Sunday, January 29, 2012

Encouraging the dole

News that our nanny government wants even more people on the public dole.
Over the last three years, the number of Americans on food stamps has skyrocketed by two-thirds and stands at a record-high 46 million citizens, or one out of every seven people in the United States. Despite the historic rise in food stamp use, however, the Obama Administration believes not enough people are receiving food stamps who should be and is offering $75,000 grants to groups who devise “effective strategies” to “increase program participation” among those who have yet to sign up.
So, lets' get this straight.  Our government, which can't pay it's bills without borrowing even more and more money, is paying groups to find even more people to put into subsidized programs.  Rather than encouraging the citizenry to be productive members of society, it wants to put more and more of the population into dependency on Washington.  With the resultant election behavior of rewarding their benefactors.

Read the whole story by Wynton Hall at Big Government.

Friday, January 27, 2012

The mirror never lies


From Michelle Obama's Mirror.

College education and the Feds

News from Michigan:

President Barack Obama Friday told an enthusiastic crowd of students at the University of Michigan that extra taxes on millionaires should help subsidize their futures.

Without mentioning Gov. Mitt Romney by name, Obama used his campaign-style event to urge higher taxes on the nation’s most prosperous to reduce student loan-payments, increase student grants, fund universities and pay for high-tech research.

Excellent commentary from Sundancecracker:
This argument has frustrated me for years. The reason colleges are able to raise tuition costs is specifically because the federal government underwrite student loans and guarantees payment. There is no supply/demand equation in the pricing process. The colleges can charge whatever rates they want. The student goes to the federal government and gets loans for the cost. The loans are determined by the cost of the education. If the free market was allowed to work, colleges would immediately have to lower tuition costs in order to attract students. Alas, POTUS would never be honest about that. It is the subsidization of tuition that raises the rates. 

Who says this isn't all about class warfare?

What a dfference three years makes

From Howie Carr:

How profoundly America has changed since January 2009. 
I was pondering this the other night during the State of the Union address. Did you know that our elite military units like the Navy SEALs are now examples of America at its absolute finest? Why, wasn’t it just a few years ago that Sen. Dick Durbin was comparing these very same troops to the Khmer Rouge and Joe Stalin’s Red Army?

What used to be Dick Cheney’s hit squad is now a beacon of freedom.

But now of course the president is a Democrat. When Durbin spoke a Republican resided in the White House.

Remember when Theo Epstein snubbed Republican George W. Bush when the rest of the Red Sox went to the White House after the 2007 World Series? Nobody said boo. Now Bruins goalie Tim Thomas does the same thing to our PC president and — hey, somebody get a rope!

Since January 2009, natural disasters are no longer the personal fault of the president.

Now that Obama is president, Gen. “Betrayus” is once again Gen. Petraeus, the greatest American military genius since MacArthur, no make that U.S. Grant.

George W. Bush played 30 rounds of golf in eight years and it was dereliction of duty. Obama’s played 80 in three years and it’s a well-deserved rest from his terrible burden of world leadership.

On Jan. 20, 2009, all the homeless people went home. Inflation ended that same day. No longer do dying Americans have to travel to Canada to buy affordable prescription drugs.

The Tea Party — violent rhetoric. Occupy Wall Street and the publicly defecating hippies — in the finest tradition of our Founding Fathers.

Bush mispronounces nuclear — idiot. Obama butchers corpsman — misspoke.

Raising the debt ceiling under Bush — the worst kind of fiscal irresponsibility. Raising the debt ceiling under Obama — a valiant effort by our young president to save the world economy.

 McDonald’s jobs under Bush — “burger flipping.” McDonald’s jobs under Obama — entry-level jobs with one of America’s noblest public corporations.

Unemployment rate of 4.5 percent under Bush — “jobless recovery.” Unemployment rate of 8.5 percent under Obama — the new normal.

The Patriot Act under Bush — incipient fascism. The Patriot Act under Obama — yawn.

Words and phrases you haven’t heard since January 2009:  no blood for oil ... Cindy Sheehan ... not one more dime ... quagmire ... atrocities ... candlelight vigils ... not on our watch ... waterboarding ... Abu Ghraib...

Ah yes, the amazing way media perception turns on a dime.

Via The Feral Irishman.


