Global Warmists Are At It Again

Just when you thought it was safe to go in the water...the global warming climate change hoaxters are at it again, manipulating data when it doesn't suit their phony thesis. (Much like Democrats keep finding votes when their opponent has just won a photo-finish election.) This time, the Brits--lynchpins in the ongoing hoax whose real agenda is income distribution on a massive scale--are in the forefront once again:

Dr Benny Peiser and Dr David Whitehouse, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), have written to John Hirst, chief executive of the beleaguered Met Office, asking for an explanation of a press release issued by his organisation on January 20 and headed “2010 – a near record year”. This won headlines by claiming that last year was hotter than any other in the past decade.

When the two men examined the original data from which this claim was derived – compiled by the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and the Met Office’s Hadley Centre – it clearly showed 2010 as having been cooler than 2005 (and 1998) and equal to 2003. It emerged that, for the purposes of the press release, the data had been significantly adjusted.

How'd this happen? Simple:

Comparing the actual data for each year, from 2001 to 2010, with that given in the press release shows that for four years the original figure has been adjusted downwards. Only for 2010 was the data revised upwards, by the largest adjustment of all, allowing the Met Office to claim that 2010 was the hottest year of the decade.

Power Line, in the meantime, explores the equally nefarious scientific malfeasance--supported by the taxpayers--of the left-wing climate liars who populate NASA and NOAA. They, too, were confronted with data that didn't support their phony thesis. Power Line posts animated before and after charts to show how their manipulation of the urban heat-island effect--an outlier in overall climate data--is used to distort the actual, normalized statistics. Which (unmanipulated) statistics decided do not support the global warming hoax.

These clowns just won't give up, will they? Perhaps this cadre of NASA and NOAA climate propagandists scientists could be another area Republicans might target for some useful budget cuts. Taxpayers would save twice over by eliminating the employees and their rich pensions as well as killing off their endless supply of bad faith data that, daily, along with the predations of EPA, is driving American's gasoline and utility bills ever higher as the use of relatively inexpensive fossil fuel resources is relentlessly choked off, not by shortages but via an extraordinarily vicious and cynical government policy.

Middle Class Ready to Go Galt?

That's a provocative question, isn't it? For the Ayn Rand-uninitiated, "going Galt" is a phrase derived from Rand's towering, controversial objectivist novel, Atlas Shrugged. To make a very long story short, the novel is about the fiscal and social Armageddon that occurs when an increasingly socialist US government takes things too far by taxing and regulating away any and all rewards for creating products, jobs, profits, and a decent lifestyle. So one by one, the best Americans simply quit, withdraw from society, and join their spriritual leader, John Galt, in his secret hideout to await the cataclysm that will happen when they all stop playing the stupid game. It's a strike of the productive against the drones.

A real-life version of the novel may very well be starting to play itself out today. It's the topic of a really provocative article by Gonzalo Lira entitled: The Coming Middle Class Anarchy. Lira focuses on one retired couple who have their own problems but, nonetheless, continue to play the game, paying, paying, paying even while the bank and the Feds screw with their re-fi request. (Read another, even more poignant story here.)

I've been having my "going Galt" moments over the last two years, sitting here completely out of work and trading my remaining IRA accounts like a fiend in order to come up with enough capital gains to live on in a continually whipsawing market. The rental housing I own no longer gets top dollar, and a couple units have remained unrented for months. Nonetheless, I've never defaulted on anything since I'm not that kind of dude.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to get a lower mortgage rate from a major bank on a morgtage I'm already paying. It's been two months now. Nothing has happened, they keep asking for more info, but fail to see the logic: If I'm successfully paying a mortgage that's nearly 2 points higher than the one I'm trying to get now, where is the difficulty? But the irony is, if I'd screwed this mortgage up, or even walked away from it, I'd probably be in better shape today.

While I twist in the wind on this, Wall Streeters (all of whom support Democrats, BTW) are jacking their "bonuses" up to historical highs, resuming a lavish lifestyle that most Americans have never seen. And at the bottom rungs of society, nothing is spared to send more and more money their way via this or that "entitlement" program. Who supports the fat cats and the grifters? Me. And millions of other middle class suckers like me.

