The Lies Keep Coming

Silly me. I always think that after a certain amount of time reporters would actually get facts straight. Yeah, put another 'kick me' sign on my back and be done with it.

Sigh.

I keep thinking that when something is easily looked up, a reporter might, I dunno, easily look it up. Kick me.

Goodbye to federal funding for 2012 candidates

Republicans in a wide field must battle each other for the party's private donors. But the emergence of free-spending independent political groups — since the Supreme Court in 2009 cleared the way for unlimited corporate spending in campaigns — is expected to help close the imbalance between Obama and the GOP. Several of the Republicans also have immense personal wealth...

By refusing matching funds, candidates are potentially forfeiting a lot of money. Edwards received nearly $13 million in matching funds in the 2008 primary, and Joe Biden, now the vice president, accepted over $2 million for his primary run. McCain, the winner of the GOP nomination that year, accepted $84 million in federal funds for the general election, but that barred him from any private fundraising. Obama opted out of the system and raised $264 million.

Phew! Good thing they managed to not pass along the fact that Obama promised to take public funding, before breaking that promise.

Anyway, back on point. For goodness sake, can we please get Citizens United correct already? The Supreme Court ruled that you couldn't limit the speech of corporations just before an election. That's it. They could already spend all they wanted...just not in the brief period before elections. There. Were. No. Spending. Limits. Just timeframe limits. It's not that hard, people.

"You keep using that word."

It's one of moviedom's best lines, infinitely reusable in many situations.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Today, that word is DEMOCRACY.

When Wisconsin Democrats fled the state in order to keep their Senate from voting on legislation, we were told that was what DEMOCRACY looks like.

When protesters in Wisconsin stormed their capitol and started screaming about their precious benefits, we were told that was what DEMOCRACY looks like.

When a mob in Wisconsin surrounded a Republican lawmaker trying to make a phone call, intimidating him and forcing a Democrat to extricate him from their clutches, well, they were telling us that is what DEMOCRACY looks like.

And today, on the front page of the Times Union, there's a story and photos of protesters at the capitol in Albany yesterday, where people showed up to try to convince lawmakers not to cut their particular piece of the taxpayer-funded pie, well the headline screams "Democracy in action at Capitol".

They keep using that word. I am positive that word does not mean what they think it means.

We do not have a democracy in the United States, nor in the state governments of Wisconsin or New York. If we did, when we saw DEMOCRACY we would be seeing people going to the polls to vote on everything. We would see the people voting themselves on what to fund, what to cut, who gets collective bargaining.

We have representative democracies in these places. These people have clearly forgotten what REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY looks like. That's when people go to the polls on regular bases and elect representatives to do the peoples' work for a set amount of time. If a majority of people want something, they elect people that will do that thing. When not enough people want something, they do not have enough representatives to do that thing. That is what REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY looks like, elected leaders putting into place the policies on which they campaigned by voting on and enacting legislation...what they were elected to do.

Mobs chanting about Hitler and people physically shutting down debate and votes...that is NOT what DEMOCRACY looks like. Throwing a temper tantrum when you lose an election or a vote and trying to take your ball and go home is NOT what a DEMOCRACY looks like.

When TEA parties were organized in a attempt to sway elected leaders' votes and tell them what people actually elected them to do - that is, what the majority wanted, no one was screaming that that was what DEMOCRACY looks like. It was just people petitioning the government and peaceably assembling. Democrats should take some notes.

Clinton Did It, In The DC, With The CRA

Apparently the push back by normal Americans via the TEA parties and such sufficiently put a hold on the far left's push to destroy the United States' economy, started with the collapse of the housing industry. Unable to think of a new tack, they (including Obama) want to give it another go with a bigger and badder CRA, the primary vehicle used to ram the economy the first time. IBD pushes back hard (quotes from the community agitators themselves and a liberal think tank are brutally effective here):

The Greenlining official added: "While some cling dearly to the myth that the CRA was the culprit, simply repeating a statement endlessly does not make it true."

Greenlining's pique is understandable. It helped fuel the subprime crisis by using the CRA to leverage large banks like WaMu for record loan set-asides for uncreditworthy minorities. Then it extorted even more money when the banks announced merger plans, filing protests with federal regulators to delay their bids.

Greenlining even got a sweetheart WaMu mortgage for its own headquarters, according to the new book "The Great American Bank Robbery."...

Ex-Federal Reserve Board Gov. Lawrence Lindsey, a staunch CRA defender, acknowledges that the changes "did contribute to a downgrading of credit standards."...

FACT: Studies show that CRA loans have higher delinquencies and defaults and act as a major drag on bank earnings. In 2008, CRA loans accounted for just 7% of Bank of America's total mortgage lending, but 29% of its losses on home loans. Also, banks with the highest CRA ratings tend to have the lowest safety and soundness ratings.

FICTION: Only 6% of subprime loans were originated by banks subject to the CRA, so the vast majority of risky lending was not tied to the law.

FACT: Among other things, the figure does not count the trillions of dollars in CRA "commitments" that WaMu, BofA, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo and other large banks pledged to radical inner-city groups...

All told, they shook down banks for $4.6 trillion in such commitments before the crisis, boasts a report by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, or NCRC, the nation's top CRA lobbyist (which conveniently removed the report from its website during the FCIC hearings)...

FICTION: "These loans performed well," the FCIC report maintained.

FACT: Brookings found that the loan commitments were set aside for low-income minorities with "marginal credit scores" and posed a higher risk. They were even riskier than regular CRA loans, because the banks delegated underwriting authority to the nonprofit shakedown groups, which had no experience judging credit risk...

Despite repeated requests by Commissioner Peter Wallison, the panel never examined the performance of the trillions in loan commitments...

Global Warming Causes Freak, Extraordinary Weather Events

I guess the evidence is just piling up - there's no reason to doubt that anthropogenic global warming is causing unusual, freakish weather events that just don't seem typical...look at this one for example, reported by the Weather Channel:

[On March 30] a storm that buried Ruby, Colorado under 141 inches of snow finally ended.

Can you imagine that? Nearly 12 FEET of snow at the end of March! C'mon, man, that's just not normal.

Oh.

Wait.

Yeah, that was in 1899. Sorry 'bout that ;)

Kagan A Worse Choice Than We Feared

At the time we knew that, like her boss, Kagan was an inexperienced and thoroughly unqualified choice for her post, but if we believe what she and her then-Department tell us, she was not only completely inexperienced and unqualified, but completely disconnected and comically and cluelessly bumbling in her previous job. CNSNews' investigation using FOIA requests of Kagan's former employer, the Office of the Solicitor General, shows the general pattern of coordination and organization by staff in responding to the legal challenges to Obamacare. These include direct communications surrounding this defense, but not the particulars, that include Kagan. Her job, at the time, was heading the department that would defend the law against constitutional challenges. She herself argued cases before the Supreme Court (and was generally demolished as incompetent by the justices, even the liberal ones, perhaps best exemplified when her office argued that the government would be justified in burning books to control political speech).

Yet, from their statements, we are told that in the months between when the threat of litigation first surfaced to when she actually stopped working as Solicitor General after legal action had been initiated, she had absolutely zero to do with the pending litigation or filings of the single most divisive and politically important matter of the entire year - litigation in which her office, the office she was leading, was one of the 2 sides. But she was involved in ZERO discussions about it, gave ZERO opinions about it, provided ZERO input into the litigation - despite the fact that it was happening months before any Supreme Court opening was suspected or she was contacted as being a potential nominee. In fact, when a potential recusal came up, they appeared to all but brag about how she had been "walled off" from the litigation "from day one" - despite "day one" being months before any SCOTUS talk arose.

In other words, the single most prominent case of the year with the highest political stakes and the most media coverage and public involvement was going on with her office playing one of the two parties and she never even sat in on a meeting where it was discussed in more than passing.

So.

Do we believe Kagan when she claims the above - and shows just how dangerously incompetent and unqualified she is for any important job, where the biggest and most important issues are kept from her by staff to keep her from getting involved (maybe they were afraid she'd argue that Obamacare be burned?)?

Or do we believe our lying eyes that where there's smoke there had to be fire?

Schumer Busted - You Can Ignore Dems' Hyperbolic Ranting About Cuts

Schumer was foiled by a conference call and started telling what he thought was just his fellow dems that they should use hyperbolic language to smear Speaker Boehner and lie about budget negotiations...except the press was already on the call:

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a member of the Democratic Senate leadership, got on a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning without realizing the reporters were already listening in. Schumer thought he was on a private line with four Democratic senators who were to talk with reporters about the current budget stalemate.

Schumer instructed the group, made up of Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Tom Carper of Delaware, Ben Cardin of Maryland and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, to tell reporters that the GOP is refusing to negotiate.

He told the group to make sure they label the GOP spending cuts as "extreme."

"I always use extreme, Schumer said. "That is what the caucus instructed me to use."...

"The main thrust is basically that we want to negotiate and we want to come up with a compromise but the Tea Party is pulling Boehner too far over to the right and so far over that there is no more fruitful negotiations," Schumer said on the call. "The only way we can avoid a shutdown is for Boehner to come up with a reasonable compromise and not just listen to what the Tea Party wants. "...

