Monday, October 17, 2011

Republicans need to get one thing straight. This is the ONE RULE that controls the way the media covers Republicans. It will always be followed. There is nothing that Republicans will do that will break that rule.



1. The media will always credit Democrats for everything good and blame Republicans for everything bad. This is true for real issues but doubly true for blatant falsehoods and urban myths.



In other words, Republicans must stop trying to impress the media. Treat them as the lepers they are. Even the good members of the media cannot get the truth out past their editors. So treat them all like lepers and go around the media with the NEW media (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Fox News, other online resources). http://amplify.com/u/a1ex6h

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Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Leaving the Plantation

Interesting choice of phrase by Herman Cain, comparing the Democratic Party to a plantation. It sure seems that Democrats are willing to go to extremes to hurt any black person who leaves the Democratic Party. Maybe we can expect a Fugitive Voter act from them in the near future that makes it illegal for designated minority groups to leave the Democratic Party.


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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

But the credit rating is dropping because the federal government does not have a signed plan for reducing the long term debt of the United States Government. As the Republicans have passed the only plan to do this out of the House, a plan that was killed in the Senate by Harry Reid and which Obama would have vetoed anyway, there is no real way that Republicans could possibly be at fault. This debt ceiling crisis was manufactured by Democrats, based on Democrat failure to pass realistic budgets for years, and the truth is that Democrats deserve all of the blame for it. Republicans have not been perfect in past years, but this year they finally stepped up to the plate. Only to have beanballs thrown at them by Obama and his fanboy media.



http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2011/07/obama-has-gop-set-up-to-take-fall-for.html http://amplify.com/u/a19p08

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Sunday, July 17, 2011

In 2006 not one Dem voted to raise the debt ceiling #tcot #teaparty

Now the GOP know what to do. Why do less than the Democrats did in 2006?


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Monday, June 27, 2011

Bill Maher & David Carr think you are idiots

If you aren't a liberal democrat who lives in one of the DC-Boston Metroplex states or in some other huge, and hugely corrupt, city then you are a slope-browed neanderthal idiot. Nice to know where you stand on Americans, Carr. Why don't you just emigrate from the US. We hear that French people are nearly as nasty and xenophobic as you, so why not move to France and spew your bile from there?

Amplify’d from www.realclearpolitics.com













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nyts david carr middle places home of low-sloping foreheads



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gen david petraeus on leading im not a quitter



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obama praises robots that boost the performance of diapers



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obama we have not run out of stuff to make



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New York Times columnist David Carr responds to Bill Maher implying Alabama and Kansas are not the "smart states."



David Carr: "If it's Kansas, Missouri, no big deal. You know, that's the dance of the low-sloping foreheads. The middle places, right? [pause] Did I just say that aloud?"

Read more at www.realclearpolitics.com
 

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Friday, June 17, 2011

Weiner Goes to Hollywood

Relax, Weiner. And get ready for the pseudonymous "David Kahane's" take on the Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) political comedy revue.



Pure funny!



Read the whole thing...

Amplify’d from www.nationalreview.com

“Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”



“That good, huh?”



“At least I didn’t get snippy or anything.”



“Sure you didn’t call anybody a jackass? Didn’t bash Dana?”



“Best behavior, I swear. I apologized to the planet. I even apologized to Huma, just like you told me to.”



“Glad we didn’t have a failure to communicate. Was she there?”



“Are you kidding?”



“Must have been tough,” I mused. “But always look on the bright side of life. Like I said the last time, I’m going to make you a bright, shining star.”



“I think I want to be alone,” he said.



This was bad: I couldn’t lose my star in a green-lit project. “Listen, Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore. Or even Kew Gardens. What’s the matter?”



“Somebody shouted, ‘Bye-bye, pervert.’”



“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”



“Somebody asked if I was more than seven inches.”



I had to calm him down. “I know you. You used to be big.”



“I am big,” he retorted. “It’s the pictures that got small.” He was still fuming. “Listen, Dave, I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more.”

Read more at www.nationalreview.com
 

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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Putting Austrian Economics in its Place

Catalan gets it. He most definitely gets it. The Austrian school of economics is the one branch of economics that has one theory of practice that applies from the very smallest examples at the micro end of the scale to the largest examples at the macro scale. It successfully predicted the collapse of the USSR. It predicted the failure of the stimulus in the US in 2009. And it has predicted the continuing failure of Keynesian spending and quantitative easing to do anything good for the US economy. When you switch your frame from the absurdist Samuelson version of economics, with its sharp dividing line between micro and macro and a dependence on econometric models that don't work, to the Austrian version that uses thought experiments and derived universal truths, then the real shape of things becomes apparent.

Amplify’d from mises.org

I recently came across "Putting Economics in Its Place," an article penned by Richard L. Heilbroner, an avowedly Schumpeter-influenced socialist.[1] Heilbroner's main purpose is to argue that the explanatory scope of economics has been greatly exaggerated. He contends that economics does not provide a universal, underlying science of society. He exemplifies this theme by pointing to the — alleged — failure of the economics profession to predict and explain the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union.