What we are

From the Plumb Bob Blog:
The fact is that conservatives are not “stupid, racist, greedy and unfair.” We’re thoughtful, compassionate, ordinate in our desires, and stand for truth and liberty. It is Progressives who have lost their minds, who represent the worst of seething hatred, avarice, envy, lust, arrogance, self-righteousness, and dishonesty, while pretending to stand for the opposite. The contrast between the Tea Party and #Occupy demonstrates this amply. We’re looking for public champions to say so credibly.
Yes, where are those public champions that we need??

The Vote Pump

From Firewall with Bill Whittle:



Follow the money. Never truer than today.

Juxtaposition of the Day

State Of The Union, Jan 24, 2012;
"In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries."
State Of The Battery, Jan 26, 2012;
Obama-backed electric car battery-maker files for bankruptcy
From Small Dead Animals.

By the Numbers

Kinda says it all.  Well, not really, there's even more that's wrong.....



From Conservative Manifesto, via American Power.

Yeah, let's encourage small business

From Dan Danner at Big Government:

Imagine for a moment that you are a small-business owner looking to hire a new employee. As tough as the economy has been, you’ve managed to put your firm on track to expand.

Now imagine facing a lawsuit for requiring perhaps one of the most basic qualifications for job applicants – a high school diploma. You don’t have to imagine that last part. It’s now an unfortunate reality thanks to guidance recently issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The “informal discussion letter” states that requiring a high-school diploma as a qualification for employment may violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, which the EEOC enforces. Therefore, an employer must prove a high school education is “job related and consistent with business necessity,” or face potential fines or lawsuits brought under ADA.

So, not having a high school diploma puts you in a protected class for discrimination enforcement from the EEOC?  Under the Americans with Disabilities Act?  Have we gone mad?  (or just madder?)

It's all part of the war against business being waged by this administration.  Read the whole thing HERE.

On the courthouse beat

From Keith Koffler at White House Dossier:

A hearing in Atlanta on whether President Obama meets the Constitutional requirements for the presidency ended at midday without a ruling by the judge.
 
Georgia Administrative Hearings Deputy Chief Judge Michael Malihi gave no indication when he will rule or whether he will sanction President Obama and his attorneys, all of whom refused to attend the hearing.

Of course, we know what would happen if one of us "little people" would miss a subpoenaed hearing, or even not have counsel present.

Advanced Economics??

President Obama said at a campaign event in Las Vegas, Nevada:
"I laid out a blueprint for an economy that's built to last, that has a firm foundation. Where we're making stuff and selling stuff and moving it around and UPS drivers are dropping things off everywhere."
Making stuff.  Selling stuff.  Yep....the smartest president we've had.

Now I know why the transcripts haven't been released.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Quote of the Day - II

From the comment section of  Ann Althouse's excellent blog.  Written by "Dan in Philly"
Let me be clear, O is and always has been an ordinary political hack who was picked up by a brilliant campaign because he happened to be in the right place at the right time. This brilliant campaign ran him, and ever since he's bee trying and failing to lead the country. He's been a failure from the beginning because he's been a fraud from the beginning.

Sums it up in my book.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

The logic within the SOTU??

From Hugh Hewitt comes this logical arrangement of initiatives put forth in yesterday's State of the Union speech.  It's a bit long, but worth following.  Because it truly points out that the SOTU was nothing more than a laundry list of political talking-points and campaign slogans.  This was written by Clark Judge:


But let me get this straight:

1) banks will be punished (do I understand this right, by a committee headed by Eric Holder?) if their lending is too risky,

2) and they will be required (by the same committee) to give more home loans (meaning, it must be, to people who would otherwise not qualify for the loans, or else the government would not have to be involved) at lower rates (which means rates that do not compensate them as much as the market says they need to be compensated for the risks they are taking, all of which sounds like a new edition of the policies that brought on the financial collapse),

3) which must mean that they will have to pull back on risky lending someplace other than homes,

4) the only place that most banks would be able to pull back on riskier customers would be loans to small and new businesses,

5) but these are the businesses that have created just about all the jobs over the last 20 years and he said early in the speech he wants to encourage them,

6) so maybe their growth capital will come from selling stock to the kinds of people who invest in new and small businesses,

7) but through the Buffet Rule he’s going to double the tax rate on investment income for those people, meaning that, like the banks, they can’t be fully compensated for the risk of backing small and new businesses,

8) so they will not invest more in small and new companies but in big established firms,

9) so more of those small and new firms will have to turn to the government for capital,

10) which luckily he said would up its investing in early stage businesses with “the best” ideas,

Coincidence? You tell me.

