Obama's Next Ploy For Raising Gas Prices

Well, he's on quite a roll already:

Well, he's doubled gas prices by crushing the dollar with his economic "policies" and shutting down domestic oil production. When you've already shut down oil production, how do you find a way to make gas prices go up more?

Obama keeps up push to end gas, oil tax breaks

Yup, raise the cost of gas production and sales - raises that will, naturally, be passed right though to you and me. I'm guessing this one could be worth, oh at least 40-50 cents more per gallon.

"These tax giveaways aren't right," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday. "They aren't smart. And we need to end them."

Giveaways? And people said Bush lied...where are they now?

Your Random Saturday

Paul Krugman, how art thou a hypocrite, let us count the ways...why 3 ways just in this one expose:

2011 Krugman: A GOP proposal to raise the Social Security retirement age "shows how disconnected [its proponents] are from the way the other half lives (and dies)." It's only the plutocrats, "the judges - and the politicians, who are similar - who think it's a great idea to raise the retirement age."

1996 Krugman: "...Mr. Peterson’s proposal is more completely fleshed out, but the general thrust is clear: slow the growth in benefit levels, gradually raise the retirement age...We need not dwell on their sensible proposals, however, because there is not the slightest prospect that they will be put into effect — or indeed that we will do anything serious about the looming crisis until it is almost upon us."

2010 Krugman: Re: unemployment benefits as disincentive to work: "What Democrats believe is what textbook economics says."

Economic Textbook Author Krugman: "Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect...The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker's incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of "Eurosclerosis," the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries."

2004 Krugman: Deficit at 3.5% of GDP - "Well, basically we have a world-class budget deficit...that as a share of GDP is right up there. It’s comparable to the worst we’ve ever seen in this country...so I think we’re looking for a collapse of confidence some time in the not-too-distant future."

2010 Krugman: Deficit at 9% of GDP - "Many economists, myself included, regard this turn to austerity as a huge mistake. It raises memories of 1937, when F.D.R.’s premature attempt to balance the budget helped plunge a recovering economy back into severe recession...But despite these warnings, the deficit hawks are prevailing in most places — and nowhere more than [Germany], where the government has pledged 80 billion euros, almost $100 billion, in tax increases and spending cuts even though the economy continues to operate far below capacity."

Remind me why any local papers run columns by this dishonest political hack?

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First I've seen of this statistic about those racist GOP bastards:

Of the black members of the House of Representatives, the only ones from majority white districts are Republicans.

They really do hate black people.

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Interesting item here about the failure of high speed rail...in China (yes, the China whose high speed rail is supposed to be kicking our arses and that we're supposed to be longing for and emulating):

It was supposed to be the modern equivalent of the Great Wall, a web of high-speed rail lines whipping travelers and commuters at speeds of over 200 miles an hour. It was to be a model we were told we needed to emulate to stay technologically competitive...

Today the reality is somewhat different. In February, Liu Zhijun, minister of railways in the People's Republic of China, was arrested after investigations into cost overruns and poor performance of the ministry's showcase bullet trains, with a dash of corruption thrown in.

The modern marvel he oversaw has caused his ministry to run up some $276 billion in debt, roughly five times the amount that bankrupted General Motors. The money was mostly borrowed, ironically from the same Chinese banks that are financing our debt. And the trains aren't running safely or on time.

On April 13, the government announced train speeds would be reduced from a maximum 216 miles per hour to 186 as a result of concerns about safety, energy efficiency and affordability...

The Beijing-Tianjin line, built at a cost of $46 million per mile, is losing more than $100 million a year. Ticket prices are high for a Chinese citizenry with an estimated per-capita income of $4,300, still below the world average despite China's touted economic boom. People still prefer riding buses over these government-mandated bullet trains.

editoriaLIES

Times Union on Thursday, April 28. Basically just one long, drawn out lie. Without naming any names except for Donald Trump, whom no conservative or GOP pundits that I'm seeing think will be a serious contender for a nomination if he even runs, they smear the entire Republican party, in particular any potential candidates for president, as embracing the fantasy that Obama isn't a citizen.

The reality, as I'm sure they must be aware...strike that, they're probably clueless...every serious GOP leader and potential candidate has been absolutely hounded by a leftwing press obsessed with this subject and have repeatedly said they not only didn't believe it, but it was a ridiculous distraction...

just like Donald Trump.

Pretending that Donald Trump is indicative of the field of potential GOP candidates is simply not truthful.

A Second Bite At The Apple For America

In light of yesterday's news:

(Briefing.com) - The data indicate that the U.S. economy expanded at an annualized rate of 1.8% from January through March...initial jobless claims for the week ended April 23 totaled 429,000, which is greater than the 390,000 initial claims that represent the Briefing.com consensus. The latest initial claims tally also marks an increase of 25,000 from the prior week.

and the fact that Obama has, a year and a half ahead of the election as an incumbent with no declared serious challengers, yet, already declared that he is running for reelection, this time on his record (insert guffaw here) instead of as the New Age Messiah, I thought it would be interesting to look at the warnings the right gave America before they foolishly elected this inexperienced, incompetent, unqualified teleprompter reader the first time and see how they hold up and if they're still as valid today. Note that I've pulled some out that just aren't really applicable today.

I crammed a pretty thorough summary together here: All That Remains

Palin was a supporter of Pat Buchanan, a right-winger or as many Jews call him: a Nazi sympathizer. -Obama spokesman Mark Bubriski (Palin did not support Buchanan, and neither of them are Nazi sympathizers)

2+ years later Obama's primary tactic for dealing with opponents remains smearing them and lying about them. √

*

Gov. Sarah Palin ought to go to New York and get gang-raped by black men. -Obama supporter Sandra Bernhard

2+ years later and Obama's supporters and the left continue to behave this way with zero calls from The Won to distance himself from them. √

*

I'll tell you my impression. We really in this last election, when I say we...the Democrats, I think pushed it as far as we can to the end of the fleet, didn't say it, but we implied it. That if we won the Congressional elections, we could stop the war. Now anybody was a good student of government would know that wasn't true. But you know, the temptation to want to win back the Congress, we sort of stretched the facts...and people ate it up. -Paul Kanjorski (D-PA)

2+ years later...will America buy the 'elect us and we'll "save" Medicare from the GOP? √

*

I know Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And, Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002. -Hillary Clinton

2+ years later, you can add a LOT more speeches to that side of the ledger...and what else? A doubled national debt? Doubled gas prices? Trillion-dollar deficits every year as far as the eye can see? Doubled unemployment? √

*

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. -Barack Obama, speaking behind closed doors in San Francisco

2+ years later a crowd in, yes, Pennsylvania is told that if they can't afford gas, they should buy a new car, and not just any new car, but overpriced hybrid cars or nonexistent hybrid vans instead of clinging bitterly to the "monster trucks" and imaginary 8 mpg gas guzzlers that he thinks they all drive in flyover country. √

*

George Stephanopoulos (to Biden) during Democratic primary debate- You were asked 'Is he ready?' You said 'I think he can be ready, but right now I don't believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.
Obama's pick for Vice-Presidential candidate, Joe Biden- "I think that I stand by the statement."

2+ years later is there any reason for Biden, or anyone else, to challenge that statement? √

*

I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country'd be better off. -Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden on The Daily Show.

2+ years later, any less true? √

*

Obama (February) to Milwaukee paper- Let’s see if this [school voucher] experiment works, and then if it does, whatever my preconception, you do what’s best for kids.
Obama (July) to teachers union (campaign release)- Senator Obama has always been a critic of vouchers.

Obama (January 2007)...we can send 15,000 more troops; 20,000 more troops; 30,000 more troops...I don’t know any, uh, expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to, uh, privately that believes that [the surge] is gonna make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.
Obama (July 2008)- What I said was...if you put 30,000 troops in, of course it’s going to have an impact. There’s no doubt about that.

2+ years later, any less two-faced? Still claims that he believes marriage is between a man and a woman but has decided to shirk his constitutional duty to defend the Defense of Marriage Act that was passed with massive majorities in Congress and signed into law by the last Democrat president. √

*

Over the next few months of this campaign, you're going to hear a lot of talk about change. Democrats say they're the party of change. There was a time when they believed that low taxes were the path to growth and opportunity - but they've changed. There was a time when they believed in common-sense American values - but they have changed. There was a time when they believed that America should pay any price and bear any burden in the defense of liberty - but they have changed. These days, if you want to know how a Democrat in Congress is going to vote tomorrow, just visit the website of MoveOn.org today. -President George W. Bush speaking at the National Republican Senatorial Committee's annual dinner in 2008

2+ years later, any less true? √

*

David Limbaugh:

--The MSM preach that money in politics necessarily corrupts, so why do they ignore Obama's broken promise to accept public financing, his record-breaking campaign receipts, and the large number of untraceable contributions?