The anger is building. It's what launched the much-maligned Tea Party movements and it's what eviscerated the Socialists Democrats in last fall's election. But if these elections don't produce some swift and telling results, the next chapter won't be pretty. It takes an awful, awful lot to piss off America's middle class. In fact, I'm not sure that's every really happened. But if things don't change for the middle class, and soon, I wouldn't want to work at Goldman Sachs, on Capitol Hill, or be in this country illegally.

Dennis Kucinich Is in the Pits

If you haven't been following political trivia over the past week or so, you might have missed this newsworthy item: Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is suing the company that runs the House cafeteria for $150,000. The issue: Denny apparently bit into a vegetarian sandwich purchased there and hit an olive pit. This traumatic encounter, we are to believe, not only caused dental damage but ongoing mental anguish. Read more of the ludicrous details--and some pungent commentary--here.

Kucinich has served seemingly forever as the representative of Cleveland's West Side, additionally including some western and southern suburbs. Throughout the course of his service, he's run for President at every opportunity, badmouthed the United States publicly when visiting abroad, and failed to do anything to get a bailout for National City Bank during the financial crisis, causing its forced sale to Pittsburgh-based PNC--with the loss of a significant number of corporate jobs that down-and-out Cleveland could little afford to lose.

For some bizarre reason, Denny's constituents continue to re-elect this national laughingstock. Since I hail from that area originally, I'm told that Denny's "constituent service" is superb. That may be. But I wouldn't define constituent service as trotting around the country and the globe running for President pretty much as a socialist. And I wouldn't define constituent service as not lifting a finger to help out the nation's 10th largest bank, even as fellow Congresspeople (read Barney Frank) shamelessly saved their own hometown institutions.

Which gets us back to the olive pit. With the budget in crisis, with the Middle East falling apart, with millions of Americans still out of work--including a ton of Ohioans, with a looming Obamacare that we can't pay for, and a looming Social Security implosion, why the hell is Denny suing over a olive pit, at least three years after the fact, BTW? Maybe because, in the end, as with a lot of Congressmen, it's all about Denny. It may also say a lot about his personal finances. With his gold-plated Congressional medical and dental benefits (as a good socialist, surely he hasn't opted out), what's the beef here anyway?

Answer: like all Democrats, Denny probably figures that any inconvenience he runs into must therefore be somebody's fault, probably some rich capitalist who made 2 cents' profit off that (allegedly) ill made sandwich. Therefore, income must be redistributed. Denny has always had a problem with father figures and authority figures. His latest antics would seem to be an extension of this lifelong pattern, since there's really no rational reason for his behavior.

Fortunately for all Ohioans and all Americans, it looks like the Republican-controlled state legislature and Governor Kasich will remedy the Kucinich problem shortly. Under ruinous Democrat control for ages, cities like Cleveland and Toledo have been hemorrhaging jobs and population since the 1960s. As a result, Ohio has been gradually losing U.S. Representatives after each census. They've lost another seat this year. Buzz is that Denny's district will simply be drawn right out of the map, with adjacent re-gerrymandered districts gobbling it up. Sadly, what the voters wouldn't do for themselves, Columbus will now have to accomplish.

Meanwhile, Denny will have to leave the limelight, go back to Cleveland, and find someone else to sue. How pathetic can you get?

WTF = WIN?

The Obama crew tried to add some pizazz to the President's State of the Union address earlier this week by coming up with what they'd hoped would be an inspiring new slogan, "Winning the Future." The acronym for this faux-brilliant ideal is WTF, of course, and you web fanatics know what that stands for. It's kind of funny that, even in Washington's alphabet-mad environment, Obama's back-bench of policymakers and speechwriters didn't head this colossal goof off at the pass.

When you leave yourself as wide open as they did, you can always expect your opponent to drive a truck through the opening. And Sarah Palin, bless her little much-maligned heart, was the first to pounce. Her reaction demonstrated not only her communications savvy. It also turned the Democrats' constant ridicule of herself, her intelligence, and her family right back on them, making the administration and the media look like a bunch of fools. (Story, video, and lotsa comments on Hot Air right here.)

It's interesting to think back to another political alpha-slogan that was strangled in its crib. That was back in 1974 during the Presidency of Gerald Ford. Beset by a rampant inflation, Ford was under pressure to do something, anything. So his administration conceived of a lame, ill-defined program to "Whip Inflation Now." It was nothing more than a slogan really, but hey, you got a swell "WIN" button if you joined the party.

Alas, the party was short-lived. Media, politicians, academics, everyone trashed this silliness, the President's own party included. WIN died a quick, nearly painless death. (Bet one of those buttons would fetch a few $$ today.)

Obama's ill-conceived and insincere promise to seriously cut the Federal budget--all the while promising even more programs--was nuts to start out with as his earlier economic efforts have been. Palin's wit and timing quickly put an end to it by obliterating its slogan.

While I still think the media has bloodied Palin too badly for her to run a credible campaign in 2012, you have to give this energetic woman a lot of credit here. Her political instincts are swift and sure. She spotted the opportunity and wasted no time going for the political jugular. It's clear her old school teammates didn't call her Sarah Barracuda for nothing, no matter how the media loves to sneer and smear.

Trashing Michelle Bachmann: Journolistas at Large?

Interesting sequences of events unfold in the MSM underground if you're patient enough to look for patterns. Which you have to do, since, as good Marxists, they always help each other cover their collective tracks.

In last weekend's Washington Post--increasingly as strident and hard left as the New York Times as both struggle for relevancy--idiotarian columnist Dana Milbank, with his usual self-important pomposity, swore off trashing Sarah Palin for an entire month:

I have written about her in 42 columns since Sen. John McCain picked her as his vice-presidential running mate in 2008. I've mentioned her in dozens more blog posts, Web chats, and TV and radio appearances. I feel powerless to control my obsession, even though it cheapens and demeans me.... But today is the first day of the rest of my life. And so, I hereby pledge that, beginning on Feb. 1, 2011, I will not mention Sarah Palin -- in print, online or on television -- for one month. Furthermore, I call on others in the news media to join me in this pledge of a Palin-free February. With enough support, I believe we may even be able to extend the moratorium beyond one month....

First, February isn't even 30 days, so Milbank chose the easiest month in which to try to break his "addiction." Second, note his invitation to others in the MSM to join him in his, er, "pledge." Even though it's not yet Feb. 1, I've combed most major outlets online and guess what? Mirabile dictu, the Palin trashtalking is indeed almost entirely gone, vanishing seemingly overnight.

In its place, however, is...gasp...Michelle Bachmann trash talking! The MSM has been tearing the conservative Minnesota lawmaker limb from limb this week for her show of audacity and independence in making her own video State-of-the-Union rebuttal. (Transcript here.)

Reaction from Marxists and bloggers posing as journalists and commentators was swift and savage. (Example here.) From site to site and blog to blog, these hypocrites have been tearing out a new one for Bachmann, who's apparently committing the same sins Palin did: She's bright (very bright), attractive (very attractive), conservative (very conservative). But worst of all, she's female, and only left-wing women are allowed to be powerful and have aspirations. (And if the truth were told, largely male MSM clubbers, misogynists to the core, are uncomfortable even with this.)

Funny how this headlong attack formation showed up right after Milbank's grandstanding in the Post. Could it be that the original Journo-list, now purged of turncoats and buried somewhere underground in a new, secret discussion group, is already auditioning its collective Alinsky-style tactics in preparation for the 2012 primary season, the better to kill potentially attractive Republican presidential candidates before they're even declared and out of the gate? I.e. :

Pick the target [in this case Bachmann], freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

This certainly seems likely. After all, Milbank's fellow Postie, the despicable (and astonishingly ignorant) Ezra Klein, headed up the original Journo-list. (Klein's the clown, BTW, who thinks the Constitution is so old ["written over 100 years ago (sic)"] that it's not a binding document.)

It's not implausible to imagine that these two amigos decided to put the already badly-damaged Palin aside for a bit to concentrate their trashery on an arguably more dangerous Michelle Bachmann--already a proven legislator and campaigner who's beaten back left-wing hate campaigns in Minnesota twice before.

Let's keep our eyes open and see how February unfolds. You've read my theory, so now let's look for more evidence to accrue. Meanwhile, note to Millbank and Klein: you're being watched.

Unions Weasel Out of Obamacare En Masse

Wanna keep your money and escape Obamacare entirely? Just join a union. This fun fact via Weasel Zippers:

... there are 166 union benefits funds now exempted from this requirement, which account for about 40 percent of the exempted workers. This means that although there are only 14.6 million unionized employees in the United States, and 860,000 of them are already exempted from this provision of Obamacare.

