old boyfriend of the baby's mother are charged with felony child endangering. They were in court for an initial hearing Tuesday. They're jailed pending a plea hearing in two weeks.

The prosecutor says they all lived in the mobile home west of Piketon, a village noted for its old uranium enrichment plant.

He says the baby's mother is a juvenile. He won't identify her or say if she'll be charged.


Last November did these folks do their civic duty and vote for the Messiah or The Maverick? Why?

Story here

Life in "Progress" State

The Golden State of California, who hasn't had a conservative leader since Rome fell......
Less than 24 hours after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders announced a plan to close California's massive budget deficit, Los Angeles County officials moved to sue the state, a union for government workers said it might strike, and Republicans threatened to back out of the deal over a provision to cut the number of prison inmates by 27,000.

The governor largely stayed out of sight, except for posting a brief video on Twitter in which he played with a big knife and talked about autographing state property to be sold at auction to raise extra money. Legislative leaders, meanwhile, began to brief their members, and staff started compiling a formal proposal in anticipation of a vote that could occur Thursday.

But as those preparations went ahead, the leader of the Republicans in the state Assembly reacted angrily to news posted on The Times' website about the deal's effect on prisons. Under the plan, some inmates would be allowed to finish their sentences on home detention, new incentives would be created for completion of rehabilitation programs, and parole supervision would be scaled back for the least serious offenders. The prisons now hold 168,000 inmates.


They'll be releasing approximately 16% of their prison population.

So what's more important to a "Progressive", funding the EPA or having criminals roam the street?

More.........

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Liberal suicide watch

David Brooks (RINO, NY) on the democrats death wish..........

We’re only in the early stages of the liberal suicide march, but there already have been three phases. First, there was the stimulus package. You would have thought that a stimulus package would be designed to fight unemployment and stimulate the economy during a recession. But Congressional Democrats used it as a pretext to pay for $787 billion worth of pet programs with borrowed money. Only 11 percent of the money will be spent by the end of the fiscal year — a triumph of ideology over pragmatism.

Then there is the budget. Instead of allaying moderate anxieties about the deficits, the budget is expected to increase the government debt by $11 trillion between 2009 and 2019.

Finally, there is health care. Every clichĂ© Ann Coulter throws at the Democrats is gloriously fulfilled by the Democratic health care bills. The bills do almost nothing to control health care inflation. They are modeled on the Massachusetts health reform law that is currently coming apart at the seams precisely because it doesn’t control costs. They do little to reward efficient providers and reform inefficient ones.

The House bill adds $239 billion to the federal deficit during the first 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It would pummel small businesses with an 8 percent payroll penalty. It would jack America’s top tax rate above those in Italy and France. Top earners in New York and California would be giving more than 55 percent of earnings to one government entity or another.

Nancy Pelosi has lower approval ratings than Dick Cheney and far lower approval ratings than Sarah Palin. And yet Democrats have allowed her policy values to carry the day — this in an era in which independents dominate the electoral landscape.


More.........

Buzz Aldrin punch ( not-edited )

Monday, July 20, 2009

Obama Rap: "Just a little bit of Obama Drama"

Obama: Transparency Will Be Touchstone

A rock star in the making

My nephew Justin, working his axe.....



Party of the rich


A group of Democrats elected in recent years from some of the country's richest congressional districts have emerged as a stumbling block to raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for President Barack Obama's ambitious health-care overhaul just as the plan has begun to meet increasing resistance over its cost.

Friday, two freshmen representatives -- Dina Titus, from suburban Las Vegas, and Colorado's Jared Polis, representing Boulder, Vail and some of the tonier suburbs of Denver -- joined Republicans to vote against Mr. Obama's top-priority health-care overhaul when it faced a vote in their House Education and Labor Committee. One reason was a one-percentage point-surtax on couples earning between $350,000 and $500,000 -- gradually increasing to 5.4 percentage points on earnings more than $1 million -- to pay for it.

The bill passed the committee anyway, but if the number of Democratic defectors grows it could pose a serious obstacle to the president.

Also on Friday a busload of freshmen Democrats went to the White House to plead their case against sharp tax increases with the president and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. The organizer was Rep. Gerald Connolly, the president of the freshman class whose Northern Virginia district is the richest in the U.S. as measured by median household income.


More........

Shovel ready? LOL

If you're shoveling BS...........

Under the Obama administration's economic stimulus plan, needy communities were supposed to be first in line for money to rebuild highways and jump start the economy.

It hasn't worked out that way.