--Why do they dwell on VP candidate Sarah Palin's lack of foreign policy experience but ignore presidential candidate Obama's thinner experience?

--As champions of the "little guy" and privacy rights, why are they not outraged that the Obama campaign targeted, slandered and investigated Joe the Plumber by illegally using government computers merely for asking Obama one of the many questions they should have asked him?

--Why did they let Obama get away with falsely denying his culpability in opposing an Illinois bill that would have provided medical care to infants born despite failed abortion attempts?

--Why are they completely incurious about the many gaps in Obama's past, including his years at Columbia and Harvard?

--How dare they accept Obama's insulting claim that he was unaware of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's anti-American, racist and blasphemous diatribes after attending his church for two decades and calling him his spiritual mentor?

--Other than being sympathetic to Marxism themselves, why don't they ask Obama about his mentor Frank Marshall Davis and his admitted Marxist influence on him or that of his "openly Marxist" mother? Why was he "drawn to" Marxists? Why did he seek them out? Why don't the MSM explore the logical connection between that background, his alliances with Marxist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn, and his advocacy of "spreading the wealth" today?

--Why don't they examine his self-description as a post-racial unifier against his autobiographical accounts of personal racial bitterness and his alliances with the Rev. Wright and Louis Farrakhan?

--Why do they conceal his complicity in Fannie and Freddie and his alliance with disgraced Fannie exec Franklin Raines?

--Why don't they demand the release of the videotape of his appearance at a 2003 dinner with Palestinian supporter Rashid Khalidi?

--Why don't they wonder how he dares to mock the Holy Bible while he claims to be a devout Christian?

--Why do they give him a pass on his many duplicitous shifts of positions on the threshold income level for tax cuts from $300,000 to $250,000 to $200,000 to $150,000? How can they let him masquerade as a tax cutter and fiscal conservative when he has been the most liberal and tax-raising senator and his new spending easily would exceed $1 trillion? Does he support government control of our 401(k)s?

--Why did they affect hyperventilation over Sarah Palin's supposed wardrobe extravagance, which was merely a matter of projecting her best image, yet wholly ignore Obama's obscenely idolatrous million-dollar Greek coliseum mirage?

2+ years later, how many of these has the press addressed? Zero? √

*

John Hawkins:

Thirty Reasons to Vote for John McCain

15) For good or ill, John McCain is a moderate, but Barack Obama was the most liberal senator in America in 2007. Do you trust someone that liberal to run the country?

16) When there's an international crisis at 3 A.M. and the phone rings, you can't vote "present."

18) Do you really want to spend the next four years listening to Barack Obama's supporters cry "racism" every time somebody criticizes or disagrees with him?

22) John McCain favors judges who will stick to the Constitution. Barack Obama says he wants judges with "empathy." Would you want an umpire of a baseball game who sticks to the rules or one who has "empathy?"

24) We have the 2nd highest corporate tax rate in the world and it is driving our companies overseas. John McCain wants to cut the tax to keep businesses in the U.S. and create jobs. Barack Obama does not.

2+ years later, any arguments that these are still valid points? √

*

As for Congress, knowing what the Dems did from 2006 to 2010, should we put them back in charge?

-In July 2008, Congress had an approval rating of 9% (first ever in single digits), its approval has not been above 15% in 2008, a majority (52%) say it is doing a POOR job (record high), Democrats approval of Congress is 13%, R's is 8%, and I's have a 3 (three!) % approval rating of Congress with 63% (!!) saying POOR

2+ years later, I'd say the voters spoke last November about how much they thought of their decision to give Obama huge majorities in both houses. √

*

-In June 2008 the Democrats tried to pass an 'energy bill' that essentially just hiked taxes on oil companies, which history has shown increases gas prices, then blamed Senate Republicans for stopping something that would 'help people'

2+ years later, do they have any better ideas? Nope, still saying that raising taxes on gas producers will cut costs - more of that 'new math' stuff. √

*

-After 2 years in power, their primary suggestion to counter the slowed economy is to raise taxes

Still true after 4 years. √

*

-Passed an economic 'relief' package that excludes many military personnel and others with legal, non-US-born spouses

2+ years later can also point to passing a trillion dollar stimulus failure, multi-trillion dollar Obamacare that America didn't want when even Congress didn't know what was in it - refer again to the top of the page if you want to see how well they managed the economy. √

*

-Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi travelled to one of the most terrorist-supporting countries in the World, Syria, in her imagined official capacity, and made false claims about Israel and negotiations with terrorists to the dictator running Syria

2+ years later we're watching the same dictator slaughter his own citizens as Obama's Secretary of State assures us that he's a "reformer" and after we bombed Libya because Obama told us that we couldn't sit back and watch a dictator murder his own citizens. √

*

-Chuck Schumer (NY) has openly called for the approval of judges to be based on ideology, not qualifications, and is calling on Senators to violate the Constitution and refuse to abide by their charge to perform "advice and consent" on Supreme Court nominees, presumably only if their ideology differs from his own bigotry, and refuse to grant the President his Constitutional authority to nominate Supreme Court justices, additionally, Chuck Schumer thinks that Senatorial arms should have been "twisted" to prevent the qualified Samuel Alito from being confirmed due to his ideology, lying in the process that he and other Senators were 'deceived' about Alito's opinions while at the same time noting that the opinions they reviewed all pointed to the same judicial philosophy now evident in Associate Justice Alito

2+ years later we have two utterly ideological choices sitting on the Court for decades to come thanks to the election of Obama, ideologues that have featured an outright lied to Congress about her views on the 2nd Amendment during confirmation hearings, one of the most unqualified selections ever put forth, one that argued before that same court that the government could ban books to stifle political speech, and one that had been mocked and derided by the very court she would sit on as stunningly incompetent. √

*

-The House conducted literally hundreds of hearings into the activities of the President in their first year, but had yet to finish a single spending bill as of nearly the end of 2007

2+ years later they can point to their bang-up job on the 2010-2011 budget...oh wait, they never did a budget so as not to harm their already slim election chances. √

*

So, in long-winded fashion, we see that the same arguments against these people apply just as well today as they did in 2008 and 2010. The issue is whether the American people will fall for it again.

Oil Company Profits...Again

Sisyphus himself never had to try to inform the media and the left and their unknowing consumers about 'windfall profits' of oil companies:

Speaking for the anti-capitalist, anti-corporate wing of his party (it's a big wing), Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., called Exxon's profits "obscene" and claimed that "Big Oil" is "robbing" the middle class.

Two days earlier, ABC's Jonathan Karl displayed the bias widely found in his profession when he, too, asked if there is something "obscene" about high oil and gas profits "when Americans are struggling just to fill up the tank."...

Exxon earned $10.65 billion on $114 billion in revenue. Shell's $8.78 billion profit came on $114.84 billion in revenue. Chevron's expected top line of $66.62 billion will likely yield a bottom line of $5.69 billion. These are not outsize margins — roughly 9% after taxes in the case of Exxon, less than 5% for Shell and 8.5% for Chevron.

In comparison, Apple made $6 billion on revenue of $24.7 billion, a profit margin of almost 25% in the first quarter. Google's profit margin for the same period was nearly 27%. Too high-tech for you? McDonald's makes 20 cents on the dollar. Where is the outrage over their profits? Aren't they committing robbery too?

Media Bias Busting

Thanks to Doug Powers at MichelleMalkin.com, tipped to this USA Today piece that slides in, almost certainly by accident, more evidence to destroy the kind of cra* seen here: link. Note that I'm not giving some kind of amazing journalistic coup credits to USA Today for this or anything, just noting that when they actually let slip some truths, they run very counter to the prevailing media wisdom:

At the last of four events on Rep. Paul Ryan's "listening tour" of his district Thursday, he called on a man in the front row of a high school auditorium, then instantly recognized him.

"You changed clothes!" Ryan told Steve Jozefczyk. The 54-year old salesman from Franklin, Wis., had asked Ryan several critical questions from the front row of an event six hours earlier in Waterford, when he wore a shirt and tie. In Greenfield, it was a black "Faux News" parody T-shirt.

Josefczyk admitted trying to trick Ryan into calling on him again. But Ryan listened anyway...

In the district that has elected the 41-year-old congressman seven times, constituents — especially older ones — were largely supportive. The first comment at the first of four stops Thursday — a mostly friendly room in the basement of Waterford Village Hall...