Best union recruiting tool yet, I'd say.

How's that hopey-changey thing workin' out for ya?

Keith Olbermann Job Bank

American Glob has posted its "Top Ten" helpful hints for the now-unemployed left-wing hatemonger news commentator Keith Olbermann. My personal fave:

5. Paint a sign that says “Will Teabag for Food.”

Read the rest via the link above.

Gee, when I lost my last full time gig in 2008, no one ever stepped up to help me like this.

Hypocrite Leland Lee Tries to Silence Limbaugh (Yawn)

This from AP:

Rush Limbaugh's imitation of the Chinese language during a recent speech made by Chinese President Hu Jintao has stirred a backlash among Asian-American lawmakers in California and nationally.

California state Sen. Leland Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco, is leading a fight in demanding an apology from the radio talk show host for what he and others view as racist and derogatory remarks against the Chinese people...."The comments that he made - the mimicking of the Chinese language - harkens back to when I was a little boy growing up in San Francisco and those were hard days, rather insensitive days," Yee said in an interview Thursday. 

Cry me a river. I sometimes hearken back to the days when I was a little Polish-American boy growing up in the suburbs of Cleveland and listening to Polack jokes every day. BFD, you whiner. Grow up.

Limbaugh, in fact, was lampooning the Chinese Communist president's "discussion" on camera with President Obama which was only minimally translated on TV. So Limbaugh essentially mimicked what he got out of this dangling conversation, essentially a Chinese version of "Blah, blah, blah." So what? Since when do we need to stick up for Communist Chinese dictators anyway? Perhaps Lee, who like Hu seems intent on silencing dissidents, senses a kindred spirit.

Limbaugh later replied to this latest bit of nonsense from the overly-sensitive left--confirmed idiotarians who are still struggling to keep pushing on the phony "Republicans as hatemongers" meme they've been peddling since the massacre in Tucson. Said El Rushbo:

"Back in the old days, Sid Caesar, for those of you old enough to remember, was called a comic genius for impersonating foreign languages that he couldn't speak," Limbaugh said. "But today the left says that was racism; it was bigotry; it was insulting. And it wasn't. It was a service."

Again, for those too young to remember, Caesar (b. 1922) is a venerable Jewish TV comic who's 1950s variety show, named "Your Show of Shows," frequently lampooned German and Yiddish speakers via silly, faux German dialogue. It was regarded as wildly funny back then and nobody got touchy about it.

In any event, Lee also accused "pro-Limbaugh" listeners of sending him hate-mail faxes. Of course as is always the case with the left, there's never any evidence as to exactly who did send the faxes or if they were even authentic faxes at all. Nonetheless, the media has trumpeted Lee's allegations as the truth. As of this morning, it's absolutely impossible to find any fact-checking on this at all via Google and other search engines which do carry page after page of lefty articles hawking this meme, proving at the very least that these clowns really know how to use keywords.

Comments Lucianne.com rather pungently:

Blame, blame, blame! When are people going to start taking responsibility for their own actions? The only one who made this idiot send this racist fax is the idiot himself.

It's been noted here and there that Lee is considering a run for San Francisco mayor, so this little allegation--trumped up and probably phony--not only fits in with the left's anti-conservative Tucson meme, but also gins up publicity for Lee's possible mayoral bid. Apparently, he pulled the same thing prior to a previous election cycle, ginning up an anti-Palin scandal and additional suspiciously convenient anti-Lee hate faxes.

Which is duly noted by Lucianne commentator Gumbino who draws a couple of wry conclusions:

Yee also received a similar fax last April after he demanded to know the pay Sarah Palin received for speaking at a public university.

Ah. So it isn't just right-wingers sending Yee these faxes.

Also we have now learned that it is "racist" to imitate an accent or a language.

So we should soon hear Leftists clamoring for Tina Fey to stop mocking Sarah Palin's accent.

And for liberal radio show host Lionel to stop making fun of Swedes. "Ohhhh ... Inga! Hu tu hu tu hu!" 

Heh. 