The rules required that states give priority to counties considered "economically distressed." Yet less than half the federal highway money announced so far is directed toward those high-unemployment, low-income areas, according to an Associated Press analysis of more than $16 billion in spending announced by the U.S. Transportation Department.

More.......

The problem is that some of these areas don't have meat processors where they can buy canned ham for $500,000/lb.

Life in "Progress" City

From the city of New York, who hasn't had a republican run the city since RINO Guiliani..........

For years, top Manhattan public schools have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from parents to independently hire assistants to help teachers with reading, writing, tying shoelaces or supervising recess. But after a complaint by the city’s powerful teachers union, the Bloomberg administration has ordered an end to the makeshift practice.

Principals have been told that any such aides hired for the coming school year must be employees of the Department of Education, their positions included in official school budgets.

But such employees can command nearly double the pay of the independently hired assistants, and several schools on the Upper East Side either have told current employees they will probably not have jobs in the fall or have put off hiring new employees. That has incensed many parents, who see the aides less as a perk than as a necessity to cope with growing class sizes in well-regarded schools like the Lower Lab School for gifted children, where the average class size is now 28, and Public School 290, where broom closets are used as offices and the cafeteria doubles as a gym.


What's so "Progressive" about illiteracy?

More............

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Stimulus fail

$550,000 a pound for frozen ham.........

I'm feeling that same stimulation I felt during my last prostate exam.

read more here

Life in "Progress" City

From the "progressive" city of San Francisco we're a republican hasn't run the city since Judas was an accountant.....

The number of San Francisco retirees or their survivors knocking back $100,000 or more a year in city pensions has grown to 709.

That's 229 more than last year. It's also 124 more than for all of Los Angeles - a city with more than four times San Francisco's population - according to figures freshly provided to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, a pension reform group.

Those in San Francisco who have earned a ride on the golden highway include six former police chiefs, four former fire chiefs or their widows and a slew of former department heads.

The highest pension - $242,000 - goes to former Police Chief Earl Sanders. He got a $20,000 bump this year, thanks to a cost-of-living increase.

Penn Jillette discusses health care on FOX's Glenn Beck

Obama: Raise Taxes, Capital Gains - "For Purposes of Fairness"

It doesn't matter if the economy sucks as long as we're all equally poor.

Hey, it's a matter of fairness............

Liberal Utopia aka California

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

Making cardigans fashionable again

From an unlikely critic; The Washington Post....

From a lousy cap-and-trade bill awaiting death in the Senate to a health-care reform agenda already weak in the knees to the failure of the stimulus to deliver promised jobs and economic activity, what once looked like a hope-tastic juggernaut is showing all the horsepower of a Chevy Cobalt. "Give it to me!" the president egged on a Michigan audience last week, pledging to "solve problems" and not "gripe" about the economic hand he was dealt.

Despite such bravura, Obama must be furtively reviewing the history of recent Democratic administrations for some kind of road map out of his post-100-days ditch.

So far, he seems to be skipping the chapter on Bill Clinton and his generally free-market economic policies and instead flipping back to the themes and comportment of Jimmy Carter. Like the 39th president, Obama has inherited an awful economy, dizzying budget deficits and a geopolitical situation as promising as Kim Jong Il's health. Like Carter, Obama is smart, moralistic and enamored of alternative energy schemes that were nonstarters back when America's best-known peanut farmer was installing solar panels at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Like Carter, Obama faces as much effective opposition from his own party's left wing as he does from an ardent but diminished GOP.

And perhaps most important, as with Carter, his specific policies are genuinely unpopular. The auto bailout -- which, incidentally, is illegal, springing as it has from a fund specifically earmarked for financial institutions -- has been reviled from the get-go, with opposition consistently polling north of 60 percent. Majorities have said no to bank bailouts and to cap and trade if it would make electricity significantly more expensive.


Obama's making cardigans and mom jeans fashionable again. And I thought he was supposed to be cool...........

More...........

More signs of global warming

The high temperature of 70 degrees has been by far the coolest high temperature on record for July 18, according to the National Weather Service's Wilmington Office.

The old record, set in 1938, was 75.

Saturday morning's low temperature also tied the record.

That had been set in 1924, at 54 degrees.

Al Gore must be in town

Obama vs Obama on the Stimulus

Yes, they can run health care

Just like they've run student loans........

Anyone who still doubts that Obamacare would lead to a government-run health-care system should take a look at Obama’s plans for student loans. Those plans got a big boost this week when Rep. George Miller, the California Democrat who chairs the House Education Committee, introduced legislation to replace federally subsidized private lending with a government-run program, leaving only a sliver of student lending to the private sector and completing a journey to nationalization that began 44 years ago. Compromisers take note: This journey also involves a detour onto the “public option” turnpike.

