* * *
Really? Sign me up! Princess Pelosi says that Mitt Romney will take us back to how things were before Johnson's "Great Society".
I think that would be awesome. It's politically impossible, not least because the GOP isn't interested in rolling back government any more than the Democrats are, but it would be a good thing.
* * *
Yes, the 7.8% unemployment figure is bogus.
So the mainstream media is flogging it as real.
Problem is, it's not.
A Labor Department economist said one large state didn’t report additional quarterly figures as expected, accounting for a substantial part of the decrease.No indication of which "large state" it was, but it's probably safe to assume that said state's name either begins with C and ends with A, or perhaps begins with N and ends with K.
Or perhaps begins with I and ends with S.
In any case, the official unemployment rate was inconveniently high for Obama, and so it has been changed regardless of reality. Can we ever trust BLS statistics again?
What, you trusted them in the first place?
* * *
I said that Obamacare represented the single largest tax increase in US history, and I've said it several times. "Obamacare includes over 18 new taxes (including the individual mandate) that will hit the middle class." Just remember that Obama's lawyers defended Obamacare as a tax when they were in front of the Supreme Court.
And:
4. It will cut premiums by $2,500.From 2011 to 2012 my premium rose forty percent, not three. So, yeah.
Granted, the health care law is not fully in effect, but the trends don’t look good. According to the annual Employer Health Benefits survey, average annual premiums for employer-based health care coverage have increased. From 2011 to 2012, single coverage rose 3 percent, and family coverage rose by 4 percent.
And yes, Obama wants to raise taxes. Any new taxes which are emplaced by our federal government will not go towards reducing the current budget deficits. You're delusional if you think that will happen; every time taxes have been raised in the past five decades it has been followed by a proportionate increase in government spending.
Every time.
My favorite example is TEFRA in 1986. It was supposed to raise taxes by a certain amount and cut spending by a certain amount; the idea was to cut the budget deficit. Instead, what happened? Congress spent $1.50 for every new dollar of tax revenue.
Congress, which had been Democrat-controlled for decades before (and would continue in Democrat hands until January of 1995).
...so the taxes Obama wants, purportedly to control the deficit, will do what they always do: spur Congress to spend even more money we don't have, and the deficit (and debt) will continue to grow unchecked.
And what will our masters in government want to do, to fix the problem? Take 30% of our wealth. Whatever net worth you have right now, 30% of it will be taken in order to continue the party for a little while longer.
...because you know that the government won't stop the tax-and-borrow-and-spend-and-spend-and-s
These people, right now, have wealth and power because they are gaming the system to their advantage. Why would they want to change that?
But besides that, this "one-time tax" deal won't fly with the people. If government tries to take 30% of everyone's accumulated wealth, there will be civil war. They'll have to find a stealthy way of doing it--something like the way income tax is collected from you a little bit at a time, from each paycheck. Income tax would be politically impossible if it weren't for withholding, which is why they do it that way. If the average person had to pay out that money--take it from his bank account and give it to the government, rather than never actually holding it in his hands--income taxes would be a hell of a lot lower in this country.
Because most people don't consider the money taken from their paychecks to be theirs. They never see it; it never enters their checking or savings accounts. Most people don't consider their gross income in light of their take-home pay--and by law their employers are not allowed to tell them what other taxes and fees must be paid on the employee's behalf...but all of that is part of your paycheck, and all of it is what you are being paid in fact. It may say that your pay rate is $10 per hour, but the other taxes and fees raise that number--and if it weren't for the government's intrusive hand you would be making that other, higher number and taking it all home.
Spain's credit rating got cut today. And it's because the tax-and-borrow-and-spend-spend-spend routine cannot continue ad infinitum. We'll really know Europe is hitting the skids when their politicians suggest this "one-time wealth tax" deal, but I don't know how well that will fly with Europeans in general.
Maybe it'll be just fine with them, because Europe has a large class of people who don't have any real assets to tax. Unfortunately, those are the same people whose votes Europe has gone broke trying to buy.
* * *
Bushcheneyhalliburton? No, ObamaTracFone.
...bleah. This is a serious incentive for me to stop using TracFone and sign on with a different service. It would mean throwing away about a day's worth of talk time....
Well, it says the guy has a "controlling interest", not that he owns it. And I can't blame a company for doing things that make a profit even if they do end up helping a closet communist like Obama.
But JayG has a point:
'm sure it's pure coincidence that Slim happens to be a major Obama donor, and his wife is an Obama bundler, and they throw thousand-dollar-a-plate fundraiser dinners at their mansion, right? Interesting, is it not, that George Bush was lambasted for giving contracts to Halliburton because Dick Cheney once worked for them, whereas this is all but ignored. It is simply fascinating to see the raw, naked bias of the media exposed over and over again this election cycle - because if you think that a Republican handing over millions of dollars in government money to a wealthy donor would be kept quiet like this, I have some oceanfront property in Wyoming to sell you...Yeah, there's that same old liberal media bias which (I am assured by liberals) does not exist.
* * *
Commie bus driver tells a 12-year-old that his family should have aborted him. Why? Because his family supports Romney!
Unfortunately, the bus driver in question was not fired but merely reassigned. The company which employs her has not apologized to the kid or his parents, either.
* * *
Theodore Dalrymple on a "Potemkin Department Store" in North Korea. The customers aren't real and if you try to buy something there, they don't know what to do.
The entire thing is for show.
* * *
AP trying to help out Al Gore with his ludicrous climate bullshit.
And?
(Image shamelessly ganked from the above link.)
There you have it: when the globe gets warmer, there's more ice. It's a thermodynamic miracle!
* * *
Is graphene turning out to be a technological shmoo like the laser? New battery technology combining lithium ion with graphene foam substrate makes for a battery that stores about as much energy as a Li-ion battery, but which can be charged in 15 minutes.
Hmm.
* * *
Someone obviously had a problem understanding the fundamentals of the old story, Chicken Little.
Chicken Little was hit on the head by something (I forget what) and was convinced the sky was falling. The story was not about Chicken Little somehow blowing up in midair in a deafening explosion of flames and horror and raining down Chicken Little McNuggets on the hapless people below.
The local authorties are trying to determine where the chicken came from (an egg! duh) and JayG says, "There's some dispute over whether the chicken came from a nearby Tyson plant or a farm that hadn't completely disposed of the chicken," but I think that's missing something rather important.
To wit: what propelled the chicken parts into their stratospheric trajectory? I mean, I'm pretty certain that what doesn't happen is that a chicken is just hanging around the barnyard, scratching at the dirt, when all of a sudden bang it just explodes, flinging chicken parts miles away. (Depending on what they feed them, I suppose.)
"Personally," JayG editorializes, "I blame George Bush."
I suppose that's got to do.
* * *
While technically correct, Jon seems to be missing something:
