Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Life in "Progress" City - New York edition
If you can't
get one there
You can't
get one anywhere.........
Congratulations, New York City, did you hear the news? Fire-and-brimstone predictions from across the country have been confirmed. This is officially the abortion capital of America. A health department report released last month proves it: about 40 percent of all pregnancies in the city end that way, an average of about 90,000 a year in recent years.
No one is exactly celebrating the title. Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan and a group of multidenominationally horrified clergy condemned the statistics this month. Even abortion rights advocates expressed some concern about the numbers, trying to change the conversation to a broader one on reproductive health. As for ordinary citizens, many just wondered: Really? That many?Abortion is complicated, even in its capital city. Perhaps especially so: New Yorkers seeking to terminate a pregnancy can choose from more kinds of procedures at more kinds of facilities with fewer obstacles — and more ways to pay — than just about any place else. Women can get abortions in private doctors’ offices, at public hospitals or at clinics, some of which do not require an appointment.
What I find hilarious are the Planned Parenthood types who want to claim that abortion is the only alternative in areas where birth control options are limited or the women are not educated as to available birth control options.
Huh?
Are you telling me that a woman in New York has less knowledge or access to condoms and/or other birth control than say a woman in Cleveland, TN or Philadelphia, MS or Baltimore, OH?
But hey why am I complaining, it's just fewer democrats we have to deal with. Right?
More........
If you have to say it.........
If that's the case, how is it that if you play a gay character, you're almost guaranteed an Oscar nomination. This year, that person is Annette Benning in The Kids are All Right. (For the record, I thought it was an OK movie).
Let's put this into some context. Oscar nominations are usually doled out to people who play terrifically unusual and/or difficult biographical characters. I will donate my life savings to charity when an actor wins the award for playing an accountant who loves his wife, goes home every night to be with family and friends, and catches an frequent Chicago Bears meltdown.
Instead here are the types of roles that usually result in a nomination............
Russell Crowe, who plays a schizophrenic
Sean Penn, who plays a retarded father
Jamie Foxx, who plays a blind soul singer
Nicholas Cage, who plays a raging alcoholic
Dustin Hoffman, who plays an autistic savant
Anthony Hopkins, who plays a psychotic serial killer
Tom Hanks, who plays a moron
So if homosexuality is so "normal" how is it that gay characters are always nominated simply because they're gay? It reminds me of the Seinfeld where every reference to homosexuality is follow by "not that there's anything wrong with that".
And yet here are all these roles with nominations; Sean Penn playing a gay character, Philip Seymour Hoffman playing a gay character, Tom Hank's playing a gay character, Heath Ledger playing a gay character or Al Pacino playing a bi sexual.
If there's nothing wrong with homosexuality let's quit viewing gay movie roles like gayness is an affliction similar to albinism.
Stupidity is contagious
How do you feel about being charged ten cents for every plastic bag you use at the grocery store? That kind of legislation is on the table right now in Indiana.Representative Shelli VanDenburgh introduced this bill to the general assembly.
She is proposing that all retail merchants who offer disposable plastic bags charge each customer a 10 cent fee.
The bill also said if the store charges the 10 cents, it must have re-usable bags available for sale.
Twenty-five percent of the money collected would go to the Indiana Economic Development Corporation for the Green Industries Fund.
The remaining 75 percent would go to the Department of Education.
More......
Miami University continues its ethnic cleansing
Miami University in Ohio will no longer allow its Indian-head logo to be used on merchandise sold on or off campus, university officials said last week.
Miami has told merchandising companies the logo will no longer be available for reproduction after the current supply of merchandise is sold.
University trustees voted in 1996 to stop using the name Redskins as its athletic nickname, citing respect for the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. The school adopted the current RedHawks nickname in 1997, but allowed limited use of a logo incorporating an Indian head and the beveled letter “M” on some apparel and in some athletic areas as a “heritage mark” related to the school’s history.
Respect for the tribe and a need to move toward more RedHawks traditions were reasons for the decision to stop using the logo, university officials said.
