Video clip of the day

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AlfonZo Rachel of ZONATION brings some much needed perspective to the whole Trayvon Martin travesty unfolding down in Arizona.

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3:15 : According to street law... according to God's law...

Eh, so which is it, pal? Never mind that neither of them are applicable to Florida's penal code. This chump is just trying to justify a, yes, lynch mob mentality.


3:48 : Zo makes an outstanding point regarding Afro-centrism (black separatism) and the Constitution. Wasn't the whole idea of the civil rights movement for blacks to gain equality in the eyes of the law? Wasn't the whole idea of the civil rights movement to be for constitutional equality for blacks and other minoritiess?


Yet, aforementioned chump is making the case for slavery by saying the (white mans') law doesn't apply to him (unless he is) thus invoking the "street law" or whatever which is just an invitation for lawlessness and rule of force vice rule of law, under which slavery would certainly be justifiable.

Yep, just another example of that new civility we've been hearing so much about.

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Quickies

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A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.




B-Daddy admits to being wrong about drilling for oil and natural gas:

I still believe that our own drilling won't have much effect on prices, but it has become clear that I was missing something more important. Jobs. Drilling in North Dakota and the impact of the Keystone XL pipeline, if it were built, means jobs for Americans. It was a mistake on my part not to acknowledge that part of the equation, especially when unemployment really took off in 2009. Further, I might even be wrong about the economic impact. It seems that all of the natural gas we are bringing up out of the ground is having a huge impact on its price.

So I have to give props to Mr. 'Dawg on this, and thank him for pushing me on the issue. Now let's drill baby.

Got diversity?

100% and Vitamin D at Obama campaign headquarters.






Here's Obama's top advisor, David Axelrod on Fox News on Sunday getting Freudian?




Or is the truth of the matter just too difficult to suppress?





Second thoughts on drill, baby, drill?

Qatar, the richest nation on earth, is also the fattest with half of all adults obese and 17 per cent of the population suffering from diabetes.
By comparison America, which is often assumed to be the fattest, looks positively slim with a third of adults obese and eight per cent diabetic.

Out of a population of 1.7million, just 250,000 are native Qataris, who, in the space of just two generations have switched from a tribal existence to living in air conditioned villas being waited on by armies of servants.

More Freude on the Sunday talkies? Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, on what the President had to do to the economy.






0:15 : "...deeply damaging..."

The truth of all manner of Keynesian gimmickry wrapped up in Porkulus, Cash for Clunkers, home-owners assistance mortgage programs which has resulted in 38 straight months of unemployment being over 8%, proves to be an irresistable force for Geithner.

Shoot... the truth doesn't even hurt as Geithner, when he's done, will just rotate back to Citi, Goldman Sachs or a tenured position at Harvard. That's what passes for elite meritocracy in this country, anymore.




Leslie at Temple of Mut on the Hilary Rosen/Ann Romney dust-up:

The set-up: A snarky liberal gadfly Hilary Rosen tweeted that Mitt Romney’s wife Ann had no place commenting on economics because she had never worked (and sounding remarkably like a male chauvanist pig of former decades while doing so — a most remarkable achievement). America’s stay-at-home mom’s everywhere were shocked to discover that their thoughts on gas prices, food costs, consumer inflation, and other economic concerns are not germane to the discussion of any form of domestic economic policy formulation. Interesting, because most of the mom’s I know have a fairly significant role in budget planning. However, given Team Obama’s handling of budget matters, this type of inanity should be unsurprising coming from a 35-time White House cult-woshipper guest.

Good to know that modern feminism has progressed to sounding like Archie Bunker.

And forget about any of this sisterhood nonsense while they are card-checking your political leanings at the clubhouse door.



OK, gang. Gotta get to work. We're out.



Next post: some fun with charts/graphs


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Video clip of the day

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Nice and quick little 5 minute interview with John Stossel, now of Fox News, who spent 28 years at ABC and left because, in his words, it "sucked".

Stossel sits down with the Heritage Foundation's Rob Bluey and discusses his time there at ABC, the Buffet Rule and why statist policies make better copy and have such broader public appeal than conservative/libertarian ones.

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Our take: Statism is sexy because statism is easy. Caring for the sick, feeding the poor, educating our children, generating new technology, spurring job growth and fostering a robust economy is easy if it's someone else (i.e., the government) doing it. By contrast individual (i.e., your) initiative, effort and risk-taking is hard.