Not only does the Austrian School not suffer from the weaknesses Heilbroner charges economics with having, but it was the Austrians who settled many of the issues Heilbroner suggests still mar the science. No less important, in reading his article through an Austrian lens, one realizes just how complete the Austrian framework is. Heilbroner, for instance, rehashes discussion on the scope and nature of the science — this discussion should have been settled with the contributions of the likes of Lionel Robbins and Ludwig von Mises.[2] Finally, an analytical union between Heilbroner's criticisms and his own flawed conclusions buries non-Austrian economic frameworks, and as a result elevates Austrian theory above its opposition. Had Heilbroner possessed a better grasp of the many Austrian contributions to the debate, the conclusions he drew would have been considerably different.[3]

Heilbroner's central assertion is that economics can only describe the capitalist system, and thus has nothing to offer in regards to describing noncapitalist orders, such as prehistoric and command societies. This thesis is a corollary of his belief that what defines economics is a specific technique by which man accomplishes sought ends, namely the mixture of labor and "the materials and forces of nature."[4] From this, one can infer that Heilbroner believes that the techniques that man may employ in seeking ends in a precapitalist society, a command society, and a capitalist society are different.

But the Austrians show us just how utterly absurd Heilbroner's position is. Society is not shaped by the techniques employed by humanity; rather, the techniques are fashioned by the underlying nature of society. Indeed, the entire purpose of economization is to organize means and ends as a method of dealing with the fundamental scarcity that characterizes society — if it were not for this scarcity, there would be no purpose for economization. The nature of this scarcity is no different whether a society is a precapitalist, capitalist, or command one; the economization technique employed is the same across the board. Indeed, economization is the technique! There is no alternative, and attempts to plan an alternative can only end in failure.[5]

Read more at mises.org
 

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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

That "not as shovel ready as we thought" quip is going to come back to bite Obama

The campaigner in chief was in North Carolina at a confab supposedly on Jobs and Competitiveness, two things his administration has been attacking at every turn, when he made the quip that will live forever in infamy.

Amplify’d from www.investors.com
President Obama pauses Monday during a tour at Cree, a leading manufacturer of energy-efficient LED lighting. AP

The Republican National Committee could not have scripted a more damning sound bite. President Obama on Monday attended his administration's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness at an enviro-friendly lighting firm in North Carolina. Considering the dismal state of the economy, it should have been a subdued event.

But when it was explained to the president that the federal permit process for construction and infrastructure projects can cause delays ranging from "months to years," and "in many cases even cause projects to be abandoned," a gaffe ensued.

It was remarked to the president, "I'm sure that when you implemented the Recovery Act, your staff briefed you on many of these challenges." A smiling Obama responded, "shovel-ready was not as . .. uh ... shovel-ready as we expected."

Read more at www.investors.com
 

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60% commented that the decision to abort made their lives worse #tcot


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X-Men: First Class is a fun show

I don't have much to add to this review from Big Hollywood. First Class is a really fun movie and Fassbender as the man who would become Magneto is great in his role, just as Kevin Bacon carries the movie as the evil lunatic Sebastian Shaw.

X-Men: First Class had virtually everything going against it in pre-production– series fatigue (it’s the fifth entry in Fox’s X-Men saga), none of the original actors in starring roles, 1960s period costumes–on paper, it seemed like the ultimate studio cash-in, only to be outdone by the inevitable X-Men in Space: Electric Space Boogaloo from Space (in 3D!). Fortunately, it’s nothing of the sort.

Despite many flaws common to the superhero genre, First Class is quite possibly the best film in the series, not because it’s chock full of impressive special effects and action, but because broiling beneath its main characters’ performances are ideas–not just any ideas, but the central political and philosophical questions of the film’s time period whose minutiae our modern pundits still grapple over. This is not so much a review as a jumping-off point for discussion, so beware of spoilers ahead.

Read more at bighollywood.breitbart.com
 

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Even in India, Government's Main Function is to Choke the Economy

Gurgaon is a thriving piece of India, despite having absolutely no government services. Those who constantly agitate for descriptions of how things get done if government doesn't step in to provide water, policing, and to take money from the productive and give it to beggars, can learn a lot from Gurgaon.

Amplify’d from www.insideronline.org

India has stumbled onto the secret to economic growth, reports the New York Times:



In 1979, the state of Haryana created Gurgaon by dividing a longstanding political district on the outskirts of New Delhi. One half would revolve around the city of Faridabad, which had an active municipal government, direct rail access to the capital, fertile farmland and a strong industrial base. The other half, Gurgaon, had rocky soil, no local government, no railway link and almost no industrial base.


As an economic competition, it seemed an unfair fight. And it has been: Gurgaon has won, easily. Faridabad has struggled to catch India’s modernization wave, while Gurgaon’s disadvantages turned out to be advantages, none more important, initially, than the absence of a districtwide government, which meant less red tape capable of choking development.

Read more at www.insideronline.org
 

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It's Palin Season!

Hey Democratic Media Complex, we know what you're doing.