In 1965, Congress created what became known as the “Stafford loan” as part of the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP). Almost anyone who has attended college has heard of Stafford loans, and most people know that the federal government insures these loans against default risk — that is, the government reimburses the private lender for 97 to 99 percent of the loan’s value if the student defaults. What most people don’t know is that the government also protects lenders from interest-rate risk. Stafford loans are provided to students at a low fixed rate set by law. Fluctuations in commercial interest rates can expose banks to losses on these loans if their borrowing costs rise too high. So to smooth out their returns, the government pays the banks a subsidy when interest rates rise. Conversely, when rates fall below the Stafford rate, lenders must remit the difference to the government. Lenders are also guaranteed a percentage to cover administrative costs.


Read the rest.......

Are you feeling stimulated yet?

How about that porkulus plan...........

At an elaborate signing ceremony in Denver Feb. 17, Mr. Obama said the stimulus bill would "create or save"" 3.5 million jobs, starting right away. He also said then that he expected to be held accountable for the results.

With unemployment in June at 9.5 percent, and with the President himself now acknowledging the unemployment rate is likely to exceed 10 percent before year's end, it's pretty bizarre for Mr. Obama to say, as he did in his radio address July 11, that the stimulus bill "has worked as intended."

A report from New Hampshire suggests why the stimulus bill hasn't stimulated the economy much.

According to the state office responsible for tracking the money, New Hampshire has received so far $413.6 million in stimulus funds, which have resulted in the creation of 50 jobs, all in government, most of them temporary and only 34 of them full time. That comes to a cost of $8.32 million per job, or nearly $10 million per full time job, if we assume that two of the part-time jobs equal one full-time job.

The Obama Administration claims the stimulus bill has "saved" jobs, but there is no way statistically to verify this, and the state government hasn't reported any in New Hampshire.


Pass me another cup of coffee.....

More.......

Let's negotiate with these guys

From the American Thinker............
This may be the most sickening thing you've ever read about the Islamic thugs who are now the object of our president's diplomatically amorous pursuit.

This article in the Jerusalem Post by Sabina Amidi features an interview with one of the hated Basij miltiamen who details the incredible thuggery of his mates during the recent demonstrations.

But it is this heartless monster's actions when he was younger that exposes the Iranian theocrats as monsters the likes of which have not been seen since Hitler's Germany:

He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so "impressed my superiors" that, at 18, "I was given the 'honor' to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death."

In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband."

"I regret that, even though the marriages were legal," he said.

Why the regret, if the marriages were "legal?"

"Because," he went on, "I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their 'wedding' night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.

"I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over," he said. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her."

Such inhumanity may be routine in Iran but it is still shocking to read someone's words who tells the story so dispassionately.


But hey, at least they're not republicans.........

More..........

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Things that make you go ummmm!

I recently rented an office to a guy who needed an office outside of his home. He moved here a few years ago from Texas.

This is an excerpt from a recent conversation.....

Tenant - Is the Loveland tax office run by a bunch of Nazi's?

Gordon - Why do you ask?

Tenant - Because, I've lived here for just about three years and every city return I've filed with the city has been sent back for additional information and/or amounts due.

Gordon - That's kind of common place for many of the suburbs who have clerk's audit every single return filed with the city.

Tenant - I moved here from Texas; you probably know that they don't have an income tax. I'm amazed that despite all the state income tax, sales taxes and these local taxes I pay the roads don't seem any better, the schools are about the same and the basic city services are about the same yet I calculated that I'm paying about two and half times more in taxes for these same services.

Gordon - Welcome to Ohio

If the state ever really wants to understand why we have a major brain and wealth drain out of this state, maybe the ought to consider the insights of this affluent taxpayer, who's only reason for being in this state right now is that it's closer to his parents in Youngstown and his business interests in Indiana and Kentucky.

What exactly is the state doing to keep this guy's wealth, expertise and entrepreneurial spirit in this state?

How does Ohio stack up with the rest of the states in this country?

Catching up

I saw this pieces of a week ago but while surfing Maggie Thurber's blog, I decided to revisit it.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg's interview in the NY Times as reviewed by The New Ledger.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.

Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. [Emphasis mine]


What exactly is she talking about? How is it that nobody (especially the Times Interviewer) has really even followed up to what the hell she's talking about?

Read the rest..........