Coordinating the message is common in both parties, but it's uncommon for reporters to actually hear them rehearsing.

Confirmed at the NYT's blog and also by Schumer's office.

If There's A Flaw, I'm Not Seeing It

Alex Cortes of Let Freedom Ring notes that Speaker Boehner himself proposed this solution to the 'government shutdown conundrum' last year - looks good to me:

At a September speech before the American Enterprise Institute, the Speaker called for doing “away with the concept of comprehensive spending bills…Rather than pairing agencies and departments together, let them come to the House floor individually.”

Boehner asserted that the primary benefit of this approach would be to make spending cuts easier. Lawmakers wouldn’t have to “vote for big increases at the Commerce Department just because they support NASA” and could rather judge each department and agency on its own merits...

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are the two main implementation bodies for ObamaCare, and the former is also responsible for the taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood. If House Republicans separated the consideration of their appropriations from the rest of the otherwise comprehensive spending bill, than they can ensure that both items are defunded, risking only a shutdown in the two departments...

First, separating out the more politically-charged funding decisions minimizes the likelihood of a government-wide shutdown by making it easier for Democrats to vote for general spending cuts without having to explain to their base why they voted to defund one of their signature achievements and one of their signature allies.

Second, it is important to be clear that no one desires a shutdown, but if a partial one does occur the Democrats will be the ones to blame. Republicans should consistently communicate to the American people that these big government liberals intentionally shutdown these departments in order to protect their failed, rejected, and unconstitutional ObamaCare experiment and because they believe funding should continue for a criminally-suspect, for-profit organization that clearly shouldn’t be a budget priority with a $14.3 trillion debt and climbing...

Make it so...

Why "Tax The Rich" Leads To Chaos

The Wall Street Journal has a little ditty about why Tax the Rich is a sure path to failure - and also why the "make the rich pay their fair share" is such a moronic statement. One of the best takeaways from this little lesson in reality is the chart that features the following inconvenient (to class warfare warriors) facts:

State / % income tax paid by the top 1% income earners
California / 45%
Connecticut / 40%
Hawaii / 20%
Illinois / 20%
Maryland / 25%
New Jersey / 41%
New York / 41%
Vermont / 34%

Remind me again which group needs to pay their fair share?

Nearly half of California's income taxes before the recession came from the top 1% of earners: households that took in more than $490,000 a year. High earners, it turns out, have especially volatile incomes—their earnings fell by more than twice as much as the rest of the population's during the recession. When they crashed, they took California's finances down with them...

New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois—states that are the most heavily reliant on the taxes of the wealthy—are now among those with the biggest budget holes. A large population of rich residents was a blessing during the boom, showering states with billions in tax revenue. But it became a curse as their incomes collapsed with financial markets...

In New York before the recession, the top 1% of earners, who made more than $580,000 a year, paid 41% of the state's income taxes in 2007, up from 25% in 1994, according to state tax data...

As they've grown, the incomes of the wealthy have become more unstable. Between 2007 and 2008, the incomes of the top-earning 1% fell 16%, compared to a decline of 4% for U.S. earners as a whole, according to the IRS. Because today's highest salaries are usually linked to financial markets—through stock-based pay or investments—they are more prone to sudden shocks.

The income swings have created more extreme booms and busts for state governments. In New York, the top 1% of taxpayers contribute more to the state's year-to-year tax swings than all the other taxpayers combined, according to a study by the Rockefeller Institute of Government...

Because Sometimes It Helps To Laugh

MUD. Massively uninhibited delirium. Username? Iowahawk.

Is That A Quaking Aspen?

If I were a tree I think I'd be shaking in my roots...

Wind can't cut it.

Solar can't cut it.

Hydro can't cut it.

No nukes.

No oil.

No coal.

I'm not seeing any Shipstone devices around.

Yup, if I were a tree, I'd be mighty nervous right about now.

Deceitful Headline Of The Day

GOP presidential hopefuls hammer health care

Yeah. Right. It seems likely that they were attacking 'health care'.

Can you believe that health care?! What a nightmare! All out there making people healthy and stuff! It's unamerican!

Your Random Saturday

Always a good time to repeat some timeless economic wisdom:

Bastiat elaborated further in his "Broken Window Fallacy" parable where a vandal smashes a shopkeeper's window. A crowd forms, sympathizing with the shopkeeper. Soon, someone in the crowd suggests that instead of a tragedy, there might be a silver lining. Instead of the boy being a vandal, he was a public benefactor, creating economic benefits for everyone in town. Fixing the broken window creates employment for the glazier, who will then buy bread and benefit the baker, who will then buy shoes and benefit the cobbler and so forth.

Bastiat says that's what's seen. What is not seen is what the shopkeeper would have done with the money had his window not been smashed. He might have purchased a suit from the tailor. Therefore, an act that created a job for the glazier destroyed a job for the tailor. On top of that, had the property destruction not occurred, the shopkeeper would have had a suit and a window. Now he has just a window and as a result, he is poorer...

Do a simple smell test on these examples of economic lunacy. Would the Japanese economy face even greater opportunities for economic growth had the earthquake and tsunami also struck Tokyo, Hiroshima, Yokohama and other major cities? Would the 9-11 terrorists have done us an even bigger economic favor had they destroyed buildings in other cities? The belief that society benefits from destruction is lunacy.

But that's all OK, things are looking up...right?

Caveat emptor: The first-quarter economy is slowing and inflation is rising. A month ago, economists were optimistic about the potential for 4 percent growth. Now they are marking down their estimates toward 2.5 percent. Behind this, consumer expectations are falling while inflation fears are going up...

The main cause of today’s consumer angst is undoubtedly the jump in gasoline prices...The last leg of this gas-price jump can be attributed to the $10 or $12 oil-price spike, resulting from supply worries in the Arab world. But it’s worth noting that gasoline moved from $2.70 to $3.15 just as soon as Ben Bernanke announced his money-pumping QE2 strategy in late August last year...

So the Fed is pouring in new money, the dollar is sinking, and inflation is rising. Many believe this ultra-easy-money and cheap-dollar approach will cause the economy to boom. They said the same thing about the $800 billion spending stimulus. But the Keynesians are wrong. The recovery remains soft...

One final point: The decline of the dollar and the rise of inflation seem to be offsetting, or neutralizing, the effect of the December tax-cut extensions. Initially, those extensions helped bolster consumer spirits and economic growth. But the onset of food and fuel inflation from the cheap dollar looks like a tax hike that offsets a tax cut.

Continuing the theme...ummm...just read this all.

Michael Medved's pithy point on rich libs:

Why do fabulously wealthy individuals often insist on raising tax rates for the rich? Novelist Stephen King and investor Warren Buffett both recently demanded tax hikes on top earners and many left-leaning plutocrats agree with them.

...Higher taxes on the interest or dividends you get paid won’t reduce principal you’ve previously accumulated. Raising rates may keep people from getting rich, but it won’t stop people from staying rich, so these tax hikes help protect the powerful positions of the already wealthy against new potential rivals.

I can't resist, I just have a soft spot for real history that exposes leftists as hypocritical fear mongers in a humorous way:

In 1985, Life magazine's cover proclaimed: "NOW, NO ONE IS SAFE FROM AIDS." In 1987, U.S. News & World Report reported that AIDS was "finding fertile growth among heterosexuals." Also in 1987, Dr. Oprah Winfrey said that "research studies" predicted that "one in five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years."...

A quarter-century later, and we're still waiting for the big heterosexual AIDS outbreak...

Liberal activists also gave us the alar scare in the late '80S based on the studies of world renowned chemist and national treasure Meryl Streep...

The EPA proposed banning alar based on a study that involved pumping tens of thousands times more alar into rats than any human could possibly consume, and observing the results. The rats died -- of poisoning, not tumors – but the EPA banned it anyway. Poor people went back to eating Twinkies instead of healthy fresh fruit...

As Yale epidemiologist Michael Bracken explained: "Diseases don't fall evenly on every town like snow." Random chance will lead some areas to have higher, sometimes oddly higher, numbers of cancer.

But just to be safe, we all better stop driving cars, eating off of clean dishes and using aerosol sprays...

McCarthy References Just Get More Wrong Every Day

The continued lunacy of the left of throwing around the term "McCarthyism" and comparing people they disagree with to Joe McCarthy just keeps getting more and more irrelevant.

The liberal myth, of course, is that McCarthy was 'obsessed' with communists infiltrating the US government even though there was no such infiltration.

The problem with this myth, as the reality-based community is aware, is that communists at the time were in fact infiltrating western governments in significant numbers and at significant levels. This is fact, not opinion. The left continues to dismiss these concrete, proven facts as misguided...no - nakedly wrong opinion. If it weren't for all the communists that admitted to what they were doing, the spying convictions, and the uncovered communications with Russia they might have a point.