Besides, the government is, in itself, acting in it's own rational self-interest. Just like any other private enterprise, they are in the growth business but unfortunately, unlike a private enterprise, they are in the unique position whereby they will not be punished by the market for making promises they cannot keep with respect to say, eliminating poverty or stimulating the economy.

If Ford makes an Edsel, they are punished by poor sales and the ignomy of perhaps the worst American automobile of all-time. However, a politician enacting economic policies that have stalled prospects of a recession recovery and who has exhibited zero individual initiative in reforming a broken tax code and zero willingness to do anything about reigning in our national debt may very well get elected four more years to do god knows what.

The deck is very much stacked against the individual.


Next post: Quickies... tomorrow.

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Forget about "the war on women"....

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... who's paying any attention to the war on the poor?


Alternate headline: Doubling down on stupid


We have previously made note of what a disaster the administration's Cash for Clunkers was as $3 billion dollars to goose demand for new cars took perfectly fine-operating used cars off the market which had the obviously predictable results of raising the price of existing used cars which made them less accessible to lower income folks and charities who would be in the market for the same.

In case anyone wondered, cars are important:

For more than a century, efforts to help the disadvantaged have focused on education, healthcare, nutrition and housing. Almost nothing has been done to help the working poor afford cars, despite research that indicates it would help alleviate poverty.

About 1 in 4 needy U.S. families do not have a car, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. That's a serious handicap for the millions of Americans who don't have access to robust mass transit.

A nationwide survey of 353 people who bought cars with help from a nonprofit group called Ways to Work found that 72% reported an increase in income. Of those who were on public assistance when they acquired a car, 87% were no longer receiving it a few years later.

Other studies have found that low-income people were more involved in community activities and had better access to healthcare after getting cars, while their children participated more frequently in after-school programs.

"You're more likely to have a job and less likely to be fired," said Evelyn Blumenberg, a professor of urban planning at UCLA who studies transportation and poverty. "It's just a no-brainer that low-income families need cars."

Yet there are almost no state or federal programs to meet the need.

(italics, ours)

Let that sink in for a moment. It's not necessarily that there is no federal program in place to meet the car needs of the poor, there was certainly a program that resulted in worsening this scenario in Cash for Clunkers.


And the situation is not going to be getting any better.

he Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations that President Obama announced last summer will make it impossible for 7 million lower income consumers to buy a new car according to a National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) study released today.

“While you can mandate what automakers must build, (ed. note: a dubious assumption, at best) you can’t dictate what customers will buy, nor can you dictate if a bank will make a loan,” New Mexico Ford dealer Don Chalmers said today.

Obama's proposed CAFE standards, which will begin taking effect in 2017, raise minimum average vehicle fleet fuel efficiency to 54.5 mpg by 2025. The Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimate that this regulation will raise the average price of passenger cars and light trucks by $3,000.

“The unintended consequences of the proposed fuel economy increases are clear,” NADA Used Car Guide analyst David Wagner said. “If the price of a vehicle goes up by the government estimate of almost $3,000, millions of people will no longer be able to finance a new vehicle.”

This isn't rocket science, gang. If you are going to start mandating increases in technology outside of market demand, that is necessarily going to have an effect on the price of that technology.

The very class of people statist claim to champion are getting screwed by statist policies. Again, even that, as we have seen over the years isn't rocket science.

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Quote of the day

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Via Dueling Bar Stools:

“Call it what you want—capitalism, free enterprise, laissez faire or whatever—but a system that upholds property rights and otherwise allows free people to be themselves is remarkable precisely because it’s NOT a “system” per se. No deluded, pretentious planners devise or direct it. It’s no Rube Goldberg contraption of mandates and decrees. It’s simply what happens when you leave peaceful people alone. They produce more and satisfy human wants to a far greater extent than empty nanny-state promises could ever hope to deliver."

Remember this: no one has granted you the right to enterprise, commerce, the pursuit of happiness, or freedom of speech and religion. You are granted these merely because you are currently upright, breathing and reading this. The Constitution is merely a guarantor against the government or any other entity denying you the same.

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Programming alert

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Back at sea today on the USNS MEDGAR EVERS, so we will be taking a short blog-break. Hope to see you all again tomorrow.


