July 31, 2012

Christian nurses poisoned for eating during Muslim fasting month

You may have heard--dozens of times--that Islam is "the religion of peace."

This is complete and utter crap. Consider the following example:
Karachi (AsiaNews) - At least 11 nurses, including three Christians, were poisoned at Civil Hospital Karachi for eating during Ramadan. During their afternoon break yesterday, the 11 nurses went to the hostel cafeteria for some tea and food. Rita, a Catholic nurse, collapsed first after drinking her tea. Now all the nurses are in the hospital's intensive care unit, some in very serious conditions.

In Pakistan, eating in public during the Muslim month of fasting is illegal. For Muslims, fasting is compulsory. However, hospital workers and travellers are exempt.

Civil Hospital Karachi staff is made up mostly of Muslims who do not tolerate that their non-Muslim colleagues eat during Ramadan.
Ah yes, that famous Muslim tolerance.

But don't worry, they'd never do this here.

Global warming data has been faked!

Four years ago, amid a huge cry by Leftists that global warming was gonna kill us all, and soon, a guy by the name of Anthony Watts began taking a critical look at the official government-collected temperature records in the U.S.

Watts had a heavy background in statistics, and he quickly noticed something odd: While weather experts had long known that urban areas were warmer than rural ones, and that within a given metropolitan area the average daily temperature reported by different automated stations would differ by a couple of degrees, Watts noticed that some sites always--always--reported higher temperature than others just a couple of miles away.

Watts knew that normal, "natural" factors accounted for a lot of this : a station near the ocean would be cooler than one farther inland, and so on. But none of the known factors accounted for the differentials Watts was seeing in the temp data.

Moreover, while normal weather variations would cause different locations to read differently, the fact that some stations always showed a higher temp--instead of occasionally also showing a lower temp--suggested to Watts that something was biasing the "hot" sites.

Rather than just blowing it off, Watts visited a few of the "hot" sites, and found that without exception, they were located in artificial "heat islands" such as in the middle of parking lots, the edge of an airport ramp (the aviation term for where the planes are parked), next to an air conditioner condenser coil and so on. One was even located in the middle of a tar-covered roof!

It's long been accepted that such locations give anomalously high readings. In fact the National Weather Service has published criteria telling people to avoid putting temperature measuring stations in such locations. The problem was that measuring stations that had originally been well-sited had gradually been surrounded by buildings, parking lots, air conditioners and the like, and no one had noticed.

Not being a gummint employee, Watts was free to distribute his findings without fear of retaliation. He posted his findings on his blog, along with a list of the exact lat/longitude of every official measuring station in the U.S., and asked readers to visit the ones in their areas, take photos and send 'em to him.

Readers did just that. In droves. And take a wild guess what they found.

Yep--well over half of all temperature-measuring stations in the U.S. were located in artificial heat plumes.

But wait--we're just getting started.

The folks who collected and kept the official temperature records used a computer program to apply "corrections" to each site's readings. In theory these "corrections" might be able to compensate for the artificially hot readings of the badly-sited stations.

Accordingly, Watts asked the keepers of the official data for both the raw temp data and their correction algorithm, which would enable him to determine how the so-called "corrections" were calculated.

The Keepers of the Data (NOAA) told Watts to fuck off.

A less-dedicated investigator might have given up, but Watts was undaunted, and told the Keepers: Your work is funded by the taxpayers, so unless it's officially classified the results should be in the public domain. Show me the raw data and your so-called correction algorithm or I'll see you in court.

The Keepers just laughed, because they were part of the Gummint and had infinite taxpayer-funded resources, while Watts was just some little pissant nobody taxpayer.

So Watts sued under the federal Freedom of Information Act.  And after almost 4 years of legal fencing, he won.

He then went to work cracking both the encoded temperature data and the program that calculated the "correction" factor. And guess what he found?

Instead of the "correcting" program reducing the temps of the badly-sited (i.e. erroneously hot) stations, it was raising the readings of all stations--both the well-sited ones and the anomalously hot ones.

If you're a rational adult this should be shocking--though not all that surprising.

Watts and his associates found that after the government's so-called "correction" was applied, the "adjusted" data showed a warming up to three times greater than the raw data from well-sited rural measuring stations showed.

To see his results is to erase any possibility that this bullshit "correction" was accidental. Click here to go to his blog, scroll down to "Files," click the link next to "Figures for the paper" and look at Figure 4, which shows the raw data alongside the numbers reported by NOAA after the "correction" was applied. It's devastating.

You have to see it to believe it. So here it is:

The aqua bars represent raw (i.e. "real") data, while the red bars are what was reported after the so-called "correction" was applied. Notice that in all but one of the classes, the raw data were adjusted upward.

Congratulations to Watts, his co-authors and all the people who helped him prove that the "official" temperature data held by the government had been "corrected" upward to show far more warming than the very modest amount that's actually present.

Oh, and Watts also sued the British Meteorological Service (may not have that name exactly right) to obtain their raw data and correction algorithm too. When he finally won in court, the gummint munchkins had the brazenness to declare "You're never gonna believe this but just yesterday all that data you wanted suddenly vanished off our drives! We have no idea how it happened. And unfortunately we never bothered to make a back-up copy of this data because all sciency-types like us know that unlike your cheap consumer-grade computers, our expensive government computers never lose stuff."

Hellofa coincidence, eh?

Bottom line: The government has been caught red-handed faking temperature data to make global warming look scary.  Not only were they using data they knew was already hot-biased, they applied a totally bogus "correction factor" that increased almost ALL temperature readings from the raw data.  Finally, they refused to release the algorithm that would reveal their fraud until forced to do so by a lawsuit brought by a private citizen.

This is outright fraud, and by rights everyone in NOAA who was remotely involved should be fired immediately. The folks directly responsible should be prosecuted.

Unfortunately--but again not surprisingly--the lying mainstream media will ignore this since it doesn't help their party. They'll claim the story is just too complex for most of their readers to follow, so they'll ignore it until they can switch to Defense-2, which is that "it's old news."

Did you find the above story too complex to follow? I didn't think so.

July 30, 2012

The wisdom of Chairman Bow

"I think everyone does better when you spread the wealth around."

"At some point you've made enough money."

"The private sector is doing just fine."

"You didn't build that."

Hmmm... I got one to add:

"One and done."

Leftists and oil

Why do Leftists hate oil so much?

If you live out here in flyover country the Left's argument that "You people need to either stop driving, get electric cars or pay ten bucks a gallon for gas" doesn't win many friends, so the Left needed a more persuasive one.

They found one: "By depending so much on imported oil--much of which comes from the Middle East--we're supporting our enemies. So we need to cut way back on the amount of oil we use."

A year later, God and technology intervened to provide the "Athabasca tar sands," which offered the chance for the U.S. to buy a billion barrels of oil from our Canadian friends (at market prices, of course, which is absolutely as it should be).

OOOPSIE! Canada not being in the Middle East, the claim that "when we use oil we're really supporting our enemies" was...what's the phrase? Oh yeah: "inoperative." So the Left had to do a fast pivot to find a *new* line of bullshit to replace the old, superseded bullshit.

And they found it: "Ooooh, pipelines! Bad, scary, dangerous juju!"

And ten thousand credulous "useful idiots" instantly bought it--hook, line and sinker. No matter that of the 30,000 miles of pressurized pipelines crisscrossing the U.S., and the absolute assurance that any break or fire *anywhere* will lead the evening news on every network, you just don't hear of those happening very often.

Airline crashes kill hundreds of times more people than pipeline accidents..

So are you gonna' start driving from NY to LA from now on?  Didn't think so.

Tell ya what, lefties: If you really hate oil and affordable energy as you claim, give up your petroleum-powered cars, stop flying, stop using air conditioning and indoor ovens, and then we'll talk. Until then I'm gonna keep showing people that you're all ghastly lying hypocrites and that all you're doing is jacking up the price of energy for all of us.  Which of course is your intent.

Just like Obozo's EPA issuing an order that make it uneconomical to keep operating 50 or 60 coal-fired electric generating plants.

Actions have consequences. Obozo is on tape saying if he got elected, no one was gonna be able to open a coal-fired plant in the U.S.

Oh, sorry! What he really said was, "They can try, but they'll go broke."

Nice, huh.

Elections have consequences, folks. Are you better off today than you were four years ago? I'm no fan of Mitt Romney but I'm absolutely sure he understands economics, profit/loss, the effect of economic ceilings and floors, the Keynesian Multiplier theory and marginal costs better than the imposter from Kenya--who, by the way, is still keeping his college records sealed.

What can he possibly be worried about?

July 28, 2012

Obama established racial quota by Executive Order--seriously


Yesterday a post on a blog I like showed what seemed to be a screen-shot of a facebook post by the White House; i.e. a White House press release. Here it is:


It reads,
today President Obama signed an Executive Order establishing the White House Initiatve [sic] on Educational Excellence for African Amerericans [sic].
I read this alleged press release to my wife, noting the misspelling of "Americans" and the typo ("initiatve"). Her immediate reaction was "Obama's staff would never let something like that be posted. So it must be a fake, created by some conservative hackers."