IBD passes along just another in a long line of nuggets that simply go to show that anyone involved with uncovering wrongdoing or corruption that is compared to Joseph McCarthy should thank the person in a heartfelt manner:

The "innocent victims" of the Red Scare were once legion — like suave U.S. envoy Alger Hiss, who doubled as a Soviet spy chief, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who gave Moscow A-bomb plans.

The latest debunking of this myth is Rosenberg fellow spy Morton Sobell, who finally admitted it in 2008. But in a December interview with Ronald Radosh and Steven Usdin, Sobell, 93, added that he gave hundreds of secret Air Force documents to the Soviets in 1948...

"I did it for the Soviet Union," said Sobell, a Red-diaper baby whose parents were both Communist Party members who hosted meetings in their home...

Even the so-loathed Sen. Joseph McCarthy has been rehabilitated, by M. Stanton Evans in "Blacklisted by History." Evans illustrates, for example, that U.S. Army counsel Joseph Welch's famed "Have you no decency?" line during McCarthy's televised hearings was actually a melodramatic deceit; Welch himself had weeks earlier fired the "young lad" he accused McCarthy of slandering, admitting that he was indeed a member of the National Lawyers Guild Communist front group.

In Your Face Media Bias

This article from the AP is so biased it practically does everything but add a doctored picture of Rush Limbaugh in drag:

Canadian opposition parties toppled Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government in a no confidence vote Friday, triggering the country's fourth election in seven years...

The opposition tried this once before, after Harper won minority re-election in 2008. But before he could be defeated in a no confidence vote, Harper shut down Parliament for three months and successfully whipped up public opposition against the coalition. The Conservatives accused the Liberals of treason for uniting with the Bloc Quebecois, a party that seeks independence for Canada's French-speaking province of Quebec.

Harper's government is now once again trying to marshal public sentiment against a possible coalition government. His underlings attacked the opposition Thursday with accusations they will try to form a coalition if another minority Conservative is the result of the election...

Ignatieff, 63, is one of Canada's leading intellectuals: an author, historian and TV panel regular in Britain before going into politics.

Harper, 51, is a career politician who has spent the last five years emphasizing a more conservative Canadian identity and moving Canada incrementally to the right...

In foreign policy, he's extended Canada's role in Afghanistan and he's been a staunch ally of Israel's right wing government.

While the Conservatives will try to scare Canadians with coalition talk, the opposition will try to keep the focus on the government's recent ethic issues.

The Liberals were originally going to bring down the government over corporate tax cuts and spending billions in new fighter jets, but recent ethical issues helped them make inroads in furthering the image of Harper as an autocrat who shuts Parliament when it suits him...

Cheer Up!

If we want to make any residents of this county feel better we could always send them some back copies of the Schenectady Gazette. How long did the city manage to go without having a cop arrested? A couple of weeks?

About That Fill-In Race In The 26th

Red State's got a little smackdown of one of the names in the race out in the 26th:

Jack Davis is, of course, the former Democrat trying to run in NY-26, which is up for a special election this spring (the Republican/Conservative Party candidate, equally of course, is Jane Corwin)...instead of putting up a phony Tea Party candidate, Davis is running as a phony Tea Party candidate himself. Fortunately, Davis is apparently not particularly bright, because his campaign manager (one Curtis Ellis) is on the record as writing things like this:

The [Tea Partiers] are essentially replaying the ’60s protest paradigm. (We’re aging boomers ourselves, so we know it when we see it.) They fancy themselves the vanguard of a revolution, when in fact they are typical self-absorbed, privileged children used to having their way — now – and uninhibited about complaining loudly when they don’t. It’s the same demographic Spiro Agnew called “an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.”

Spiro. Agnew.

Ellis - who is a progressive and former Talking Points Memo diarist - is now claiming that he’s matured since then - ha! Just kidding...Jack Davis himself is kind of… well, crazy. As in, “Let’s bus African-Americans out to the farms to pick crops!” crazy, which is a major reason why Jane Corwin is the official Republican/Conservative, and frankly best, nominee...

There's a bit more at the link.

Rules For Radicals 2011

You want a rule for understanding radicals nowadays? Here's one - anybody that goes on about anything that is "an attack on the working class" or simply uses the term "the working class" can be safely ignored.

Continuing The Theme

Following up on yesterday's simple substitution edits: NPR Anchors Line Up to Deny Bias; One Says the Charge Insults NPR-Listening Conservatives as 'Stupid'

Kurtz asserted in an NPR survey last year, 37 percent of listeners described themselves as liberal or very liberal, 25 percent as middle of the road, and 28 percent as conservative or very conservative—a split he said was very much on Inskeep’s mind. “If you’re saying we’re a liberal propaganda front,” he says, “you’re insulting the intelligence of millions and millions of conservatives who listen to us every day. You are saying they’re stupid.”

Hmmmm...

“If you’re saying The Rush Limbaugh show is a conservative propaganda front,” he says, “you’re insulting the intelligence of millions and millions of liberals who listen to him every day. You are saying they’re stupid.”

Heh.

When Science Goes Right

It can't be just me. There just cannot be any way that the people writing this didn't see the BLATANTLY OBVIOUS similarities in this article to the anthropogenic global warming farce. I mean, no frickin' way. Recently somebody wrote this scare-mongering piece about how these earthquakes here and there mean a big one is coming to California. Except they're not a scientist nor in the geological field at all. Well, people got fed up and scientists debunked it. Just check this out - what you will see is text from this article surrounded by quotes (") and then in italics some simple changes that HAD to have occurred to these people. The similarities are, as they say, eerie.

"An unfounded scientific assertion by a nonscientist has swept across the Web like a tsunami over the past few days. In an article in Newsweek, writer Simon Winchester claimed that the 9.0-magnitude Japan earthquake, following close on the heels of recent quakes in New Zealand and Chile, has ratcheted up the chances of a catastrophic seismic event striking in California."

An unfounded scientific assertion by a nonscientist has swept across the world like a tsunami over the past few days. In a movie, failed divinity school student turned politician Al Gore claimed that the actions of man are causing global warming that will soon destroy life as we currently know it.

"Winchester claimed that the geological community is "very apprehensive" about these earthquakes triggering a massive California quake. Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience, checked that claim with a panel of geophysicists."

Gore claimed that the climate community is "very apprehensive" about AGW. No one checked that claim with a panel of climate scientists that don't make their living off of AGW funding.

"U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) earthquake geologist David Schwartz, who heads the San Francisco Bay Area Earthquake Hazards Project, concurred. "Simon Winchester is a popular science writer, not a scientist," Schwartz said. "I'm not saying we won't have an earthquake here in California at some point in the future, but there really is no physical connection between these earthquakes.""

"Deniers" concurred. "Al Gore is a politician, not a scientist," deniers said. "I'm not saying we won't have a climate changes at some point in the future, but there really is no physical connection between these manipulated carbon dioxide levels and cherry-picked global temperatures."

""I think the idea of saying the earthquake hazard is real is good, because it hopefully gets people to prepare. It's hard to get people to prepare," Schwartz said. "But to scare people by saying the earthquakes are jumping around and the next place one will jump is here – that's just bad science.""

"I think the idea of saying that a climate changes over time is real is good, because it hopefully gets people to prepare. It's hard to get people to prepare," deniers said. "But to scare people by saying the earth is rapidly heating up and animals are dying off all over the place and sea levels are going to rise by feet in a few decades – that's just bad science."

Jobs (Temporarily) Saved

We're seeing just about every school district in the area struggling with the loss of federal handouts this year and basically eliminating teachers and/or programs. Clearly this is the same all over the place, not just locally.

Remember, 2 years ago Obama was bragging about how many jobs he "saved" with his porky stimulus. You'll probably recall that conservatives were saying this merely delayed the inevitable, that these jobs "saved" would simply be cut when the handouts dried up. Sounds familiar, eh?

An interesting ploy by the socialists that were in charge for the past 2 years. You see, historically, recessions would end in 18 months or so - they surely figured if they could pay off localities for that long the economy would recover and tax receipts would recover.

Except, unfortunately for them and all of us, these very policies (and the rest) have actually warped that historic model and delayed/ruined any 'typical' recovery with the result that, years out, we're still not in any sort of normal recovery, are barely out of recession, and may actually be facing down the dreaded 'double dip' with oil prices spiking again. Hey, that sounds familiar! Gee, talk about history repeating! The last time oil spiked (thanks to Democrats refusing to let us use our own oil) it triggered the housing implosion (that Democrats had set up), leading to this very recession. Now, here we sit 3 years later, and an oil spike engineered, again, by the Democrats (still no expansion of domestic production, indeed Obama has strangled domestic production), is perhaps going to again trigger a recession in an economy weakened by - you guessed it - the Democrats!

So tell us, Obey-Won, are you going to start reducing that phony-baloney 'jobs saved' figure now that those jobs are going bye-bye?

Oh, right, you're on vacation* again instead of leading.

-

* "Obama played grand tourist....The president's sightseeing Sunday..." - AP

Your Random Saturday

Pelosi's gone off the deep end:

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to the House floor Wednesday to claim that "Democrats have long fought for fiscal responsibility as a top priority." What star system does she inhabit?...