Ryan said he did vote for the wars and for Medicare Part D — the prescription drug program passed by a Republican congress in 2003. In fact, he said, it should be a model for what he wants to do to Medicare as a whole.

With Part D, Medicare subsidizes a number of competing prescription drug plans, which older Americans can choose from. The Congressional Budget Office has said the cost of that plan is 41% lower than expected...

Ryan had 19 public events scheduled for Congress's Easter break — many in capacity-filled rooms throughout his district. They started last week in libraries and senior centers, but by Thursday several had to be moved into high school gymnasiums to accommodate larger crowds...

Seniors wary? Republicans cancelling events? Not holding events to face the public? Moving events at the last minute to avoid facing crowds? Angry, overwhelmingly combative crods? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Why Care About A Biased Media? Please Read!

You can never jump on enough examples like this in this day and age. Here's what we got going on -

* The country has finally reached the point where the debt bomb cannot be ignored. Adding trillions and trillions in debt in just a couple of years, with a president not just threatening, but promising to add TRILLIONS MORE in the future have guaranteed that any hope of sustainable deficits and debt are pretty much out the window now.

* America has finally woken up to these facts and polling is heavily in favor of addressing our debt.

* The GOP has introduced several plans to merely begin to deal with the problem in a adult fashion, something they should have done a decade ago.

* There is simply no disputing that entitlements will bankrupt America in the coming century, the only thing people are arguing about is how long it will take and hoping the answer is 'after they're out of office and preferably dead'.

* The media continues to peddle to laughable line being spouted by people like Harry Reid that entitlements are "fine", confusing a significant portion of the electorate.

* The president's poll numbers on the economy and the debt are terrible. With unemployment stuck around 9%, a housing market that keeps getting worse when we think it's bottomed out, skyrocketing gold, a weak dollar, and gas over $4/gal (and, oh by the way, inflation on the way that's already hitting food and gas), well, his reelection chances, even against a mediocre GOP challenger, are not good.

* The media and its allies cannot stand for this.

* The media and its allies are not without influence.

* The media and its allies are heavily allied and will stoop to anything to turn back this tide.

Now look at this lead story on a popular web portal - representative of what you're seeing and will continue to see elsewhere:

Now recently what you saw were desperate, desperate attempts by the media and their leftist allies to smear, degrade, denigrate, lie about, and otherwise tear down the Obamacare protests, the TEA party ralliers - dismiss them as violent, racist, ignorant...you name it. It didn't work. It failed miserably (see: 2010 Mid-Term Elections).

They were just getting started.

The campaign now is to play up the anti-GOP protesters - lie about the GOP plan, lie about the protesters, laud the rampaging leftists as they did with the illegally striking teachers in Wisconsin, and, when possible, utterly refuse to even let the GOP position be heard. The reason is, of course, obvious - because if the GOP is allowed to give the facts, the facts about how our debt is becoming unsustainable and how entitlements are to blame, people might use this knowledge to become informed and not scream incoherently about things the media is misleading them about. In other words, they might not buy the media's and their leftist allies' lies and vote for Obama again.

They cannot allow that to happen. They are closer than ever before to fatally crippling America and reducing it to, at best, a European welfare state and a communist dictatorship at worst (of course they do not recognize these are options, they believe they can bankrupt America, destroy the nation's wealth, cripple the leaders and the doers that made America what it is, and still live like they do now - just more "equally"). They know that the implementation of austerity measures, if implemented now, may be close enough past 'the nick of time' to slow the slide to ruin. They don't want that topple off the precipice to be too late for them to enjoy.

So prepare yourself for a LOT of coverage like you see above.

It is hyperbolic.

It is based on misinformation at best and disinformation at worst.

It relies on the electorate remaining ignorant of the facts, generally, and specifically in tune with the disinformation campaign meant to discredit it.

And, of course, it is mostly complete bulls**t.

Shall we start with "seniors wary"? Let's.

Let's be clear here - the media and their leftist allies have already drawn their line in the sand and it is Medicare. One of the 'big 3' entitlements that will bankrupt America in the lifetime of your children (if medical care rationing doesn't do it first), Medicare is the first one to be addressed out loud by the GOP, specifically in their affirmative vote in the House on Paul Ryan's plan. Bear in mind, that plan DOES NOT AFFECT ANYONE 55 AND OLDER. Not a whit. Their Medicare tomorrow will be the same as their Medicare yesterday. So, to anyone holding up a dumbass sign like "keep your hands off my Medicare", well, the GOP has already promised and voted to do just that. Let's be clear here, because this is important. The GOP has just voted on a plan that would NOT TOUCH MEDICARE for those on it or near being on it. And it would take measures meant to ensure that it will be there, in an improved form, for those under 55. The Democrats, on the other hand, and I'm going to repeat it because this is very important - are the ones that are PROMISING TO CHANGE MEDICARE FOR THOSE ON IT, THOSE ALMOST ON IT, AND EVERYONE ELSE FOREVER. The Democrats are the ones that want to put government rationing boards in charge of what care you can receive. Their leader, the president, not Paul Ryan, is the one that said maybe we should give gramma a pain pill instead of surgery to relieve her suffering. They are being guided by those that worship Britain's system where you cannot get treatment to keep from going blind until you are already blind in one eye (of course the leftist press loves this, too). Are we clear on that? DO NOT FORGET THAT.

GOP = PROMISE NOT TO CHANGE MEDICARE FOR THOSE ON IT.
DEMOCRATS = PROMISING TO CHANGE MEDICARE FOR EVERYONE.

But that's misinformation - there is also disinformation - deliberate lies like "seniors wary". What is the truth? The truth that media and it's leftist allies obscure being "seniors wary"? Gallup has the leading poll:

People were asked, and remember, at this point they don't even have many facts in hand, which plan they preferred - Ryan's detailed plan, or Obama's speech talking about fixing the debt by spending more. They're completely evenly split on which they prefer. Look a little closer...Which plan do seniors prefer? By a very comfortable margin they prefer the GOP plan. 48-42 for those over 65 and 47-41 for those over 50. Young people, notoriously uniformed, vastly prefer Obama's plan of taxing other people (they're not 'rich') to give them things later, 30-53. So, which group is "wary" of the GOP plan? Would it be the seniors that prefer it to Obama's 'give gramma a pill' plan? This is deliberately dishonest, meant to misinform, mislead, misdirect.

Then you read the story. It's from Time. The dishonesty continues.

Within minutes of beginning his presentation at an Orlando town hall Tuesday, freshman Rep. Dan Webster was cut off by angry constituents. Irked by Webster's vote for Rep. Paul Ryan's budget, they heckled and booed the congressman, touching off a chaotic confrontation with Webster's supporters, who began chanting to "let him talk." At one point, a uniformed police officer stepped to the front of the auditorium to implore the crowd, "We're grown people. Let's conduct ourselves likewise."

Webster wasn't the only one feeling the heat in the wake of the vote for the Ryan budget, which lowers tax rates for corporations and wealthy individuals while replacing Medicare with private-insurance subsidies that will be outpaced by rising health-care costs.

Egads, how to begin?

Webster was "feeling the heat" in a "chaotic confrontation". Yet, unlike the Obamacare townhalls, equally fervent, there were also "supporters" - enough to confront the hecklers that wouldn't even let the Rep. talk with a "chant". Notice how they try to marginalize the supporters compared to their focus on those that didn't even want to listen to their Rep. speak.

Next, when did I stumble into a dishonest opinion column? It mentions lower tax rates for "corporations and wealthy individuals", but where is the mention of the tax shelters and credits that will be stripped from those entities? Where are the tax cuts for the non-wealthy? Missing. Dishonestly excised for dishonest, even nefarious effect.

And then that bit about the subsidies. I guess the author is an expert in medical costs. In order for their statement to be true, they take the effect of the current health insurance climate and apply it after the health insurance climate has been radically changed. It's dishonest. It's stupid, to be blunt. It's like saying that because a hitter cannot hit a curve ball, they won't be able to hit a fastball with a different bat. It's idiotic and has only one intent - to confuse and misinform the electorate. It's not honest.

Last week in Illinois, Congressman Robert Dold's presentation on the deficit was interrupted by voters incensed by corporate tax loopholes.

But the GOP plan would eliminate those loopholes. Including this smacks of desperately trying to find something that can be spun as negative, even if the response to those that are angry would be to explain that the GOP plan is the one that would give them what they want.

Ryan's budget is dead in the water, and most voters are still fuzzy on its specifics.