I had to admit she was probably right. I mean, geez, "Amerericans"?? Okay, I don't think the Obammers really think that's how it's spelled, but on the other hand that's not a simple, single-letter typo (which I interpret as intending to hit one key but hitting an adjacent one due to fat-fingering).

And while we all make typos regularly, you'd think that with all the layers of taxpayer-paid editors and proof-readers and deputy-assistant-undersecretaries of public affairs or whatever on the WH payroll, 3 or 4 folks would be reviewing everything that goes out to ensure it's grammatically perfect and correctly states the preezy's position.

So either no one checked this (*really* sloppy) or else it got past however many people we're paying to do the proof-reading (same conclusion). Neither seemed likely, so...had to be a hacker.

But on checking Facebook (.gov, not .com), sure enough the pic in the blogger's screencap was there, with the same text--but without the two misspellings noted above. This suggests the initiative is real, though it doesn't substantiate the errors.

However, the White House version of the FB post did confirm a very clumsy quote from Obozo:
I'm establishing the first-ever White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans so that every child has greater access to a complete and competitive education...
How's that again? He says the new initiative is for African-Americans, but then 3 words later says it's so that "every child" will do better. Obviously the instantaneous contradiction isn't alarming, except that it's so clumsy and careless.

One last thing suggested this was a fake: According to the alleged facebook post (on the WH website) Obama was establishing this new initiative by Executive Order.

Coming on the heels of an earlier Executive Order instructing federal employees to stop deporting illegals if they hadn't committed any other "serious" crime, and his EO providing amnesty to children of illegals provided they had a pulse, and his direction to the Department of Energy to give amazingly generous sweetheart deals worth hundreds of millions of tax dollars to "green" companies founded by his major donors, this was so tone-deaf, and so unnecessary, that I was convinced it had to be fake.

Fortunately the White House Facebook post had a link. And sure enough, there it was: the Executive Order establishing the "initiative."

Click on the link and read the thing. This is official, institutionalized disparate treatment. It has the same effect as government establishing a racial quota, except the quota for non-blacks is zero. While the goal of better academic performance by blacks is certainly a good one, it's generally accepted that the U.S. Supreme Court held (in Regents of Univ. of Cal v. Bakke) that no level of government could establish racial quotas in programs.

But of course, Obama and his Democrat supporters have shown themselves to be totally contemptuous of the Supreme Court and the Constitution when either of those authorities conflicts with whatever they want to do.

Oh, and I'll certainly admit the webpage containing the alleged Executive Order could be a fake too. We'll know in a day or two when Obozo either verifies the initiative or claims it's a fake.

Let me close with two questions: If this had been an "initiative" by George W. Bush, by Executive Order, and reserved exclusively for kids from low-income white families, is there anyone in the entire country who believes it would be legal? Of course not.

And if Mr. Bush had persisted in directing his agency chiefs to support such a program, does anyone believe it wouldn't be an impeachable act? Of course not.

So why, after Obozo does the same thing for black kids, will every single Democrat whistle merrily and look the other way?

July 27, 2012

Which candidate would be better for the economy?

The Rasmussen polling firm reports that on the question "Who do you trust more to help the economy?" there's only a six percent margin between Romney and Obama.

Astonishingly, 43 percent of those polled say Obama would be better on the economy, while 49 percent say Romney.

Let's see if I've got this right: After 30-some months of over-eight-percent unemployment, record deficit spending (3 straight years of Trillion-dollar deficits), billions given to companies run by Obozo cronies that later folded, 220,000 small businesses folding between 2008 and 2010, and a downgrade in our government's credit rating, 43 percent still think Obama would be better for the economy?

Are you kidding me?

This simply proves what ten minutes of conversation with Dems/liberals/progressives will tell you: Most of 'em don't understand economics, have no clue as to how jobs are created, believe big government is the key to all success, favor higher taxes, and don't trust people to make their own decisions.

In other words, economically illiterate.

Ignorance has afflicted roughly a third of all humans forever. But you'd think that with free libraries and the internet, more Americans would be starting to get just a smattering of education on how economics and jobs work. Unfortunately, doesn't seem to be working that way.

July 26, 2012

Who is Frances I. Nwachuku?

Does the name Frances Nwachuku ring any bells?

Yeah, probably not. But Frances is the...well, guess "point man" isn't PC, so...point "person" who represented the federal Department of Energy in its negotiations concerning...wait for it...that fantastic, now-bankrupt green company, Solyndra, as it sought additional federal money to...well, we're not sure what they really wanted your money for, but we're sure they wanted it.

Oh boy, did they ever want it.

A little background will help: After getting roughly half a Billion dollars of loan guarantees--i.e. loans backed up by YOU, the taxpayer--Solyndra was still losing money hand over fist. To stay in business, it needed more money.

The choices were to either get it from private investors, or from...the brain trusts at Obama's Department of Energy.

Hmmm....let's see here...

You need to know something here: To government negotiators, getting the best possible deal for taxpayers is about number gazillion on their list of priorities. It's far, far outweighed by "What does my boss want to happen?" Which is entirely driven by "Does the President like the people who who are looking for the money?"

Which is driven by, "Have the applicants given big bucks to the preezy's campaign?"

In this case the biggest of the private investors just happened to be a major fundraiser ("bundler") for Chicago's most famous community organizer.

The private investors were initially rebuffed, so being good business minds they said they were resigned to folding the company. But of course, having a 'green' company that had already sucked down half a billion taxpayer dollars declare bankruptcy would make the administration look...uh...less than stellar. So the DOE's deputy negotiator--Frances Nwachuku--made an unprecedented (because totally illegal) offer: She suggested that if the private investors would put up another $75 million, the DOE would give the company another $95 million in guarantees. But in addition--and this was the crucial departure--the government would agree to "subordinate" its claims to the private investors.

If you're unfamiliar with this term, it means that in the event the company declared bankruptcy the private investors could recover their entire investment before the taxpayers recovered a dime.

If you were a secret observer to the negotiations, at this point you'd be looking in the parking lot to see what color Ferrari the private investors were giving to Frances.

Because this agreement was flatly illegal.

Flatly. Illegal.

Let me make that more clear: In every other venture where the gummint gives money or guarantees to a private firm, the deal is that the taxpayers get their money back before the private investors.

Not this time.

Needless to say, the private investors eagerly accepted this sweetheart deal.

Perhaps Frances didn't know that the deal she was offering violated U.S. law. I don't know. What we do know (courtesy of a recent report from the House of Representatives) is that only after she offered the unprecedented deal--and the private investors accepted--did the govt start its study of the deal, which again was illegal.

But astonishingly, it still went through.

Lord, it's almost like the Obama administration knows it can do anything--i.e. illegal acts--and they're guaranteed to get away with it. It's almost like he saw Slick Willy get clean away with perjury and thought, 'Hey, if they didn't take out the Slickmeister they ain't even gonna take me on!'

Oh, and one more little detail: The head DOE negotiator was normally Jonathan Silver. It may be significant that Silver did not attend the crucial meetings, leaving Frances to represent the taxpayers.

But of course Frances was completely qualified to represent taxpayers in tough negotiations with private Obama donors: She had years of experience with big banks, and graduated from...the University of Nigeria.


In some parallel universe a prosecutor has given Frances immunity, and has asked her to explain--under oath, and penalty of perjury--how she came up with her illegal and unprecedentedly generous offer to the Solyndra investors.

She can't plead the Fifth because she's been given immunity.

The nation is glued to their TV sets as Frances explains the instructions she was given.

And by whom.

Unfortunately, in our universe no one except po' bloggers will ever ask her jack-shit.

Justice is gone--Eric Holder tells congress to fuck off, and has his boss make the preposterous claim of Executive Privilege--this after Obozo claimed he knew nothing about Operation Fast and Furious. The Constitution has been shredded. The nation stopped being a nation of laws in January, 2009.

I have no idea what the future holds. Though I am not optimistic, I have not given up. But I am very grateful that I don't have any children--because I would be ashamed to hand them the ghastly mess we now find ourselves in as a nation.

If this makes no sense to you, go in peace and don't give it a second thought. Enjoy life. I wish you and yours the best.

Oh, and if you're one of my Democrat relatives who believes everything critical of Obama comes from Faux News (and thus must necessarily be false), the source here is a report from the House Energy and Power Subcommittee. Click on the 3rd link, titled "The 'No more Solyndras' Act" for the full report. Read page 4 carefully.

End transmission.

Carney refuses to state the capital of Israel

One of the hallmarks of a dishonest, pandering politician is refusal to answer even the most benign question. Now, Jay Carney isn't technically a pol, but obviously works for one. And the press secretary strives to do exactly what the boss wants.