Now Pelosi says, "Democrats are in the lead on fiscal soundness" — a statement that would be a real knee-slapper if it weren't so terrifying in what it reveals of the Democratic Party's economic policy psychosis...

Meanwhile, President Obama vows to veto any and all Republican spending cuts and refuses to negotiate on the budget with the newly elected Republican leaders of the House of Representatives...

The fact is that during her speakership, and Reid's rule in the Senate, Democrats used the economy's massive downturn...as a pretext to bloat the federal government's expenditures by more than 21% over two years...

On Israel:

But there was one outrage that provoked the president's ire -- when Israel announced a permit for the construction of 1,600 new apartments on Jewish-owned land in a Jerusalem neighborhood. Though Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately apologized to the visiting Vice President Biden about the timing of the announcement (by which Netanyahu was apparently blindsided), the reportedly "livid" Obama was unsatisfied.

On presidential instructions, Secretary of State Clinton phoned Israel's prime minister and delivered a 45-minute harangue about Israel's decision to build apartments for Jews in the Jewish capital. Details of the irate phone call were immediately released to the press, with then-State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley offering that Clinton had told Netanyahu that "the United States considered the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel's approach to the bilateral relationship."...

Later, when Netanyahu visited the White House, Obama delivered the final slaps -- declining to pose for pictures or take press questions with the prime minister, delivering a list of steps Israel would have to take to restore trust, and then pointedly walking out on the prime minister with the parting words "Let me know if there is anything new."

On March 11, Palestinian terrorists entered the home of Udi and Ruth Fogel in the town of Itamar on the West Bank. It was the Sabbath, and most of the family was sleeping. The terrorists first slit the throats of Udi and his 3-month-old daughter, Hadas. Ruth was in the bathroom but was attacked and killed as she emerged. Two more sons -- Yoav, 11; and Elad, 4 -- were also killed by knives to the heart. Their throats were slit as well. There were three more Fogel children. Two other boys, ages 8 and 2, asleep on the sofa, were apparently missed by the murderers. Twelve-year-old Tamar, who had been spending Shabbat with friends, returned home to discover 2-year-old Yishai standing over the bodies of his parents and begging them to wake up.

In Rafah, Palestinians celebrated the news of the massacre by dancing, singing, and handing around sweets.

The Obama administration issued a pro-forma condemnation. "There is no possible justification for the killing of parents and children in their home," it read. Secretary Clinton called the murders "inhuman" and reportedly coaxed a more robust denunciation of the atrocity from Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas than he had at first offered.

But there has been little else -- no ongoing campaign to shame or humiliate the Palestinians, no list of actions they must undertake to show their good faith -- not even a particularly strong expression of revulsion.

President Fail

In case anyone's wondering why so many consider Obey-Won a disconnected failure...

Will They Admit It Failed?

Remember the liberal claims about government spending? They said, depending on who and when, that for every dollar the federal government spent it would increase GDP (as if by magic) more than a dollar - $2, $3, whatever. Let's be kind and say $2. And let's be kind and say that $500 billion of the porky stimulus was spent in the first two years (or so). Doesn't that mean that GDP, just on the stimulus alone, not on the recovery of the stock market, the slight recovery of the economy, inflation, etc. should be one trillion dollars.

So why has GDP looked like this (click to enlarge):

Face it, it's time to stop lying about how government spending magically multiplies in the economy. For starters they have to first take that money out of the economy. Then they have to filter it through the wasteful layers of bureaucracy. Then it is spent in inefficient manners (Buy American = more expensive products (when you can find them), union wages, etc.). Face it, if it did anything, it grew the economy by less than they spent. The economy, since it was passed, has grown by well under a trillion dollars and that includes the other factors I noted above. There's just no there there.

Of course the opposite action is staring them in the face. Conservatives argue that reducing taxes by a dollar has a multiplier affect on the economy. Liberals argue that it stimulates the economy by less than the dollar that wasn't removed from someone's wallet.

This entire premise is ludicrous. How can someone not taking a dollar from you mean that the GDP affect will be less than a dollar? That just doesn't even make sense. If you still have your dollar then you either spend it or save it. And, unless you're saving it under your mattress (something that people that can afford to save don't do) it is going into some sort of savings vehicle where the person holding it for you is putting it work by investing or loaning it. Either way that dollar is working at at least a 1:1. But when you start to factor in the savings by not having that dollar filter through a bureaucracy, that's why (I'm pretty sure) they say it has more than a 1:1 impact than sending it through the inherently wasteful digestive system of Uncle Sam.

Oh, yeah...and 2 years after porking out new housing starts are at record lows, unemployment has only eased if you don't count the people that have given up looking for work, GDP growth remains below the minimum healthy level of 3%, and inflation is at levels unseen since the beginning of the economic downturn (helping boost manufacturing optimism). Say it with me...STAGFLATION! On the other hand, the weather's nice enough for Obey-Won to golf regularly (very regularly) again. Pretty soon he won't even be running up the White House energy bill by cranking up the thermostat to 'orchid-growing' levels.

Mmm Mmm Mm-uh-oh!

Mmm, mmm, mmm: NJ shuts down Barack Obama Elementary School

The state fiscal monitor who oversees financial operations in the school district Thursday morning ordered the closing of the Barack H. Obama Elementary School as of July 1...

Yes they can?

Not any more.

Sing it with me: “Mmm, mmm, mmm…”

Did You Gird Your Loins For Failure?

+Updated and bumped+

Well, we're getting on towards 6 9 18 25 months or so. Remember when Vice-Gaffester Biden warned America that they'd better gird their loins because the world would test Obama and, by the way, please don't bail on him even though he'll fail that test? Remember that?

How are your loins?

Biden went on to envision several possibilities where such a 'test' could come from. I'm thinking he didn't envision it coming from all those directions. He was full-on correct about Obama failing, though.

Throw The Book At Them

Two Charged in Tea Party Election Fraud
Men were officials in Oakland Co. Democratic Party

PONTIAC, Mich. (WJBK) - Two former leaders of the Oakland County Democratic Party are facing a total of nine felonies for allegedly forging election paperwork to get fake Tea Party candidates on November's ballot...

Former Oakland County Democratic Chair Mike McGuinness and former Democratic Operations Director Jason Bauer face up to 14 years in prison if convicted.

"Some of the people didn't even know they were on the ballot till they began receiving delinquency notices of filings that were required as a candidate," said Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard.

The sheriff says 23 statewide races had questionable Tea Party candidates on the ballot and the investigation may go beyond Oakland County.

Thanks to Gateway Pundit for the tipoff, we'll see if it makes the mainstream media.

Spit It Out

C'mon now, just say it. Enough fooling around. Say it.

If NPR stops getting the small amount of federal taxpayers' money that it currently receives, it will only serve to make the massive donations it gets from liberals/socialists like George Soros, who become their biggest financiers, infinitely more obvious.

Just admit it, already. They can still hide behind the 'impartial' fig leaf because they get federal money. Once that's gone they become 'that station funded by George Soros'.

Just say it.

Evolutionary Jerk Circle Jerk

I had no idea the evolution crowd had gotten so nasty. Sort of makes you wonder why the intelligent design crowd has them so nervous, doesn't it?

The liberal dink that wrote this led me on a brief little interesting chase:

Republican Control Of State Legislatures Brings Record Number of Creationism Bills

Of course the actual bills refer to not discriminating against scientific viewpoints that contradict parts of evolution theory, they are not, of course, "creationism bills". He glowingly links to the original here with the ridiculous name 'religion dispatches' where the first link is 'sexuality/gender'. It contains this howler:

But as we all know, there is no such thing as ID research, which has not yet produced one single legitimate peer reviewed paper.

The nice thing for these people is that it's a happily self-fulfilling prophecy. You see, any paper that is about ID is, by definition, not "legitimate", so this is always a true statement for them and always will be. For the peer-reviewed research on ID that has been published (yes, Virginia, it exists) it's either 'not really about ID' or the publication isn't 'legitimate', or...well, you get the picture. If "we all know" that the sun revolves around the earth, then, by definition, any research to the contrary is not "legitimate". As I said, self-fulfilling prophecy - nice work if you can get it.

But, more to the point, I did a brief search and came up with the self-proclaimed geniuses that appear typical of breed here - take a look at the robust debate and scientific curiosity espoused by these supergenius sciencey types who agree that "we all know" this is true:

Holly, it’s amusing to have you visit, and you’re very polite, but we really don’t debate with creationists here. If you want to participate in our discussions, that’s fine...But please don’t try to tell us about science. Okay?...

You’re simply repeating the dishonest claims given to you by people who do not look at science with intellectual honesty...

I do not see your argument because it is devoid of knowledge. Learn something then come back...

TalkOrigins has an exhaustive index of creationist arguments with their debunkings. Some of these arguments are in their second century. Come back with one that’s not on the list.

This one's good. For example, they claim that this site will "debunk" the 'macroevolution' argument. Well, let's go to that "debunking" shall we?