Jim Moran (D-VA): American Voters Are Racists

This astonishing story just in from fair and balanced Fox News:

Virginia Democratic Rep. Jim Moran is blaming his party's losses last November in large part on voters who "don't want to be governed by an African-American." 

Who knew? But wait...there's more:

"It happened ... for the same reason the Civil War happened in the United States," Moran said, "Southern states, particularly the slaveholding states, didn't want to see a president who was opposed to slavery.

"In this case a lot of people in this country, it's my belief, don't want to be governed by an African-American, particularly one who is inclusive, who is liberal, who wants to spend money on everyone and who wants to reach out to include everyone in our society..."

Yo, Jim. Did it ever occur to you that the majority of voters who oppose Obama do so because he's a socialist? No, of course not, because that's against the left-liberal party line narrative which dictates that everyone who opposes the President is, ipso facto, a racist. (And we won't even bother asking whose pockets will be picked to find the money Obama wants to spend "on everyone.")

I find this kind of casual smear on average, patriotic Americans particularly repulsive because Moran (D-VA) happens to be my representative, courtesy of the gerrymandered, incument-protecting Northern Virginia district I happen to live in--a problem shared by a lot of right-minded American across the country these days.

Making things even more disgusting is the fact that Moran can rarely help himself from making outrageous anti-Semitic statements seemingly at random, offending Jews of all stripes right here in his own district. (Check out this story to see what we mean.) Now that's racism to me, right?

One of the characteristics of Democrats these days is that they are comfortable smearing innocent American voters by blaming them (without fact or merit) for the kind of behaviors Democrats themselves routinely employ to destroy their opponents. Jim Moran is a case in point.

Paul Mirengoff Departs Power Line

One of Power Line's three founding amigos, Paul Mirengoff, briefly and without explanation has ceased to blog at this widely respected and largely conservative news & views site. His brief farewell is here.

Why bring this up when the Middle East (and my stock portfolio) appear to be falling apart? Simple. Without being snarky, I'm glad that Mirengoff is gone. His snide, condescending, and nearly continuous picking at Sarah Palin were typical of the so-called Washington cognoscenti (he lives in Bethesda, a near suburb of Washington DC). Who needs more of this, particularly in what generally is friendly territory?

In recent months, Mirengoff seemed more interested in keeping Palin from serious presidential contention than in skewering the current administration. In turn, Obamanation, almost with impunity, continues to gravely endanger us all with its manifest incompetence, Marxist ideology, and firm grasp of nothing, ranging from the economy to international relations. Mirengoff's attitude has simply played into the lefty ground game of discrediting, without merit or cessation, each and every attractive and viable Republican candidate that might arguably confront and defeat President Obama in the crucial 2012 elections.

Palin, in point of fact, may already have been too gravely wounded by the 24/7 lefty media attack machine to mount a credible campaign in 2012. There are simply too many Americans these days who've permanently and unshakably bought into the smears and slanders not to cause a Palin Presidential campaign grave if not terminal trouble, with the potential, tragic result of a second Obama administration. In any event, even at this point as an unannounced candidate, she doesn't need the kind of Ivy League, country club style conservative sniping that Mirengoff was wont to pile on.

Whether you support Palin, Romney, Ryan, or any of a host of other perfectly viable Republican hopefuls at this point is immaterial to me as a libertarian-conservative. But please, whatever your enthusiasms, don't add your voice, for whatever reason, to those who routinely use media-hyped lies, smears, and slanders as a way of driving out the good and leaving the worst possible candidate to run against state socialism in 2012. Just listen--carefully--to what each candidate says, make up your own mind. Above all, don't help the left out any more than writers like Mirengoff have already.

Bye-bye, Keith Olbermann

Numerous sources have confirmed the news: MSNBC's odious hatemonger, Keith Olbermann, has gotten the boot, almost simultaneously with the news that Comcast has swallowed NBC-Universal, the former GE unit that owned TV's most pathetic cable network.

For those not into media history: MSNBC was retooled a number of years ago into a pure-play, left wing propaganda arm, sort of like its defunct radio fellow traveller, Air America. And for many years, Olbermann was the network's "star," spewing out predictable leftist rants and smears regardless of the facts. Lefties smacked their collective lips as they devoured this political red meat (even though many of them were and are confirmed vegans).

Meanwhile, MSNBC's primary emphasis on feeding the left's collective BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) seamlessly morphed over the last couple of years into PDS (Palin Derangement Syndrome). But nothing really distinguished the joint, whose gutter-level, unsupported-by-the-facts vitriol toward all things non-"progressive"--i.e., socialist--continued unabated, whatever its current target.

AP profiles Olbermann's unceremonious axing in an obsequious article extolling his popularity among viewers--never mentioning the fact that neither his nor MSNBC's viewership has ever even come close to matching that of the much-reviled Fox cable news channel.

Lacking details, I'd have to assume that MSNBC is in for some kind of retooling, and Olbermann's head is the first to roll. Comcast, like all good megacapitalist entities, is going to want to start showing profits at its newly-purchased properties, and MSNBC's ratings, regardless of your political point of view, were and are consistently at the bottom of the tank--hardly a way to make money. Perhaps their solution to this problem is similar to the one hit upon by the character Cher Horowitz in the film "Clueless": "Makeover!" And Olbie was sure a good place to start, sending what would appear to be a very distinct message.

In point of fact, in a media world still almost entirely dominated by left-liberal pundits, writers, commentators, editorialists, and other assorted fellow travelers, MSNBC ultimately has fallen into the same trap as Air America--they had nothing really new to offer the general public, besides, perhaps, an elevated level of vitriol and hatred for anyone not associated with their elitist clique of wealthy faux socialists. So even the left (save for the aforementioned metaphorical meat-eaters) generally didn't bother with them. (And don't tell me I'm wrong, because the inconvenient truth is in the the network's cellar-dweller Neilsens.)

Nope, nothing new to see here. Same old, same old, albeit with slightly more colorful packaging. That market has been saturated for decades, so who needs more? Most particularly, who needs more red ink in a still-wretched economy? Not Comcast, that's for sure.

Top 2010 MSM Lies

Pajamas Media's Tom Blumer does a phenomenally thorough job listing the Lamestream Media's top 10 lies stories for 2010. Among them:

1. Phony "channel stuffing" at GM just before its fall "IPO," to pump up the apparent sales numbers.
2. Hidden marriage disincentives in the Obamacare legislation. (Genuinely unsure if these were intentional or oversights by lefty Dems who couldn't be bothered to read the legislation.)
3. Never telling the full story about how even some "global warming" scientists ideologues admitted to lying about their faux science, the better to redistribute income to the "third world," the primary motive behind "global warming" all along.
4. The completely un-reported fact that Shirley Sherrod--fired from a Federal government position after her racist rant before the NAACP--had received a 13 million dollar "settlement" in the recently-settled black farmer lawsuit. 

Follow the link above to Blumer's piece for more incidents and more details on all of them. Crucial news continues to be suppressed in this country. Blumer correctly includes that only bloggers on a gatekeeper-free internet can bypass this kind of underground censorship. So let's watch out for more of that "net neutrality" crap in 2011.

Meanwhile, Happy New Year to all. Personally, I can't wait for 2010 to conclude its journey. What a regrettable way to end a decade! Hopefully, 2011 will be much better.

A Digital Nativity Story

Luther sent me a copy of the following YouTube video a couple of days ago, and it's so good I've decided to share it. (I'm a few days late since I've been on the road.) It's a genuinely good-natured re-imagining of the Christmas Story as it might have occurred in our own Digital Age. Since the Magi don't show up on the liturgical calendar until January 6, it's still more than timely and a great way to start closing out the chaotic 2010. For a fuller-sized version of the video, which enables you to see even more details, check out the original link here.

Rendell: A Nation of Wussies

We never thought we'd see the day when we agreed with an observation made by Pennsylvania's outgoing Dem Governor Ed Rendell. But then again, sometimes strange things happen. When queried on the NFL's wimpy postponing of yesterday's Philadelphia Eagle's game to Tuesday due to this weekend's heavy but not particularly spectacular snow event, Rendell ranted away according to ESPN:

Rendell viewed the NFL's decision as a referendum on the toughness, or lack thereof, of the United States.

"My biggest beef is that this is part of what's happened in this country," Rendell said. "I think we've become wussies."

"We've become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything," Rendell added. "If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down."

As one of my old merchant marine buddies once said: "Truer words was never spoke." I agree. Wanna switch parties, Ed?