At today's regular White House press briefing a relatively unknown reporter asked Carney "What does the administration consider as the capital of Israel-- Jerusalem or Tel Aviv?" Carney's answer--as shown in this clip--was "Our position hasn't changed."

So what does that mean? That is, what is the administration's position?

Carney again refused to give a responsive answer, merely repeating "Our position hasn't changed." He did this twice more.

Now, I don't have a strong feeling about which city Obozo regards as Israel's capital-- wouldn't believe that crowd if they told me summer was hot. But the fact that they won't commit one way or the other is a hoot.

The reason seems obvious: They want to continue to garner fat campaign contributions from both Arabs and Jews. As long as they don't go on the record on the question, they can privately tell both groups they support whichever one they're speaking to.

And as long as the two groups never compare notes, they'll get away with that evasion.

The clip also shows the reaction of the other "reporters" in the room. Instead of the next "reporter" and the next continuing to ask Carney the same question, until either he gives a responsive answer or the presser ends, the next reporter smoothly changes questions and the incident is over.

So what does that tell you about the mainstream media?

Nothing we didn't know long ago.

July 25, 2012

Novel vote fraud ploy?

Scammers are constantly trying to come up with some new scheme that will allow them a free run of six months or so until they're discovered and the knowledge of the scheme reaches most of the public.

Sometimes they succeed.

This one is a masterpiece.

Seems voters in half a dozen states have received an official-looking card from something called the Voter Participation Center, saying "Voter registration documents enclosed." The card is typically already filled out with the recipient's name, address, date of birth--and in some cases even their social security number. It asks for more information, and instructs the recipient to "Return this card to the [name of state] State Board of Elections in the enclosed, postage-paid envelope."

The envelope is addressed to the board of elections, at the correct street address.

The mischief is at the very end of the address, in the zip code. It's not the code of the Board of Elections. Instead, the zip code goes to a post office box in a UPS facility.

And the U.S. Post Office confirms that the zip code will override the street address. (A really careful researcher notes that if a bar code is printed below the zip, the bar code will override the zip code.)

The boxes--a different one for each state, of course--are rented by the Voter Participation Center. And the Business Reply Mail permit printed on the cards was issued to the same outfit. So this isn't an inadvertent misprint on one set of cards, but part of a methodical plan.

At this point no one outside of VPC knows what that plan is, but at the very least, representing to voters that their completed cards are being mailed to the State Election Board when in fact they're secretly going to the VPC would seem to be misleading if not fraudulent.

What's known at this point is that the "Voter Participation Center"--headquartered in Virginia--is bankrolled by wealthy [ blank left to reader's imagination ] and run by well-known [ ]s.

It's also interesting that the states blanketed by the cards are the so-called battleground states that are expected to decide the election.

One more interesting fact: the cards have been mailed to children, deceased persons and family pets. This wide assortment suggests a total lack of discrimination as to who got cards. So it wouldn't be surprising if a significant number of persons not eligible to vote ended up returning the postage-paid cards.

Let's see...who would benefit from that?

Eh, who cares? After all, our betters in the mainstream media constantly tell us there's absolutely no evidence of actual vote fraud. So this can't be an effort to either register ineligible voters, nor to prepare IDs that would allow people to vote in place of the persons who send in the cards.

Y'know what agency would be perfect to investigate this kind of potential vote-fraud scam? Why, the U.S. Department of...wait for it...Justice. Seems like this would be right up their alley. But somehow I don't think they'll be interested in pursuing the matter--all their investigators and attorneys are devoted to suing states that are trying to scrub their voter registration rolls of dead folks and illegal aliens !

Oh, and as to the identity of the parties who fund and run the VPC--the two blanks left above? We know, but instead of telling you, let's play a game: If you don't hear another word about this, you'll know the perps were Democrats.

If it turns out they're Republicans it'll be on the front pages of the major papers for the next three months.

Obama has systematically dismantled immigration laws

Obama has steadily and stealthily dismantled virtually every tool and resource used to identify and deport persons in the U.S. illegally. Here's the history:

One of the Left's loud complaints about deporting illegals was that the government wasn't acting against U.S. business that hired illegals. "Go after the businessmen," they said. Accordingly, someone devised a computerized list--called E-Verify--that businesses could use to determine whether someone was could legally work in the U.S. It worked quite well, even though it was never mandatory.

Suddenly faced with an effective deterrent to illegal job-seekers (something they didn't actually want), the administration refused to consider making the use of E-Verify mandatory for all employers, and resisted efforts to permanently reauthorize it.

Next the Obama regime targeted programs that helped local law enforcement identify illegal aliens. Both the 287(g) and the Secure Communities agreements were rewritten so that illegal aliens wouldn't be deported unless they were guilty of some separate, "serious" crime. In effect, it was “don’t ask, don’t tell” for all other illegal aliens.

At this point Obama and his Democrat supporters had effectively instituted a stealth amnesty, but now several states being overwhelmed by illegals committing other crimes began to fight back, passing laws authorizing their own police to enforce what was still the official law of the United States. Obama reacted by instructing his Attorney General to sue three states-- Arizona, South Carolina, and Utah.

The most recent attack was just two months ago: Democrats had long argued that because the children of illegal immigrants had no choice when their parents brought them here, it was unfair to deport them. Thus the "Dream Act" was introduced. However, congress failed to pass it, so in June Obama unilaterally ordered government agencies not to deport "children" of illegal aliens if they were 12 years old or under when they came here.

When he announced this, Obama carefully avoided mentioning that his new edict would affect "children" as old as 30. In addition, shortly thereafter DHS head Napolitano admitted that parents of these children– i.e., illegal alien adults who most certainly did knowingly break the law – would similarly not be deported. Wouldn't be fair to break up the family, see.

With that announcement, amnesty for illegal aliens tripled.

"We tried our plan, and it worked." --Barack Obama

"97 percent of Greenland ice melted in July"--CBS

NASA issued a press release yesterday, titled "Satellites see unprecedented Greenland ice sheet surface melt"
The melting spread quickly. Melt maps derived from the three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet's surface had melted. By July 12, 97 percent had melted.
SEE, you stupid Deniers?!! We WARNED you that humans releasing CO2 was causing unprecedented global warming!! But you claimed we were fudging the data, and that IF the planet was warming at all, it was part of a normal cycle and not caused by human activity.

So NOW look what's happened (you stupid, bitter-clinger skeptics): As of July 12, 97 percent of the ice sheet's surface had melted! OMG! New York and San Francisco are gonna flood! You should have listened to our warnings!!

And this finding isn't by a few cunning, lying PhDs at East Anglia, or the occasionally less-than-candid Mike Mann, but NASA ! So it's all true, true, true!

What...?

You say Greenland's ice sheet is still there?? Ya say that what the press release was really referring to was that some water was found on the surface of 97 percent of the ice sheet in the middle of July?

And ya say ice core records show this happens every 150 years?

But...but...but the headline said "unprecedented"!! Melting on the surface isn't particularly scary at all!

Wow...it's a good thing the press release explained those little details, because otherwise one of the major networks, relied on by millions of voters for their entire news input--one like, say, CBS--might post a headline like

97 percent of Greenland ice melted in July

...or something equally scary.

Fortunately that could never happen. Cuz, y'know, all those layers and layers of fact-checkers and editors an' stuff.

Okay, sarcasm off. Click the link and you'll see that CBS did indeed run the above header on the network's website. And to ensure everyone got the mislead, they added this helpful graphic (which was in the NASA presser):

See how graphics can help your readers understand complex points more easily?

The white area in the middle of the left panel is ice, right? And in the right panel, just four days later, IT'S ALL GONE!!

Oh, wait...could the red areas represent just surface water? And could it be that half of Greenland is still covered with ice, much of it thousands of feet deep? (Answer: Yes.)

Ya sure couldn't tell that from the CBS (and NASA) graphic, eh?

Ya think that was intentional, or do you think the grossly misleading headline just somehow got by all those editors and fact-checkers?

Wonder which explanation CBS will go with?

Oh, and lest you think this was just a one-off, here's how Time reported it:

Three satellites show what NASA calls unprecedented melting of the ice sheet that blankets the island, starting on July 8 and lasting four days. Most of the thick ice remains. While some ice usually melts during the summer, what was unusual was that the melting happened in a flash and over a widespread area.

"You literally had this wave of warm air wash over the Greenland ice sheet and melt it," NASA ice scientist Tom Wagner said.

The ice melt area went from 40 percent of the ice sheet to 97 percent in four days, according to NASA. Until now, the most extensive melt seen by satellites in the past three decades was about 55 percent.

Yes, they do throw in "Most of the thick ice remains," but what percentage of their two-dozen readers catch that, in view of the quote from a "NASA ice scientist" that "you literally had this wave of warm air wash over the ice sheet and melt it" ?

But hey, the networks are absolutely unbiased on this global warming thingy. Just ask 'em.