But it's too late. The writer has already dedicated 2 full paragraphs to lying about the matter, guaranteeing that the next version will be linked to the lies told about this iteration and not the truth. Now we turn to the part of the story where the reporting is supposed to happen. Who does the writer turn to for some reaction?

"It's a perfect summation of the Republican priorities: tax breaks for millionaires and screw seniors, basically," says Justin Ruben, executive director of the liberal group Moveon.org.

That's right. The discredited, far far leftwing, discredited MorOn.org nutjobs. In fact, the writer turns to not a single other soul for reaction or background other than this MorOn. Not one. Their entire piece is some anecdotes, lies, and an interview with someone at MorOn.org. And this is Time and is entirely typical of what you will see. Nowhere will you see the lies pushed by this MorOn addressed. Nowhere will the author point out that the GOP is intended to be revenue neutral and counters "tax breaks for millionaires" with tax increases on millionaires. Nowhere will the author remind Americans that the plan DOES NOT AFFECT SENIORS' MEDICARE, UNLIKE OBAMA WHO PROMISES TO CHANGE THEIR MEDICARE. Nowhere.

Can I make a brief aside here? Can we please push back against the damned foolish 'shift costs to seniors' statements? Stop letting fools make this pathetic claim. People today are getting more out of entitlements than they put into them. You know what asking them to pay more of their costs is? It's asking them to pay the almighty, untouchable "fair share" that the left is so very, very concerned about when you're talking about the rich paying for services they don't use while the people that do use them contribute next to nothing for them.

It continues:

Conservatives downplayed the Florida fracas, suggesting that the noisy naysayers were Democratic plants. "It was a planned disruption," says a GOP congressional aide. Fox News blared headlines asking whether liberals had "staged assaults" on Republican town halls.

FoxNews "blared" the headlines? Did the writer pursue such a thing? The writer did not. This is unfortunate since they are already interviewing someone at MorOn.org. That is why we know that the media is heavily allied with the leftwing activists, because this is clear, blatant, and unconcealed efforts by groups including Moron.org to do just what they are accused of doing and what the writer dismisses, because they know it is true (presumably) and do not want America to know that conservatives, GOP workers, and FoxNews are 100% correct. MorOn.org's Wednesday email proudly and openly proclaimed the following - trumpeting their plan and their ties to the media:

MoveOn members are already going to town halls this week, and it's working, as the front page New York Times article shows...

We're going to track down every single Republican town hall, get lots of progressives there and make sure they're being asked tough questions. We're going to film them and push the videos out to the media...

Just this week, Rep. Paul Ryan...dedicated MoveOn members in Wisconsin were all over it...

We're going to need to replicate that kind of focus in districts across the country in May, to keep getting headlines like we did today, but we can't do that without your support.

On Monday I was on MSNBC talking proudly about how tens of thousands of MoveOn members—not big corporations—fund our grassroots campaigns...

Volunteers in every district are going to need signs, phone banks, and other materials, plus videographers and folks to edit the videos overnight and get them out to media. Can you chip in $5 right now?

That's right, MorOn.org is bragging about their manipulation of the headlines/coordination with a willing press, admitting to doing exactly what FoxNews was questioning in "blaring headlines", and proudly asking members to pony up so that they could pay "volunteers" in their "grassroots" organization to hold up mass-produced signs and get on the front page of the press, who they will flood with carefully orchestrated photos and video...just like the one you see above. Hell, they're even proudly admitting that the crowd that jeered Ryan was actually stuffed with MorOns shouting him down, stuffed to the gills with lies about his budget proposal and seemingly gloating in their ignorance.

Ruben says MoveOn members in Webster's district circulated notices about the planned town-hall meeting to alert local supporters. "We have to make sure people understand that the Ryan budget would end Medicare in order to give new tax breaks to millionaires. When people hear it, my experience is they get very angry," he says.

Well, no sh**, Sherlock! That's why you tell that particular lie, because if people believe it they'll do what you want, no matter that it is a complete fabrication.

A group called Americans United for Change launched TV and radio ads around the U.S. urging constituents to call their Republican representative to ask, "What were you thinking?"

Thankfully, the only one that seems to be playing locally is the radio ad praising Chris Gibson for his vote.

The DCCC has made small investments in more than 40 districts with ads or robocalls referencing Medicare, including those held by Webster, West, Barletta and Bass. "They have put back into play two critical groups of the electorate: seniors and independents," DCCC chairman Steve Israel said.

Because people love robocalls. Better yet, robocalls lying about Medicare. And we've already seen how seniors are reacting and how "into play" they are for Democrats and their 'give gramma a pill, instead' plan to save Medicare.

This. This is why media bias is important. Lies. Deceit. Deception. Obfuscation. Dissemination of propaganda from allies (used as a fig leaf so they don't have to say it outright themselves). Concealment of counter-arguments. Implications that there is no counter-argument (allowing your perilously partisan subject to give the GOP position as 'hoping it goes away' when in fact the GOP Reps. are out there giving town halls, trying to inform people).

This is why I do this. This is why you should care.

Who Made 'Birthers' A Big Deal? Fox? Rush? Hannity?

Nope. Surely the answer won't surprise you that CNN and MSNBC ran 20ish times more stories about Obama's citizenship than FoxNews.

Study: MSNBC and CNN Covered 'Birther' Issue Far More Than Fox News

MSNBC
including “The Ed Show,” “Hardball,” “The Last Word,” and “The Rachel Maddow Show”

- 28% of airtime studied was devoted to the 2012 election
- 10% of airtime studied was devoted to Obama
- A subset of that Obama airtime was coded “citizenship and religion rumors” to include “birther” coverage, which was 92% of the Obama coverage

Fox
including “Special Report w/Bret Baier,” “Fox Report w/Shepard Smith,” “The O’Reilly Factor,” “Hannity”

- 16% of airtime studied was devoted to 2012 election
- 5% of airtime studied was devoted to Obama
- A subset of that Obama airtime was coded “citizenship and religion rumors” to include “birther” coverage, which was 8% of the Obama coverage

CNN
including “The Situation Room,” “John King, USA,” “In The Arena,” and “Anderson Cooper 360″

- 11% of airtime studied was devoted to 2012 election
- 5% of airtime studied was devoted to Obama
- A subset of that Obama airtime was coded “citizenship and religion rumors” to include “birther” coverage, which was 100% of the Obama coverage.

"Father Michael Pfleger is a dear friend"

"Father Michael Pfleger is a dear friend, and somebody I interact with closely."

Maybe Pfleger helped Obama write his Easter message to America...oh wait, that's right - while he found time to write one for Earth Day and every Muslim holiday he didn't get around to it.

Credit To Trump

Well, for a brief moment anyway, Donald Trump deserves the thanks of mainstream Republicans and, well, most of America, for driving a sharp, pointy stick through the whole 'is Obama a citizen' dealie.

By being the one that dared to talk openly, long, and often about a conspiracy theory that could be easily dispelled, but was instead kept alive for years by Obama in order to reap the benefits, he has forced the Won to finally stop the stonewalling, end the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on fighting the release, and actually get a copy of his full, real birth certificate released. As soon as this washes through the media, well in advance of the next election to Obama's dismay, the ridiculous poll numbers showing that people were keeping this deal alive will recede like the tide (presumably), leaving the press one less hammer to use on every GOP candidate and office holder in every interview - because Trump brought it to an end, a year and a half before the election.

Pretty big arrow yanked out of the media and Obey-Won's quiver. While they pretend to gloat, you can be reasonably sure that the leftwing media is swearing, busting keyboards, and perhaps even weeping a bit that they can no longer bring this up to attack the right without themselves openly being the conspiracy theorists. Oh, and every eventual candidate that said all along that it wasn't an issue? They can now throw it back in the face of interviewers that kept bringing it up.

He may not have looked good doing it and even worse in 'victory', but in the end Trump got the job done and just made the GOP and its supporters look a whole lot better.

FoxNews' site has a bit of a writeup showing just what a mess Trump made out of the White House's birth certificate game, again demonstrating who won this one:

In a snappish press conference on Tuesday, Press Secretary Jay Carney gave a belittling answer to CNN’s Ed Henry for asking why the president doesn’t put the doubts over his nativity to rest by releasing his long-form birth certificate.

Carney told Henry that Americans would be “appalled” by the question and that he should be talking about serious issues involving the economy and foreign affairs.

But Obama was scheduled to spend most of his day today doing things that have nothing to do with the economy or Libya or gas prices. He and his wife will record an interview with his early political patron, Oprah Winfrey, as part of her launch of a new cable network. Then, Obama will head to New York for another fundraiser with big donors.