Light Holiday Blogging

As you've probably already figured out, Mr. and Mrs. Wonker are on vacation, up in good old Cleveland, Ohio--a state that woke up this week to the fact that it's declining, grossly overtaxed populace is now so reduced that they're losing two Congressional seats to redistricting in 2012. (So's New York--imagine that?)

Unlike New York, however, Ohioans are gradually waking up to the severe damage that big city Democrat machines and public employee unions have been wreaking on them for decades. Only took the Great Recession to do that, but better late than never.

We actually like the folks up here. After all, it's our home state. And we have at least modest hopes that in 2011, the now all-Republican legislature and state house will be able to continue the long slog of removing corruption and reducing the taxes that have reduced this once great state--and most particularly its decaying northern industrial cities--to a mere husk of the dynamo it once was.

Rhode Island: Nanny State Takes Away Christmas Toy Guns

This from today's Boston Globe online:

Dominic joined dozens of children yesterday at the annual Toy Gun Bash in the gymnasium of Pleasant View Elementary School. There, they lined up to toss their toy guns, from dainty purple water guns to camouflage-painted pistols, inside the Bash-O-Matic, a large black, foam creature with churning metal teeth and the shape of a cockroach spliced with a frog.

Prodded by Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, who wore a fuzzy Santa hat, the children stared curiously as the Bash-O-Matic mashed up their guns and digested them into a plastic bin near its tail.

Hat tip to Instapundit for the initial link. (Lotsa interesting stuff on this topic is there as well.)

Rhode Island, like most other states, is burdened with debt and beset by criminals. And THIS is how the attorney general spends his time on stuff like this?? What a smarmy, crappy, demoralizing Christmastime story. Not only are our lefty pols a batch of condescending, controlling nannies. They're secularist sadists as well, pulling this kind of nonsense on the eve of the Christmas holidays--where every self-respecting little boy looks forward to a toy gun, a ray gun, a light-sword, you name it--the better to protect those he cares about from the bad guys. My God, what is wrong with these morons?

Wake up, people. It's not surprising that this is yet another one of the reasons why true Blue states are losing population and representatives which will be reflected in Congressional district allocations in the 2012 elections. (The other one is the looming, gathering scandal of out-of-control public employee salaries, benefits, and pensions.) People don't need Idiotarian pols telling them how to raise their families, let alone approving of it.

Meanwhile, Earth to Patrick C. Lynch: get back to work, you idiot, and quit wasting time trying to run other people's children and their lives.

Disgusting.

111th Congress Adjourns. Merry Christmas!

We just got our best-ever Christmas present. The disgusting entity known as the 111th Congress has now adjourned. Permanently. Here's hoping the new year will bring us, in the 112th Congress, a batch of Representatives, at least, who'll acknowledge that they're the employees of the U.S. taxpayer, not the other way around.

And perhaps in 2011 as well we'll stop hearing tireless drivel about how this tax cut and that tax cut "costs" the Federal government money. Wrong answer. The Federal government costs US--you and me--money. Let's not forget where the funding--and the deficit service comes from.

The Surber Challenge to Warren Buffett

It was just a few blog entries ago that I fulminated about the idiotic proposal advanced by Warren Buffett--and other filthy rich Democrats for that matter--for the Federal government to raise taxes on the super-wealthy such as he. Of course, he was supporting the Democrats' desire NOT to extend the Bush tax cuts for the "rich"--i.e., couples who make $250K or more per annum. The sage of Omaha thus proved himself to be a senseless, hopelessly out-of-touch dope, having no clue that even $250K ain't "rich" anymore in this country, particularly if you live in a large urban area with catastrophic real estate taxes. Wealthy morons like Buffett and others (i.e., Nancy Pelosi) don't even remember what it was like to live on real-life salaries anymore. So what business do they have telling us what we should pay, eh?

Well, now, here comes Don Surber with a modest proposal of his own. Since he knows that Warren, Bill, and others are full of hot air and know they'll never have to pay more taxes than they want, due to the kinds of intricate (and legal) tax sheltering they use, he calls them on it, challenging them to write a check and send it in to the Treasury themselves rather than waiting for their fellow rich socialists in Congress to act.