"Be vewwy quiet. We aww hunting Pay-wins."



h/t: Stix


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Class and Common Sense

Some English fellow calling himself "lenin" writes at his eponymous blog on many matters that lend their selves to Marxist proselytizing. Recently he attacked the idea that optimism about economic mobility was a common sense conclusion, favoring the idea that there was no economic mobility because class barriers were too strong. Being a Marxist-Leninist, "lenin" advocates empowering the government to protect individuals against these class barriers. The problem is summarized in this quote.



The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine.




The Irish Potato Famine came about because of the same potato blight that ten years previously had killed off the potato crop in the USA, and that had spent the previous several years killing off the potato crops in Europe. But the reason it brought about a famine that killed off the Irish, despite all the corn and cattle that were raised in Ireland being exported to feed England, was government. The conquering English government had passed laws preventing Irish Catholics from owning or leasing land during the 16th and 17th centuries, and only restored some ability to lease land in the 18th century while leaving the title to Irish lands in English hands. Irish lived in such government created poverty that they could only survive on the potato, which was the only crop that could feed a family on one or two acres of farming land. If the potato failed, then the Irish had no way to feed themselves and died. All the wealth of the country was being exported to England by the order of the English government.



The point is that the English government oppressed the Irish and created the potato famine. Likewise, the Ukrainian famines of the 1920s and 1930s that killed off 20% of the populace were created by the Russian government of Lenin and Stalin. The permanent famine in North Korea is created by the North Korean government. Chinese and other communist famines of the 20th century, including the famine created by the communist Ethiopian government of the 1980s, were all the result of government oppression.



In ancient times, it was the actions of kings plundering their peoples that always led to famine and revolt. It has always been so. Governments oppress the people. That is their function. The only government that does not oppress is one that is prevented by the actions of the people from oppressing them, and that requires starving the government and taking away all the powers it has.



This is what "lenin" ignores. Government does not get rid of oppression or class barriers. Government creates them. What are class barriers but measures of how close people sit to governmental power? The ultimate high class person is the king, followed by his court, other nobles, and preferred tradespeople with royal monopolies to engage in this or that type of commerce. Free men are below that, and government owned servants and slaves below them.



So if the government's actions create these classes, how should we ever expect the government to create a classless society? The answer is we cannot. As it is in the government's structural interest to create class boundaries, the only way to prevent the creation of class boundaries is to starve government of power. Given that "lenin's" solution to class barriers is impracticable, let us consider the question of economic mobility.



Is he right that it is impossible for individuals to raise themselves by their bootstraps from poverty to success? Does it require assistance from people who help voluntarily, or does it require government to clear the way? Clearly it is possible for people to lift themselves up from poverty by their own bootstraps. We all know of people who have done it. There is no question that it is possible. Is it easy? No. How can it be made easier? Get help from friends and family. That has worked for many immigrants to the US who arrived with nothing and own hotels, convenience stores, restaurants and other thriving businesses within a generation. Several families from India or Thailand or Vietnam or Korea would pool their money and invest in the best businessman, who would start a successful business and pay back his investors, and they would follow either individually or in new agreements.



At the end it boils down to optimism versus pessimism. Which are you: A glass half full or a glass half empty person? If you are an optimist, you're a capitalist. If you believe you are doomed to oppression and need the help of government, which has never voluntarily freed a people from slavery but has created plenty of slaves, and which oppresses by its very nature, then you are a marxist, socialist, communist, fascist, royalist, or some other kind of believer in big government.



As for me, I believe in individuals and capitalism. It creates freedom and wealth. Big government, on the other hand, oppresses individuals and creates equal misery for all. Pick your side wisely.

Amplify’d from leninology.blogspot.com
Over the last dozen or so years, there has been a substantial rise in inegalitarian political attitudes, a drop in support for redistribution and, confluently, a more modest but real drop in the number of people who think of themselves as being 'working class'.

It is axiomatic that public attitudes are complex, with clusters of seemingly contradictory attitudes expressed on the same subject. The most recent social attitudes survey (British Social Attitudes, 27th report) confirms this with its mixed bag of results giving socialists reasons to cheer and mourn. But this is banal, what we would expect. The question is in what overall direction does the balance of these composite attitudes tend; in what direction is the trend over time? The authors of the survey find that on such matters as welfare, poverty and wealth redistribution the public has shifted to the right and ascribe this to New Labour's tenure in office. Most interesting for my purposes, though, are the findings on the 'race to the top'. These findings disclose a set of attitudes which in the relevant ideological struggles would tend to favour the right. They find that most people think of themselves as upwardly mobile, and believe that 'meritocratic' factors such as "hard work" are the most decisive in determining one's success (as compared with 'ascriptive' factors such as class, or race).

When you consider that this is not merely debatable but absurd, that hard work is very far from being a more important factor in success than class background (or race, gender, etc), it becomes apparent just how much ideological ground work has had to be done to construct this 'common sense' worldview, and how much the constituents of this 'common sense' had to compete with and displace every day experience.
Read more at leninology.blogspot.com
 

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Monday, May 23, 2011

A picture is worth a thousand words

How many thousands of words are these pictures of Bibi Netanyahu and Barack Hussein Obama worth?