Or was it intentional that the study's conclusion matched the objective of the administration?  You be the judge.  A sample:
The Department of Education has acknowledged using flawed data in a study on the impact of race on student loan repayment rates, having omitted black students from its calculation. The analysis was conducted during the debate over gainful employment regulations, in response to complaints that the rules would hurt colleges that enroll relatively high percentages of minority students.

Read the whole article from Inside Higher Ed.

Hat tip to Small Dead Animals.

Same ol', same ol'

Same old themes, same old rhetoric, same old "government is the answer" message.

Good thing he wore a different tie so we could tell the difference.



Quote of the Day

If they wanted him (Obama) to close Gitmo they should have put a factory there, or an oil rig.

-- Dan McLaughlin


Hat tip to Proof Positive.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

From Orlando

News report:

President Obama was in Disney World where he unveiled his new plan to create jobs. He was joined by Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse but not Goofy. He had to stay behind to tend to his vice presidential duties.


The Beer Parable of Taxation & Tax Cuts

This has been circulating around the 'net, and the stated author (an economics professor) has denied writing it.  But it still rings true.


Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this…

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing
The fifth would pay $1
The sixth would pay $3
The seventh would pay $7
The eighth would pay $12
The ninth would pay $18
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59
So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20″. Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men ? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20 saving,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,”but he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!”

“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back, when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works. The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.



I have a sneaky suspicion that the attributed author actually did write this, but later denied it to keep up his credibility in the ivory towers of academia.


Good intentions

Andrew Klavan looks at how the road to hell is paved.



Watch it a second time and keep your eyes on the graphics along the sides of the road. 

Now, if only he would do these same sendups for ads in the November election.

13 Politically Incorrect Gun Rules

A compilation from various sources, put together on the Daily Caller:

1. Guns have only two enemies rust and politicians.
2. It’s always better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
3. Cops carry guns to protect themselves, not you.
4. Never let someone or something that threatens you get inside arms length.
5. Never say, “I’ve got a gun.” If you need to use deadly force, the first sound they hear should be the safety clicking off.
6. The average response time of a 911 call is 23 minutes; the response time of a .357 is 1400 feet per second.
7. The most important rule in a gunfight is: Always win – cheat if necessary.
8. Make your attacker advance through a wall of bullets . . . You may get killed with your own gun, but he’ll have to beat you to death with it, because it’ll be empty.
9. If you’re in a gunfight:
-  If you’re not shooting, you should be loading.
-  If you’re not loading, you should be moving.
-  If you’re not moving, you’re dead.
10. In a life and death situation, do something . . . It may be wrong, but do something!
11. If you carry a gun, people call you paranoid. Nonsense! If you have a gun, what do you have to be paranoid about?
12. You can say ‘stop’ or ‘alto’ or any other word, but a large bore muzzle pointed at someone’s head is pretty much a universal language.
13. You cannot save the planet, but you may be able to save yourself and your family.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Juxtaposition

Sundancecracker over at The Last Refuge has this observation:

February 2nd 2012, Groundhog Day and the State of the Union address will occur on the same day.  This is an ironic juxtaposition of events.

One involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to an increasingly insignificant creature of questionable intelligence for prognostication.

The other involves a groundhog.

Why couldn't I have been so observant?

To follow up

In addition to the news about the Solyndra auction, there was this report from last week:

Now seems an unlikely time for handing out bonuses at bankrupt Solyndra LLC, but that’s the plan of company attorneys intending to dole out up to a half-million dollars to persuade key employees to stay put.  Nearly two dozen Solyndra employees could receive bonuses ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 each under a proposal filed by Solyndra’s attorneys in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

The attorneys say the extra money will add motivation at a time when workers at the solar company have little job security and more responsibilities because so many of their colleagues have been fired.

I guess the failure to attract any bids to take over the company might put a damper on those bonuses.  One can only hope.

Sourced from the Washington Times.

But it's Green energy

News item of the morning:

(Reuters) – Solyndra LLC failed to attract any bids on Tuesday from buyers who could have restarted production, brought back some laid off staff and kept the bankrupt solar panel maker operating, according to a company adviser.

