FICA Insanity

Raise, Don’t Save, Social Security - NYTimes.com:

OK, FICA is broke, so we ought to RAISE the amount paid under FICA!!  Insanity truly knows no bounds!!!

Beck Viewers Better Informed than Stewart Viewers?

Is Jon Stewart Correct that Fox News Viewers Are "the most consistently misinformed media viewers"? - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

Who knows ... but it appears that the data isn't exactly what at least Stewart would have you believe. The video at the end is really worth a view -- apparently sanity wasn't a 100% phenomenon at the "Rally to Restore Sanity". Hmmm ...

TX vs CA

RealClearPolitics - The Texas vs. California Example

Just read it. This comparison is so obvious and easy that the mind numbs at what it is that liberals are clinging to in their ideology. It seems they are completely willing to take the country to bankruptcy rather than simply admit the extremely obvious truth that their policies don't work!!!

Freedom to Work!

Power Line - Boeing Heats Up

The MSM has pretty much stayed away from the BO administrations vendetta to dictate to Boeing what states it may or may not build multi billion dollar plants in. This is really nothing more than an edict to US business saying "do it the BO way or get the hell out of the country".

I'd rather keep the business and get rid of BO ... and ASAP!!! We need Boeing and others like them MUCH more than we need BO!!

Palin Derangement Syndrome

American Way: Sarah Palin email frenzy backfires on her media antagonists – Telegraph Blogs

Gee, Sarah appears to be a hands on governor and mom, struggling to balance work and family, with strong religious convictions. Who would have thought?

Denigrating Palin has become the replacement for denigration of Bush up till say '10. All the supposedly smart and "in the know" people would throw out some barb from time to time expecting instant approval from all around them. It would just be embarrassing for anyone to admit that they were SO STUPID to defend Bush or now Palin!!!

Well, maybe for some I guess. I always rather enjoyed not going with "the in crowd".

My only criteria for President next year is "ABBO" (Anybody But BO) ... if it is Palin, then I could support her 100%. At least we've established a new low bar for the Presidency with BO.

Republican Tendencies

E-mails show GOP circling Palin in late 2008 - CNN.com:

The MSM is panting and salivating like a starved dog in a butcher shop over the release of Palin e-mails. Let's just review a bit here:

• When Wikileaks brought out the State Department e-mails / memos showing the "real views" on various world leaders, how did they like that? They tried to arrest the guy.
• When hackers got the real climate data records that showed that a lot of Global Warming was a hoax, how did they like that? They tried to arrest the hackers. 
• What was their attitude on getting BO's birth certificate? Columbia or other school records? Information about his time at ACORN? Maybe his e-mails of early Chicago politics would be interesting? Guess not -- I could imagine the Press being curious, but curiosity this selective makes them essentially a palace guard for Democrats. 
• What is the normal position on "invasion of privacy"? 

It is easy to understand of course. They HATE Sarah Palin, and want her out of their sight anyway they can make that happen.

 I always wonder though, if people are born with "Republican tendencies"? Even though all their teachers and classmates are liberal, they somehow see things differently.  They see how Republicans are treated in the media, and the first few times they make comments in maybe history or government class about "personal responsibility", or potentially "how do we KNOW what is really "progress"", the strong disapproval let's them know they are "different"?

I guess it must be true though that being a Republican is a choice --  some day in maybe HS or College Sarah woke up, knowing the way things ought to be and "went Rogue" -- she willfully chose evil over good and thus began on the path of enmity with the American media and elites.

There is hope of redemption though. Look at Arianna Huffington. She had a short stint as a conservative commentator in the early '90s during which she was seen as a complete air headed idiot by the left. She subsequently "went left", and is now viewed as one of the most brilliant women in the world, taking in $315 Million on the sale of her Huffington Post far left web site.

So while some things about humans are innate, others can be put on and off like fashions. It is a good thing we have the liberal elites to tell us which are which!

Liberal "Fact" On Deficits

Tim Pawlenty’s Economic Plan: Lies and Lunacy - The Daily Beast:

Last month, the CBO released a little-noted document, which I first encountered via Bruce Bartlett, breaking down the debt this country has accumulated since 2001. The grand total of debt is $11.8 trillion. Of that, more than half, or $6.2 trillion, was added because of lost revenue, while $5.6 trillion was added because of spending. Now you may look at those numbers and say, well, spending is almost half. And yes, it is. But what’s interesting in this chart is that the lost revenue figure matches exactly the actual current deficit.

For those who reside in the world of fact, it’s beyond question that the decrease in tax revenue because of the Bush tax cuts and the economic meltdown that resulted from conservative deregulatory policies has done more than spending to create the crisis. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world of fact. We live, instead, in a world of right-wing ideological lunacy. And so we get things like Tim Pawlenty’s jaw-dropping economic plan, which ignores completely our revenue reality.

Here is a link to the "little noted document":
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/121xx/doc12187/ChangesBaselineProjections.pdf

In the liberal world, you willfully declare the sub-prime meltdown to be a "Republican problem due to de-regulation", completely ignoring the fact that the whole creation of the sub-prime market was a Democrat program to give folks without good enough credit a "deal" on homes. That is exactly like creating crack cocaine and blaming lack of drug laws / enforcement for there being problems caused by it. Was sub-prime abused? Helllllooo ... what else would you expect!!! Government programs are ALWAYS abused, they create a false and unsustainable reality, just like cocaine ... that is why a smaller government is MUCH safer!!