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Thursday, April 28, 2011

Pity Poor Jane Mecom

Sometimes it is interesting to think like a socialist liberal. Let me join in the fun Jill Lepore had with her nonsensical op-ed in the New York Times,. She had her fun setting fire to a field full of strawmen. It's time to join in, and add a modest proposal of my own.



Here goes...



Poor Jane Mecom. Too bad that half of her big brother Ben Franklin's brains and drive and profits couldn't have been redistributed to his sister so she wouldn't have lived in such misery. Of course, Ben would have suffered and never been able to become the father of the Revolution. Hi wouldn't have thought of the kite-flying experiment. Nor would Poor Richard's Almanac have survived to a second printing after the profits from the first were seized and given to his sister, instead of being invested in a larger second run. Maybe the US would still be a province of England to this day, and we'd all play cricket and throw darts in the pub, after having tea and crumpets at half three. And we would have a king. Maybe even a prince born in the English colony of Kenya. But if the US had remained a provincial backwater and the internal combustion engine never became a commercial product, well all those advances in human prosperity would be worth losing if only Jane Mecom hadn't been subject to such suffering.



As for those other people whose lives were saved by American advances in science, prosperity and wealth... Screw em.



In fact screw every energetic person who wants to be free and pursue happiness instead of having their earnings and abilities leveled with those who are lazy, stupid, and/or unlucky.

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
Poor Jane’s Almanac

Franklin, who’s on the $100 bill, was the youngest of 10 sons. Nowhere on any legal tender is his sister Jane, the youngest of seven daughters; she never traveled the way to wealth. He was born in 1706, she in 1712. Their father was a Boston candle-maker, scraping by. Massachusetts’ Poor Law required teaching boys to write; the mandate for girls ended at reading. Benny went to school for just two years; Jenny never went at all.


Their lives tell an 18th-century tale of two Americas. Against poverty and ignorance, Franklin prevailed; his sister did not.


At 17, he ran away from home. At 15, she married: she was probably pregnant, as were, at the time, a third of all brides. She and her brother wrote to each other all their lives: they were each other’s dearest friends. (He wrote more letters to her than to anyone.) His letters are learned, warm, funny, delightful; hers are misspelled, fretful and full of sorrow. “Nothing but troble can you her from me,” she warned. It’s extraordinary that she could write at all.


“I have such a Poor Fackulty at making Leters,” she confessed.


He would have none of it. “Is there not a little Affectation in your Apology for the Incorrectness of your Writing?” he teased. “Perhaps it is rather fishing for commendation. You write better, in my Opinion, than most American Women.” He was, sadly, right.


She had one child after another; her husband, a saddler named Edward Mecom, grew ill, and may have lost his mind, as, most certainly, did two of her sons. She struggled, and failed, to keep them out of debtors’ prison, the almshouse, asylums. She took in boarders; she sewed bonnets. She had not a moment’s rest.


And still, she thirsted for knowledge. “I Read as much as I Dare,” she confided to her brother. She once asked him for a copy of “all the Political pieces” he had ever written. “I could as easily make a collection for you of all the past parings of my nails,” he joked. He sent her what he could; she read it all. But there was no way out.


They left very different paper trails. He wrote the story of his life, stirring and wry — the most important autobiography ever written. She wrote 14 pages of what she called her “Book of Ages.” It isn’t an autobiography; it is, instead, a litany of grief, a history, in brief, of a life lived rags to rags.


It begins: “Josiah Mecom their first Born on Wednesday June the 4: 1729 and Died May the 18-1730.” Each page records another heartbreak. “Died my Dear & Beloved Daughter Polly Mecom,” she wrote one dreadful day, adding, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away oh may I never be so Rebelious as to Refuse Acquesing & saying from my hart Blessed be the Name of the Lord.”


Jane Mecom had 12 children; she buried 11. And then, she put down her pen.

Read more at www.nytimes.com
 

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Sunday, April 17, 2011

D or R: Who cheats on taxes more?

The Daily Beast asks if the old saw is true that if a Republican cheats it's in the boardroom, while if a Democrat cheats it's in the bedroom.

Amplify’d from www.thedailybeast.com

Since Tax Day will be the talk of the weekend, The Daily Beast scoured hundreds of news reports going back to the 1990s to find which political party can claim the most tax offenders. We came up with a list of 25 politicians who have been embroiled in tax scandals over the past two decades.

The verdict? Turns out Republicans have the bigger names—Jack Abramoff, Randy “Duke” Cunningham—but Democrats have the most tax scandals by a margin of 18 to 7.

The offenses encompass a spectrum of cases and officials—an indication that no public official or office is immune. There’s Jerry Fowler, former elections commissioner of Louisiana, who funneled state dollars toward a voting machine company in which he had an interest. Bill Campbell, former mayor of Atlanta, who knowingly owed the IRS more than $60,000. And former U.S. treasurer Catalina Villalpando, whose signature was on U.S. currency from 1989 to 1993—and owed the IRS more than $45,000.