July 24, 2012

Video: Egyptian "candid camera" gag goes bad

Chilling video clip here, of a "candid camera" type gag filmed by an Egyptian TV crew. They interviewed several prominent Egyptians, but a few minutes into the interview, with the questions becoming more pointed, the interviewer tells the guest that this is actually an Israeli television station.

On hearing this, the guests are furious. Two men (appearing on separate segments) are so angry they attack the crew. One--allegedly a comedian--even slaps the female interviewer, knocking her down.

As the interviewees become more violent, the crew finally tell them it's just a prank. At which point the "comedian" goes over to the woman he slapped and says "You brought it on yourself. Why did you fall down so easily?"

It's said a picture is worth a thousand words. In that case a minute of video could be worth ten times that. You need to see this clip to understand how deeply these Egyptians seem to hate Jews.

And then explain to us all how that "Arab spring" thing is going to end well for the world.

July 23, 2012

Moyers: 2nd amendment a "license for murder"

"Never let a crisis go to waste" was the infamous prescription of Rahm Emanuel when he was Obama's chief of staff. And sure enough, the movie mass-shooting in Denver has brought out leftist moonbats wailing about how eeevil guns are, and lecturing us that no one needs 'em, so we shouldn't have 'em.

Example: Long-time PBS pontificator Bill Moyers. After the shootings Moyers opined that the second amendment was
...a license for murder and mayhem and...a great fraud that has entered our history.... With the weak-kneed acquiescence of our politicians, the National Rifle Association has turned the Second Amendment of the Constitution into a cruel hoax, a cruel and deadly hoax.
Like so many liberals, Moyers claims to be repelled by the fact that our Constitution explicitly recognizes the right of citizens to "keep and bear arms." It's hard to know whether Moyers' position is due to the admitted death toll caused by criminals and nuts using guns, or whether this is just an excuse to disarm us.

The murder and wounding of innocents by gun-wielding nuts is a terrible tragedy--one that people on both sides of the political divide rightly abhor. Liberals see this as having a simple solution: Ban private gun ownership. They seem not to understand that this would leave the population defenseless against thugs--and despotic rulers.

Interestingly, Moyers was Lyndon Johnson's campaign manager and advisor and is credited with much of the genesis of the so-called "Great Society" that has consumed so many trillions of dollars since 1965, with so little positive effect. But not to worry: Being a liberal means never being called to account for the failure of ideas or programs. All that matters is that you had the right intentions.

July 20, 2012

GOP agrees to a freeze on defense spending

Last night the House approved a defense bill authorizing nearly $606 billion. This amounted to a freeze on defense spending, and "89 Republicans joined 158 Democrats on the key 247-167 vote.”

How...interesting: "Republicans joined Democrats"?? Sounds as though, in the reporter's mind, at least, the Repubs conceded to a Dem bill. Why would that be, when Repubs control the House by a comfortable majority?

Okay, here's why I think the reporter wrote it that way: From a political standpoint, a freeze on spending is like a reduction, since inflation means you can't do as much with the same dollars next year as you did this year. So historically, most gummint departments (and the congresscritters who supposedly oversee their operations) counted on a five or six percent hike each year, like clockwork.

Given that framework, and since the GOP historically favors a strong military, freezing defense spending would seem to be a concession by the Republicans.

And hey, fair enough: country's on the brink of fiscal disaster so everyone is expected to take a budget cut to help the nation avert catastrophe, right? So the Repubs agreed to freeze defense, presumably hoping that by doing so it would prompt their opponents to be similarly cooperative in freezing spending on the myriad social programs that actually account for well over half of all federal expenditures.

But excuse me for suspecting that this hoped-for reciprocity won't materialize: The Dems will continue to insist that social welfare programs be expanded, as they always have and always do. And they'll absolutely pillory any Republican who tries to hold the line.

Republicans strike me as trusting to the point of gullibility, like Charlie Brown taking a running start to try to kick the football Lucy is holding. Every single time he's tried this, she pulls it away at the last moment and he falls flat. But the repeated experience teaches him nothing; he never learns.

In a cartoon strip that's cute. In real life...not so much.

Hope I'm wrong, but in politics experience trumps optimism. I'll predict here and now that the Dem leadership will win increases on social spending. And the Repubs who tried to cooperate with them by voting to freeze defense spending will be like, "Whoa, we thought you guys agreed that both parties needed to work together to reduce spending. And so, like, we helped you freeze defense, but now you won't help us freeze social spending. And like, that just doesn't seem fair, y'know?

So the Dems will see to it that the top GOP leaders get an invitation to George Clooney's next party--ensuring that business as usual in Washington continues.

Pelosi: Obamacare "an act of fiscal stability " ??

Sometimes I think some politicians don't understand the same English the rest of us do. How else to understand Nancy Pelosi's comment on Obozocare:
If we’re talking about fiscal stability, the Affordable Care Act is an act of fiscal stability.
Nancy had been talking about the need to "control" health-care costs. But I don't know of anyone with an IQ above room temperature who believes the government providing health care to millions of people who can't afford it now will save money. Quite the reverse: It's projected to cost tens of billions more than we spend now.

Moreover, if gummint health-care ends up resembling the Medicare model in any way, doctors will end up being forced to treat patients on the gummint's list for some lowball, bureaucrat-approved rate, which will lead to billing patients not on that list (i.e. the ones who are privately insured) more than today.

But that's not the worst of it: It's the total cost of the gummint footing the health care bills for an unknown number of millions of Americans. This is supposed to be "an act of fiscal stability," Nancy?

Clearly this is some new, gobble-speak definition of "stability" that I don't understand. It's stability in the same sense that death is a stable condition.

But at least Nancy was right about one thing: We had to pass the bill to find out what was in it. And we're learning new things all the time.

Wow, thanks, Democrats!

"You didn't build that" vs. "I totally deserve this..."

Obama wants you to believe that the driving force behind envisioning, starting and successfully running a business is...not the person who comes up with an idea, mortgages his house to get the money to start it, risks everything and works 70 or 80 hours a week for years to make it successful, but...some other person.

Thus a week ago he uttered the infamous line, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

CNN--which has always supported Democrats--ignored the remark for four days, finally reporting it only after the Romney campaign featured it in an ad.

Now flashback three years: Two whole weeks after he was sworn in as preezy, Oblahblah was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee--normally fairly anti-American--was totally in love with Obozo and awarded him the prize, passing over a field of people who had actually done something positive, to honor a person whose only experience with peace was being a U.S. senator for a bit under three years--during which time he gave dozens of speeches proposing peaceful solutions to thorny problems, and introducing critical bills to further world peace.

Just kidding. He didn't do squat. But he totally deserved the Nobel. He deserves all the credit for the Nobel, because... because... uh... er...because he's such a great orator, and never needs notes.

The phrase "You didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen" is reserved for businessmen.

July 19, 2012

One booming part of the economy: food stamps!

Recently C-SPAN was interviewing Democrat congresscritter Rosa DeLauro about the federal food stamp program. The gist was something like this:

Interviewer: The cost of the food stamp program rose from $30 billion in 2007 to $72 billion in 2011. Why the huge increase? Is it all due to the rough economy?"

DeLauro: Mostly. When there are difficult times, the number of people who use food stamps rises. When the economy gets better, the numbers drop. And we're already beginning to see a slight decrease in the numbers [on food stamps].

Interviewer: But Bloomberg reports that food stamp rolls are expanding even as unemployment decreases. [The Dept of Labor reported] a drop in unemployment between 2009 and 2011, yet the number of people on food stamps is continuing to rise. Some people think it's become too easy for folks to get on food stamps."

DeLauro: Uh...."

Okay, she didn't say that, and actually admitted that even though official unemployment was down slightly, that doesn't include people who have stopped looking for jobs, and that just might, possibly, barely be more than a few dozen people.

Which got me thinking: There is no good way to answer that question. Because if the number of Americans on food stamps is indeed rising (and it's up 140 percent in two years), either the gummint is 'cooking the books' about unemployment, or else people are getting on the program when they shouldn't.

If a Republican were prez, that would be a lose-either-way deal. But under the gentle reign of Buraq "Freebies" Obama, the MSM will ensure that this gets a spin that will help Democrats, by flooding the zone with stories about dozens of delightful and oddly photogenic single moms who depend on food stamps to feed their kids.

Equally predictably, you won't read or hear much from the MSM about thugs using food stamps to buy drugs, booze, guns, bling or lottery tickets.

Don't get me wrong--I think the food stamp program is generally a good idea. Just wish the MSM wasn't completely in the tank for the Dems.

July 17, 2012

"They could not be that brutal."

I read a lot of stuff on the Net, but a post today by Richard Fernandez is the most gripping I've read in years. It's the story of a man born in South Korea who in 1986 decided to defect to North Korea.

That's crazy enough, but to make matters far, far worse, the goofy sonofabitch insisted on dragging his loving wife and daughters along, even after his wife warned him it was a really dumb move.