“It’s time to move on,” said Paul Allen, Miami’s director of business services.
Maybe I've got it all wrong. See, when the Kosovars, the Croatians and Serbs are eliminating references to other cultures we call it ethnic cleansing, when we do it in this country, we call it sensitivity.
By the way, when is Miami dropping the name itself. Afterall, we don't name Universities after the twelve tribes of Israel or the various African tribes. Isn't that a little racially insensitive?
More......
I won't be watching the State of the Union
.........So within the next week, I've authorized congress to consider targeted tax credits to every family for the purchase of a pony. Because shouldn't every family have one..........
......... In an attempt to cut down on alcoholism in this country, I've authorized the FDA to accelerate approval of a beauty cream that will make every one hot. By having lot's of beautiful people in this country, we'll have less need for alcohol consumption........
......... During the next two month's I will have approved a new cabinet level department responsible for building a time machine. Within the next decade "Back to the Future" will no longer be a science fiction movie but reality..........
......... I have requested that the Department of the Interior stop all current actions and concentrate specifically on protecting all species of unicorns and sasquatches in our national parks..........
......... I will not rest until we can rid all Hollywood actors of their Napoleon Complexes.......
......... In an attempt to rid ourselves of our dependence on foreign oil and solve global warming, I will commission a bi partisan think tank who's charge will be to design a world in which everything will run on magnets............
.......... and finally, I want to encourage all parents to discontinue making reference to the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus......... There is only one person who can deliver everything to the American people and he is an omnipresent American president with a lot of taxpayer money and a State of the Union address..............
If I missed your particular fantasy insert here_____________________.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Sage advice for POTUS
The objective case for developing our oil and gas wealth is pretty straightforward. With the exception of climate change, pretty much everything the Obama administration considers a major problem would be improved by opening the floodgates to new exploration.The deficit? The oil industry already pays the U.S. treasury more than $95 million a day in taxes, rent, royalties, and the like. If you expand exploration, you expand revenues. According to estimates, if America unlocked its oil and gas reserves, the government could take in somewhere between $1 trillion and $2 trillion in additional revenue over the coming years. And that’s not counting the increased revenues from the stimulus of lower fuel and energy costs.
Trade imbalances? Domestic oil and gas is, by definition, not imported. The more we produce here, the less we import, or the more we can sell overseas. Either way, the trade deficit goes down and GDP goes up.
Jobs? You can’t drill for American oil or natural gas in China, Saudi Arabia, or anyplace other than America. Oil- and gas-exploration jobs pay more than twice the national average.
Unfortunately for Jonah, he's never read my blog. Because if he had, he would know that there's a big reason Obama won't drill. It's one of the hills their party will die on. The Environment is #7 on the list and as I noted on 9/08............
The democratic party likes to say that it's out for the working guy. But ask yourself this question; if it came down to creating jobs for working stiffs and protecting a caribou in Alaska, who wins?
We have the capability to start domestic drilling here in the US. Domestic drilling accomplishes a number of good things for this country. It lessons our dependence on resources from rogue nations, it strengthens our dollar, it lessons our trade imbalance, it increases US Treasury receipts, it creates good high paying, union jobs.
Yet with all these positive aspects of domestic drilling who do you think is primarily responsible for killing it? Hint, it's not republicans.
Watch the video from a month or so ago and tell me that democrats care more about the working stiff struggling to pay $4/gal for gasoline over saving some caribou in Alaska or sea otter off the San Francisco coast
So nice try Jonah. Not going to happen even though this guy claims to be a "pro business" president.
More....
Happy Birthday to you........
Mayor Mark Mallory on Sunday called for an end to the kind of violence that left two people dead the night before.
"Two young men losing their lives to gun violence in one night is absurd," Mallory said.Cincinnati police officers found Uriah Ware Jr., 17, shot dead at 11:53 p.m. Saturday in the parking lot of the former National Guard Armory at 4100 Reading Road in Paddock Hills.