Republicans and Tea Partiers tend to shout the loudest when it comes to tax reform, and they’re also the most law abiding—when it comes to paying their taxes, anyway.

Read more at www.thedailybeast.com
 

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Saturday, April 16, 2011

False Flag KKK Posters in Chico

The Tea Party being a grassroots movement rather than an organized reelection campaign, it's quite possible for members to have mutually contradictory aims. But the constant accusations of racism from the Democratic Party and its comrades in the national media are so ridiculous they have reached the level of parody. It is not predictable that no matter what a conservative or tea partier says the vast left wing conspiracy will claim there was a hidden racist agenda behind it. Everything is blamed on racism.



And of course the greatest irony of all is that the KKK was the Democratic Party's partisan terrorist organization, formed to oppress Republicans and blacks by means of violence and terror. To use the KKK as an attack against Republicans is a tremendously a-historical falsehood and irony. It insults the intelligence of every observer.

Amplify’d from www.krcrtv.com
The Chico Tea Party Patriots are speaking out after an offensive flyer was distributed Thursday about the group’s rally on Monday claiming to be from the tea party.

Thousands of posters were stuck up around butte county depicting the Klu Klux Klan symbol, a burning cross, and the words "Help us take our country back from the Kenyan" referring to President Obama.
See more at www.krcrtv.com
 

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Thursday, April 14, 2011

Who should decide the health care I get?

Should an insurance company decide what it can afford to give me?



Should a government appointed and paid panel of experts decide what they can afford to give me?



Or, and maybe this is too radical to be acceptable to Democrats, should I decide in consultation with my doctor what I want, need, and can afford?

Amplify’d from www.nationalreview.com


In a blog post on the president’s speech yesterday, Paul Krugman offers a great example of how some on the left think about health-care costs:


And when people start screaming about death panels again, remember: you can always buy whatever health care you want; the question is what taxpayers should pay for. And compare this with a voucher system, in which you have insurance company executives, rather than health-care professionals, deciding which care won’t be paid for.


The ideal, then, is technocratic management where experts who “actually know about health care and health costs” are the ones who say yes and no. And the alternative is understood to be insurance companies deciding what will be paid for.


As Krugman implies, someone must make a decision about “which care won’t be paid for.” Shouldn’t that someone be the patient and his family rather than Krugman’s panel of experts?
Read more at www.nationalreview.com
 

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Monday, April 11, 2011

Surprise: Governments waste lots of $$$

After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, BP opened up the checkbook and started writing checks to local governments for "cleanup" and other associated costs. Is anybody at all surprised that these governments wasted the money on corruption and things that had nothing whatsoever to do with the oil spill? I can't imagine even the most intellectually dishonest argument from a professionally dishonest arguer, say a lawyer, a sociologist, or a professor of semiotics, that could justify this.



Except, naturally, that it seems to be the mission and the justification of government to waste money this year in order to justify raising taxes so government can waste even more money next year. If you have ever worked for a government agency you know exactly what I'm talking about. It happens every year in every agency of every government everywhere: Intentional waste in order to protect next year's budget.

Amplify’d from www.theblaze.com

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In the year since the Gulf oil spill, officials along the coast have gone on a spending spree with BP money, dropping tens of millions of dollars on gadgets, vehicles and gear – much of which had little to do with the cleanup, an Associated Press investigation shows.

In sleepy Ocean Springs, Miss., reserve police officers got Tasers. The sewer department in nearby Gulfport bought a $300,000 vacuum truck that never sucked up a drop of oil. Biloxi, Miss., bought a dozen SUVS. A parish president in Louisiana got herself a top-of-the-line iPad, her spokesman a $3,100 laptop. And a county in Florida spent $560,000 on rock concerts to promote its oil-free beaches.

Florida’s tourism agency sent chunks of a $32 million BP grant as far away as Miami-Dade and Broward counties on the state’s east coast, which never saw oil from the disaster.

Some officials also lavished campaign donors and others with lucrative contracts. A Florida county commissioner’s girlfriend, for instance, opened up a public relations firm a few weeks after the spill and soon landed more than $14,000 of the tiny county’s $236,000 cut of BP cash for a month’s work.

Read more at www.theblaze.com
 

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Dreams of my President

It turns out that not only do we all dream of being President. What would we do? Who would we meet? Would we try to enrich ourselves or serve our nation? But our President dreams of being us: anonymous, normal, ordinary citizens who just want to live our lives free of the distractions from Washington DC.



What do you think? Should Obama get his wish and be an ordinary, anonymous citizen and really good looking guy again? There is an easy way to make it happen, Mr. President.

Amplify’d from www.dispatch.com

"I just miss - I miss being anonymous," he said at the meeting in the White House. "I miss
Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls, driving to
the supermarket, squeezing the fruit, getting my car washed, taking walks. I can't take a
walk."


He says he enjoys golf but is not the fanatic that some have portrayed.


"It's the only excuse I have to get outside for four hours at a stretch," he said.