And to make his challenge stick, Surber is sending in a check to the Treasury for $10. As Surber himself says:

The beauty of this is the next time some lib lips off about Republicans and tax cuts for the rich (which Democrats did not rescind upon assuming control of Washington) I can say, pay up — I did.

Nice touch, Don. You need something to stop left-wing stupidity in its tracks and get them off their always-ready, memorized talking points. BTW, Surber challenges the rest of us right-thinkers to do the same. I'm thinking about it. But to be honest, given my two years of technical unemployment already, I think I need the $10 more than the Feds.

(BTW#2: Surber duly notes that your check to the Treasury is NOT tax-deductible. Oh, the humanity....)

Independent Collegian Gets F in Economics

Randomly surfing, I spotted the following headline in a recent issue of The Independent Collegian:

Kasich plans to scrap Strickland’s 3C rail program and send 16,000 jobs elsewhere

John Kasich, of course, is Ohio's Republican Governor-elect, and the Collegian is the campus newsrag of the University of Toledo. So right away, we can parse the headline and what is to follow. Kasich, being a Republican, must necessarily be reviled by an Ohio college student newspaper which, of course, encourages only budding leftist journos (are there any other kind?) to write for them.

But what's more interesting in this hit-piece is how ideology trumps any knowledge of economics or politics. Kasich plans to reject Federal funding to set up an allegedly high-speed all-Ohio rail service from Cleveland to Cincinnati via Columbus. The Collegian sees this as robbing Ohio of "16,000 jobs" and views it as hypocrisy on the part of Kasich who (correctly) tarred current Governor Ted "Tax 'Em High" Strickland as having lost 400,000 jobs on his brief watch.

Well, dudes, check again. The way you create REAL jobs is to encourage the private sector to do it. Ohio's now blessedly-terminated rail line would be funded by the Feds, sure. I.e., by hapless taxpayers from Ohio and other states. Once built, it would, like Amtrak and all other publicly-funded US rail services, lose money by the bucketload. Which would be made even worse by the ridiculously high union-led salaries that would be paid to the railway's staffers, all of whom, surprise, would be paid for by out-of-work Ohio taxpayers--presumably.

The problem with Federally funded or Federally assisted programs like the one Kasich intends to terminate is that once the initial $$ have been spent, the boondoggle entity gets turned over to state and local jurisdictions which then must, ta-da, raise taxes on a consistent basis to fund a money-losing operation and cave in to extortionate public employee union salary demands. It's precisely this kind of thing that's brought Rust Belt states like Ohio and Michigan to their knees. 

By rejecting this boondoggle, Kasich will save individual Ohioans and Ohio-based businesses billions of dollars going forward. This is a small step in the direction of real business stimulus which will create real employment, not more taxpayer-funded union jobs, the kind that are bankrupting state after state. 

Kasich's action is similar to the recent rejection by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie of a massive second-tunnel project from New Jersey to Manhattan. The Feds were to pony up a good chunk of the money, New Jersey and the Port Authority were to pony up the rest. And if there were cost overruns (which, given union featherbedding, there will be--and how!) New Jersey alone would have to pick up the bill.

Christie rightly torpedoed the whole project, saving his state from a major--and perpetual--financial catastrophe. On a lesser scale, Kasich proposes to do the same thing.

So, Collegians. Watch and learn. 16,000 more Ohioans on the public dole payroll will only serve to increase Ohio's systemic unemployment which is mainly due to the state's ridiculously high, business-deterring taxes. If you want to pay for 16,000 more public employees for the rest of your lives, why don't you do it? And in the meantime, why don't you stop writing stupid, ill-informed editorials and leave Kasich alone to clean up Strickland's sorry mess?

Removing Don Luskin link

Every once in awhile I go through our "Good Guys" list to make sure links are still working and appropriate. I've noticed that my link to Don Luskin, which used to offer nonstop and quite useful critiques of Idiotarian faux economist Paul Krugman, has morphed into a more specific financial site--Trend Macro--whose up-to-date content now requires a subscription. Luskin's thoughts and observations on the economy are actually quite astute--a fact you can grasp during his occasional appearances on Larry Kudlow's CNBC TV show.

But for our readers, this site's evolution (and the fact it's now behind a pay window) makes it less useful for reference, so we're removing it as a link--even though we still consider Don one of the "Good Guys."