Carney painted Obama into a corner by suggesting that he can’t deal with the distraction of answering the question about his birth certificate because he is working constantly to revive the economy and oversee three wars. How can he help Winfrey, raise money or even play golf by that standard?

Don't Say You Weren't Warned

For a year and a half the left, the center, the media, the DNC...they all dismissed the warnings and red flags raised about Campaigner Obama (S-IL) leading up to November 2008 from the right. They went ahead and swallowed the myth whole. Sure, the regrets are there now, but as they whine about $60 to fill their gas tank, it's too late.

This is June 2008:

CNBC’s John Harwood: So could the (high) oil prices help us?

Barack Obama: I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money in their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more rapidly...

The obvious inference is that Obama doesn’t object to $4 a gallon gas per se, just how rapidly the price increased. Most Americans hate it and want gas prices to go down as rapidly as possible. Obama wants to “help people to make the adjustment” to “new circumstances."

The right went on and on about this moronic statement from the Teleprompted Won, how it was just another sign of a misguided socialist (misguided, because high gas prices of course negatively affect the poor disproportionately). They were ignored. And here we sit:

Just A Thought

...and almost certainly (with a level of confidence approaching unity) not an original one. Still, the show must go on.

How did we 'win' the Cold War? We developed the heck out of our technology, especially military technology, and crippled an enemy that couldn't keep up and had no alternatives.

So is it crazy to think that we could, I guess 'pacify' is as good a word as any, the Middle East similarly? Not by making better weapons (although we're doing that, too), we're already light years ahead of the cave- and hut-dwellers we're fighting in that respect.

No, I'm talking about their biggest weapon...oil.

Look, we've got oil. A LOT of oil.

I understand the arguments both sides make. If we don't use the oil we're forced to develop cleaner sources of energy quicker. If we don't use the oil, we'll have oil when these other places run out. We need to get off of foreign oil controlled by terrorists and tyrants. We need to get off of oil altogether. Et cetera.

But what if choose the combo platter #3? A bit of #1 and the #2? No, I'm not arguing for us to conquer and colonize the dictatorship-controlled oil-producing states, though we could (assuming we weren't interested in doing it as mess-free as possible as we did with Iraq and had plans for it afterwards (as with Iraq) - that is, I'm not talking about flattening them and simply moving in the drill rigs. No, what I'm talking about isn't that or an arms race, but an oil race. What if called in the oil companies, pointed at our proven reserves, and said 'have at it'? Basically just let them go after the stuff that we know is there, is readily recoverable, is in a safe place that we control, and is governed by our environmental regs that are so much better for the environment than the places that we're buying oil from now.

First rule, we get first pick. If we use everything they find, fine. If they find more than we need they can sell it to our allies.

Second rule, this is going to take time, at least a decade or two. So work fast, but work smart. Accidents will cost you dearly - this is basically easy money, all you need to do is go pick it up (I know, it's never that easy, but compare do what the Deep Horizon was doing, for example...), so don't screw up, take the extra month to get online safely or you get nothing.

Third rule, there is going to be a cut off point where your lease expires, but exceptions will be made at the back end if you take extra time to get going safely on the front end - so you're not punished by producing for a month less if you need to delay getting going a month to get some safer parts installed or replaced or staff trained or whatever. Once we've accomplished our goal, the reserves go back to being reserves, since we need to spend the interim developing those other sources (if they exist) or developing ties with friendlier replacement nations that need to grow in the void left by bankrupt dictatorships.

In short, use our natural resources, something the US has done since its inception to gain worldwide dominance (face it, it's true), to flood the market.

1) American jobs swelled enormously.

2) Oil prices in America drop precipitously (remember, although oil is 'fungible', we're not playing that game, we're just taking it close to home and using it ourselves, the oil, unless in excess, is not going on the world market and if it does, it will be cheap - we'll be sure of that), tremendously helping the economy.

3) Watch the $$$'s stop flowing to our enemies and dictators. No, it's not 'nice' and people will suffer since there are whole countries that basically live off of government handouts bought with oil revenues. There will be revolutions. There will be chaos. Need I remind you that this is war? We'll have to spend some money on containing the chaos, aiding refugees, and rebuilding anyone that decides to replace their islamic or communist dictatorships with free states. How to fund it? See 1 and 2 above.

No, it's not pretty. No, it's not polite. But if we want to win this war, why not do it the same way we toppled the USSR without pitched battles? Use our own ingenuity and resources to cripple what they rely on, leaving them broken.

Is it a war, or are we just playing games? If the latter, then disregard the above. If the former, what are we treating it like the latter?

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High Gas Prices "A Blessing In Disguise" To Media...Under Obama

Your Random Saturday

Ann Coulter skips (some of) the snark and takes out the big stick o'reality:

When the Republicans proposed that, instead of cutting a few billion, the government chop $60 billion from the budget, Democrats went ballistic. They said it was madness. Republicans were proposing to bring back the miserly federal budget of 2008!...

All the Republicans had to do was threaten to cut federal funding for abortion, and they won $40 billion in spending cuts overnight...

Kyl said: "You don't have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood. That's well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does."

The entire mainstream media immediately rose in angry denunciation of Kyl -- based on Planned Parenthood's claim that abortion constitutes less than 3 percent of the services it provides.

Apparently, that depends on the meaning of "services it provides." If taking 30 seconds to write a prescription for birth control pills is considered the equivalent of a two-hour, multiple-visit $450 abortion, then perhaps abortion does constitute only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's work.

But according to Planned Parenthood itself, when it comes to services for pregnant women, abortion constituted 97.6 percent of the services Planned Parenthood provided in 2009. Only 2.4 percent of the organization's services for pregnant women involved prenatal care or adoption referrals...

Transocean Safety Faulted, But Obama Admin Gave Them Safety Awards, Praised Safety Culture

Maybe someone else can untangle this massive web of CYA between BP, Transocean, and the Obamas. See, I just saw this:

Report: Transocean's 'poor safety culture' helped lead to spill

The headline leads you to a story with this headline: Report: Transocean contributed to Gulf disaster

Flaws in Transocean Ltd.'s emergency training and equipment and a poor safety culture contributed to the deadly Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion that led to the Gulf oil spill, according to a Coast Guard report released Friday.

The report centered on Transocean's role in the disaster because it owned the rig and was primarily responsible for ensuring its safety, the Coast Guard said. BP PLC owned the well that blew out.

The Coast Guard report also concluded that decisions made by workers aboard the rig "may have affected the explosions or their impact"...

Electrical equipment that may have ignited the explosion was poorly maintained, while gas alarms and automatic shutdown systems were bypassed so that they did not alert the crew...

"These deficiencies indicate that Transocean's failure to have an effective safety management system and instill a culture that emphasizes and ensures safety contributed to this disaster," the report said...

Previously, a presidential commission pointed to a cascade of technical and managerial failures, including a faulty cement job and a poor safety culture in the industry...

The Coast Guard's report said electrical equipment on board may not have been able to prevent flammable gases from igniting. The report said some of the electrical equipment was in bad condition and severely corroded.

...and the bridge crew had not been trained on when they should activate the systems...

The report also faulted the culture on board for problems fighting the fire, noting that drills were held at the same time on the same day each week, and that drill personnel were sometimes allowed to skip the exercises...

"Transocean failed to ensure that its onboard management team and crew had sufficient training and knowledge to take full responsibility for the safety of the vessel," the report said.

Now this immediately set my spidey senses a-tingling, because I recalled some rightweb (certainly not MSM) reporting that went like this: No wonder finger-pointing Obama wants oil spill finger-pointing to stop

The man on the left in the top picture is one of President Obama’s Department of Interior officials. He’s handing a national safety award to a Transocean official. The men in the second picture, posing with their district U.S. Department of the Interior’s Mineral Management Service (MMS) safety award, work for the Deepwater Horizon rig.

And here’s an image of the Safety Award letter from the Obama administration: (see link - text partially reads: "The rigs inspected were rated excellent in maintenance and general housekeeping...Transocean, Inc., through its commitment to safety and environmental compliance, has operated and maintained its rigs in a professional manner...")

Note: “The SAFE Program, established in 1983, recognizes companies that expend extra effort to enhance safety, conduct their operations in a manner that adheres to all regulatory requirements, and employ trained and motivated personnel.”...

At first, officials said 83 inspections had been performed since the rig arrived in the Gulf 104 months ago, in September 2001. While being questioned about the once-per-month claim, the officials subsequently revised the total up to 88 inspections. The number of more recent inspections also changed — from 26 to 48 in the 64 months since January 2005...