Solyndra, which owes more than $500 million to the U.S. government, has said a turnkey buyer is the best hope for getting the most money for the government and other creditors. However, no turnkey bids were submitted by a Tuesday deadline, said company adviser Eric Carlson of Imperial Capital LLC.

It's such a great business, in a booming vitally important field.  Not to worry - somehow those loans will be repaid to the taxpayers.

Yeah, right.

Milton Friedman on "Greed"

Milton Friedman had a wonderful way of taking complex economic issues and distilling them into conversations that the common man could understand.  Not with demagoguery, not with double talk, but with a straight-forward presentation of facts and logic.  This short exchange with Phil Donahue is just one example (courtesy of Powerline).




I just discovered that Friedman's classic 1980 television series "Free to Choose" is available through Google Video.  In addition, the 1990 follow-on, plus some recorded interviews, are also available to watch for free.  You can see them through THIS LINK to miltonfriedman.blogspot.com.

Well worth your time.  Watch it with your family.  Send the links to your friends.  It's not too late.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

The quote that sums it all up

Though I have 'issues" with his candidacy and some of his positions (and to a similar extent, that's true for all of the declared candidates for the GOP nomination), Rich Santorum nailed it on the head with this quote in South Carolina:


“We’re the wealthiest country in the world and the world is wealthier because they have become more like us. We’ve transformed humankind. And we have a president who sees all of that as a mistake.”

There, in three short sentences, is the essence of what motivates and drives Barack Hussein Obama.

Whether the nominee is Santorum or someone else, that quote should be a part of EVERY campaign speech, every campaign flyer, every press release.  Nothing spells out it out quite so succinctly, quite so clearly.

Originally reported by The Other McCain; hat tip to The Camp of the Saints.

It's the spending!!

From Investors.com comes this frightening news about our Congress:

Despite endless talk of spending cuts and fiscal restraint in Washington over the past year, lawmakers continued to act as though the government doesn't spend nearly enough.

They introduced 874 bills in the House and Senate that would have boosted annual federal spending by more than $1 trillion if they'd all been signed into law, according to an analysis done for IBD by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.

In contrast, lawmakers offered up just 215 bills to cut spending last year that would have reduced federal outlays by about half a trillion had they all been signed into law.

The analysis also found that for every dollar in cuts, lawmakers in the House proposed nearly $3 in spending hikes, and in the Senate $1.40 in hikes.

Personally, I'm rooting for a Greek default 47 days from now.  Maybe that will shock both voters and their representatives into some sense.

Read the whole story HERE.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Two sides of the mouth....again

The Daily Show's John Oliver skewers Froma Harrop of the Civility Project.



I guess this means "We're all for civility, unless we need to slam our opponents".

More "Do as I say" from the left.

Sunday Hypocrisy

It's amazing to me how Democrats can say what they do with a straight face. Which is the party that screams the loudest about separation of church and state? Which says that religion should have no part in the political process?  Could it be those folks with the (D) after their name?

Which makes this story all the more disgusting:
On the Sunday before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett visited Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to give a political speech, in support of her boss (Barack Obama) and congressional Democrats:

"Teachers, and firefighters, and policemen, whose jobs are now in jeopardy because Congress--well let me be specific--because the Republicans in Congress," Jarrett told the crowd. According to the CBS affiliate in Atlanta, at this point, "Before she could finish her sentence, people in the congregation were laughing, and applauding."

At the Sunday service, Jarrett also brought up Osama bin Laden's death in order to praise the president. "We all sleep a little better at night knowing Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants are not plotting a terrorist attack against the United States," Jarrett said. Then she pivoted to Iraq: "I saw so many soldiers returning home from their last tour of duty in Iraq, in time for the Christmas holidays."

At the end of Sunday's sermon, after Jarrett had delivered her remarks to the congregation, the church held a voter registration drive.

Thanks to the folks at The Weekly Standard for bringing this latest hypocrisy to light.

Follow the money

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  One of the most underappreciated lines in movie history, IMHO.

From the New York Post, news of another pious Kennedy do-gooder:

Professional do-gooder Kerry Kennedy — Gov. Cuomo’s ex-wife and the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy — has called the oil-drilled rain forests of Ecuador “the biggest corporate environmental disaster on the face of the Earth, in the history of the world.”