You may wonder why any rational person would willingly defect from the free, prosperous South to the ghastly, totalitarian North. And the answer is that the man had just received a PhD (in Germany) in Marxist studies. At the university all his professors assured him daily that Marxism was far, far superior to capitalism and that individual freedom was overrated. When North Korean officials promised him free health care and a government job (sound like a certain U.S. political party you know?), that sealed his decision.

His poor wife--lacking the benefit of her husband's degree in Marxist studies--was aghast and distraught.

“Do you know what kind of place it is?” she asked. “You have not been there even once. How can you make such a reckless decision?”

But Oh replied that the northerners were Koreans too, so "they cannot be that brutal."

It is the classic line before the nightmare begins.

Being a dutiful wife, she and their two daughters stayed with husband/father as he defected. But as soon as he arrived in Pyongyang, Oh realized something was terribly wrong: They were met by party officials and children carrying flowers, but in the bitter cold of a North Korean December Oh noticed that the children weren't wearing socks, and their traditional clothes were so thin that they shivered. He began to suspect that they didn’t have any warm clothes.

“When I saw this I was really surprised and my wife even started to cry.”

Ignoring his questions about the promised job and free health care, Oh and family were taken to a guarded camp where he was drilled in the sayings of Kim Il-Sung. Living conditions were harsh, the better to make them fear losing what little they had.

Soon Oh was told that if he and his family wanted to keep eating he must take an assignment to Europe, where his job would be to lure more South Koreans to come to the worker’s paradise, and to convince Europeans what a great place it was. He was ready to cooperate, but was stopped by the selfless courage of his wife.

She was furious. “I remember the two of us talking about it softly under the blanket. I told my wife that by fulfilling this mission, we would preserve our livelihood in North Korea. But she slapped me in the face.” His wife said they would have to pay the price for his mistakes – he could not help entrap others.

Condemned herself, his wife did not want to have any part in luring others to the same hell. So when Oh arrived in Copenhagen, he defected to the West. For Oh it meant going back to South Korea--whose freedom and plenty he had renounced just months before. But for his wife and daughters it was a death sentence.

They were taken to Yodok concentration camp, and Oh has not seen them in 25 years.

Now 70 years old, Oh sounds like a man haunted by the knowledge that his stubbornness, ignorance and ego wrenched his loving wife and daughters from a free and prosperous country and condemned them to a living hell.

What must it be like to hear your broken daughter ask, “Why, daddy? Why?”

Why indeed, citizen.

Mr. Oh took 3 innocents to their doom. But the intellectuals who molded Oh's thinking--and that of much of our nation's so-called elite--are dragging along a whole nation. In fact a man like Bill Ayers is worse than Oh, since the latter at least had the courage of his misguided convictions, and volunteered to live in the Marxist society he believed was so superior.

Ayers and his comrades lack that courage, choosing to live here while denigrating our country at every turn, and convincing millions of Americans that it is indeed possible to get something for nothing.

How many Americans are convinced that everyone can have "free" health care and a great government job if only they vote for Obama again? How many are excited at the prospect of “fundamentally transforming this country?”

And surely the promises must be true. It couldn’t possibly be a lie--a cheap trick to win votes--because no one could be that dishonest. After all, as Oh noted when contemplating the tales about the north: the people pushing these stories are Americans too.

"They could not be that brutal."

May all so-called "progressives" find their way to North Korea.


Postscript: This story was broadcast by the BBC, and published on its website. This is significant because historically, the BBC has always loved the Left. Thus posting this story is, in effect, an "admission against interest" and therefore much more credible than if it had been published by some other organization.

July 15, 2012

'Banker's son, football star, kills girl in car accident'

Here's a story that should make your blood boil:
St. Paul, MN-- A 16-year-old high school girl was sitting on the grass at her school, nowhere near the street, when an SUV vaulted over the curb, struck and killed her.

The vehicle was driven by a star football player at the school, son of a prominent Christian banker. The driver had been convicted of drunk driving in 2001 and had had his license revoked. He never tried to get it reinstated, and just a few months ago he was convicted of driving without a license, but avoided jail because his father was a prominent figure in the community.
Does that seem somehow...unfair to you that the driver didn't get jail time for his drunk driving charge, nor for driving without a license, simply because he was a star athlete and the son of rich parents? I know it sure struck me as a horrible miscarriage of justice. Indeed, there was no justice here at all, and as a result an innocent teen--who wasn't even near the street--is dead.

Oh, wait, I seem to have gotten a scrambled story off the Net: Seems the driver in this case wasn't a star football player, nor the son of a banker, nor of prominent parents.

So how the hell did he manage to avoid jail on the drunk-driving and driving without a license charges? What was the guy doing still driving a car?

Oh, now I see: Driver was an illegal immigrant, and because the mayor and police chief of St. Paul have announced they won't penalize or deport illegals, they gave the guy a slap on the wrist for the two earlier charges and let him go.

Nice, huh.

Would the cops have given your son that same deal? Not on your life.

And now that Obozo has announced it's now the official policy of his government to NOT enforce immigration laws, that sort of treatment will become the norm everywhere, instead of just in so-called sanctuary cities--whose nutty residents apparently approved that policy and thus deserve every consequence thereof.

Oh, and one final coda to this one: The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported the girl's death and funeral, with the following headline:
St. Paul teen killed by SUV remembered at her funeral.’
"Killed by SUV," eh?

Damn SUV just decided to go for a spin by itself. That would indeed be quite a story.

But since that didn't happen, it's almost like the paper wants you to miss the real story.


And before anyone rushes to point out that native-born Americans cause a lot more fatal auto accidents than illegals, I'm well aware. That wasn't the point. Rather, it was that under our current liberal rules, illegals who have broken some *other* law are often released without any action.

So much for being a nation of laws, eh?

Quotes from Chairman Bow

If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
--Barack Obama
Clueless. Socialist.

Disastrous combination.

Oh, for those absolutely clueless liberal readers who are absolutely certain the above is actually a mis-quote and was taken from Fox or similar: Click on the link. It's from the official White House transcript.

Thank you so, so much, those of you who inflicted this disaster on our nation. Guy makes Jimmy Carter look like a rocket scientist.

July 14, 2012

GOP opposing tax hike on top earners is losing issue

Okay, I’m as conservative and anti-Obozo as they come, but I gotta say that Republicans threatening to vote against an extension of the Bush tax cuts because the Dem proposal doesn’t extend that extension to people making over $250K/year seems to be a *losing issue for the GOP.*

What it says to most people is that GOP congressional leaders would choose not to extend the tax cuts to anyone, if the other option was to let the Dems raise taxes a couple of percent on top earners.

I’m well aware that an extra two percent on top earners will do essentially zip to reduce our deficit and debt, and that if the Dems succeed in raising tax rates on that group this time, they’ll lower the threshold next time. Yes and yes, I get it. But hear me out:

GOP House members need to queue up a list of things we want but Dems don’t, and agree to concede on the two percent tax hike on top earners if the Dems will agree to whatever our matching concession is. The idea is, the Dems will bitch and moan and whine and reject, and that will give the GOP the perfect defense:

We offered to do it if they’d do X or Y or Z or W, but the Dems rejected every offer we made. That shows that what they really want is NOT higher taxes on top incomes, but simply to blackmail conservatives by threatening to block extension of the Bush tax cuts for *everyone* if they didn’t get their way. Is that your idea of cooperation, or bipartisanship, or a new, more civil tone? Sure doesn’t sound like it to us.

Ever seen that poster where someone is holding a gun to a dog's head, and the caption is "One more [something] and the dog gets it."? It's effective because the dog looks innocent and surprised, and clearly didn't do anything wrong, but is being threatened (jokingly) to force someone else to do/not do something.

In this case, Dems are holding all unfortunate, struggling taxpayers hostage--gun to the head--to force the GOP to agree to raise tax rates on top incomes. If we do, they will then cheer endlessly: "Look, peasants, we fought--for YOU--to raise taxes on the rich, and we WON!! Yay, and vote Dem." And that will be effective.

What we need to do is change the game on them: Force *them* to either concede on a point we want, or else *decline* an offer by the GOP to agree to a small tax hike on top incomes. If the latter, it shows their true colors to everyone. And of course if they take the deal, the GOP at least gets something we want and couldn't otherwise get-- like a federal law allowing every state to require a photo ID to vote, to use just one example.

Of course the devil is in the details--and given our current leadership I wouldn't be surprised if the GOP ended up trading higher taxes for a handful of magic beans. But the *tactic* is a good one.

End of transmission.

A modest plan for raising fed income tax rates

Over at Ace's place, co-blogger Laura posted about how left/liberal policies were bankrupting cities. But amazingly, leftists/libs seemed unable to comprehend that the reason the cities are bankrupt is liberals' insistence that their historic policies are not to blame in any way. Rather, the problem is that government doesn't tax "the rich" enough.

Many (possibly most) liberal policies inexorably lead to cities spending money they don't have. They typically do this by selling bonds, which is like borrowing from your kids. One common cause of cities running short of cash is to fund pensions and current salaries for retired and active city/county workers.