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by AP, the agency has released copies of only three inspection reports — those conducted in January, February and April. According to the documents, inspectors spent two hours or less each time they visited the massive rig. Some information appeared to be “whited out,” without explanation.

See, the AP did do some digging into this initially, but they just swept it under the rug when push came to shove. We'll see if they connect any internal dots at this point.

These two AP reports, placed side by side, should trigger an absolute firestorm of media scrutiny on Obama and his people now shouldn't it? We'll see...but we can probably guess.

Fleeced

Fleece: to strip of money or property by fraud (an act of deceiving or misrepresenting)

WSJ:

A dominant theme of President Obama's budget speech last Wednesday was that our fiscal problems would vanish if only the wealthiest Americans were asked "to pay a little more."...

Consider the Internal Revenue Service's income tax statistics for 2008, the latest year for which data are available. The top 1% of taxpayers—those with salaries, dividends and capital gains roughly above about $380,000—paid 38% of taxes. But assume that tax policy confiscated all the taxable income of all the "millionaires and billionaires" Mr. Obama singled out. That yields merely about $938 billion...

Say we take it up to the top 10%, or everyone with income over $114,000, including joint filers. That's five times Mr. Obama's 2% promise. The IRS data are broken down at $100,000, yet taxing all income above that level throws up only $3.4 trillion. And remember, the top 10% already pay 69% of all total income taxes, while the top 5% pay more than all of the other 95%.(*)

We recognize that 2008 was a bad year for the economy and thus for tax receipts, as payments by the rich fell along with their income. So let's perform the same exercise in 2005, a boom year and among the best ever for federal revenue. (Ahem, 2005 comes after the Bush tax cuts that Mr. Obama holds responsible for all the world's problems.)

In 2005 the top 5% earned over $145,000. If you took all the income of people over $200,000, it would yield about $1.89 trillion, enough revenue to cover the 2012 bill for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—but not the same bill in 2016...

So who else is there to tax? Well, in 2008, there was about $5.65 trillion in total taxable income from all individual taxpayers, and most of that came from middle income earners. The nearby chart shows the distribution, and the big hump in the center is where Democrats are inevitably headed for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks...

This is politically risky, however, so Mr. Obama's game has always been to pretend not to increase taxes for middle class voters while looking for sneaky ways to do it...

Now that those two ideas have failed politically, Mr. Obama is turning as he did last week to limiting tax deductions and other "loopholes," such as for mortgage interest payments. We support doing away with these distortions too, and so does Mr. Ryan, but in return for lower tax rates. Mr. Obama just wants the extra money, which he says will reduce the deficit but in practice will merely enable more spending.

The shocking truth:---
(*) The wording here is correct but sort of like a brain teaser setting those two items so close to each other. The recent 'rule of thumb' percentages that should help clarify:

top 1% - pay ~40% of income taxes (earn about 20% of the income)
top 5% - pay ~60% (therefore more than everyone else combined)
top 10% - pay ~70%
bottom ~50% - pay nothing

Look Out For "The Lookout"

I earlier warned of a pseudo-journalistic page on Yahoo! called The Ticket. Looks like the same applies to "The Lookout".

Seemingly ages (in internet news time) after the myth that GE isn't paying taxes was exposed as a reading comprehension problem at the New York Times, this baloney calling itself an official "news blog", is STILL repeating the lie:

Three months later, despite some positive signs, employment rates have barely budged, Americans are more pessimistic about the economy than they've been in a while--and Immelt is under fire amid news that GE reportedly paid no taxes this year.

Way to keep up with current events, champ.

McWinning!

You know, nothing demonstrates how our economy is really on the right track and turning around! like "billions and billions" applying for entry-level burger flipping jobs at McDonalds, right?

Spread The Sacrifice Around

A Mythical Alliance

Why, no, I'm not talking about the upcoming royal (semi-royal?) nuptials in Great Britain. No, the alliance I'm talking about is NATO.

See, the plan was to band the western nations (the 'good guys') together against the Soviet Union. Attack one, you attack all, etc etc blah blah blah. But a funny thing happened along the way.

See, just about all of the parties to the grand alliance decided that, what with World War 2 over and all and the Cold War first, well, cold, and then, well, won, they could stop worrying about the bomb and learn to love socialism. They figured if they could call on the superfriends if any bad actors showed up, then they individually could, you know, sorta cut military spending, a little here, a lot there.

Except for the USA of course. And with us around watching their back, well, they really had very little incentive to spend money on bullets instead of butter for their increasing numbers of unemployed citizens, generous retirement benefits, healthcare for all, etc. They just kept cutting and cutting knowing that Uncle Sam was just around the block with his bat with a spike driven through it.

Finally it got to the point where they actually picked a fight with a bully (Libya) and then hollered for Uncle Sam to come kick his rear.

Funny thing happened. We didn't come when they whistled. Oh sure, we made a token gesture, but since we weren't talking about an actual attack on a member nation, but a civil uprising against a dictator, we didn't really have a dog in the fight and, actually, both dogs looked pretty mangy to us. So we just sorta said no. If you want to do this you go on ahead and take care of it.

So they hitched up their pants, looked around to see what they could find for a weapon, and went after that bully.

And found that without the USA their military 'might' couldn't even put down a 2nd rate dictator like QKQuadaffaiyi.

I guess finding out in a civil war in Libya that our allies are all but useless is better than in a real war, though. Gird your loins, Americans, and hope that the guy whose own Veep thinks will fail any serious challenge isn't in office if push comes to shove, because we're not going to be able to hide behind the skirts of the French.

Falze Shrugged

Well, apparently the 'long-awaited' movie adaptation of Atlas Shrugged is out. I don't plan on seeing it, at least not in a theater. Now doesn't even feel like the time to rehash my views on Rand.

Even those waiting breathlessly for this movie seem to be coming away with a reaction to the effect of: It was awesome! Yeah, the dialogue sucked, it wasn't that involving, some of it got tedious, the story really just isn't that riveting, it's hard for people to relate to it that haven't read the book, but it was AWESOME!

Look, I enjoyed the book. I'll enjoy it again when I whittle down the pile of unread books in the bookcase somewhat. But it's a little bit of a tough slog at times. Seriously.

And I have no interest in immersing myself in Rand's 'philosophy'. Now's been a ripe time for conservatives to point out that Rand didn't really share a lot of beliefs with conservatives or libertarians (whom she seemingly loathed). That's not what I get out of Rand. Yeah, she seems a bit prescient, but only because she had already lived what happens when a government does what our government is now doing. She just does a good job taking observations about the past and extrapolating them elsewhere, like to the US. Again, I don't have to worship the ground her 'heroes' walk on, but I can slurp up every ounce of observation that she infuses her scenes and settings with and not let that history, that slide into communism in Russian, die and be forgotten.

I won't tell people not to see it, but remember, you don't have to love her or her 'heroes' or convert to her way of thinking to get the historical message that comes through loud and clear.

Tax The Rich?

Couple of items from IBD that are worth looking at. One has this handy chart:


If anything jumps out at you from that chart, it's that the top 1% are NOT PAYING THEIR FAIR SHARE! Yeah, right.

As a way to reduce deficits, shifting tax burdens up the income scale fails to solve the problem and could well make it worse.

One reason for this is purely mathematical. The deficit is far larger than any revenues that could feasibly be squeezed out of the rich...

Over an adjusted gross income threshold of $200,000 — lower than the $250,000 that signifies "rich" to the Obama administration — total taxable income from all returns was $2.061 trillion in 2008 (the latest year available). This income generated $531 billion in taxes.

Let's say the top rate had been the Clinton era 39.6% instead of 35%, and the capital gains rate was back to 20%. That would have raised the 2008 tax yield by about $50 billion. Even assuming 2010 incomes are higher than in the recession year of 2008, these rate hikes don't add up to serious deficit relief...

Wouldn't even a little added revenues help? It would, but only if it didn't spur more spending. The trouble is that these revenues are likelier to be spent than saved...

As the tax system has grown more top-heavy, its revenues have also grown more volatile. The income-tax take spiked to an all-time high in 2000, hitting 10% of GDP for the first time ever. In 2010, it sank to 6.2%, its lowest level in more than 50 years.

If raising taxes on the rich won't get us in the black (recall that the 'massive' (read: miniscule and short-lived) surpluses (read: surplus) under Clinton were a result of spending cuts, not massive revenue gains alone), then where to look? Why killing off old people! At least according to the Dems (read: transforming Medicare into a less-intrusive Obamacare):

Sensing an opportunity to scare seniors, Democrats were quick to pounce on Ryan's reform idea, which he included as part of his 2012 budget plan.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called it "a path to poverty for America's seniors."