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Video clip of the day

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Famed Sci-Fi writer, Arthur C. Clarke, back in 1974, calling it for the internet circa 2001.

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0:24 : bonus round: correctly predicting the approximate size of a laptop in that woefully inadequate iPad-less era earlier this century.


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(ed. note: We read Clarke's Sands of Mars as freshmen back in high school and thoroughly enjoyed it which begs the question why we never really picked up another sci-fi book again. hmmmm.... )

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Law designed to lower health care costs and provide coverage to more people not doing a whole lot of either

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It turns out one of the things we are finding out about ObamaCare once we passed it is that not only is it turning out to cost a heck of a lot more than advertised 2-3 years ago, many of its new intended beneficiaries will be getting stiffed because of existing laws.

President Obama’s landmark health-care initiative, long touted as a means to control costs, will actually add more than $340 billion to the nation’s budget woes over the next decade, according to a new study by a Republican member of the board that oversees Medicare financing.

The study is set to be released Tuesday by Charles Blahous, a conservative policy analyst whom Obama approved in 2010 as the GOP trustee for Medicare and Social Security. His analysis challenges the conventional wisdom that the health-care law, which calls for an expensive expansion of coverage for the uninsured beginning in 2014, will nonetheless reduce deficits by raising taxes and cutting payments to Medicare providers.

The 2010 law does generate both savings and revenue. But much of that money will flow into the Medicare hospitalization trust fund — and, under law, the money must be used to pay years of additional benefits to those who are already insured. That means those savings would not be available to pay for expanding coverage for the uninsured.

(italics, ours)

Bummer, dude.

All those young, healthy millenials who were forced to sign up for ObamaCare as a means to help finance ObamaCare, thinking they will reap the benefits of ObamaCare will be getting squeezed by their Boomer grandparents. How do you say, "priceless"?

“Does the health-care act worsen the deficit? The answer, I think, is clearly that it does,” Blahous, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, said in an interview. “If one asserts that this law extends the solvency of Medicare, then one is affirming that this law adds to the deficit. Because the expansion of the Medicare trust fund and the creation of the new subsidies together create more spending than existed under prior law.”

It certainly doesn't take an Ivy League economy degree to surmise that an expansion of benefits as contained within ObamaCare is going to cost quite a bit of money and may very well not be deficit-neutral.

Of course, those Ivy League economists retort:

Administration officials dismissed the study, arguing that it departs from bipartisan budget rules used to measure every major deficit-reduction effort for the past four decades (ed. note: and how has that been working out?) — including the blueprint offered last month by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

“Opponents of reform are using ‘new math’ while they attempt to refight the political battles of the past,” a White House budget official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the report was not publicly available. “The fact of the matter is, the Congressional Budget Office and independent experts concluded that the health-reform law will reduce the deficit. That was true the day the bill was signed into law, and it’s true today.”

The CBO has done nothing of the sort and, in fact, projected ObamaCare to cost nearly twice as much over the next ten years than their 10-year projection just two years ago.



But let's talk some "double-counting", shall we?

Blahous acknowledged that his analysis departs from budget conventions, which, he said, make sense for the most part. He said that in this case, however, those rules do not fully illuminate the financial impact of the health-care law, since they permit what conservative critics have dubbed a “double counting” of proposed Medicare savings.

Medicare is financed in part through a trust fund that receives revenue from payroll taxes. Before Obama’s health-care act passed, the trust fund was projected to be drained by 2017 (later updated to 2016). Absent the health-care law, Blahous writes, Medicare would have been forced to enact a sharp reduction in benefit payments in the middle of this decade, or “other Medicare savings would have had to be found.”

Enter the health-care law, which provides about $575 billion in Medicare savings — enough to automatically extend the life of the trust fund through 2029, according to estimates at the time, and avoid a sharp cut in benefits.

But in cost estimates by the nonpartisan CBO, those savings also offset a dramatic expansion of Medicaid under the law, as well as new subsidies for uninsured people to purchase coverage.

Very simply, you cannot take additional revenue and count it equally towards two separate entities... even three but we now know those newly-insured millenials are screwed.


That this double-counting has, for years, been recognized as a standard, bi-partisan accounting practice in D.C. speaks volumes.