Response:

1. We would not expect to observe large changes directly. Evolution consists mainly of the accumulation of small changes over large periods of time. If we saw something like a fish turning into a frog in just a couple generations, we would have good evidence against evolution.

2. The evidence for evolution does not depend, even a little, on observing macroevolution directly. There is a very great deal of other evidence (Theobald 2004; see also evolution proof).

3. As biologists use the term, macroevolution means evolution at or above the species level. Speciation has been observed and documented.

4. Microevolution has been observed and is taken for granted even by creationists. And because there is no known barrier to large change and because we can expect small changes to accumulate into large changes, microevolution implies macroevolution. Small changes to developmental genes or their regulation can cause relatively large changes in the adult organism (Shapiro et al. 2004).

5. There are many transitional forms that show that macroevolution has occurred.

Wow! Talk about a smackdown! Not.

1. We wouldn't expect to see such a thing. Sure, we evolved from apes, but we wouldn't expect to actually be able to tell such a thing happened, you stupid creationist! They then make some ludicrous straw man argument about immediate macroevolution, an argument no one that I'm aware of is even making.

2. We don't have to defend against this claim because, well, we have other arguments that sound better.

3. We're going to change the terms of the debate so your question means something we can "debunk" instead of something we can't.

4. We can observe microevolution, like the color of butterflies, and since we can't think of a reason why this means they can't turn into condors, well, hey, it could happen!

5. We have fossils that show that butterflies turned into condors, or something like that. Well not really, but we're going to try to make you think that's the case.

Seriously? This is the best they've got? Moronic arguments that I can slash apart and I don't even know anything about the issue? Pretty pathetic. Speaking of pathetic, let's get back to the supergeniuses. After a WHOPPING three comments from 'Holly', how did the supergenius blogger react?:

Is everybody getting tired of Holly? There’s no real entertainment value here, so how much longer should this continue?...

And yes, SC, she’s not even an interesting in her ignorance [sic]

For daring to rebuke these holier-than-thou clowns for their ridiculous and oft-unrelated rebukes in a fourth (yes a whole 4) comment?

Goodbye, Holly...

She started out polite, so I let her run for a while. But that’s always a mistake. They’re all the same, really...

Feel free to read the comments by 'Holly', which were unfailingly polite and on topic. It goes on, with people commenting on her sex life and making the most geniusey scientificy argument possible - 'she must be fat':

Her recent divorce no doubt threw her into a heretofore unknown world of new responsibilities and new challenges, financially, socially, and sexually...

Probably not safe for work, but contains important information on the sorts of photos that are used for avatars...

I should have banned her as soon as she showed up and deleted her comment...

I see a new persecution card being crafted! The creationists will publish obscure articles in obscure journals, THEN when they hold up their pathetic list of pathetic articles in pathetic journals they’ll whine and cry that we’re being mean to them because their journals aren’t Good Enough!

You mean exactly as you're discussing? Weird projection there.

Probably for the best. That Holly quickly got on my nerves...

Frank J says:

I am not recommending that you make this a “debate” site.

I wouldn’t hesitate to do so if there were anything to debate...Creationism is nothing but a widespread mental health problem...

While SC may have shut her out, he didn’t delete her comments once they were posted...

I like this one - yeah, we banned her, but at least we didn't delete her comments! Hey, want to see some SERIOUS defensiveness?

Already by her second comment she’s calling us close-minded bigots who are simply opposed to God.

Want to see the comment that triggered this fetal position under the bed defensiveness lash out against someone already banned from the site? "I realize I am discussing this amongst people who will never see my argument as valid simply because it involves God." Whoa! Lookit her go for the throat!!

We’re wrong simply because we don’t accept her point of view...

Project much, buddy? Hey look, the genius that called her fat is trying to defend himself!

Let’s clear it up, I’m not insinuating that Holly is fat, just saying that since the development of the Fat Girl Angle it’s impossible to judge petiteness or the lack thereof from avatar photos. Almost all fat girls use the Fat Girl Angle, but plenty of non-fat girls do too.

Hey, just cuz I said she must be fat, it's like she's all ticked cuz I said she must be fat! Then the clueless dick with the site moronically makes this statement:

Most of us have seen lots of blogs and forums, and far too many of them seem to tolerate just about anything. I guess it’s good for traffic. I don’t care. I don’t want this blog to be something I’d be embarrassed to admit is mine.

Banning people with differing opinions then cheering on people that say they're going to go spam that person's blog and watching people call them 'fat' gratuitously? That he's not "embarrassed" by.

Wow, things are much more belligerent, insular, and defensive out there in the Darwin-or-bust camp than I ever imagined.

Lame

There's only one headline that's still up on Yahoo!'s front page that's been there more than a day, the rest are fresh.

You'll NEVER guess who gets the starring role in the headline...oh no, never!

Shameful Reporting On Japan

This nuclear power crisis (despite the likely lack of human health effects, it's still a crisis) in Japan has triggered the absolute worst in the media - and I'm talking up and down the dial from MSNBC and NPR to FoxNews.

On CNN yesterday we watched Wolf Blitzer practically in tears as he pleaded, begged really, over and over and over Japan's US ambassador to use the word "meltdown". The word itself, as nearly as I can tell, has been used roughly 4.7 trillion times in the past 48 hours in the news. None of these teleprompter readers know what it is (since it has no clearly defined meaning as some of the more sober reports have indicated) but that hasn't stopped them from hysterically repeating the word like some kind of mantra.

Wolf then went on to 'bring in' another reporter who was talking to random people in the US who were giving 'differing' reports than the Japanese statements. This was of course reported as there being actual differing accounts. How someone sitting in their office in Chicago can give an equal weight opinion about conditions on the ground from the people on that ground is utterly beyond my comprehension. Basically they started an entire meme, about 'differing accounts', by getting the official version and then making up an alternate 'account' from whole cloth. Utterly manufactured. It's like interviewing someone in Kenya about the color of the sky they're observing and then saying there are differing accounts of the Kenyan sky color because a scientist in Norway is saying that the sky could be some other color because of the temperature or the color sky where he is or something.

Of course they then rapidly starting trying to get anyone with any actual nuclear power knowledge to say it could be like Chernobyl, particularly after we started seeing some hydrogen gas explosions at the facilities. This is, as the actual experts (as opposed to the talking head experts) have explained, absolute nonsense. The reactor types are utterly different (these reactors will not explode as happened at Chernobyl and Chernobyl had no containment vessel as these have). At worst these cores are going to melt to slag and render the facility unusable - along with producing some somewhat radioactive gas that will need to be vented. The reaction, as the experts are saying, seems to be proceeding fairly slowly, indicating that such a 'meltdown' could be 'controlled' to an extent, they're not losing control over the thing completely.

I turned to my wife and said that at least I hadn't heard the phrase 'China syndrome'. Alas, not long after I believe it was Geraldo on FoxNews asking someone about the possibility of this going 'China syndrome'. This utterly antiquated term, leftover from a time when people feared a nuclear core could get out of control and melt down through the plant and through the earth itself, bursting out on the other side of the planet, in 'China', has long since been relegated to the dustbin of history along with the fears that the nuclear tests conducted during WW2 would ignite the very air, causing a chain reaction that would destroy the world. Yet there was Geraldo hyping it.

And now, finally, the headlines are blaring that the 'rods were exposed'. Of course this is meant to conjure images of radioactive material rods being waved around Japan. Of course this actually means that they're not getting enough cooling water into the core, which isn't going to help with the whole 'slowing the reaction' thing. But the "exposed" rods are still safely contained behind feet of concrete and steel.

Yes, this is a crisis - a crisis because it appears that these facilities are not going to be usable again. They're not going to explode, tear the heavens asunder, melt down through the earth to come bursting out in the Wisconsin capitol building, or lay waste to every living thing in Japan.

It is, in fact, a testament to the way these things were built, even the one from the early 70s, that the radiation currently being detected is "1,000 times normal!!!!", even though at 1,000 times normal it's still barely of concern. Just goes to show you how very VERY little radiation they normally put out.

One would think that with the bodies of thousands reportedly washing up on beaches, the press could find something 'better' to do than hyperventilate, bloviate, and hyperbolically hype "meltdowns" that would have little to no discernible effect outside of the containment facility. There's plenty of 'bleeding' to 'lead', you would think they could focus their ghoulish reports on real horrors, not 'The Big One' that they're hoping for. I wasn't in the room, but my wife said that one of them, I believe on CNN, actually stated that a nuclear catastrophe would be terrible for the people there, but would be great for them [the press]. Disgraceful.

Two For One - Anti-Obama Racism And The Rich

1. Why is it that the left can avoid seeing racism or religionism (is that a word?) in:

- liberals throwing Oreos at Michael Steele
- blacks at a polling station yelling at whites and calling them "cracker"
- anti-intellectual crusades against "dead white men"
- muslim extremists screaming about god as they slaughter innocent people

But they easily discern 'veiled racism' and 'code words' about racism when faced with hundreds of chants, signs, and speeches railing against Obama's fiscal policies, finding such 'coded messages' only after utterly failing to find any racism in signs, speeches, interviews, etc.