His impossible dream: "I just want to go through Central Park (in New York) and watch folks
passing by ... spend the day watching people. I miss that."

Read more at www.dispatch.com
 

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Thursday, March 3, 2011

Congress's enumerated powers do not include subsidizing entertainment or education or even puppies

Everybody with a heart loves puppies. That doesn't mean that the federal government should give us all puppies. Everyone, or nearly everyone, likes Sesame Street. That doesn't mean the government should pay for it. Seriously, would a TV network like CBS or NBC or ABC or FOX love to pick up Sesame Street and broadcast it everyday, or would they love it? There is no other reasonable choice. You know they would love it. Every popular show PBS and CPB sponsor would thrive in a commercial environment. The shows that don't thrive would be the shows that are wastes of programming, like the weeks long fundraising marathons that every year drive viewers away from public television and listeners from public radio.



Even boring pieces of crap like the Prairie Home Companion have thriving merchandise businesses. PHC is so ready for a commercial network that it has its own fake commercials holding down spots that real commercials could be slipped into.



In case you don't know what "enumerated powers" are, you should try reading the Constitution. I've attached the relevant text below.

Amplify’d from topics.law.cornell.edu

Section 8.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

To establish post offices and post roads;

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;--And

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

Read more at topics.law.cornell.edu
 

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The Chevy Volt: Answering a question assembled by a committee of idiots

What is the strength of the Volt? Read it and laugh at the snark.

Amplify’d from www.unifiedpatriots.com
So at what, precisely, does the Volt succeed? (You know everything and everyone has to be good at *something*, don’t you?) They eat money, including taxpayer money, like Pac Man ate little balls. Not only have the taxpayers given GM bucketloads of money that we’ll never get back, buyers of these rolling rechargeable batteries get tax credits of up to $15,000. That’s right, people. Tax Credit. As opposed to a deduction, you get to whack that right off your tax bill.
Read more at www.unifiedpatriots.com
 

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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The tragedy of celebrating single-motherhood

Read this article and cry.



The tragedy of celebrating single motherhood is that married families have suffered. Abortion doesn't require the consent or even notification of the husband of a married mother-to-be. Divorce is easy and set up to reward a woman for breaking up her marriage, while punishing the husband. Most people won't even chastise a friend who is cheating on their mate. And almost nobody except neanderthals cares about pre-marital and extra-marital sex. The hippy free-love movement has won. Marriage lost.

Amplify’d from www.city-journal.org

Within my lifetime, single parenthood has been transformed from shame to saintliness. In our society, perversely, we celebrate the unwed mother as a heroic figure, like a fireman or a police officer. During the last presidential election, much was made of Obama’s mother, who was a single parent. Movie stars and pop singers flaunt their daddy-less babies like fishing trophies.

None of this is lost on my students. In today’s urban high school, there is no shame or social ostracism when girls become pregnant. Other girls in school want to pat their stomachs. Their friends throw baby showers at which meager little gifts are given. After delivery, the girls return to school with baby pictures on their cell phones or slipped into their binders, which they eagerly share with me. Often they sit together in my classes, sharing insights into parenting, discussing the taste of Pedialite or the exhaustion that goes with the job. On my way home at night, I often see my students in the projects that surround our school, pushing their strollers or hanging out on their stoops instead of doing their homework.

Connecticut is among the most generous of the states to out-of-wedlock mothers. Teenage girls like Nicole qualify for a vast array of welfare benefits from the state and federal governments: medical coverage when they become pregnant (called “Healthy Start”); later, medical insurance for the family (“Husky”); child care (“Care 4 Kids”); Section 8 housing subsidies; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; cash assistance. If you need to get to an appointment, state-sponsored dial-a-ride is available. If that appointment is college-related, no sweat: education grants for single mothers are available, too. Nicole didn’t have to worry about finishing the school year; the state sent a $35-an-hour tutor directly to her home halfway into her final trimester and for six weeks after the baby arrived.

In theory, this provision of services is humane and defensible, an essential safety net for the most vulnerable—children who have children. What it amounts to in practice is a monolithic public endorsement of single motherhood—one that has turned our urban high schools into puppy mills. The safety net has become a hammock.

Read more at www.city-journal.org
 

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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The price of union-controlled education mills is students who can't even read

The problem with union controlled education is that unions don't serve students. They serve teachers and other members, and see parents and other taxpayers as the enemy, not as their customers. This sets up an oppositional culture that ends up so perverting the school curriculum and priorities that students don't even learn the basics, like how to read at grade level.

Amplify’d from cnsnews.com

(CNSNews.com) - Two-thirds of the eighth graders in Wisconsin public schools cannot read proficiently according to the U.S. Department of Education, despite the fact that Wisconsin spends more per pupil in its public schools than any other state in the Midwest.

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Monday, February 21, 2011

Mitch Daniels suffering by contrast with Walker and Kasich--Updated

The public labor union bullying of the elected legislature and governor continues in Wisconsin, where Scott Walker stands resolute in his plan to balance the budget not only this year, but also for the future. Gold plated union pensions and contracts negotiated through an incestuously corrupt process threaten to bankrupt the state in the near future, and have created a $137 million deficit this year and a much larger one in the next 2-year budget cycle. Democrats in the legislature ran away from the state senate rather than participate in the democratic process. The protests are also fundamentally anti-democratic, as they seek to overturn the results of a democratic election by bullying the legislature. Republicans in the Wisconsin state senate have upped the ante: introducing fast track Voter ID legislation to prevent some forms of vote fraud and call Democrats' bluff. It remains to be seen if Democrats rush back to the statehouse in order to protect the right to commit vote fraud in Wisconsin. Democrats traditionally favor the "right" to commit vote fraud as well as the "right" of state workers to conspire with friendly Democratic state officials to negotiate sweetheart union deals in return for kickbacks to reelection funds. When these two cherished Democrat Party values are put up against each other we'll see which one wins. Obama has already backed off early White House and DNC support of the Wisconsin rabble rousers. The protests are borderline violent, with actual locals supplemented by revolutionary communists and socialists bused in from out of state. The tone of things is most definitely not civil, with union supporters, communists, socialists, and various revolutionary rabble rousers making the most bloodcurdling threats imaginable and comparing every Republican in sight to Adolf Hitler. The public perception of union demands has suffered badly.

Do not be sad or feel left out. You will also get a chance to see unions in revolt in your state. The SEIU's purple people beaters are coming to a town near you! They aren't just visiting Wisconsin, but will be marching all over America to intimidate their political opponents.

Among other fiscally sane ideas anathema to Democrats, Ohio governor John Kasich and the overwhelmingly Republican Ohio legislature are also pressing right to work legislation and cost cutting of gold plated public union contracts that threaten to bankrupt that state. Unions threaten to turn out twenty thousand union supporters Tuesday for another borderline violent protest like the ones in Wisconsin.

Sinister, threatening fist posters
Sinister fist images worthy of a Kevin Jennings
Indiana also has its own problems with gold plated union contracts threatening the financial future of the state. Like Wisconsin and Ohio, prompted by disastrous state budgets and unemployment numbers, the voters elected overwhelming majorities of Republicans in the statehouse and gave the governorship to Mitch Daniels. Now Daniels, who seems according to the tea leaves to be running for the Presidency as a one-legged-stool (fiscal only) Republican, doesn't want to push HB 1468 (The Right to Work Bill) or any other legislation that claws back gold plated benefits from public employee unions. He makes excuses that he didn't run on Right to Work as a campaign issue in November. The unions are revolting in any case. Frankly, I'm not sure why Daniels is paying any attention to union demands. There is nothing for Republicans in coddling unions. Union elites will continue to drain away union pension funding and give it to Democrat campaign funds, hoping for government bailouts at some time in the future to make good the pensions they stole behind workers' backs.

Kasich and Walker know what needs to be done. They are doing the smart fiscal thing.

I think Daniels, who claims to be a fiscal conservative, knows the right thing to do. But he seems to be convinced that he shouldn't do it because... because... because... I have no idea why he thinks this. He happens to be wrong. He might not have run on forcing public unions to be responsive to the voters and their pocketbooks, but that's why the people voted for him. They understood this conversation was happening nationally just like everyone else did. Everyone, that is, except for Daniels. If Daniels claims to be a fiscal-only conservative and demands that social and national security conservatives shut up and be quiet about their principles, he will never inspire anyone in the presidential contests coming up. And now he isn't even doing the fiscal conservative part right! He will not be electable if he persists in this ill-advised political triangulation.

UPDATE: Teachers are the focus of Daniels' other education reform plans for Indiana. Among his plans are expanding charter schools, offering vouchers, and restricting the ability of teacher contracts to expand relentlessly, forever. Teachers have already been playing hooky in Indiana in order to protest these moves. And one of the first moves Daniels made on coming into office in 2005 was to rescind the license of state workers to collective bargaining. He didn't run on this change in 2004, but made it anyway. Given this, it's not clear why he is resisting a right to work law this year.

Someone at Daniels' ear needs to advise him that he needs to behave like a fiscal conservative, not like a Clintonian Democrat trying to claim the center. Otherwise he will doom his candidacy with Johnny McMaverick style centrism before he begins. And that leaves out his rejection of the other two legs of the three legged stool that supports conservatism as a governing ideology.

Further: The bailout mania of the idiotic US government in 2008 and 2009 does not bode well for political backbone when faced by the bankruptcy of the majority of labor unions in the country. It's a sure thing that unions will squeal loudly when they have to pay out on pensions. Unions have been stealing pension money without worker approval to play political games for years. When this theft comes to light union leaders will cry to the heavens for help, claiming they didn't know. Taxpayers, having already payed a monopoly premium for union work, have paid for these pensions once. Taxpayers must not be held liable for theft committed by union elites in the past, today, or tomorrow. Union members need to hold their leaders to account today, before these accounts come due leaving them completely without pensions: forced to subsist on Social Security.

That would put an exclamation point on the union-sponsored betrayal of America's manufacturing workers for the last 50 years, would it not?