Still two years away from full enactment and this thing is looking like a fiscal train wreck of epic proportions.

Confirmed: it really is about class warfare

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We knew it all along, however, credit them for their honesty but the White House finally admitted that higher taxes on the rich via the Buffet rule has nothing to do with deficit reduction or paying down the debt.

Introducing a minimum 30 percent income tax on millionaires “was never our plan to bring the deficit down and get the debt under control,” Jason Furman, the principal deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters on a conference call Monday afternoon. “This is not the president’s entire tax plan. We’re not trying to say this solves all our economic problems, all our budget problems.”

Making the argument for the rule based on billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s argument that it’s wrong for him to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary, President Barack Obama said in the State of the Union address in January that paying the “fair share of taxes” was necessary for a “sense of shared responsibility. That’s how we’ll reduce our deficit.”

If the President is going to keep trotting out the ridiculous "Buffet rule" chimera, we're going to keep knocking it down... with joy in our heart and a smile upon our face.


Buffet only pays himself a salary of $100,000 which is far, far less than what he pays his secretary, so naturally, not only is Buffet paying less in taxes than his secretary he is also paying less of a percentage of his salary in taxes than his secretary.

Buffet receives most of his income from capital gains which is taxed at 15 percent which is far lower than the highest income tax rate. So, Buffet could simply grant himself, say, a salary of $1 million, thus paying more in taxes and he and the President could quit making clowns of themselves. But, no, Buffet is a) acting in his best rational self-interest by shielding as much of his income as possible from taxation and is b) allowing himself to be a pinata for the benefit his BFF's re-election campaign.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) slammed the bill late last month, after the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the rule would generate $46.7 billion in revenues over the next decade.

“It was designed for no other reason than politics — there is no economic rationale for it,” Hatch said in a statement. “I hope the president will stop the class warfare and start leading by putting out real proposals to bring down our debt.”

But in the Monday conference call, Furman said that sum wasn’t too shabby.

“We think $47 billion is a meaningful amount of money to most Americans,” he said.

$47 billion sounds like a big number until you realize that is the alleged revenue generated over 10 years and with the way Obama spends money, that represents less than one percent of the $6.4 trillion in projected deficits during that same time period.

So, yeah, better stick with the "fairness"/class warfare angle because the numbers are laughable.

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Constitutional republics are like, hard (cont.)

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If you watch nothing else today or this week, please check out this video (~7 min.) below from Bill Whittle and Firewall and with respect to inherent rights and being free to do what the hell you want.



President Obama is totally bummed out over the provisions within the National Defense Authorization Act which he signed into law in November of 2011 which gives the federal government the power to indefinetely detain U.S.-born suspected terrorists on U.S. soil without due cause and presumptive G.O.P. nominee Mitt Romney is cool with it because he totally believes that neither Obama nor he, were he to be President, would abuse this power.

Guess what...?






It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter because this power is now enshrined into law and we are assured by completely fallible human beings that they would never, ever abuse that power.


Where we once had a right, we now have an assurance.


Where we once had 1st amendment rights, we are now forced by the government to pay for other people's contraception, quite possibly against our religious beliefs, because of the provisions contained within ObamaCare.


And it's happening without any of us causing much of a fuss because it's all happening... slowly. You can't feel it, we can't feel it but there's those laws setting on the shelves right now for all eternity waiting for it's moment to be abused.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what assurances are given; the legal framework to bury both the 1st and 5th amendment are in place and it really didn't take that long.

Your right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion and your right not to be unlawfully detained are not granted by the Constitution. Those are inherent rights; rights existing merely because you are breathing. They are rights that are protected by the Constitution from interference by the government. And now they are rights that are in serious jeopardy because of the seduction of power and of ignorance and hypocrisy.

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Quickies

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A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.


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Out of the blocks: B-Daddy on the Shaima Alawadi and Trayvon Martin travesties:

At the time of the initial report, I saw Fatima on television and shared with friends that she didn't seem credible. But I withheld public judgment, which is more than I can say for the professional racialists who have invaded Florida to inject themselves into the Martin shooting. Here again, media bias may also be contributing to the appearance of guilt. NBC has issued a half-hearted apology for editing 911 tape to make George Zimmerman, appear to be racist. No one is willing to let the police and prosecutors do their jobs. Instead we get appeals to mob violence. One would think that the supposed heirs of the civil rights movement's leadership would recognize that as a danger to all Americans.