Friday, July 17, 2009

Harry Alford: Barbara Boxer is a racist

Shona Holmes- Against Nationalized Health Care Ad

I wonder who's repsonsible for this?

Suicide Bombers, posing as guests attacked American luxury hotels in Indonesia's capital and set off a pair of blasts Friday that killed eight people and wounded more than 50, authorities said.

The bombings, which came two minutes apart, ended a four-year lull in terror attacks in the world's most populous Muslim nation. At least eight Americans were among the wounded.


Probably a Jerry Falwell backed cabal of fundamentalist Christians.

Leaving the one you love

Mark Steyn with a must read on Canadian Expats............

Multiculturalism, government books, using phrases like “Canadian mosaic” with a straight face, hailing the ability to say “CanLit” with a straight face as a virtue in and of itself . . . These are all excellent answers. But David Rakoff, “the author, most recently, of Don’t Get Too Comfortable,” cut to the chase:

“There is no contest about what I miss most about Canada. It is universal medical coverage. Just thinking about it, and its absence here, can send me into complete despair.”

Well, the natural reaction is just to roll one’s eyes. But don’t try that at home, kids: the wait time for eye-roll dislocation-correction surgery is up to two years at the Royal Victoria. So Colby Cosh, a rare non-expat Canadian, chose instead a hoot of derision, paraphrasing Mr. Rakoff thus:

“Yeah, I got so upset I almost thought about packing my shit and going home so I wouldn’t be in complete despair anymore.”

And this diddy........
Canada has done everything David Rakoff, Sarah McNally and Melissa Auf der Maur want—not least in their own fields. It taxes convenience-store clerks to subsidize books and writing and publishing and that wonderful “national conversation about literature like a big book club” in which everyone’s membership dues are automatically deducted from your bank account whether you go to the meetings or not. And still Mr. Rakoff and Ms. McNally and Ms. Auf der Maur leave. They applaud the creation of a “just” and “equitable” society, and then, like almost all the members of the Order of Canada you’ve actually heard of, they move out. Despite commending the virtues of a social “safety net” for you and everyone else, they personally can only fulfill their potential somewhere else, without one. Usually in a country beginning with “Great” and ending in “Satan.”

Read the whole thing...........

Higher than France


From the WSJ..........

Say this about the 1,018-page health-care bill that House Democrats unveiled this week and that President Obama heartily endorsed: It finally reveals at least some of the price of the reckless ambitions of our current government. With huge majorities and a President in a rush to outrun the declining popularity of his agenda, Democrats are bidding to impose an unrepealable European-style welfare state in a matter of weeks.

Mr. Obama's February budget provided the outline, but the House bill now fills in the details. To wit, tax increases that would take U.S. rates higher even than most of Europe. Yet even those increases aren't nearly enough to finance the $1 trillion in new spending, which itself is surely a low-ball estimate. Meanwhile, the bill would create a new government health entitlement that will kill private insurance and lead to a government-run system.

Hyperbole? That's what people said when we warned about this last fall in "A Liberal Supermajority," but even we underestimated the ideological willfulness of today's national Democrats. Consider only a few of the details:


Read the rest............

Life in "Progress" City

From the Queen City of Cincinnati, who hasn't had a republican mayor since the introduction of the telephone...............
Cincinnati City Manager Milton Dohoney says layoffs must start this summer because the city's deficit for this year is now projected to be $28 million, $8 million more than previously expected.

Dohoney announced the worsening financial picture in an e-mail this morning. Mayor Mark Mallory followed immediately with an announcement about a press conference to talk about the budget.

Mallory had said he didn't think the deficit would be as deep as $20 million, crediting Finance Director Joe Gray with being ultra-conservative in his projections.

Yeah, Let's be a little more specific about the mayor's thoughts on the projected deficit. After all I had it right here........

"Who knows what the number will actually be?" he said. "The number is a projection. We get forecasts all the time."

So we started at a 14 million dollar shortfall then it went to 20 mil and now it's up to 28 million.

But hey it's only an ultraconservative projection right.

What's so "progressive" about being a dumbass?

More.........

Life in "Progress" City

From the Windy city of Chicago, who hasn't had a republican run the city since Noah built that big boat.......
Three men were fatally shot. One man was fatally stabbed. Police shot one man and at least seven other people were wounded by gunfire -- including an 8-year-old boy sitting in his bedroom -- during an especially violent six hours late Wednesday and early Thursday mainly on the South and West Sides.