Then you make up numbers:

• The hated "Bush tax cuts" were supposedly responsible for $1,186 of the $6,220 ... you do all you can to make it sound like those were the culprit, they were 1/6th of the problem 
• "Tax Act of 2010" $354 Billion, ... Democrats in control of all 3 branches ... 1/4 the size of those horrid tax cuts. Bush??? Hate to say it, he left office in Jan '09!!
• ARRA = TARP ... 2009, $253 Billion, BO, 60 votes in Senate, big house majority. Bush? I don't think so.
• Note 2007, last year of Republicans in control of house/senate. Total deficit $161 Billion. One of the best kept secrets in the American media!
• Total deficits 2008-2011 after Democrats took over House / Senate followed by WH in 2009 $4,565

There you have it. Your own party is hugely ('08) and TOTALLY ('09 -'11) responsible for the numbers (unless of course you want to give Bush / Republicans credit for the surplus in 2001, they did have both houses from '94-2006), but who is it that is a "lunatic and a liar"??? The folks responsible for $1,635 B out of $6,200 B ... SIMPLE!!!!

Does anyone really need any more to understand why this country is over the cliff and falling like a rock??? Vast sections of the media and electorate have a willful disregard of fact.

"Change" in Perspective

The Factory of Selective Moral Outrage - Page 1 - Victor Davis Hanson - Townhall Conservative

Good summary of a few of the selective outrages on various topics, financial meltdown, Patriot Act, the wars, etc. a lot of media outlets, entertainers and people have shifted 180 degrees on exactly the same issues now that their ideology is in the WH.

As it says at the end; General "Betray Us" is now up for head of the CIA and the left is just fine with that!

Debt Ceiling Sanity

Our Salutary Debt-Ceiling Scare - Charles Krauthammer - National Review Online: "and"

Charles nails it, nothing to add, a worthy column.

Can America See Through BO?

RealClearPolitics - Seductive Beliefs: Part II

Good column by Sowell.

Obama is politically savvy enough to know how to get his point across without blowing his cover.

The fate of the United States of America may depend on how savvy we the people are in seeing what he is doing-- and how soon, before the situation becomes irretrievable.

Finding the Weiner Hacker

iowahawk: Help Me Bring the Weiner Hacker to Justice

This story would of course bring down any Republican congressman in 24 hours, but for a liberal congressman, "stuff happens".

Well done (and funny) coverage by IOWAHAWK in the link. I think that Congressman Weiner ought to contact OJ on the search for Nichole's killer. Like the Weiner Hacker, I'm sure he is still "at large" so to speak ... perhaps Rep Weiner looking in a mirror would aid in the search.

Liberal Alchemy, Opinion to "Fact"

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2013/05/28/study-finds-fact-checkers-biased-against-republicans

I've noted a new MSM device that seems to be designed to turn conservative statements into "lies" and liberal opinions into "facts". Much like lead into gold, it doesn't work if you have a brain you use for something beyond keeping your head from collapsing, but it explains why a lot of the left finds these "fact checkers" to very "factual".

After all, it fits their biases, so it MUST be TRUE! But, perhaps the left ought consider the old saw that "if it conforms to your biases, you ought to strongly consider that it is FALSE".

The fact that, as the Lichter study shows, "A majority of Democratic statements (54 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely true, compared to only 18 percent of Republican statements," probably has more to do with how the statements were picked and the subjective bias of the fact checker involved than anything remotely empirical. Likewise, the fact that "a majority of Republican statements (52 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely false, compared to only 24 percent of Democratic statements" probably has more to do with spinning stories than it does with evaluating statements.

A lot of what goes on in politics, economics, society, etc is a LONG way from "fact". The modern world is loaded with "statistical science" which is pretty much an oxymoron. How good is the economy? Like a lot of such things "it depends" -- what you use to measure it, which parts you give the most focus, how you deal with government vs private, young vs old, etc.

If you can get some "Fact Check Site" to take your cherished position as the "true way" to view the glass (half empty, half full, twice as big as it needs to be, etc) and call the other side liars. The advantage as always goes to the dominant culture -- millions of people that only listen to one side of the news get another way to have their biases confirmed and continue to live a comfortable life in the the thrall of "The Party".

BO Grounds NASA

Column: Is Obama grounding JFK's space legacy? - USATODAY.com

Not a particularly well written article, but the authors are guys that I have enough respect for to read independently of their writing skills.

The fact is that America has lost it's way in so many ways, and NASA is just a small example. We need new leadership, we need a vision beyond the transfer of existing wealth from one pocket to another and general decline.

Space was once a REAL "Final Frontier". I guess I really am getting old -- I'm looking back at the space program of the 60's as "the good old days". Damn ... how did Ronald Reagan manage to remain optimistic and positive out into his 80's? Oh wait, he was Reagan -- he WAS the hope, and he still had the illusion of thinking that Carter was the worst president we would ever have!

The Mythology of BO

Shelby Steele: Obama's Unspoken Re-Election Edge - WSJ.com

Very Very well written and solid analysis. Read it!

Maybe Herman Cain is our only hope?

BO Attacks Boeing

Battling over Boeing: Jobs in Texas threatened | Viewpoints, Outlook | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle: "growth"

The unions have definitely got their moneys worth out of BO. The real message here is that America is increasingly anti-Business. Less jobs, less wealth, less revenue -- say hello to Chicago style corrupt managed national decline!!