"Uriah Ware was hit by a stray bullet at a birthday party," Mallory said. "Parents should not have to worry about their child's safety at a birthday party."
Mr. Mayor, you are correct. You shouldn't have to worry about stray bullets at a birthday party and out here in "Redville" we don't.
More.......
Megin...... meet "Peach"
The whole thing sickens me and it reminds me of a story I recently told The Lovely Mrs. Gekko about a douchebag I once knew named "Peach" (I don't think I ever knew his real name).
"Peach" was the brother in law of my best friend at the time. "Peach" didn't work because he was "disabled". For some reason, he wasn't physically able to get a job but always seemed healthy enough to sell hot video tapes, lawn mowers, etc. In today's world, he probably be out there selling hot copper tubing ripped out of some abandoned house.
But to me "Peach" was still cool because he smoked a lot of dope and was willing to share it with me. In addition, "Peach" was quick with his criticism of "the man" who was holding down people from their aspirations in life.
I guess it never occurred to me that "the man" "Peach" was always critical of, saw fit to hand him a check to be a total douchebag. I'll always remember Terry and I going into his kitchen lokking for munchies and not finding one thing in their kitchen to eat. See, "Peach" always had money for dope but food for his kids I guess was optional.
In any event, "Peach" and his family were total welfare hacks. They received food stamps, ADC, his disability and free lunches for his kids. In today's world, they'd also be receiving subsidized housing and disability for their kids who they (along with the school's cooperation) would have diagnosed with ADD or some other learning disorder.
One day, my friend Terry and I were smoking dope with good old "Peach" and he starting acting weird. After a couple of bowls he whipped out a gun and started waving it around.
That was our cue to get the hell out of there. Later that day, we found out that "Peach" shot Terry's other brother in law in the head, killing him.
The point of this story is four fold.
First, that bit about idle hands being the tools of the devil is totally true. I've never met a damn person who accomplished crap when they were given money just to exist.
Second, drugs are an epidemic in our lower classes and welfare does nothing but enable the consumption of those drugs. Why do we continue to turn a blind eye to the child abuse going on in these homes when a simple drug test would solve many of those problems? Six years ago, I took a second job with a grocery store chain and they drug tested me as a condition of employment (to stock bologna for crying out loud). It doesn't seem to me to be a stringent criteria for someone who has their hand out to remain clean; especially when children are involved.
Third, guys like "Peach" are like magnets in society. While they're smoking their weed and taking Xanax, they've got plenty of time to teach others how to scam the system. In addition, it drains the working stiffs of their desire to do the right thing. Seriously, why work your ass off just for the privilege of supporting an asshole like "Peach". If you wonder why the Tea Partiers are so popular, it's a culmination of lots of people who know a "Peach" and are tired of supporting that bullshit and being a conspirator to the death of a child who's only sin was being born to a lowlife drug addict.
Finally, I'm guessing that "Peach" is dead by now. If he isn't, I'm sure that he is still a lowlife pile of dung. In addition, I'm sure his legacy of being that lowlife pile of dung has been well passed down to his children and their children. Just like Megin Gray's kids.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Big Pharma moves to the White House
The Obama administration has become so concerned about the slowing pace of new drugs coming out of the pharmaceutical industry that officials have decided to start a billion-dollar government drug development center to help create medicines.
The new effort comes as many large drugmakers, unable to find enough new drugs, are paring back research. Promising discoveries in such illnesses as depression and Parkinson's that once would have led to clinical trials are instead going unexplored because companies have neither the will nor the resources to undertake the effort. Drug companies have typically spent twice as much on marketing as on research, a business model that is increasingly suspect.
The initial financing of the government's new drug center is small compared with the $45.8 billion that the industry estimates it invested in research in 2009. The cost of bringing a single drug to market can exceed $1 billion, according to some estimates.