Miguel Loreto, 17, of the 5900 block of south Kolin Avenue, was shot in the head at 2936 W. Palmer St. and was pronounced dead at 10:27 p.m. at Norwegian-American Hospital, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office.

At 10:08 p.m. Wednesday, a gunman on a bicycle approached Loreto and shot him in the head, according to police, who said the shooting is possibly gang-related.

Terrance Hollins, 17, of the 7300 block of south Dorchester Avenue, was shot at 6422 S. Eggleston Ave. and was dead on the scene, the medical examiner's office said.

It's a good thing that they have those restrictive gun laws in Chicago or someone might be shot there.

More..........

Send In The Clowns

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Barack Obama Attack Ad: Unacceptable Jeans

Joe Biden: "We've Got To Spend Money So We Don't Go Bankrupt"

Steven Crowder talks Socialized Obamacare with Neil Cavuto

Sen. Barbara Boxer accused of racism by head of Black Chamber of Commerce

Ooops, that global warming thing, nevermind

Maybe we were a tad premature on that whole global warming thingy.........

Could the best climate models -- the ones used to predict global warming -- all be wrong?

Maybe so, says a new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The report found that only about half of the warming that occurred during a natural climate change 55 million years ago can be explained by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What caused the remainder of the warming is a mystery.

"In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record," says oceanographer Gerald Dickens, study co-author and professor of Earth Science at Rice University in Houston. "There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."

During the warming period, known as the “Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum” (PETM), for unknown reasons, the amount of carbon in Earth's atmosphere rose rapidly. This makes the PETM one of the best ancient climate analogues for present-day Earth.

Well it's clear that all those single cellular organisms built huge SUVs that ultimately ended in their demise........

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Animal Farm

Paying workers "living wages" is all good until the people who preach about it get fined for failing to abide by labor laws...........

The Fund for the Public Interest raises money for all kinds of liberal causes, but a lawsuit has forced it to pay millions of dollars in overtime to its legions of idealistic door-knockers.

The nation’s largest fundraiser for progressive causes issued checks to thousands of former workers in the last several weeks after settling a $2.15 million class-action suit alleging it subjected workers to grueling hours without overtime pay.

The nonprofit Fund for Public Interest Inc. was set up in 1982 as the fundraising arm of the network of Public Interest Research Groups, which was founded by Ralph Nader. It deploys legions of door-to-door and street canvassers—and once counted a young Barack Obama as one of its New York City organizers—to solicit contributions for the Human Rights Campaign, the Sierra Club, Environment America, and other groups that together spend millions of dollars each year lobbying Congress.

Those organizations often battle with deep-pocketed corporations; the money raised by canvassers is an important source of funds. In many cases, however, the employees collecting those donations made an hourly rate that worked out to less than minimum wage.

The abrupt shuttering of its Los Angeles office after employees took steps to unionize also brought allegations of illegal union-busting from many, including Christian Miller, an L.A. employee from 2002 to 2006 who filed the suit on behalf of 12,000 canvassers and directors.


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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

How about some diversity?

Reader Jeremy forwarded this to me and it is rich.........
Among the full-time faculty of the University departments of journalism, law, political science, sociology and economics, there are 111 registered Oregon voters. Two of them are Republicans.

That's what I discovered last week, via the public voting terminal at the Lane County Voting Office. I spent two hours there, with a spreadsheet full of names generated from the various department Web sites. It was a laborious process, but I was in no hurry. In fact, I even took a break to eat a sandwich and muse on the gorgeous summer weather outside. There would be plenty of time to continue the long, winding procession of faculty down the screen.

When I finished, there were 98 Democrats, nine Independents, two Republicans and two members of the Pacific Green party staring back at me. Both of the two Republicans were in the School of Law, and one of them was University President Dave Frohnmayer. I wondered, as I came across his name marked red in a sea of blue, if he was aware of the monolithic politics of University faculty. Did it irk him? Did it belie the diversity standards that his tenure had ushered in?

The Diversity Plan that Frohnmayer signed off on in May 2006 was a massive effort reviewed by more than 1,000 people, and will remain a prominent feature of his legacy. Contrary to popular belief, it is not just dedicated to increasing racial and ethnic diversity, but takes a broad-based approach to helping "the individual learn to question critically, think logically and communicate clearly." In addition, it explicitly includes political affiliation as one of the elements of diversity it intends to promote.

Three years later, it's hard to give the University's efforts on political diversity anything besides a failing grade. Not only do voting statistics reveal political uniformity, but the checkbooks of the faculty members are just as indicative. Ninety-six percent of political contributions made by faculty to presidential candidates in 2008 went to Democrats. In 2004, it was 100 percent.