The human-rights activist penned opinion pieces and lobbied officials to voice her outrage at the damage oil companies have caused to the town of Lago Agrio, where 1,700 square miles of rain forest have been destroyed and people sickened.

What Kennedy has never mentioned during her campaign is that she is being paid handsomely for her seemingly selfless advocacy.
Kennedy, 52, was secretly hired as a “public-relations consultant” by the lawyer representing the Ecuadoreans in an $18 billion lawsuit against Chevron, according to court documents.

Cashing in on her respected family name and legacy, Kennedy raked in tens of thousands of dollars and was given a 0.25 percent stake — worth as much as $40 million — if the $18 billion judgment handed down by an Ecuadorean judge is ultimately upheld. (Chevron has not yet paid pending its countersuit in Manhattan federal court.)

Read all about the hypocrisy HERE.  Hat tip to Powerline.

Of course, it's just me

John Hinderaker over at Powerline summarizes my feelings well.
As you may have heard by now, Newsweek’s forthcoming issue headlines, “Why are Obama’s critics so dumb?”

Well, sure. We who are unhappy that unemployment has increased on Obama’s watch, that over-regulation has stymied economic growth, that our children now owe a $15 trillion debt that we can’t pay–hey, we’re just dumb! We obviously aren’t smart enough to understand how devastating our economy, unemploying millions of Americans and burdening our children with trillions of dollars in debt is really a great idea.

If that’s what you think, you are a liberal and you may take Newsweek seriously. The rest of us remember when the publication sold for $1. Hey, we Power Liners may be stupid, but we actually operate in the black. And, more broadly, the time when liberals could seriously try to peddle the lie that conservatives are stupid is long, long gone.
There was a time when I enjoyed reading Newsweek. Had a subscription and looked forward to insightful analysis of the events of the world arriving in my mailbox each week.

I also had a television with vacuum tubes.  Both have passed into irrelevancy.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Everyone should see this video

This is a short satiric piece translating the Federal budget to a family budget scenario. They just dropped NINE digits from the fed numbers.



Put in these terms, even the most economically illiterate should grasp the problem we are facing.

Then again, they did vote for BHO in 2008, so I may be a bit optimistic.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Volt = Obama??

Sundancecracker over at Last Refuge gets it right:
Everything about the Chevy Volt is a metaphor for the Obama presidency. A product that everyone thought was great until they tried it out, now no-one wants it. It costs way too much. The performance reviews are horrible. It was overpromised and profoundly under-delivered. Less expensive competition can go twice as far, and if you’re not careful with it, it just might kill you while you’re sleeping.

Yep, a sh!t car for a sh!t presidency.
Read the whole article HERE.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Your goverment in action

Might as well be mandating the use of unicorn piss. From (gasp) the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.

“It belies logic,” Charles T. Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, said of the 2011 quota. And raising the quota for 2012 when there is no production makes even less sense, he said.

So let's see if we have this straight. The federal government mandates that oil companies put a product into their gasoline. Only it doesn't exist. And then the government fines them for not using a non-existent item.

And they want to run your healthcare?? And some think these brainiacs know how to do that better??

Read the whole disturbing story HERE.

Finally, an honest politician???

I've given up believing the campaign promises of politicians, if only because it's better for my stomach. If something good comes along, all is well. Mostly I just hope that they don't screw things up too badly. Amazingly, the American system of business and community seems to be quite resilient to deal with mediocrity in government.

In any case, news today from the office of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. From Politico:
Freshman Sen. Rand Paul is making good on his promise to cut federal spending. The Kentucky Republican and tea-party favorite said Thursday he’s returning $500,000 to the U.S. Treasury — money from his operating budget that his office never spent.
and
“I ran to stop the reckless spending. And I ran to end the damaging process of elected officials acting as errand boys, competing to see who could bring back the biggest check and the most amount of pork,” Paul said at a news conference in Louisville, where he presented taxpayers with a massive mock check for $500,000.


Maybe there is someone who carries through on their promises. We shall see.

Back again from the Unknowns

Well, a multiple year hiatus. A couple years of frustration with not just our government, but with the madness of much of the world. Time to get back to the keyboard.

Need to clean up some things....blogs on the blogroll that have passed into history. Other "stuff" as well. Now to have the discipline to write regularly.