Life in "Progress" City - NY edition
Actor Alec Baldwin has joined a list of elite New Yorkers targeted by tax collectors who think they're fibbing about where they really live to dodge New York City income taxes.In recent years, auditors have confronted hundreds of super-wealthy New Yorkers over the residency rules - including star Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter.
Facing shrinking revenues, the state has ramped up its pursuit of suspected tax dodgers, hiring 189 new auditors and - for the first time - making filers swear under oath on tax forms as to how many days they "spend in New York City."
From the party of choice
An Akron woman was sentenced to 10 days in the Summit County Jail, three years of probation following her release and 80 hours of community service for being convicted of falsifying residency records so that her two children could attend Copley-Fairlawn schools.As an aside, the Gekko's have never had kids in our the public school district, a district currently under fiscal emergency and under state control for not passing a levy since the beginning of time. We just received our latest property tax bill. Out of curiosity, how much would be a "fair" amount for us to pay to support those schools?Common Pleas Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove, who handed down the sentence Tuesday afternoon in a packed courtroom with Cleveland's major television networks recording the proceedings, ordered Kelley Williams-Bolar, 40, to begin serving the sentence immediately.
Williams-Bolar, who was standing before the bench with her attorney, Kerry M. O'Brien, nearly collapsed into the arms of sheriff's deputies as she was led away, sobbing loudly, to begin serving her jail term.
Confessions of a Branch Gorevidian
In the early days we debated complex issues openly and often. It was a wonderful group to engage with in wide-ranging environmental policy discussions. The intellectual energy in the organization was infectious. We frequently disagreed about specific issues, yet our ultimate vision was largely shared. Importantly, we strove to be scientifically accurate. For years this had been the topic of many of our internal debates. I was the only Greenpeace activist with a Ph. D in ecology, and because I wouldn't allow exaggeration beyond reason I quickly earned the nickname "Dr. Truth." It wasn't always meant as a compliment. Despite my efforts, the movement abandoned science and logic somewhere in the mid-1980s, just as society was adopting the more reasonable items on our environmental agenda.Some activists simply couldn't make the transition from confrontation to consensus; it was as if they needed a common enemy. When a majority of people decide they agree with all your reasonable ideas the only way you can remain confrontational and antiestablishment is to adopt ever more extreme positions, eventually abandoning science and logic altogether in favour of zero-tolerance policies.
The collapse of world communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall during the 1980s added to the trend toward extremism. The Cold War was over and the peace movement was largely disbanded. The peace movement had been mainly Western-based and anti-American in its leanings. Many of its members moved into the environmental movement, bringing with them their neo-Marxist, far-left agendas. To a considerable extent the environmental movement was hijacked by political and social activists who learned to use green language to cloak agendas that had more to do with anti-capitalism and anti-globalization than with science or ecology. I remember visiting our Toronto office in 1985 and being surprised at how many of the new recruits were sporting army fatigues and red berets in support of the Sandinistas.
Hey Obama here's an idea
HERE'S AN IDEA YOU IDIOT................DROP THE MINIMUM WAGE!!!!!!!!!!
This is really a must read piece.......The real danger is not starving families with low wages, but locking them out of the economy altogether. If the minimum wage gets too high, there is no way for low-skilled workers to take their first step into the work force. What’s worse, there are many government regulations that are tending to compound the effect of the minimum wage, raising the price of hiring workers. Obamacare, for example, will effectively raise the minimum wage by adding an expensive minimum benefits package every worker must be given. Hiring inexperienced teens has become a risky, regulated, expensive proposition — as a result, the teenage unemployment rate in this country recently hit an all-time high of 27.6%! My teenage son would gladly work for $5, or even $3, or even for free in the right job that could teach him skills and help him establish a resume of reliability. Unfortunately, that’s impossible today.This is why I say that for many people, low wage jobs are the first rung on the ladder to success and prosperity. Raising the minimum wage is putting the first rung of the ladder out of reach of many low-skilled Americans.
Is it just a coincidence that unemployment shot up right when the federal minimum wage law kicked in?
More.......