This doesn't surprise me in the slightest. See, those who can, do (republicans) those who can't, teach (democrats) and those who can't teach, shoot for tenure protection (socialists).

Read the rest here

Jews go to the back of the bus


President Obama held a one-hour meeting with more than a dozen U.S. Jewish leaders on July 13 -- a session the White House tried to keep secret and off-the-record. The White House also was careful to exclude Jewish leaders it deemed too inimical to the president's Mideast agenda.

While the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations approached the White House to set up Obama's first formal meeting in the Executive Mansion with a constituency that overwhelming voted for him in November, it turned out to be a belated, carefully orchestrated damage-control exercise.

The encounter of Jewish leaders with Obama came well after his far higher-priority outreach to the Muslim world during previous trips to Turkey and Egypt, when in each instance he avoided stopovers in Israel.

In the meantime, by ratcheting up pressures on Israel to make unilateral concessions on settlements without getting any peace overtures in return from Palestinians and Arab leaders, Obama sent shock waves through the ranks of a growing number of Israel's supporters in the U.S.

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Obey


Read where this sign was spotted here..........

Health care; Everyone's covered until they aren't

From the state of socialized medicine, Massachusetts, who has a single payer health care system for almost everyone.
The new state budget in Massachusetts eliminates health care coverage for some 30,000 legal immigrants to help close a growing deficit, reversing progress toward universal coverage just as Congress looks to the state as a model for overhauling the nation’s health care system.

The affected immigrants, permanent residents who have had green cards for less than five years, are now covered under Commonwealth Care, a subsidized insurance program for low-income residents that is central to the groundbreaking health care law enacted here in 2006.

Critics of the cut, which would save an estimated $130 million, say it unfairly targets taxpaying residents and threatens the state’s health care experiment at a critical time.


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Minimum wage hits blue states hardest


An increase in the minimum wage is coming in a couple of weeks (July24). And guess what? It will hit blue states hardest........

The lower cost of living in central states makes the higher minimum wage even harder to absorb, because customers can’t pay the higher costs. The same breakfast could cost $10 in a New York diner and $5 in South Carolina. That’s why it makes no sense for Congress to impose Blue State rates on the Red States, unless it’s to drive up the unemployment rates of their low-skilled workers.

Members of Congress assume that if the minimum wage were raised, all workers would retain their jobs. But this is not the case. An increase to $7.25 an hour, plus the mandatory employer’s share of Social Security, unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation taxes, brings the hourly employer cost close to $8, even without benefits.

With the minimum wage increase, employers will only hire workers who can produce $8 an hour worth of goods or services. That will be fewer people than they employ today. Employers can change technologies or hire more skilled workers to keep their firms in business.

Denying work opportunities to those whose skills and output don’t add up to $8 per hour is not compassionate, it’s manifestly unfair. At a time of rising unemployment, the federal government is dooming unskilled workers to the ranks of the unemployed by saying they cannot even take the first step on the career ladder. That’s not the road to job creation and economic recovery.

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Once again, it blows me away that liberals are so quick to embrace the very marginal science of global warming yet ignore very provable science like, say, THE LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND.

So let's go through this for your liberal arts major that somehow received a college degree without passing econ 101.

See, when prices increase, demand for the product and or service decreases. So when you artificially increase the costs for labor what happens? anyone? anyone? Bueller?

The demand goes down.

Look, I'm not trying to be a prick by laying this out. I don't make up the law just to be hard on the working guy. I also don't like the law of gravity; especially when I weigh in every Sunday morning.

But that is the economic reality we live in.

Let's take an example. I can make a fabric paying $8.00 to some unskilled worker in the US or I can pay an unskilled worker in say Thailand (can you say Nike) for $1.00. Where do you think I'm going to take my production.

This doesn't even include environmental mandates, OSHA requirements, various state and local zoning issues, an upcoming mandatory health care requirement, etc.........

Once again the minimum wage doesn't impact me directly; I pay my employees well above minimum wage. But like all business owners, prices will eventually increase on everything I buy for my business and guess what I do with those price increases?

If you guessed, "he'll increase his prices" you would be correct.

See a dirty little secret The Obamunists won't tell you. When the people on top of the food chain have their prices increased (taxes, labor, materials, etc.), they simply pass on the increase to their customers or vendors. That cycle continues through the economic food chain until you get to the bottom. Who does the poor guy at the end of the food chain pass his price increases on to? Nobody! He eats it.

