Considering that water is a notoriously unreactive fuel, I'm guessing that unicorn flatus is involved, somehow.
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This one's inevitable: Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis? The Sears Tower will be renamed the Willis Tower. *sigh* Whatever.
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So Obama wants to socialize medicine. Except, apparently, for wounded veterans, who will have to have private insurance? Right now veterans only have to pay for care which is not related to service injuries--eg the guy who got a leg blown off in Iraq doesn't have to pay for a prosthetic leg, but he does have to pay for having his earache checked out.
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Jim Cramer said he likes Obama but doesn't like some of Obama's plans. Now an ex-congresscritter is calling for investigations of Jim Cramer.
Message: If you are effective at disagreeing with Obama, prepare to be punished.
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White Senator compares Obama "stimulus" to Zimbabwe. Black Senator says he is raaaaaaaaacist! for doing so.
Black Senator--Senator Clyburn--says the white senator's statements are "beyond the pale".
You know what? I object to that black man's obviously racist use of the word "pale" in that statement!!!
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Senator Clyburn? We elected a black man President. STFU.
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Our new governor here in Illinois wants to increase the income tax rate. Illinois has a flat income tax; it's 3%. Quinn wants it to be 4.5%.
That might fix the budget problem for one year. Then the Democrats in the state assembly will jack up their spending again and we'll be right back in the same problem. Then what will Quinn do? Increase the rate again, to 6%?
The Democrat answer to budget shortfalls is always the same: increase taxes. That's why Chicago currently has the highest sales taxes in the country.
And who's going to stop them, anyway? Illinois is run by Democrats. Thanks to Chicago it votes Democrat in national elections. The state assembly is controlled by Democrats and we have a Democrat governor. Whatever the Democrats want, they get, and the only thing that even slows them down is their propensity for internecine conflicts.
You've got to love living in a blue state. You just have to. Because if you don't, you lose your mind.
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This picture of FAIL is not work safe. It shows a man taking a picture of his daughter posing with a big pink Mickey Mouse...who has an erection almost as big as the girl is tall. The girl is casually resting her arm on the thing.
The comments insist it's a Photoshop; I can't really tell.
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The Anchoress discusses Obama's about-face on the economy.
Up until last week, the economy was an unprecedented disaster and we were all going to be eating cardboard before long. This week, Obama's saying that the economy isn't nearly as bad as all that and everyone's making it out to be a lot worse than it really is.
This begs the obvious question, which many others have already posed: if indeed things aren't as bad as we thought they were, can we just cancel the record deficit spending? Because if things are actually okay, we don't need to spend the money.
Expect the Tweek administration to issue some "corrections" over the next month or so in which they explain that no, the economy is doing better because of the deficit spending, even though the checks haven't actually been written yet. The massive pork spending is creating the expectation of a better economy, you see, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Without the massive deficit spending, we're still screwed, and so you see Obama and the Democrats have Saved Us All.
*hurk*
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"Massive deficit spending"--the Democrats were whining and bitching about "the huge war deficit" that was resulting from action in Iraq...and now they've spent more in less than two months than was spent on the entire Iraq war. Basically our government is just turning up the speed on the printing presses down at the Treasury.
The inevitable result of printing more money is to increase prices and interest rates, and to drive employment down--and since this recession is already on track to be the longest one since the end of WW2, you can expect things to get worse before they show even the slightest sign of maybe considering the idea of contemplating the notion of getting even slightly better.
1929 could have been a recession if the government in charge at the time had done things differently--and if the following administration had not done more of the same wrong things--but they didn't have the benefit of experience; there was no prior example of why what they were doing was wrong. There had been other economic downturns but not in the highly connected world of the 20th century, where the economy was beginning to globalize. Protectionism might have worked to stop such an economic event in the nineteenth century; but in the 20th, it failed.
This administration doesn't have that excuse. The examples given by the Great Depression should have been enough for any competent economist to say, "Okay, if we do that, we're only going to make things worse." Except that the economists in this administration have a greater interest in liberal policy and less interest in continued good economic performance. They cling to the worn-out Keynesian playbook even though it has been demonstrated to be worth its weight in toilet paper time and again.
And in any event the economists are overruled by politicians, who want power; and in Washington, D.C., "power" descends from how much money you get to spend.
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Work tonight. Whee!