How governments create conflict
And it's columns like this one that got the ball rolling.............
Some Americans have strong, sometimes unyielding preferences for Mac computers, while most others have similarly strong preferences for PCs and wouldn't be caught dead using a Mac. Some Americans love classical music and hate rock and roll. Others have opposite preferences, loving rock and roll and consider classical music as hoity-toity junk. Then there are those among us who love football and Western movies, and find golf and cooking shows to be less than manly. Despite these, and many other strong preferences, there's little or no conflict. When's the last time you heard of rock and roll lovers in conflict with classical music lovers, or Mac lovers in conflict with PC lovers, or football lovers in conflict with golf lovers? It seldom if ever happens. When there's market allocation of resources and peaceable, voluntary exchange, people have their preferences satisfied and are able to live in peace with one another.
Think what might be the case if it were a political decision of whether there'd be football or golf watched on TV, whether we used Macs or PCs and whether we listened to classical music or rock and roll. Everyone had to comply with the politically made decision or suffer the pain of fines or imprisonment. Football lovers would be lined up against
golf lovers, Mac lovers against PC lovers and rock and rollers against classical music lovers. People who previously lived in peace with one another would now be in conflict.
Why? If, for example, classical music lovers got what they wanted, rock and rollers wouldn't. Conflict would emerge solely because the decision was made in the political arena.
The lesson here is that the prime feature of political decision-making is that it's a zero-sum game. One person's gain is of necessity another person's loss. As such, political allocation of resources is conflict-enhancing, while market allocation is conflict-reducing. The greater
the number of decisions made in the political arena, the greater the potential for conflict. It would not be unreasonable to predict that if Mac lovers won, and only Macs could be legally used, there would be considerable PC-lover hate toward Mac lovers.
There's really no change
But keep in mind conservatives. This network let go a goof ball who will spend the next couple of years balled up in a corner of his NY apratment with his hairless cat but replaced said goof ball with another.
It's really nothing to gloat about.
There goes Jimmy Galt
The founder of Jimmy John's said he has applied for Florida residency and may recommend that his corporate headquarters move out-of-state as a result of the Illinois tax increases enacted last week.
Jimmy John Liautaud told The News-Gazette on Tuesday that he is angry about the moves, which boosted the individual income tax from 3 percent to 5 percent and the corporate income tax from 7.3 percent to 9.5 percent.
"All they do is stick it to us," he said, adding that the Legislature and governor showed "a clear lack of understanding."
"I could absorb this and adapt, but it doesn't feel good in my soul to make it happen," Liautaud said.
Jimmy John's, which has its corporate headquarters on Fox Drive in Champaign, has more than 1,000 sandwich shops nationwide, many of them franchise operations.Champaign has been its corporate base, but Liautaud said it will not necessarily continue that way.
Liautaud said he has been contacted by "multiple pro-business states" that made him feel "wanted and important."
Jimmy here is doing Illinois a favor. See, most entrepreneurs or conservatives won't voice their opposition to these kleptocratic regimes, they just move out.
How an idiot creates jobs
Three days before Christmas, President Obama gathered his economic team in the West Wing’s Roosevelt Room to review themes for his State of the Union address. The edge-of-the-cliff crisis he inherited had passed, but with more than 14 million Americans still out of work, he was looking for bold ways to bring down unemployment. The ideas presented to him, though, seemed familiar and uninspired. “You know, guys,” he said, according to someone in the room, “I’ve told you before, I want you to come to me with ideas that excite me.” Nothing he was hearing excited him.
That's because people who create jobs aren't exciting, they're just profit seekers and those seeking profits create jobs as a by product of their efforts.
The dirty little secret the Obamunists never got in ivy league skools is that governments cannot create anything; they never have and never will. All governments can do is destroy the will of the people. Something this administration has been wildly successful doing. The fact that this dip shit still hasn't figured it out in two years of on the job training speaks to his idiocy.
Can we get that dumb ass George Bush back?
More.....