So once again, let me repeat that I'm not a conservative for me, I'll do fine in any economy because I have the skills to adjust.

I'm a conservative for the little guy out there. And laws like minimum wage hikes only end up hurting the very people they're designed to help. You'd think a congress person or two might have enough wisdom to understand that.



Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Bruno reinforces stereotypes?

Apparently, GLAAD is upset that Bruno reinforces gay stereotypes.....
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said Friday that "Bruno," the new film starring Sacha Baron Cohen, reinforces negative stereotypes and "decreases the public's comfort with gay people."

GLAAD president Jarrett Barrios, who saw the film Friday, said that "the movie was a well-intentioned series of sketches — some hit the mark and some hit the gay community pretty hard and reinforce some damaging, hurtful stereotypes."


Hellooooooooooooooooo!

Have any of these gay folks ever watched the Logo channel or Bravo; networks aimed at the gay community?

It's a Brunofest.

Or how about those gay pride parades?

Nothing stereotypical about those..... right?

If you don't want the Cohen's of the world to exploit your stereotypes, you might want to police that crew of guys in the crotchless leather chaps in your next parade.

The clue phone rings..... Will Obama pick up?

Obama is heading for Michigan to talk about job training for the unemployed.
President Barack Obama conceded Tuesday that the unemployment rate will keep growing for "several months" as he prepared to head to battered Michigan to unveil a plan to help train people for the next generation of jobs.

Obama is proposing a multibillion-dollar investment in the nation's community colleges, a $12 billion effort to help the two-year institutions reach, teach and train more people for "the jobs of the future." He was to outline his program in a speech Tuesday afternoon at Macomb Community College in Warren, Mich.


The clue phone is a ringing on The Obamunists. You can train these people to be nuclear physicists but if there are no companies in the Michigan area where will they work.

Exactly, how anxious are entrepreneurs to get into new businesses when they'll summarily be stripped of any of their income for their risks?

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God have Mercy........

..........on the soul of John Fautenberry

John Fautenberry, a 46-year-old serial killer convicted of murdering a Milford man who gave him a ride in 1991, was executed this morning by lethal injection.

For those who would suggest that capital punishment is not a deterrent; explain to me how Fautenberry will kill again.

Read the rest on this derelict. Society is better off for not having him in it any longer.

TOTUS fail

Again, thanks to reader Jeremy........




An update from TOTUS on the problem........


Remember how I was hoping to take the next couple of days off? Well, that hasn't worked out so well.

My White House designated operator, Felix, clearly has to go. Today, Big Guy and I were scrolling and speaking to an interest group that supported us, and during the middle of the speech, one of my screens collapsed. Turns out Felix didn't tighten one of my screen's bracket rods, and one of my screens collapsed. It was kind of embarrassing, and the accident looked alot worse than the may have seemed on video.

All that said, I think I tweaked something. It may be my ACL, or maybe my MCL, or my "T" joint. Regardless, the Secret Service sent me first to George Washington University Hospital, where there is a special ICU and care facility for senior administration officials. But a good friend of mine, I'll call him Browny for legal reasons, ended up in a coma there after having "minor sinus surgery" if you get my drift, and there was no way in hell, I was going to put up with that.

So off I went to Bethesda Naval, where I figured I'd get looked at and released. But then there were the X-rays, the MRIs, the prodding and poking, the seemingly endless attempts to draw blood where the nurse couldn't find a vein despite my best efforts to explain that I was merely a humble hard-drive. Yet the poking and prodding continued.

Then they discovered that I basically had a limited warranty, and out the door I went. Someone really ought to try to look into this health care thing.

Budget Deficits


Thanks to reader Jeremy......

The federal deficit has topped $1 trillion for the first time ever and could grow to nearly $2 trillion by this fall, intensifying fears about higher interest rates, inflation and the strength of the dollar.

The deficit has been widened by the huge sum the government has spent to ease the recession, combined with a sharp decline in tax revenues. The cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also is a major factor.

The soaring deficit is making Chinese and other foreign buyers of U.S. debt nervous, which could make them reluctant lenders down the road. It could also force the Treasury Department to pay higher interest rates to make U.S. debt attractive longer-term.

"These are mind-boggling numbers," said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at the Smith School of Business at California State University. "Our foreign investors from China and elsewhere are starting to have concerns about not only the value of the dollar but how safe their investments will be in the long run."

The Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit in June totaled $94.3 billion, pushing the total since the budget year started in October to $1.09 trillion. The administration forecasts that the deficit for the entire year will hit $1.84 trillion in October.