City councils respond by borrowing ever more money, and raising sales taxes and other fees to ever higher rates. Each increase incrementally causes a small number of taxpayers to give up the fight and go off the above-ground economy. Some of the poorest who have managed to own their home can't pay their ad-valorem taxes and lose their home.

When overtaxed residents complain and vote down tax increases, councils wail pitifully that they'll now have to cut police and fire protection because of the stupid, mean, stingy, greedy voters. What bullshit: There's a ton of--if not outright waste, at least crappy decisions made by cities every day. Stop making those decisions and see how much farther your tax revenue will go!

Example: Why does any city have a taxpayer-funded pension plan? Why not let employees do the 401K thing, with employer matching contributions up to a couple of thou per year? Such "defined contribution" plans beat the hell out of "defined benefit" plans, where people with the same years of service get the same fat pension.

Well of course you know why they don't make the efficient choice: Politicians don't want to fight with the public-employees union, and figure its easier to go along with the union than fight to keep costs down. After all, look how much heat Wisconsin governor Scott Walker got for bucking the unions.

Until a few years ago I would have suggested that taxpayers could use the initiave petition process to force state, city and county governments to switch to less-costly retirement plans. But as Justice John Roberts' recent opinion on the constitutionality of Obamacare showed (and before that, the overturning of California's "Prop 8"), we can't depend on the courts to uphold/enforce perfectly constitutional measures, nor to overturn laws that violate the Constitution.

So I see no real hope of bringing government to heel short of armed revolt. And I don't know anyone who wants it to come to that.

But I do have an idea for a proposal for a GOP-introduced bill that would make amusing theater: Have the GOP offer to let Democratic voters set the tax rate for the whole country. But not simply be decree. Instead, for two years any Democrat who had a total federal tax liability of more than $5000 could go public with his/her return, and write a check to Uncle for some higher amount. Then at the end of the second year, all federal tax rates would be raised by the weighted average of the percentage of increase that persons declaring themselves Democrats on their 1040 paid, and would scale up from there by the same increments as today.

Rounded to the nearest whole percent.

So if every Dem who paid more than $5k in fed income tax would have been required to pay an average of, say, 22% of their AGI in tax, but instead voluntarily paid 30% to the feds, all tax brackets would rise by 8%.

Simple and very powerful, eh?

Of course, if a thousand Hollywood stars and elite newspaper reporters and editors paid twice what they had to, and the rest of the hard-working but less-enlightened Democrat voters paid only what they had to, tax brackets would rise by...um...zero.

Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Oh, and just to keep things fair, add the provision that if taxes end up not being raised within, say, ten years, people who overpaid today can apply for a full refund of the amount they overpaid.

Hell, even pay 'em whatever the going interest rate on U.S. borrowings is. The only catch is that the names of everyone who applies for a refund is to be published in the Wall Street Journal and NY Times every week for a month. So we'll all be able to see who among libs is willing to loan the U.S. government money at two percent, or whatever.

July 13, 2012

Whoa! Look what's happened to Medicaid!

Medicaid was one of Lyndon Johnson's "great society" welfare programs. It gives "free" (i.e. paid by taxpayers) medical care to people who can't afford it, regardless of their age.

You won't be surprised to learn that it's grown enormously since its creation in 1965.

The graph at right shows the number of employees per medicaid recipient. (Don't know whether this is nationwide or just for Pennsylvania.)

You'll notice the number drops like an anvil from 13:1 (private sector) in 1966 to just 1.9:1 today.



As most of you probably recognized quickly, this graph represents a complete disaster, since it shows that every single private-sector employee is having to pay just over half the total cost of providing medicaid assistance to a person receiving it.

Tell me, oh wise Democrats and liberals: Is there a limit to how low this number can go before the cost per taxpayer grows too high to continue?

The graph shows that Medicaid has exploded in terms of number of people seeking that form of assistance. But of course, innumerate Democrat congresswhores assure us this kind of explosion can't possibly happen to Obamacare, because today's computers are *so* much smarter than in 1966, and we know *so* much more about human behavior than we did then. And all the models say it just won't happen.

Or something like that.

Now check out this graph:

It shows that not only has the number of medicaid recipients per worker been growing exponentially, so have expenditures. And again, bad news for taxpayers.

But good news for Democrats, since it means more folks who can be counted on to vote Democrat, since those receiving "free benefits" surely don't want to lose 'em. In fact they'd like to get *more* freebies.

Liberals: Bribing voters for over a century.

July 12, 2012

"An enormous success..."

As I keep saying: This just keeps getting better and better.

Latest example: An official in Obama's Dept of Energy appeared before a House committee today to testify about the infamous loan program that gave literally Billions of taxpayer dollars to companies that quickly failed--and were never good bets to begin with from a business standpoint.

And how did this official describe the results of this program?

He said it was "an enormous success."

Gateway Pundit noted that Frantz may have omitted some...uh...relevant details:
Frantz forgot to list the green companies that went belly-up since receiving Obama dollars. Heritage reported:

For those who only hear about these failing companies one by one, here's a list of all the "clean energy" companies supported by President Obama’s grants and loan guarantees that are now failing or have filed for bankruptcy. The liberal media hopes you’ve forgotten them, but we haven’t.

Evergreen Solar
SpectraWatt
Solyndra (received $535 million – now bankrupt)
Beacon Power (received $43 million)
AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy
Nevada Geothermal (received $98.5 million)
SunPower (received $1.5 billion)
First Solar (received $1.46 billion)
Babcock & Brown (an Australian company that got $178 million)
Ener1 (subsidiary EnerDel received $118.5 million)
Amonix (received 5.9 million)
The National Renewable Energy Lab
Fisker Automotive
Abound Solar (received $400 million)
Chevy Volt (taxpayers basically own GM)
Solar Trust of America ($2.1 billion fed loan guarantee – now bankrupt)
A123 Systems (received $279 million)
Willard & Kelsey Solar Group (received $6 million)
Johnson Controls (received $299 million)
Schneider Electric (received $86 million)

That’s 19 (that we know of so far). We also know that loans went to foreign "green" companies (Fisker sent money to their overseas plant to develop an electric car), and that 80% of these loans went to companies founded or headed by President Obama’s campaign donors.

The Obama Administration calls this a success.

In fact, "An enormous success"....

And freedom is slavery, war is peace and Obama will give free health care to everyone.

July 11, 2012

Bankruptcy of cities as a preference cascade?

San Bernardino joins Stockton, California in filing for bankruptcy.

Back in my last career we had a saying: Where there's one, there's two. Does anyone on the planet think we're not gonna see another California city go bankrupt?

Then consider this: If you were a city looking for some of that sweet, sweet federal bailout money, would you think your chances would be better under Obozo or a President Romney? Then if you're a mayor or council leader and are aware enough to see that bankruptcy is inevitable, would you wait til the election to file, or would you decide maybe August or September would give you a better chance at some last-second vote-bribing legislation from a desperate Obozo and his Democrat flying monkeys?

And as many commenters have noted, who will the Dems call on to bail out bankrupt cities and states (invariably run by Democrats)? Why, all U.S. taxpayers, of course.

Thus will the endless money train funneling public-employee unions and pensions be permitted to continue, like a plague of locusts, devouring all productive businesses in one city/county/state before moving the vacuum cleaner hose to the next.

While a huge majority may want to stop this robbery, once the Constitution was shredded by King Barry, no other mechanism exists--short of civil war--to accomplish that.

Wheeeee!

Arizona singled out, but it's not political. Noooo...

In April of 2010 the governor of Arizona signed into law a bill requiring immigrants in the state to carry documents verifying their legal status in the U.S, authorizing state and local law enforcement to check an immigrant's status, and making it illegal to hire or transport illegal immigrants.

On June 25, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down three of the four provisions of this law, ruling that legal immigrants didn't have to carry registration documents; that state police could not arrest someone suspected only of being in the U.S. illegally; and that the state couldn't criminalize the hiring or transporting of illegal immigrants.

By contrast, all the justices upheld the provision of the law allowing state police to inquire into the immigration status of a person already stopped for some other, unrelated reason.

Within hours of the publication of the court's decision the Obama administration announced that it U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would no longer cooperate with Arizona--specifically that one state--when the state asked the feds whether someone suspected of being in the U.S. illegally was in fact illegal.

The fact that this change specifically singled out Arizona, and the timing of this announcement just hours after the court's opinion was released, naturally raised suspicion that the Obama administration was retaliating against the state after the court upheld even one of the law's provisions.

But such a brazen use of government power to intimidate a state's legislators or citizens would be viewed as an abuse of power by many. Thus it was necessary for Obama's minions to deny that the obvious connection existed.