2. I'm hearing a lot of wealthy liberals complaining that they're not being taxed enough. Seems like they could use a good history lesson into the wealthy, liberal philanthropists of the past. Where, exactly, do they think the name "Carnegie Mellon University" came from? Libraries are hurting around the nation, guys, how about tossing some money their way if you have so much extra? Face it, these cries of 'tax me more' are crap. If they have excess money there are a gazillion non-profits that could use that money and if it's not filtered through the federal government there's that much more directly available. So, Michael Moore, you filthy fata$$, stop whining about how your taxes should be higher and get a library named after you or a neighborhood non-urgent care clinic.

Look, we all understand the game now - or we should. You don't want your taxes raised - you want our taxes raised. By trying to group you with us you want us all to be taxed more to give more control to the government - you don't want people like those evil Koch brothers funding libraries and health clinics, you want the government to control all that and you want to do it by confiscating "excess profits".

Us? We want people to be taxed less so they can take their "excess profits" and invest them wisely in their communities instead of watching Uncle Sam take our money to fund the bigots at NPR and the genocidal racists at Planned Parenthood.

Wow

Note that last part about 'willing to pay us'...when workers are free to join or not join and have a cut a check every year to pay them, suddenly enrollment goes WAY down and workers become less 'willing to pay' them. If these people really think that all these teachers are doing this just because they love the NEA advocating for liberal causes, they're more delusional than I thought.

Your Random Saturday

Thought this was interesting and off the beaten path so to speak:

The Democratic Senate is itching to pass a bill that will mean death for innovation, which is the backbone of American economic growth. Sen. Patrick Leahy's, D-Vt., bill, S. 23, is called patent reform, but it's not reform -- it will kill innovation by litigation...

The core of our time-tested patent-granting system goes under the label first-to-invent, plus a one-year grace period. It is only common sense that the patent should be granted to the first person who actually invents something, and our Constitution specifically identifies "inventors" as the owner of the property right.

The one-year grace period allows an inventor time to experiment with his invention, perfect it, make sure it works, offer it for sale, perhaps begin commercialization, find funds to complete his work and apply for a patent, and seek partners and investors. This system is essential for the protection of individual inventors and small businesses...

Leahy's bill would replace the first-to-invent plus grace period with first-to-file plus litigation. That would grant the patent to the first to file an application at the U.S. Patent Office, even if another person actually built the invention first.

That change would create a paper race to the Patent Office, which already has a backlog of 700,000 applications. Advocates of the Senate bill claim this will facilitate deciding who is the real inventor.

That's not a problem with first-to-invent, however. Last year, there were only 47 challenges out of 500,000 first-to-invent patent applications...

The Senate bill would also institute a European-style post-grant challenge process to invalidate the patent. In Europe, competitors use this process to tie up the patent in expensive administrative legal proceedings, which independent inventors and small businesses can't afford.

Canada recently shifted to a first-to-file system and found that it imposed a special hardship on independent inventors, startups and small businesses that don't have in-house lawyers or resources to hire expensive outside counsel...

He explained that a large part of invention is trying out a vast number of ideas, such as Thomas Edison with thousands of light bulb filaments and the Wright Brothers with many wing shapes. First-to-file means flooding the Patent Office with dead-end applications.

Another unfair and biased aspect of the Leahy bill is that not a single practicing inventor or representative of small business was called to testify during five years of Senate hearings on patents.

Rather frightening figures...60% of us pay for the other 40% to live? And it's us that need to pay 'our fair share??'

This week, CNBC reported that social welfare payments now comprise 35 percent of wages and salaries this year...

And then there are those who receive paychecks by working for the government. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 8 percent of the work force is government employed. There is certainly some crossover between the two groups, but between them, we can assume with certainty that the government supports more than 40 percent of Americans...

The easiest way to avoid government cutbacks is to vote democrat. The dirty little secret of the liberal political program is that it isn't a program at all -- it's simple bribery. Vote for us, you get a check. Vote for them, you lose your check. It's quite simple and quite effective...

Medicare and Medicaid expenditures have nearly doubled over the past decade. With the rise of Obamacare, the national debt will near $30 trillion by 2020. By way of contrast, the entire world gross domestic product per year is approximately $74 trillion. Unless world domination is in our near-term plans, we're in serious trouble.

Just the (economic) facts:

The Bush tax cuts for the rich "caused the deficit" -- even though Obama says maintaining the current rates for the top 2 percent of income-earners "costs" $700 billion over 10 years, or for each year, less than 5 percent of the current annual deficit?

The war in Iraq caused the deficit -- even though the combined annual costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars represent about 10 percent of the current annual deficit?

Spending cuts fail:

When you consider that just four years ago -- as I've written many times -- President George W. Bush's deficit was $161 billion, it is amazing we have to begin with Obama's newly established base line of some $1.5 trillion and start our "cuts" from there. We all knew that when he imposed his "stimulus-porkulus" monstrosity, it would not be a one-time affair and that these new levels of spending would find a way to become permanent. And so they have. Under the president's proposed 2012 budget, federal spending would remain well above the 2008 level -- and above pre-recession levels by an obscene amount.

Real cuts?

Democrats were forced to counteroffer with a cut of $10.5 billion, or 0.28 percent of the federal budget. Imagine you have a budget of $10,000 (about 40 percent of it borrowed on a credit card), then "slash" 28 bucks. That's what it's like to be a frugal Democrat...

Well, Obama is in a fetal crouch under the Oval Office desk, muttering something about the need for courage and bipartisanship while quietly proposing $6.5 billion in cuts, which the Congressional Budget Office said is really only $4.7 billion. (That's about 700 million more than the U.S. spends in borrowed money every day. Imagine someone in obscene debt going a little more than 24 hours without using his credit card. Problem solved!)...

Look at it this way. Those heartless Republican bastards would cut 2011 non-defense discretionary spending from 3.6 percent to 3.2 percent of GDP. Under Bill Clinton, such spending averaged 3.1 percent of GDP.

Go Forth And Educate

Free example:

What if the government decided that it would be good if people had some widget that you install in your breaker box that detects wasted power and curbs its flow. The widget exists, but it's really expensive, so very few people have it. Also, it only kinda sorta works.

But the government decides as many people as possible have them. As a sort of 'bonus', a lot of electricians would be employed installing them and factories would be busy making them.

To the big government liberal - this is as far as it goes. Saving energy? Good! Busy union electricians? Good! Busy factories? Good!

Yes, all good. Right?

So they decide to allocate billions upon billions of tax dollars borrowed yen to give certain people widgets for free or for a small fee, depending on your income. Factories start making widgets, pre-selected electricians start installing them, a percentage of people see a benefit that is loudly trumpeted as success of the 'widget stimulus program'.

Unless you didn't get a widget handout. Now, if you want a widget, the price has gotten astronomical - after all, the government is paying for most of them and forcing their construction, shipping, selling, installation, calibration, etc. at union wages. There is no competition, because the government will only credit you for the installation of a certain brand of widget and no other brand can compete with a subsidized product.

Oh, and the widget stimulus only goes on for a year. At the end of the year the widgets are so overpriced that no one will buy one, especially since, at that point, the fact that they don't really work has been exposed by non-state media (talk radio, FoxNews, internet...). Factories close, laying off the workers. Electricians have less work, not to mention the enmity they've gained by installing these things that don't work and may even cause problems that people now have to pay themselves to remove or adapt.

But those billions sure were well spent because they helped employ a few thousand people for a year, right? Certainly better than:

1. Letting manufacturers tinker with the design via the few installations they're getting to find out if it's really feasible and workable.

2. Letting manufacturers compete to come up with a cost-efficient design (whether it be cheap for a widget does little, or a bit pricier if it really works good but costs a lot to make).

3. Letting sellers compete to sell the widgets at a price people will pay.

4. Letting people select an installer of their choice who charges a rate they are willing to freely pay.

5. Letting the market mature over time as manufacturers make better widgets cheaper thanks to what they learn from the new installations and new manufacturers getting into the business as some sharp tack sees a way to improve it and gets a loan from a careful bank/lender who sees a way to make a buck off of the loan.

6. Realizing the savings in energy from an efficient use of the macroeconomy and the hundreds and hundreds of millions of players all interacting to find the best product at the best price (or, MUCH more likely, a number of products at varying price points with varying levels of efficacy - so people that can't spend as much can STILL see some savings by there being alternative products available to them at less cost than just one model selected by lawyers-turned-politicians with not a clue how a widget works).

7. NOT seeing the widget market collapse once the government gravy train dried up.

--

There you go, use it if you like. Central planning cannot work. There is simply no way for a handful of lawyers to make better decisions than billions of people interacting continually, all trying to find what best works for each of their billions of individual selves.

America

America...we don't make the stuff you buy. We make the stuff you buy better.

What has happened is that American manufacturing has moved up-scale. Here's a quotation from an article that appeared in 2009 in the San Francisco Chronicle:

" -- America makes things that other countries can't. Today, 'Made in USA' is more likely to be stamped on heavy equipment or the circuits that go inside other products than the TVs, toys, clothes and other items found on store shelves."