Read the rest..........

Monday, July 13, 2009

ObamaHandshakeSnubbed

Right to work


A breakdown between "right to work" states and non right to work states.

The Alliance for Worker Freedom has consistently championed Right to Work laws, which protect a worker against being forced to join a union against their will. Right to Work laws are currently in force in 22 states, and the the coercion of being forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment that occurs in the 28 states without right to work laws is antithetical to worker freedom.

Right to works laws have an additional benefit however – they are proven to reduce unemployment.
Examining unemployment in all 50 states and the District of Columbia shows that states without Right to Work laws average over 9% unemployment, whereas states with right to work laws average only 7.8% - a difference of over 1.2%. Lest there be any doubt as to the relationship between right to work laws and unemployment, statistical analysis and regression modeling proves a correlation does indeed exist at a statistically significant level (p<0.05).

Businesses flee the US


It is purely a matter of common sense that tax cuts generate economic growth, while tax hikes cause business to shut down or flee. After all, why stay in business when half your profits are being taken by the taxman? That’s why according to the IRS, over 400,000 tax-refugees fled from the top 10 taxing states to lower-taxing states in 2007 alone.

This is hardly rocket science.
Especially damaging to jobs are corporate tax hikes. As we all know, corporations don’t pay taxes—people do. These tax hikes result in massive job losses as businesses close their doors and move interstate – or overseas. In fact, the marginal US corporate tax rate (including state and federal taxes) is a whopping 39.3% - the second highest in the world! But legislators just don’t get the message and refuse to cut corporate taxes. In some states, like New Jersey , Oregon, and Illinois, in defiance of all laws of logic and reason, corporate tax rates have actually increased in the last 6 months!
Read the rest

What about profits?

Bill Kristol on the Obama oped piece related to the stimulus........

In President Obama’s op-ed on the topic of the economy, here are some words you won’t find: profits, investment, incentives, taxes, risk, enterprise or markets. Or freedom, or liberty. So, though he claims to want to build a “foundation for growth,” Obama ignores the real drivers of economic growth. Instead, his vision is that of a bloated and meddling nanny state that would stifle economic opportunity and growth.

Obama’s economic program--the stimulus package, health care, cap and trade--offers a huge opportunity to Republicans: Oppose root-and-branch this attempt to impose on us more spending, more debt, and higher taxes, accompanied by an ever heavier hand of government. Oppose these schemes that are informed by the unwarranted arrogance of the central planners and the barely hidden condescension of the best and the brightest.

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Steve Dahl and his Disco Demolition

Another reason not to buy the Enquirer

In keeping with media outlet policy of giving you less for more, The Cincinnati Enquirer canned Peter Bronson from their editorial page.

Bronson and Walter Williams Columns were the last remaining reasons to buy a Sunday paper. Since I can read Walter Williams elsewhere, I don't need the Enquirer at all.

Nice job.

Mandating unemployment

From the WSJ.............

Here's some economic logic to ponder. The unemployment rate in June for American teenagers was 24%, for black teens it was 38%, and even White House economists are predicting more job losses. So how about raising the cost of that teenage labor?

Sorry to say, but that's precisely what will happen on July 24, when the minimum wage will increase to $7.25 an hour from $6.55. The national wage floor will have increased 41% since the three-step hike was approved by the Democratic Congress in May 2007. Then the economy was humming, with an overall jobless rate of 4.5% and many entry-level jobs paying more than the minimum. That's a hard case to make now, with a 9.5% national jobless rate and thousands of employers facing razor-thin profit margins.

There's been a long and spirited debate among economists about who gets hurt and who benefits when the minimum wage rises. But in a 2006 National Bureau of Economic Research paper, economists David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Bank reviewed the voluminous literature over the past 30 years and came to two almost universally acknowledged conclusions.

First, "a sizable majority of the studies give a relatively consistent (though not always statistically significant) indication of negative employment effects." Second, "studies that focus on the least-skilled groups [i.e., teens, and welfare moms] provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects."

Proponents argue that millions of workers will benefit from the bigger paychecks. But about two of every three full-time minimum-wage workers get a pay raise anyway within a year on the job. Meanwhile, those who lose their jobs or who never get a job in the first place get a minimum wage of $0.

Mr. Neumark calculates that the 70-cent per-hour minimum wage hike this month would kill "about 300,000 jobs for those between the ages of 16-24." Single working mothers would also be among those most hurt.


Here's my question to "progressives". If minimum wage is such a great idea, why don't we make it $20.00/hr?

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