Enter a dickhead by the name of John Morton, director of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Morton had been asked to appear at a meeting of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on border security. During his testimony before the subcommittee, Representative Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) asked Morton about the decision to stop cooperating with his state. Quayle asked,
I find it a little concerning that you recently [stopped cooperating] with Arizona state and local law enforcement agencies. What is the reasoning behind it? Why pick Arizona as the sole one right now, to actually remove a program that, you said, was an essential component of DHS’s...immigration enforcement strategy?
Morton's reply:
We were not going to renew the 287(g) agreements that were rescinded in Arizona for the next fiscal year, so we were going to terminate them anyway in a few months.

I think we did it [when we did] because we thought that it made the most sense to do it at the same time. We knew that there would be questions how things would operate, and we wanted to set the record clear.

Oh, it's very clear, Mr. bureaucratic dick. That's a "Fuck you, congressman" if I've ever heard one.

Kick the Kenyan marxist out in November. Then prosecute.

July 10, 2012

Economic recovery or not? Depends on who's president

Obama's Secretary of Labor says the creation of 70,000 jobs last month was proof that the economy is recovering. Obama chief advisor Valerie Jarrett agrees.

Wow, what a relief! Cuz for a coupla days there I thought when the economy only created 70,000 jobs in a month it was actually bad news.

Reeally bad news.

See, I thought I read somewhere that economists had calculated that the economy had to create about 220,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with immigration and population growth. Guess I must have imagined that.

Flashback! In 2004, when George Bush was in the White House and unemployment was 5.6%, one monthly labor report showed the economy added 310,000 jobs that month. And how did Illinois senator Obama describe this? He denied that the economy was improving, saying it was far too soon to say we'd made progress.

But today, with Obama as prez, 70,000 jobs created in a month is touted as solid evidence of economic recovery.

Funny how standards for everything change depending on which party is in the White House.

Governor of MA vetoes welfare reform bill

Oh you're jus' gonna love this: Massachusetts' electronic welfare benefits program has reportedly been riddled with fraud, so the state legislature--which has historically been extremely generous in giving taxpayer bucks to the poor--finally got serious about reform.

Seems taxpayers were discovering that welfare recipients were using the electronic benefits cards to buy guns and jewelry, get tattoos, manicures and so on. Finally, in a sea change no one believed would happen in this century, a majority of legislators passed a bill saying EBT cards could no longer be used for those things.

Sounds like a reform long overdue, right? So did it stop the fraud and waste?

We'll never know, cuz the governor of the state--Obozo buddy Deval Patrick--vetoed the bill, insisting that welfare reforms "were already on track without the Legislature’s meddling."

Cute, huh.

See, Massachusetts has passed the "tipping point"--the point at which half of voters pay no income taxes but instead receive taxpayer-funded "freebies." Understandably, these recipients will continue to vote for pols who promise to continue their gravy train at or above the current level of benefits. If a pol can capture 90 percent of this group, re-election is virtually assured.

Patrick is simply playing to long-time Democrat constituents.

July 09, 2012

Obama: Lousy job creation caused by...tax cuts??

This just gets better and better: This afternoon Obozo gave a speech in which he blamed the extremely weak job growth on--are you ready?--tax cuts.

Obama didn't explain the mechanism by which he believes cutting taxes reduces job growth--but then kings don't have to explain their thinking. In any case Obozo's theory certainly contradicts decades of seemingly uncontroversial economic theory that tax cuts stimulate spending, thus raising total demand, thus ultimately creating jobs.

But of course King Barry doesn't need a PhD in economics to know how tax cuts affect job creation 'cuz he's a "community organizer." And they know all about how economics reeallly works. Kinda like the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Property is theft! Yeah, man!

Rumor has it the Nobel committee has already decided to award Barry the prize for economics, to go with his Nobel peace prize--which they decided to give him the day he took office. Cuz they knew he was gonna do so much peace-y stuff n' all.

Gotta say that when I first read the transcript I thought this was a prank from the Koch brothers, cuz I couldn't believe he'd say something so flatly at odds with decades of economic theory. But the video does show him saying that.

Eh, they prolly photoshopped it.

I was wondering: Will any reporter have the balls to ask him where he got this novel economic theory? Nah. The only guys who would question him about that aren't allowed to ask questions.

Neat trick, eh?

Shameful

Those of you who pay attention to immigration, borders and gun control know that Brian Terry was a U.S. Border Patrol agent who was killed by a gang of Mexican gunmen about ten miles inside U.S. territory.

That was bad enough. It's the kind of thing that used to start wars--and justifiably so. But to make matters worse, a gun dropped by one of the Mexicans was one of the weapons illegally sold to "straw buyers" by order of Eric Holder's Dept of Injustice, with the full knowledge that the real buyer was Mexican drug gangs. This was under the infamous Operation Fast and Furious, about which Holder refuses to disclose certain information to congress.

Now the next shoe has dropped, and it's even worse: When Agent Terry and his squad confronted the heavily-armed Mexican gang members--again, well inside U.S. territory--they ordered the intruders to drop their weapons. Not surprisingly, the heavily armed Mexicans didn't comply, so in accordance with the policy handed down by Border Patrol executives, Agent Terry's squad fired beanbag rounds at them.

So not only did Eric Holder's justice department sell the Mexican drug cartels the guns that killed Agent Terry, their standing orders also required him to fire beanbag rounds at the heavily armed men who killed him.

Shameful.

Want to create a million new jobs in a month?

A few days ago writer and blogger by the name of Charles Hugh Smith penned a thought-provoking piece titled "Why I can't hire you." Whether you're looking for a job, a small-business owner or simply a taxpaying employee worried about the nation's deficit and taxes, it's definitely worth reading.

Summary: Say I own a small "mom and pop" business, and we're very busy. I think we could increase revenue if we hired a couple of employees. Now suppose you're a hard-working, skilled person who's looking for a job. Unfortunately, in the current economy it would be crazy for me to hire you, because the cost and risk of doing so far outweigh the likely benefit to me.

He then recites a very long list of the tasks a business owner takes on when he/she hires even a single employee. It's depressing and daunting, and as part owner of a small business myself, I completely agree with him. The red tape and reporting requirements just for taxes alone is shocking--and that's without a single "outside" employee.

In other words, there's a huge disincentive to hire that first outside employee. Of course once a business has, say, 50 employees, the marginal cost of hiring number 51 is small. It's that first one that's the high hurdle

Would you like to create a million new, private-sector jobs almost overnight? Exempt businesses with less than $300,000 in annual revenue from almost ALL reporting, tax and licensing requirements. Let them treat employees as contract labor, meaning employees are responsible for paying their own Social Security and withholding (artfully named a "self-employment tax).

Many small businesses wouldn't exceed the revenue limit for years. But when one did it would have enough employees and revenue that the cost of complying with all the red tape would be spread over more employees instead of just one. That way the owner wouldn't have to overcome such a huge financial and time hurdle to hire that first employee.

I can hear statists and bureaucrats everywhere wailing already: "Oh, we could NEVER do that, because...[insert bullshit reason here]."

Hey, do you want to create a million new jobs in a month or don't you? The truth is that bureaucrats would rather people stay unemployed, because that means job security, promotions and power for the bureaucrat.

Can anyone guess where that road leads? I knew you could.

What in the world are they thinking?

The government of California is struggling to cope with a projected budget deficit of a few billion dollars. So what do the state's politicians propose?

"Hey, let's spend Billions to build a bullet-train!"

Great! There's so much automobile traffic between, say, San Francisco and L.A. that a train could prolly make enough to cover its operating costs.

Enviro: "Wait, we don't want you to put a rail line down the coast. It's way scenic and a rail line would ruin the view!"

Pol: "Okay, guess we'll scrap that idea."

Enviro: "Oh, no! We're all in favor of rail 'cuz it'll replace so many icky, polluting cars! We just don't want you to put it there.

Pol: "Well just where do you think that hyper-expensive project should go?"

Enviro: "The Central Valley. Say, Stockton to San Bernardino."

Pol: "What? But except for commercial trucks, almost nobody else drive from one of those places to the other. The thing wouldn't have any ridership."

Enviro: "Why does that matter? What's important is that you build it. See, it'll be a powerful statement that rail is good and automobiles are bad!"

Pol: "But it'll cost billions--and will lose hundreds of millions every year in operating costs! You people are...wait, how much did you contribute to our re-election campaign?"

Enviro: "Like we said--Central Valley. Oh, and we can get the feds to kick in 90 percent of the building costs. We gotta friend in the White House who absolutely loves big, shovel-ready projects like this."


So guess what, peons? Y'all are about to be paying billions of your tax dollars to build a rail line to nowhere, that will create thousands of construction jobs for illegal aliens in California and will then cost millions per year to operate, since it'll be nearly unused.

Y'say you're less than thrilled about that? Y'say this decision shows California's state pols are crazy or on the take? Congratulations--you're waking up.

Now tell me this: If you all can see why this was a stupid thing for California's pols to do, how does that state's situation differ materially from that of the entire U.S.? We're in debt up to our eyeballs, but instead of reducing goofy, unneeded spending, the current resident of the Oval Office keeps shoveling billions into more goofy, wasteful projects, like Solyndra, First Solar, Abound and so on.