The wages that would be paid to Americans employed in manufacturing such trinkets would be abysmally low by American standards - wages so low that, were today's unemployed blue-collar workers willing to work at such wages, they could likely today find jobs as clerks at fast-food restaurants or as baggers and grocery-cart fetchers at supermarkets.

Public vs. Private

In some cases I've seen the rightweb indicating that the situation in Wisconsin makes this a prime time to just do away with failing public education completely. Extreme? I think so. But crazy? No. Conservatives ask: "Is it time to end public schooling?" because they're got teachers illegally striking so as not to lose benefits that basically no private sector workers have and only about half of public servants have. (yes, I said 'public servants) After all, the rightweb is starting to mention how Wisconsin students are, well, not very smart. Or at least not performing very well. About 1/3 are proficient at reading and math. In the private sector, when you do a crappy job, you usually don't use your terrible performance review as proof that you're indispensable and the boss should take a pay cut to help get the company out of the red instead of you losing some benefits. That said, getting back on topic, the conservative cry is really just a continuation of the free market ideals so many of us hold, where the strong survive and the poor performers are not subsidized, but ushered to the bankruptcy court to start fresh. No, it's not an assault on 'teachers', it's an assault on a broken system that is simply run on the backs of teachers, good and bad.

Liberals instead seem to look at it from the other end of the telescope, there is no performance bad enough to trigger ending their jobs. If someone isn't doing well, that just means they need more motivation - so kindly put down that stick and hand us more carrots, Governor. Of course this ignores history, where more money over the past decades are simply producing stupider children, less-accountable public servants (so comfortable with their power that they'll conduct illegal strikes and flaunt laws to get their way), unsustainable debt, and giant campaign donations to Democrats.

Conservatives, I believe, would gladly pay bonuses or higher pay or benefits for excellent performance by teachers/schools - hell they do it now when they pay taxes for public schools but also pay to send their kid to a private school (where there are no vouchers) - they also believe that failure should have consequences.

Liberals instead believe the opposite, failure means do more of the same, only turned up to 11 - more money, more policies that push the same agendas. Success is an opportunity to find fault, the kids are traumatized by getting poor grades, having red ink on their tests, we can't teach the kids about stuff that 'matters' because we keep having to teach to these 'tests'. "These tests" are supposed to be tests of basic skills. Here's a hint, if you have to devote all your time to getting the kids to squeak by a basic skills test, you shouldn't be worrying about more "fun" topics. This is a liberal/conservative split, liberals think you can have ice cream even if you don't finish your meatloaf or the child might be traumatized. Apparently a stupid child with ice cream is better than a smart child forced to finish their meatloaf.

I have worked in the private and public sectors. I have worked in public jobs with and without forced unionization. All jobs were sort of comparable. Let me put a few things out there as clearly as I can.

1 - Public job, forced unionization
2 - Public job, no forced unionization
3 - Private job

Salary/Total Compensation: 1 >> 2 > 3
Accountability: 3 > 2 >> 1

(Oh, did I mention the 35-hour work weeks at #1? Yup, 7-hour workday via union 'negotiated' contract. Alas it did not include lunch, but did include two 15-minute breaks that you had to take.)

And it's not that close. Does it make any sense how these things go together? Or course not. Yet the slightest attempts to rectify it cause near rioting in the streets, death threats against those that try to rectify it, and near hysteria. They deserve everything they've got because they serve the public (when they want to). That's a lovely thought, but Governor Christie put it best - if you can't do it for a reasonable level of compensation, well, this is America, you don't have to be a public servant. Maybe you can get yourself a private job, one left vacant because someone in the private industry left to take your old job that is now offering less, but still more than they were getting in the private sector.

WI Dems Admit To Attempting To Try To Sneak Into Capitol Via Windows

In case there's any doubt on this point, the Democrat Party of WI seems to here admit that they tried to invade the capital (recall that a court order ended the 'overnight campouts') via windows (instead of just coming through doors like normal people), only to, shockingly, find windows in winter closed and locked.

"If we can recall just three senators, we can regain control of the Senate and can end the ugly games Republicans in the legislature have played in the last few days -- unplugging phone lines, bolting windows inside the Capitol shut, and withholding the paychecks of Democratic legislators," the party said in an online appeal.

Others on the scene reported that they had no difficulty just getting inside (ok, some difficulty simply as a result of the vast swarm of prodigiously flatulent protesters), but still - coming through the windows? Are they supposed to leave the windows unlocked to legislators' offices at night?

Why They Lost

Why did the unions lose in WI?

They screeched that the Republicans that campaigned to change the way things work, showed up, debated the measure, gave the minority weeks to show up, and finally did the only thing they could to restore sanity to the process - voted, are "cowards" - not the minority Democrats that were crushed in the last election, top to bottom, who fled the state to avoid debating or negotiating.

They screeched that the Republicans that campaigned to change the way things work, got elected, showed up, had meetings to craft and discuss a bill, debated it publicly, and voted for it are "destroying democracy" - not the minority Democrats that were crushed in the last election and chose to flee the state in order to prevent a democratic vote from being held on their state's budget.

Meanwhile, ultra-leftist Gov. Brown in California is pushing back against the unions that own him and the government, but are flushing that once-proud state down the crapper, half of the states in the nation do not allow collective bargaining by public servants, the federal government does not allow collective bargaining by public servants, but here in NY Cuomo is still owned lock, stock, and barrel by the unions and is cutting them breaks while decimating non-profits that assist the poor and needy so that he doesn't need to cut into the bennies of public servants that own the Democrat party in NY. Something on the order of 40% of all NY spending is to compensate state employees (and ex-employees I would assume). Oh yeah, it's coming here, too, don't you worry.

An Easier Question

The Press wet their pants with glee when a snotty liberal interviewer asked then-Vice Presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin her take on the "Bush doctrine" and she asked him to clarify what he meant by that. Of course it was not exactly a 'trick question', because, while there simply was no easy answer to the question since the so-called 'Bush doctrine' had changed at least twice from any initial formulation by the time the question was asked, the interviewer gave no indication that he had any clue this was the case, in fact he himself got it wrong in his down-the-nose 'explanation'.

Notwithstanding the source, that was a tricky question.

Needless to say, any similar question in the next year and a half will be much easier. What is your reaction to the Obama doctrine?

Ooh, that's an easy one...there isn't one!

Much easier.

For the following can surely not be considered any kind of rationale 'doctrine' -

Pledge to give civil trials to terrorists in the heart of US cities. Then change your mind.

Pledge to go after terrorists. Then don't. And reclassify 'terrorists' as your political opponents. And go after them.

Preach democracy for the world. Then ignore the murder of pro-democracy protesters in Iran. Then support them in Egypt when an ally peacefully goes away without murdering them in the streets. Then don't in Libya when the murderous dictator begins slaughtering them with military air strikes. Then do. Then don't.

Then say 'it's complicated'.

Then intensify your efforts to get schools, any schools, to please PLEASE enter the 'get Obama to speak at your commencement' contest.

Pet Projects

The left is simply apoplectic that federal funding could be cut for NPR.

Or PBS.

Or Planned Parenthood.

Or WIC's unneeded excess funding.

The list pretty much goes on and on.

Would the left be as exercised by the attempt to defund NPR and PBS if they weren't leftwardly tilted? Seriously. Of course they wouldn't.

But this just got me to thinking...what are the similar 'can't touch this' pet projects of the right in the budget that can/should/might be cut?

Well there's the federal funding for the NRA...oh wait.

Of course the Heritage Foundation's line item...no, no wait.

Those groups that help women get their baby adopted if they don't get an abortion...nope, hold on...

Hmmmm.

See where I'm going with this?

I think the one thing you can really point to, were you to try to make the argument, would be 'the military'.

Almost legitimate. But hold on...the Constitution itself calls for the federal government to be responsible for national defense. Not abortion. Not Barney. Not Elmo. Not Alan Chartock. So that argument simply fails to hold water.

What am I missing? What programs did the Democrats rush to defund in 2009 when they had a majority in the House, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and the White House?

Nothing. There was nothing they rushed to cut that was 'vital' to the nation (yet, strangely, beloved mostly by conservatives) that liberals were unhappy that they had to support with their tax dollars. No, what the left did was simply try to add MORE programs, MORE spending on things that liberals loved and were 'vital' to the nation that conservatives were unhappy they would have to support with their tax dollars.

Interesting, isn't it?

Obama Continues To Continue Bush Policies Re: Terrorists

Then.

REMARKS BY PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA AT HIS SIGNING OF EXECUTIVE ORDERS CLOSING THE GUANTANAMO BAY DETENTION FACILITY, IMPLEMENTING USE OF THE ARMY FIELD MANUAL GOVERNMENTWIDE, SETTING UP A SPECIAL INTERAGENCY TASK FORCE ON DETAINEE DISPOSITION, AND THE CASE OF ALI SALEH KAHLAH AL-MARRI LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D.C. TIME: 11:22 A.M. EST DATE: THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2009

PRESIDENT OBAMA: (In progress) -- order that we are signing. "By the authority vested in me as president of the -- president by the Constitution under the laws of the United States of America, in order to effect the appropriate disposition of individuals currently detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo, and promptly to close the detention facility at Guantanamo consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States, and the interest of justice, I hereby order" and we then provide the process whereby Guantanamo will be closed no later than one year from now.