Maybe George Zimmerman is guilty of some crime. I certainly don't know. But I am certainly not going to make a judgment based on edited media reports. Maybe Shaima Alawadi was the victim of a racist attack, but my gut instinct, based on watching her daughter speak tells me otherwise. But I'm certainly not going to accuse people of murder when I don't know the facts. Americans need to call out the Al Sharptons of the world for the ridicule they deserve; they do nothing to advance the cause of justice.

Thankfully, cooler heads have prevailed here in San Diego where there has not been near the level of vitriol and rancor willfully and wrongly injected into this particular affair as opposed to the goat rope down in Florida.

We have heard both the edited an un-edited versions of the 911 call made by the, uh, "white Hispanic" George Zimmerman. Summary: NBC is guilty of journalistic malfeasance and of inciting racial hatred and encouraging personal endangerment. If anything untoward happens to George Zimmerman, NBC, Al Sharpton and the New Black Panthers should, by law, be held accountable.



Related: KT notes it's a been a tough stretch if you are in the race-baiting business but, wait...

And then, like a miracle from the heavens, comes George Zimmerman. Finally, some light in the darkness, a big, juicy chunk of traditional racism that everyone can latch onto! Marches! Speeches! Protests! Demands for justice! Like a battered church shaken in its faith that suddenly finds an image of Mary on a tree stump in its yard, it was too good to be true.

And it was, indeed, too good to be true. Zimmerman was a Democrat, not a Republican. He was half-Hispanic, not totally white. He's got a history of working with the NAACP. Spike Lee tweeted the wrong address and set the lynch mob out to string up an innocent, retired couple. The disappointments go on and on.

And with respect to the GOP budget plan authored by Paul Ryan (R-WI):

President Barack Obama accused Republicans on Tuesday of favoring the rich with a "radical" budget plan that focuses on cutting popular programs, which the White House sees as a potent vote winner for Democrats in this year's election.

In a week in which Mitt Romney is expected to extend his lead in the race for the Republican nomination to confront Obama in the Nov. 6 election, the president took aim at their new budget blueprint, calling it "thinly veiled social Darwinism."

Want to know what's social Darwinism? Doing nothing about our unsustainable entitlement programs. The President by his very inactions and his lack of willingness to reform Social Security and Medicare is willing to cast aside the well-being of future generations as those programs get crushed under their own weight.




And speaking of radical:

The House on Wednesday night unanimously rejected an alternative budget proposal based on President Obama's 2013 budget plan, dispatching it in a 0-414 rout.

The vote came just hours after the White House cast the pending vote as a political "gimmick," an apparent attempt to downplay what many expected to be an ugly-looking vote for the White House.

Obama's budget plans have a poor track record in Congress over the last year. In May 2011, 97 senators voted against a motion to take up his 2012 budget plan — no senator voted in favor of the motion.

0-414 and 0-97 doesn't sound very mainstream, does it?






Coming to a town near you: the Arab/Occupy Spring?

An Egypt-styled “Arab Spring,” which has put radicals in charge of the government, will be launched in the United States this spring with a war on “corporate power, Wall Street greed and the political corruption of the 1 percent,” according to the group headed by former Obama green aide Van Jones.

“They’re really not going to like the 99 percent Spring,” said Rebuild the Dream in an organizing email Friday.

Comparing the collection of protests last year that are symbolized by the 99 percent campaign and Occupy movement, to those of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., the group said that “we were all inspired by the protesters of the Arab Spring who stood up to totalitarian governments, and inspired the Occupy movement here in America.”

Standing up to totalitarian governments is a great thing but how do you revolutionize towards the status quo? Occupy/Obama's Whining Squatters are totally vested in the status quo.

What they are revolting towards is a more invasive and intrusive federal government that will necessarily infringe upon some enshrined rights with respect to your wealth, property and very possibly your exercise of free speech. That doesn't sound very progressive to us and, in fact, sounds quite regressive.





And from yesterday: Louis Oosthuizen's double eagle on #2 in the final round of the Masters in which he placed second to Bubba Watson.







OK, gang, that'll be all. May try to check in later today but we will definetely be back tomorrow.

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