Oh, and he keeps blocking things like drilling and pipelines and coal mining that actually do make a profit and employ people. And help keep our energy costs down.

The moron is on tape saying that under his plans "your energy costs will necessarily skyrocket." Well at least that part of his plan is working.

July 08, 2012

Bullshit from courts, part gazillion. Or: the "penaltax" is unconstitutional

Some things are so rarely discussed--because they seem so obvious--that when a court eventually says "You can't do that," or "We hold that the federal government does indeed have the power to do X" (which it couldn't before that moment), almost everyone is taken by surprise. And thus no one has the arguments in hand to immediately call bullshit.

Let me be more clear: Judges populate virtually the same bell-curve as the rest of us. Which means some of them are--if not complete idiots, then at least people who often seem to be carried away by their own brilliance in seeing lines of reasoning invisible to the less-gifted.

Either way, some of the opinions judges write seem...how to put it?...ah: to totally violate the Constitution. But unless someone pops up right away and slaps the thing upside the head, within weeks the opinion takes on an aura of 'precedent' and essentially can't thereafter be undone.

(If you think this is merely hyperbole, consider that the U.S. Supreme Court has never bothered to reverse their infamous 1857 decision in the Dred Scott case, which implicitly held that slavery was legal. And no, Scott was not overturned by the Slaughterhouse Cases since the latter dealt only with persons born in the U.S, where the opinion in Scott applied also to persons of foreign birth.)

One case that shows how easily poor judicial reasoning becomes enshrined as legal precedent is Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad, in which the court considered the limits (if any) on the power on congress to tax citizens. That opinion says
That the authority conferred upon Congress by [section] 8 of article 1 ‘to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises’ is exhaustive and embraces every conceivable power of taxation has never been questioned....
The opinion is filled with phrases like "...the conceded complete and all-embracing taxing power...” “...the complete and perfect delegation of the power to tax”; “the complete and all-embracing authority to tax”; and “the plenary power [to tax]” (emphasis added).

While the author of the opinion may have been focused on the fact that the Constitution indeed confers a power to tax, and that this basic power has not been disputed, the fact is that the Constitution severely and explicitly restricts the types of taxes congress is permitted to levy. Specifically,
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken. --(Article I Section 9)
This restriction was so unequivocal and absolute that when congress decided it wanted to tax personal income, the members knew it would take a Constitutional Amendment to make that legal. Thus the 16th amendment (July, 1909):
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
So a century ago, at least, congress knew the Constitutionally-imposed limits and was unwilling to brazenly exceed them.

It's vital to note that the Constitution explicitly approved forms of taxation other than direct "capitation," such as "Duties, Imposts and Excises," but these were taxes on goods rather than people. Thus it seems clear that the power of congress to impose taxes on people is hardly unlimited, and most assuredly does NOT "embrace every conceivable power of taxation."

So what are we to make of congress imposing the "penaltax" that is the central punitive mechanism needed to enforce the mandate that is central to Obamacare? Clearly the Supreme Court published an opinion in Brushaber claiming that the power of congress to tax was complete, all-encompassing, total, unchallenged. But just as clearly, the Constitution says the exact opposite.

Now, I'm not a lawyer and I don't read all that well, and the writing in Brushaber is, ah, ridiculously verbose and circumlocutory, but near as I can tell the crux of the case was a challenge to the authority of congress to tax income. Justice White wrote a couple of thousand words--including those quoted above saying congress had a "complete and all-embracing taxing power"--but could more easily have said "Read the frickin' 16th Amendment."

Why is this important? Because Justice White's painful novel notwithstanding, Brushaber was not about whether congress had the power to tax anything it wished, but whether it had the power to tax income. And that power had been explicitly granted by the long and difficult process of amending the Constitution--including ratification by 'the people' via their state legislatures. It's the way the founders intended such major changes would have to be made.

Now I readily acknowledge that the various states are free to tax anything and any kind of behavior (or refusal to engage in a certain behavior) that their citizens will tolerate. That is in fact the essence of the tenth amendment. But the Constitution gives congress only two kinds of taxing power: per capita, levied equally on all; and taxes on goods ("imposts, duties and excises").

The penaltax in Obamacare is none of these. It is thus unconstitutional--regardless of the words in Brushaber, not least because that case was settled by the 16th amendment.

Un-Constitutional. Tax. Period.

Postcript: Before being appointed to the Supreme Court, Justice Edward Douglass White (author of the Brushaber opinion) had previously been a U.S. senator. Thus it's not at all surprising that he would ascribe to congress powers greater than the Constitution actually granted.

July 07, 2012

Sharia atrocity number 3,583

Far too many Americans seem to buy the line that Islam is "the religion of peace."

Not even "a religion of peace," but "the".

Ask yourself, would adherents of a peaceful religion execute a woman for adultry? Reuters reports that happened last week in Afghanistan, in front of a crowd of 150 men. The executioner was a member of the Taliban.

Let us quickly note a crucial difference: Apologists for atrocities committed under the auspices of Sharia law correctly note that ghastly acts are committed by nominal followers of every religion who have simply gone crazy. But this execution wasn't the act of a lone nut, but a deed performed before a cheering crowd of 150, all seemingly approving the execution.

In other words, either this was the statistically improbable convergence of 150 nutcases in the same place, or else this was the institution of Sharia/Islam working as designed.

What features should U.S. health care have?

Recently there's been a growing chorus from the liberal media along the lines of "If those stupid, knuckle-dragging, bitter, clinging, Neanderthal Rethuglicans were to somehow --totally against the will of the overwhelming majority of Americans, ya know--manage to repeal our wonderful Obamacare, what do they propose to replace it with?"

While the best answer is probably "Not a thing," I'm pretty sure the wafflers and RINOs will be cowed by the libs and MSM and will quickly agree that they need to keep most of what's in Obamacare and simply tweak the worst parts to make everything rosy. (Gotta worry about re-election, dontcha know.)

In that spirit, let's see if liberals and conservatives can agree on anything re health care:

I'm confident virtually all conservatives will agree that no one with a potentially life-threatening emergency should be denied emergency care because of poverty. And I don't know anyone who's suggested that.

And as I would hope every liberal knows, that was U.S. law long before Obamacare.

What we have to do is figure out how to pay ER's for providing emergency care for people who can't pay. I'll describe one way to do that below, called Plan E.

Next: What to do about people who can't pay, but because they know they can't be denied care, go to the ER for routine, non-acute problems? Here's a heretical but effective response: Don't treat 'em at the ER. Instead, give 'em a pre-printed, one-page list of walk-in clinics in the area and send 'em on their way. The list should be divided into clinics that will take the uninsured and those that are willing to accept monthly payments, and these should be at the top of the list.

Guess what? Local clinics will instantly do the math and some will decide that they'll be able to make a small amount by getting on the top of this list.

Better yet: News of the new policy will spread with amazing speed, such that I expect the number of people seeking ER treatment for non-threatening conditions will drop by half after the first week, then half again by the end of the second. Even people who are poor and/or low-information don't want to waste their time.

Oh, and ER to also give these folks a short writeup of what the staff has found concerning their medical condition and tell the patient to present this to the clinic when they go. This will give the clinic staff a second data point.

Third: Exempt all walk-in clinics that agree both to treat uninsured patients *and* to be put on the list handed out by the ER from all Health Privacy Act regs, and any other regs that could be deleted without affecting *medical* efficiency.

Fourth: Encourage clinics to keep records of everyone who presents for treatment but both lacks insurance and claims to be indigent. Then pay a college kid to collate this info. (Hell, for a measly $50-grand a year I'd do it myself.) Anyone found to be abusing the system--such as by failing to make agreed monthly payments for services rendered--will go on an on-line list attesting to this. Abuse it too much and no one will treat your routine problems. You get put on a pay-cash-in-advance status.

Okay, that's enough for now. Now for "Plan E" --how to pay for the cost of ER's treating uninsured/indigent patients for acute conditions: Have the feds, state and local gummints split a quarterly tab three ways. The split could be equal, or more like 40-40-20. Point is that the locals--including local reporters--would be far more able to monitor local ERs to ensure they're not padding their treatment claims.

The reason for making a cash-strapped local gummint participate is that making the local gummint have some skin in the game gives them an incentive to ensure honesty in the accounting. Conversely, if they don't pay something they have zero incentive to keep the local hospital honest.

Since this is already too long, I'll only note one more point for now about a beneficial change to health care: Pass a fed law allowing insurance companies with more than a few million customers to sell health insurance in all states. The nominal reason most states require a company to have a physical presence in that state to sell insurance is that state regulators know from experience that if an out-if-state company commits an egregious wrong, they often duck and dodge inquiries seeking to determine the facts.

And I don't believe opening health insurance to all companies regardless of state was addressed in Obamacare.

More later.