Now.

President Obama announced Monday that military trials will resume for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp...

"He's sort of a God"

Click for larger size if needed. One word, baybee - priorities! Thank goodness the adults are in charge now! Yeah!

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) - "This proposal, which calls for $6.5 billion in new cuts, utterly ignores our fiscal reality. Why are we doing all this when the most powerful person in these negotiations - our president - has failed to lead this debate or offer a serious proposal for spending and cuts that he would be willing to fight for?"

Present!

NPR Defunds Itself On Camera

Looks like NPR has just given us all we need to stop wasting taxpayer money on what should be a private enterprise (oh, and it's much worse than the headline might lead you to believe - I strongly suggest clicking through to read it all: NPR executives caught on tape bashing conservatives and Tea Party, touting liberals

A man who appears to be* a National Public Radio senior executive, Ron Schiller, has been captured on camera savaging conservatives and the Tea Party movement...

In a new video released Tuesday morning by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe, Schiller and Betsy Liley, NPR’s director of institutional giving, are seen meeting with two men who, unbeknownst to the NPR executives, are posing as members of a Muslim Brotherhood front group. The men, who identified themselves as Ibrahim Kasaam and Amir Malik from the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) Trust, met with Schiller and Liley at Café Milano, a well-known Georgetown restaurant, and explained their desire to give to $5 million to NPR because, “the Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere.”

On the tapes, Schiller wastes little time before attacking conservatives. The Republican Party, Schiller says, has been “hijacked by this group.” The man posing as Malik finishes the sentence by adding, “the radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people.” Schiller agrees and intensifies the criticism, saying that the Tea Party people aren’t “just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”

...O’Keefe’s organization set up a fake website for MEAC to lend credibility to the fictitious group. On the site, MEAC states that its mission is combating “intolerance to spread acceptance of Sharia across the world.” At their lunch, the man posing as Kasaam told Schiller that MEAC contributes to a number of Muslim schools across the U.S. “Our organization was originally founded by a few members of the Muslim Brotherhood in America actually,” he says.

Schiller doesn’t blink. Instead, he assumes the role of fan. “I think what we all believe is if we don’t have Muslim voices in our schools, on the air,” Schiller says, “it’s the same thing we faced as a nation when we didn’t have female voices.”

...Later in the lunch, Schiller explains that NPR would be better positioned free of federal funding. “Well frankly, it is clear that we would be better off in the long-run without federal funding,” he says. “The challenge right now is that if we lost it all together we would have a lot of stations go dark.”

When one of O’Keefe’s associates asked, “How confident are you, with all the donors that are available, if they should pull the funding right now that you would survive?,” Schiller answered this way: “Yes, NPR would definitely survive and most of the stations would survive.”

That is precisely the opposite answer Schiller’s boss, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation), gave at a press conference Monday in Washington. “We take [federal defunding] very, very seriously,” she said. “It would have a profound impact we believe on our ability – of public broadcasting’s ability – to deliver news and information.”

At the Café Milano lunch, Schiller said he’s “very proud of” how NPR fired Juan Williams. “What NPR stood for is non-racist, non-bigoted, straightforward telling of the news and our feeling is that if a person expresses his or her opinion, which anyone is entitled to do in a free society, they are compromised as a journalist,” he said. “They can no longer fairly report.”

With that, Schiller once again directly contradicted NPR’s public statements. At her Monday press conference, Vivian Schiller apologized for the way it handled the Williams matter. “We handled the situation badly,” she said. “We acted too hastily and we made some mistakes. I made some mistakes.”

--

* as if there were doubt, other NPR spokespeople are confirming that 1) it was him; and 2) he said these things

Gazette's Priorities Exposed

See the Sunday Gazette? Page 1, big top of the fold story about how the state budget cuts are going to 'hit hard' because non-profits are having their funding slashed, even zeroed out.

Then, buried on B6, tucked in with the TV listings, there's a story about how Cuomo has cut deals with unions to keep them fat and happy.

Interesting, no? How about changing the locations of those two stories? That would make more sense to me.

This is all just ridiculous and just like how the Democrats nationally are playing things out to their logical conclusion - bankruptcy. Cuomo wants to slash out all the funding of non-profits and try to plug a massive deficit with little sums like the $500k he's taking from the described aid group. He can take all the money of all these groups and still not touch the problem or the billions in deficits. Meanwhile, he's cutting deals with the teachers unions to keep their gravy train on the tracks. So when the fit really and truly hits the shan* and the cuts come for the real issues, like Medicaid, now they'll have shredded the non-profits and such agencies that would otherwise have been available to help out people now in need of assistance because we cannot afford to subsidize them as we have in the past (well, like we thought we could).

--

*I can't help but think Cuomo and his cronies are hoping they can nickel and dime their way along for a few years, while never asking their union meal tickets to suffer along with anyone else, including 'the poor' being serviced by non-profits, in hopes that when the economy turns around they can then restore some of that funding and seem like the benevolent gracious leaders...and, again, all without ever asking the unions that own them to give up their sweetheart deals that dwarf the funds that these non-profits are using.

She's A Machine

If they ever want to get their message across to the American people again, the GOP MUST get Michelle Bachmann to give lessons on STAYING ON POINT when dealing with a hostile press that is nothing more than the media arm of the liberal wing of the Democrat party.

It does not MATTER that her answers are only tangentially related to the questions being asked - the liberal press will NEVER give a conservative an opening to talk about what matters to them or us. As long as they continue to make any attempt to interview conservatives (and if they stop totally, the cat will never get back into the bag), conservatives must continue to briefly answer the question and then move on to their main points. The press, by way of comparison, routinely set up liberals to talk about what they want to talk about or will happily shift focus to whatever they want to talk about. Conservatives do NOT have this luxury, they must muscle their way through the interview to get the word out on things like this that we need to know, otherwise we'll never hear it. If they cut you off, bring it up again right away. Make them sweat. Make them work for the interview. Make sure they know that an interview is not just the liberal media demanding that conservatives say what they want them to say - it's a 2-way street.

Keep talking, Michelle. The NY GOP could well learn from her.

WWDC?

Nothing. Said it before, will say it again in the coming days. Nothing. Oh, they'll talk about cuts, but it's like that American Pickers show - hoarders (they politely call them "collectors") call these guys or otherwise agree to have Frank and Mike go through their largely-forgotten carp and sell some of it to them - until Frank or Mike hold up something in particular...then, suddenly, that one thing just can't be parted with. Sure, they say, I need to get rid of some of this stuff. No, not that. Or that. I think I'll hold onto that. I don't think I can part with that. I'm going to fix that up some day. No, sorry, not that. I don't think that can go. Gee, I guess none of it can go after all.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said that after a number of conversations with Obama and Vice President Biden, he is not optimistic the president will take the opportunity provided by a Republican-led House to look for areas of compromise on spending cuts.

"I was hopeful that we would step up to the plate here, if you will, and use this divided government opportunity to do something big about our long-term problems. I don't have any more complaints about no conversations with them. I've had plenty of conversations with them. What I don't see now is any willingness to do anything that's difficult," McConnell said on NBC's "Face the Nation."...

The White House has said it will meet Republicans halfway on spending cuts, but Republicans say they are only about one-sixth of the way there -- proposing $10.5 billion in cuts on a $3.7 trillion budget proposal for the coming year that is already $1.65 trillion in the red...

"I can tell you personally I'm willing to see more deficit reduction, but not out of domestic discretionary spending. When you're cutting education, innovation and infrastructure, you're not dealing with the reality of this recession," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the majority whip.

"I don't believe what we have from the House is a serious economic plan," Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said on CBS. "I think it's an ideological, extremist, reckless statement. If that were to be in fact put in place, it would contribute to the reversal of our recovery. ... It sets back GDP. We will lose 700,000, 200,000, 500,000 jobs, whatever we lose, 200 to 700, it moves against the recovery that we've worked so hard to achieve."...

Seriously? 700,000 jobs by cutting funding back to around 2009 levels? Right.

"If you believe that you're going to balance the budget by cutting just 12 percent of the budget down to balance, it is literally, figuratively, impossible," Durbin said. "You can't cut your way out of our crisis; you can't tax your way out of our crisis. You have to deal with this, in its entirety, and we have to think our way out of it."...

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said he'd like to work with Democrats to reform entitlement programs, starting with "grandfathering all the grandparents." But that conversation can't begin when Democrats refuse to discuss an immediate budget deal.

"Now Dick says everything has to be on the table, but under their plan, nothing is on the table," said Hensarling, who appeared with Durbin on "Fox News Sunday." "When Dick talks about, or accuses us of draconian cuts, yes, this is 2.5 percent, roughly, of the entire federal budget. They're willing to do nothing."