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., called it a "war on seniors."...

And on Wednesday, President Obama weighed in: "I will not allow Medicare to become a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry."

Hold on a second. Here's what Ryan's plan, which he put together with the help of former Clinton administration budget director Alice Rivlin, would do:

Starting 11 years from now, it would create insurance exchanges through which private plans, approved by the government, would be available to seniors. The federal government would provide a subsidy for retirees to offset the cost of coverage — and adjust it based on income — then let them shop around for the best deal.

If this sounds familiar, it's because that's basically what ObamaCare would do for the entire country — create exchanges, let people pick their government-approved plan, and subsidize the cost for those who need it.

Yet while ObamaCare is a marvel of health care reform for workers — Pelosi called it her "proudest achievement" — RyanCare would be a death sentence for retirees...

We're Better Off, How?

Well, into Obey-Won's 3rd year, let's see how big of a sigh of relief we can breathe that Sarah Palin did not become vice-president.

Well, McCain is still alive and kicking, so she would not be president. I guess assassination is out there, but the left is constantly telling us that the majority of Americans, conservatives, hate having a black president, so surely the risk to Obey-Won vastly oustrips that of war hero John McCain, and Obey-Won hasn't even faced any realistic assassination attempts that we're aware of (thankfully). So that "fear" can be scratched off the list.

We don't have to worry about her making any stupid statements, right? Of course the guy we got instead was 'overheard' (hard to call it that when he didn't try to avoid being heard) spouting a vulgarity positively about a law that was passed against the wishes of a majority of Americans. Then there was the time he couldn't remember the 'number' of the porkulus website (1-555-PORK-YOU?). Or when he demanded that a guy in a wheelchair stand up so people could see him. Oh yeah, and it wasn't Sarah Palin that went on TV and told people they shouldn't use mass transit because of the swine flu, causing a near (media) panic that required immediate damage control.

We don't have to worry about her not being on top of her 'duties'. Of course the guy we got disappeared from the country after being put in charge of negotiating a budget CR between the houses of Congress. And his staff locked a reporter in a closet to avoid letting him see who was at the event (presumably). And he was put in charge of the ludicrously out-of-control porkulus because 'no one would mess with Sheriff Joe!', except for all that money sent to nonexistent districts and millions spent on handfuls of jobs, and a spiraling unemployment rate. And the whole falling asleep during Obama's (latest) speech about how he's going to fix the deficit by spending more and punishing employers thing.

Well, at least Joe's got better hai...oh wait.

Gee, we sure dodged a bullet, didn't we?

Moore MorOns

If you can believe it, it's April 16th and I just got another email from MorOn.org and their special friend Michael Moore that still is pushing the myth, debunked at least since the 4th, that GE didn't pay taxes for last year.

Good grief.

The Reviewer Shrugged

Very interesting. The movie reviewer the Times Union uses provided a very even-handed, factual review of the first "Atlas Shrugged" release. They were able to note an uneven (at best) script (from what I've heard) and seemingly uninvolved directing while still praising a few bright spots (some of the actors). Then over at the Gazette it was basically an uninformative, disinterested panning. Oddly enough, the only thing they praised was the director, who they claimed made the most of a terrible script, plot, etc. etc.

Most interesting of all, the review in the TU noted that if you hadn't read the book you'd like be lost and not like the movie. The Gazette reviewer appears to me to have not read the book. And, predictably, they appeared lost and didn't like it.

Just my $0.02.

Leftist Calls Obama The Left's 'Spear Carrier'

Seriously? Yes, apparently seriously. This left winger actually, in praising Obama on a far left talk show, proudly referred to the half-black Obama as his spear carrier.

Remember, black America, you keep voting for the people that are on this guy's side.

Today's poster child for this strategy is notorious Florida trial attorney / libtalker Mike Papantonio. Best known for his fill-in work on MSNBC and weekly radio show with Robert F Kennedy Jr...

ED SCHULTZ: So why did progressives support him then?

PAPANTONIO: Because he is good for progressives. Don't get me wrong, Ed, he is good for progressives. He's the only guy out there carrying our spear...

JUST IMAGINE the reaction to a conservative host using "Obama" and "spear" in the same sentence! It would dominate the news cycle for days.

Try weeks. Hell, they're still recycling made-up Rush Limbaugh quotes that they made up in the 80s. This was not on FoxNews. Not on Rush Limbaugh's show. Not even on Michael Savage's show. Nope, MSNBC. You know, Obama's channel. The channel he carries the spear for.

This country is absolutely nuckin' futs.

If You Care

MorOn.org is still touting the NYT's mistake about the GE "tax refund", that has been obliterated as laughable for, I dunno, a week or two now?

Anyway, figured I'd keep people up to date on these losers since Democrats still embrace them.

Lookin' Out My Back Door

So, are the Democrats having a "civil war" and driving the "moderates" out of their party?

If the tables were turned, this is how the media spins ordinary party internal back and forth. When it's the Democrats, it's all 'see no strife, hear no strife, speak no strife'.

***

This struck me as rather out of date:
I thought his plan for historic, massive, record-breaking deficits was pretty obvious by now since he started on it in 2009 - trillion for a 'stimulus' that didn't, couple tril for health care that doesn't, cash-for-crushing-perfectly-good-used-cars, shutting down lucrative American energy businesses, taking over private businesses and handing them over to unions instead of debtors, working to keep about 9% of people that want jobs from getting one...do we really need another speech to know what his plan is for increasing deficits??


OH! My bad. This is an all NEW plan to ratchet up federal debt by further crippling tax receipts. Sorry 'bout that. I didn't realize his new and exciting deficit plan was "tax and spend". You have to hand it to him, it's certainly a new and exciting direction for a democrat - I wonder how he came up with it.

***

Obama, the mad budget slasher of DC, look out!

So, OK, not really so much.

***

The media wouldn't be trying to mislead anyone on Planned Abortions-in-the-hood would they?

Round It Up

This and that...

I think I noted last week how even some leftists were 'getting it' on Rep. Ryan's budget, that, at long last, something has to be done about the bankrupting of America. Here's George Will, who wanders back and forth from the left to the right as the winds blow him, so I guess we'd call him a moderate or centrist, pointing out the obvious (I pass it along because there are some easy-to-remember bites to use in conversation):

Now, the President's initial response was that the Democrats will say this is extreme. This extreme plan by Paul Ryan envisions over the next decade a 34 percent increase in federal spending. It envisions adding trillions of dollars to the national debt. That's how slow the glide plan is that he proposes. Furthermore, on Medicare, Medicare is doomed as we know it, not by Mr. Ryan, but by Mr. Arithmetic. It just doesn't work anymore. And therefore, when he proposes essentially what the bipartisan commission on Medicare proposed more than a decade ago, premium support, which is...essentially what every federal worker has from the man who delivers your mail to Harry Reid who delivers stuff.

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Seems like a campaign ad made-to-order, don't you think?

The day after Rep. Giffords was shot by a deranged loser in AZ, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida had this to say:

...I agree, it's our responsibility to, to make sure that we set the right example and set the tone of civility...So the rhetoric outside needs to be toned down as well. But we have to set the first example...

We, we have to think about our word choices carefully. That's true. But we also have to realize that someone who is unhinged, someone who is mentally unstable, we don't know--the, the slightest thing could, could set them off. But what--we do have to make sure that among our responsibility is to be civil to each other. I mean, I, I, I've engaged in heated debates many times with colleagues who I don't agree with on the issues. But you have to be a human being who recognizes and has respect for one another when you leave that room. We, we fight and debate in an arena. But you have to leave that intensity in the arena and respect one another as Americans and human beings.

Hmmm....

But what did she just say about that plan that would still add TRILLIONS to our national debt and massively hike spending? This is, by the way, the new DNC chair!

"...this budget would be devastating for seniors and older Americans. This Republican path to poverty passes like a tornado through America's nursing homes..."

Riiiiiight. Oh, but that's not all!

"This plan would literally be a death trap for some seniors."

Literally! Particularly seniors under 55! We literally need to respect one another as Americans and human beings and think about our word choices carefully and set the first example. ;)

***

Remember the ones getting it? This guy is one of the most surprising. Nice intellectual smackdown of the foolish and disgraced hooker-freequenting-lawyer-turned-hooker-frequenting-pol-turned-hooker-frequenting-governor-turned-castoff failure-turned-talking head Eliot Spitzer:

Showing glimpses of the conservative that used to occupy his body many years ago, the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan not only defended the Republican as deserving a lot of credit for his bold plan, but also exposed Maher and Spitzer as ignorant hypocrites when it comes to the nation's fiscal policy...