And we Republicans must stiffen the backbones of the officials we put in office. They did not get put into office in order to coddle union elites or bail-out thieves. That socialist practice of bailouts must end, no matter what business the thieves are supposedly in.

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No good reasons for public employee unions to exist

There is only one police force in any city. Is it right that the police can go on strike against the citizens who pay their taxes, thereby leaving them without any official enforcement of the law? Doesn't that leave taxpayers at the mercy of criminals?



How about firemen?



Isn't it the job of the public servants elected by the people to decide the proper staffing and funding levels for such important government employees as firemen and police? How then can the union trump decisions made by the lawful representatives of the people? Isn't that immoral and wrong?

Amplify’d from www.outsidethebeltway.com

Playing off the ongoing story out of Wisconsin, Professor Bainbridge makes a strong argument against the very existence of public sector labor unions:

In effect, public sector unionism thus means that representatives of the union will often be on both sides of the collective bargaining table. On the one side, the de jure union leaders. On the other side, the bought and paid for politicians. No wonder public sector union wages and benefits are breaking the back of state budgets. They are bargaining with themselves rather than with an arms’-length opponent.

Bainbridge’s argument isn’t a new one. In fact., it was made more than 70 years ago by Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

“The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, “I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place” in the public sector. “A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government.”

Indeed, for many years, the very idea of public sector workers being able to organize and force the government to bargain with their representatives was largely rejected:

Courts across the nation also generally held that collective bargaining by government workers should be forbidden on the legal grounds of sovereign immunity and unconstitutional delegation of government powers.

Courts across the nation also generally held that collective bargaining by government workers should be forbidden on the legal grounds of sovereign immunity and unconstitutional delegation of government powers. In 1943, a New York Supreme Court judge held:

To tolerate or recognize any combination of civil service employees of the government as a labor organization or union is not only incompatible with the spirit of democracy, but inconsistent with every principle upon which our government is founded. Nothing is more dangerous to public welfare than to admit that hired servants of the State can dictate to the government the hours, the wages and conditions under which they will carry on essential services vital to the welfare, safety, and security of the citizen. To admit as true that government employees have power to halt or check the functions of government unless their demands are satisfied, is to transfer to them all legislative, executive and judicial power. Nothing would be more ridiculous.

The very nature of many public services — such as policing the streets and putting out fires — gives government a monopoly or near monopoly; striking public employees could therefore hold the public hostage. As long-time New York Times labor reporter A. H. Raskin wrote in 1968: “The community cannot tolerate the notion that it is defenseless at the hands of organized workers to whom it has entrusted responsibility for essential services.”

Read more at www.outsidethebeltway.com
 

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Need ID to buy beer, need ID to vote

Since the Democrat state senators are out of state instead of in-state, doing their jobs, the grownups will proceed with a bill that has long been needed in Wisconsin and every other state that doesn't check IDs for voters.



Say you are a Wisconsin voter and a drunk. When you go to the bar to get loaded on a day of early voting the bartender checks your ID to make sure you are allowed to drink. But when the nice people from the local Democratic Party come by in their van to carry you to the polls, you stumble drunken into the polls and sign your name anywhere they will let you. No ID needed! No need to vote in your own name. Just sign next to any name. Then go vote, stumble back into the van, and go back to drinking. They'll even give you a couple of bucks for your time when dropping you back at the bar. Heck, you can do the same thing tomorrow at another precinct. The nice people in that van are so very helpful with allowing you to vote early and often, and not checking voter ID makes it much easier.



So how about we stop that scheme?



Thank goodness the foxes have left the henhouse so as to better protect their best campaign contributors, public sector unions.

Amplify’d from www.redstate.com

Hey, maybe we’ve got this all wrong.  Maybe all those Democratic state senators should stay in hiding for a couple of days longer; it’ll let the adults get some business done.

…Republicans plan to move ahead with regular Senate business. In addition to tomorrow’s calendar, that could mean public hearings on other legislation, and possibly a floor vote on a voter ID bill that Democrats don’t like.

Background on the Voter ID bill here: essentially, it’s the usual commonsense notion that people who vote should have to go through the same kind of hoops to establish identity that we expect from people who, say, buy beer.  The Democrats hate the very idea, of course - it’s not that they personally indulge in election fraud, but it’s a weakness of some of their dearest companions - so they’ve been fighting it tooth and nail in Wisconsin for years.

Read more at www.redstate.com
 

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Poll measures national support for Walker over public sector unions

Union thugs not so popular as they pretend.

Amplify’d from chicagoboyz.net

If these sorts of numbers hold up, the unions, the Democrats, and Mr. Obama will have managed to turn a local setback into a major defeat by accepting battle on a ground not of their own choosing.

That poll is a national, not a Wisconsin poll.

What are the Wisconsin-only numbers? Last week Walker was apparently behind.

43% approved, 53% disapproved. But that was last week, the question is slanted, events have moved on and that is only one poll. (That same poll found that by 55/36 people wanted the Democrat senators to return to the capitol.)

Read more at chicagoboyz.net
 

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