He continued, “You may disagree with his proposals, but he is the first Republican really in a very long to say, ‘Look, we’re going to have to do things that are going to hurt you. We’re going to have to tackle these big entitlement programs.’”

Sullivan really drove home the point for Maher and Spitzer saying, “And that’s much more I might add than President Obama has done. He has run away from his own debt commission.”...

Sullivan then made a comment that took both Maher and Spitzer by surprise: “You can’t raise taxes to end the debt. You’ve got to cut spending.”

He then asked the perfect question, “What would you cut, Eliot?”

Spitzer replied, “I would cut defense – I would get out of two wars. And, I would put back in the tax on the rich.”

Maher of course replied, “Right.”

But Sullivan correctly said, “Still won’t do it.”

Maher and Spitzer tried to fight this point with Sullivan, but in so doing, they showed themselves as being totally unknowledgeable about the budget.

Our total defense outlays are currently $750 billion. As CNNMoney.com reported back in December, the annual cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for folks making over $250,000 a year was roughly $41 billion.

As such, we could eliminate the Bush tax cuts for these people while slashing defense spending to zero and we’d still have over an $800 billion deficit

***

Finally, Obama's spending plans amount to something like adding $10 TRILLION to the national debt over the next decade. America has, over and over the past year plus, said they want to see spending cut. The GOP has produced a budget that merely begins to do that, it still has the federal government spending WAY more than it takes in. Nevertheless, the White House's PR team spent their time on the Sunday talk shows claiming that Obama's budget proposal would take a "scalpel" to that $10 TRILLION instead of "a machete". $10 TRILLION. T-R-I-L-L-I-O-N. And he's going to use a "scalpel" to clean it up.

Ok then.

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Ever felt like you could use a good example of what conservatives are referencing when they complain about "the nanny state"? You're in luck, here you go!

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Ready for a super easy quiz?

American Ghost Towns of the 21st Century

There are several counties in America, each with more than 10,000 homes, which have vacancy rates above 55%. The rate is above 60% in several...
ended.

These are the American Ghost Towns of the 21st century. Each has a population of more than 10,000 along with vacancy rates of more than 55%, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.

What do the states housing these failing counties have in common?

Need a clue?

Oops?

Intentionally misleading? Or just lazy/stupid/overcommitted to a false narrative?

CNN.com Paints Would-be Mosque-burner as Anti-Muslim Radical, Omits That He's Muslim

Gilgoff recently discussed Californian Roger Stockham, who drove across the country to Detroit, Michigan, planning to wreak inferno-laden havoc on an area mosque. Thankfully, he was arrested by Detroit police in front of the Dearborn, Michigan Islamic Centers of America before having a chance to do so.

In an astounding omission, Gilgoff attempted to paint Stockham as a radicalized redneck driven to violence by anti-Muslim rhetoric of some sort. But not once did he mention that Stockham is apparently a devout Muslim!...

Stockham’s beef with the Dearborn ICA was that it was a Shiite center, rather than Sunni, the strand of Islam of which Stockham himself is a devotee. Thus, as Islamist Watch pinpoints, the problem at issue here is not hostility towards Islam displaying itself in acts of violence – the “Islamophobia” CNN routinely insists is plaguing the American Muslim community. Rather, this is an instance of how Islamic balkanization has led to sectarianism run amok within the religion itself - and how such divisions can lead to violence.

I Know What We Can Cut

Hey, you know where Cuomo might want to look for some cuts? I know SUNY is all whiny about any potential cuts, but I think Cuomo can get just about everyone behind getting rid of a SUNY prof "teaching" students how to break the law!

An eccentric SUNY Purchase art professor held a "class" yesterday in SoHo where he instructed his hipster students on how to illegally squat in condos around the city.

Chris Robbins organized the seminar with the hopes that at least one or two of the 20 attendees will find an unoccupied apartment or condo and unsafely and illegally move in -- without paying rent or taxes...

Robbins took students step-by-step through the process of converting someone else's property into their own...

The former Peace Corps volunteer organized his tutorial through The Trade School, a social-networking site at OurGoods.org where people teach a skill in exchange for gifts. It has no affiliation with his college courses.

While not directly affiliated with his teaching job, and while professors, like everyone else, enjoy wide protections courtesy of the First Amendment in their private lives, I think we can agree that a teacher publicly encouraging criminal activity, and actually receiving material compensation for his law-breaking instruction, is someone we can safely eliminate from the taxpayer payroll. We're not talking about 'how to use craigslist to your advantage', 'the art and life of john cleese', or even 'a pornographic look at life on noah's ark' here, we're talking about honest-to-goodness criminal activity.

Local Bias Re: Wisconsin

So let's get this straight. On Thursday in the Gazette there was a rollicking AP nugget about the preliminary, incorrect results of the judicial election in Wisconsin (can you imagine so much hubbub over such a thing?). It reads (hilariously in retrospect):

Wisconsin voters send new message

Wisconsin voters sent Republican Gov. Scott Walker a clear message about their unhappiness with his muscling through a law restricting union rights by sending a once runaway state Supreme Court race towards a near-certain recount and filling the governor's former post with a Democrat.

Ok, stop laughing. I know it's hard, this is just so biased and wrong on so many levels.

1. The voters sent no such message, they voted for the other guy as we now know.

2. Even if the original vote count was correct and an entire city's votes had been thrown away, can you really call a 200-vote win a "clear message"?

3. What kind of biased, incorrect crap is "muscling through"? They had plenty of votes to pass it, had been given control of both legislative houses and the governor's mansion by the people of the state, and put up with a temper tantrum by the minority Democrats who FLED THE STATE in order to stop the democratic process before they finally got fed up and just voted on the damned thing right out in the open in front of everybody.

Democrats warned they were only a sign of things to come.

Guffaw! We can only hope!

Anyway, the loser is called "a little-known assistant state attorney". The winner is "Justice David Prosser".

THEN, lo and behold, after the correct count comes out (instead of the incorrect AP 'count'), the Friday edition contains an AP blurb that suddenly names Prosser a "conservative judge". His opponent, backed to the hilt by the unions and essentially making it known that she'd vote 'their way' in any case she sees, is never a 'liberal'.

We laugh at you when you're angry!

editoriaLIES

Times Union - Thursday April 7

Give Mr. Ryan credit, too, for at least proposing tax cuts the country probably can't begin to afford. His call to slash the top corporate and individual tax rates to 25 percent reflects the GOP and tea party thinking that more fiscally moderate members of Congress will have to refute, or at least rebut, in a serious discussion of fiscal policy.

This is an a classic case of the uninformed trying to misinform - Ryan's proposed budget, as I've noted, is basically aiming for tax neutral, that is, yes, he's proposing a cut in rates, but he's also removing deductions. The Times Union misleadingly leaves this out, either intentionally or due to their lack of familiarity with the facts.

Couple Blips Thursday In The Gazette's OpEd Page

First there was this editorial: Use Tasers only as a last resort

It's hard to believe that a pair of Rotterdam police officers couldn't figure out how to subdue an out-of-control 13-year-old on his way out of the Rollerama skating rink last Friday night without zapping him with an electronic stun gun -- unless the kid was as big as Andre the Giant or was carrying a lethal weapon...

But considering that the shock from a Taser is torture-like in intensity, and has proven lethal on numerous occasions, it should only be used as a last resort -- after police have tried other, less-intrusive methods. That should include things like pepper spray or nightsticks, and those should only come after physical force has been tried...

What would they have done 20 years ago, before the advent of Tasers? Shot the kid?

We'll keep this in mind the next time officers injure someone taking them into custody or after officers are injured or killed after trying "physical force" on a suspect.

Oh, and the last two questions are easy as pie. They would have tackled the kid, breaking his nose, the wrist trapped under him, and a couple of ribs. The town would then be paying his parents millions of dollars.

And in a letter there was a call for forced sterilization or wholesale slaughter of people to stop global warming that was amusing:

Computer climate models agree on one important point: The factors that influence our climate's behavior do not lead to the observed temperature increase when humankind's contribution is deliberately left out of the computer programs. Without the human factor, the programs show climate behavior would continue along the general pattern of the past seven millennia.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Indeed! The phrase that describes this observation is called "a self-fulfilling prophecy" :) When you take out the stuff the anthropogenic GW supporters put in to show that human impact is the cause, suddenly two things happen - first, human impact no longer shows up in the model (duh!) and second, suddenly their "models" no longer can predict any kind of climate changes, you know, the ones going on for "seven millennia".