Barack is going to Ohio to Increase Our Manufacturing Capacity!!!

You may not have read about it because he wasn't accompanied with his usual wave of unemployment, disaster, debt and racial discord, but Barack recently visited Ohio.

Here's an article that the good folks at Industry Week recently sent me.

President Obama will be in Cleveland, Ohio, today to talk about his plan to strengthen U.S. manufacturing by investing in new technology

.O, God, God almightty help us all...  Most of Barack's "investments" have been in green energy, America's Community Colleges, Solyndra, anti-global warmingscams, infrastructure, canisters of Leprechaun farts, sustainables, and other failed schemes.  

We've got the smallest percentage of our workforce employed than we have in a long, long time, and we're in big trouble. Hillary and Jeb Bush are warming up offstage.  This is sooo...scary.  

H CRAP!!! 

He's got his shirt sleeves rolled up.  that means he's ready to work.  And we all know what happens when he does that...

Manufacturers are adding jobs at the fastest rate in decades with nearly 900,000 new positions created in the last five years. Factory production is up by a third since the recession and factories across the U.S. are experiencing growth not seen since the 90s.

This fool has never even managed a Taco Bell Night Shift....

The new White House and Commerce Department plan looks to take advantage of the latest surge with a series of initiatives including:

Competitions

The Department of Defense is launching a competition for leading manufacturers, universities, and non-profits....

Hey, how would you describe Barack's donor base?  Let's start with universities and non-profits....

 to form a new manufacturing hub focused on revolutionary fibers and textiles technologies. The $75 million federal investment will be matched by more than $75 million of private sector resources.  These private sector resources" are often called "campaign contributions" in the real world.  

Also, there will be $320 million competition to strengthen small manufacturers. Non-profits in 12 states will compete for $158 million in Federal funds matched by $158 million or more in private investment over five years to provide technology and engineering expertise to small manufacturers through the latest round of competitions to strengthen the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)’s network of centers in these states.

Supply Chain Innovation

A new White House and Commerce Department Report describes a dense network of small manufacturers that make up the backbone of America’s supply chains, contributing more than 40% of all manufacturing employment. However, even as their share of U.S. manufacturing employment grows, small firms continue to face stiff challenges in innovation. As the new report finds:

Small manufacturers are playing an increasingly important role in U.S. supply chains and the manufacturing sector overall. Today, small manufacturers employ 42% - or nearly half of all U.S. manufacturing workers - up ten percentage points from their share in the 1980s. 

Dense networks of these small manufacturers are vital to the process of taking a product from concept to market, and the exchange of manufacturing know-how across suppliers is essential for the diffusion of the new product ideas and innovative processes that give U.S. manufacturing its cutting edge.

However, because of the barriers they face, small manufacturers often lag behind their larger peers in adopting critical new technologies. 

Ok, class, raise your hands if you've heard this before....

"Most of our job growth comes from small businesses."  

Heard it before?  

Of course you have.  It's one of those obvious factoids that government gnomes and their media friends love to repeat.  

It's like saying "Most of the growth in forests comes from trees that aren't grown yet."  But they say it like it's brilliant.  Wisdom.  Waaaaay smart. 

For example, a recent survey found that fewer than 60% of small manufacturers were experimenting in any way with 3-D printing, a potentially transformative technology that is especially beneficial for small companies due to its flexibility. In contrast, over 75% of large firms were using the technology.

The White House Supply Chain Innovation Initiative will focus on public-private partnerships and new federal efforts to strengthen U.S. manufacturing overall by closing this gap.

The event will be live streamed at www.whitehouse.gov/live.

God helps us all.  

Barack has come up with another public-private partnership.  

Any time you hear public-private partnership, cover up your wallet, lock your purse in the trunk, and bury the family silver in your back yard.  

The risks are going to be public, and any profits will be privatized.  

I'm sorry for repeating that cliche, but as long as "public-private partnership"is polling well with idiots,Democrats, I've got to repeat it..

Ok, here's my point....

American manufacturing will regain it's place at #1 in the world when we do the following:

1. Reassure investors, manufacturers, and other risk-takers that our government isn't going to confiscate and redistribute any profits.  

2.  Eliminate the risk of hiring someone.  If I hire someone to unload shipping containers, all I want is to have my containers unloaded.  I don't want to take on a dependent.  I don't want to be sued if he's black or brown, and I decide to stop purchasing his labor.  I don't want Nancy Pelosi to dictate what I have to pay him to unload my containers.

4.  And finally, it doesn't matter if I'm getting raw material from Canada, Mexico, Cuba, South Africa, or Kenya, it should all come into the country at the same tariff rate.  We have tens of thousands of government Munchkins earning great salaries slapping tariffs and quota restrictions on imported stuff.  All of those people should be propped against a wall and shot.  

5.  We gotta end our public school system, then bulldoze every public school, plow salt into the ground so nothing can every grow there again, and try something different.  

6.  Imagine interviewing high school graduates day after day after day, who can't read a tape measure, fill out an application, or answer a simple question.  

Shit, folks, it ain't working any more. It was good while it lasted.  End it.  Let's do something different.    

One Obama paragraph. Five errors.

I've been very, very busy at work, so I haven't been posting much on this site.  I've been producing things that other people want.  I produce things that people voluntarily give their money for. 

The president of the United States has been very busy too.  But he takes things by force. 

Fortunately for the nation, Barack Obama has disadvantages that I (and many others) don't have. 

You see, we're not burdened by being totally full of shit. 

Here's a recent Barack speech, in italics. 

"You'll hear if you watch the nightly news or you read the newspapers that, well, there's gridlock, Congress is broken, approval ratings for Congress are terrible.  And there's a tendency to say, a plague on both your houses. 

And I take pride in being the Point Man for Tarrant County, Texas, for many of those who say "a plague on both your houses".  Both houses spend other peoples' money like drunk cowboys.  Both sides support the Drug War, they've supported the War on Gays, the War on Brown People, etc., etc., etc.  My side doesn't. 

But the truth of the matter is that the problem in Congress is very specific.  We have a group of folks in the Republican Party who have taken over who are so ideologically rigid, who are so committed to an economic theory that says if folks at the top do very well then everybody else is somehow going to do well;

Name ONE "economic theorist" who says that if "the folks at the top" (and they're centered around D.C.) do well, then EVERYBODY ELSE is going to do well.  Name one.  Barack, I will kiss your ass on the White House steps, and give you 30 minutes to draw a crowd beforehand, if you can produce the economic theorists who claim that if the folks at the top are doing well, then EVERYBODY ELSE will somehow do well.  There will always be some losers.  Always.  In the purest libertarian capitalist system that anyone can imagine, there will be some heartbreaking losses.  Someone, somewhere, will be the last VHS cassette manufacturer. 

BTW, here's a map of the wealthiest counties in the USA.  I'll never tire of posting it.  Barack is in the middle of that radioactive orange spot. 

....who deny the science of climate change;

Well, you got me there.  Climate is changing.  It always has.  I believe that it always will.  So does everyone else.  But I'm not going to stop flying, or hauling the nation's toilet paper around in semi-tractors.  Barack, you aren't going to stop flying either.  So please, please, please drop the posturing.  We've been through four or five Ice Ages in the past, and we're blessed to live in the gap between a couple of them now.  Enjoy it while it lasts.   

....who don't think making investments in early-childhood education makes sense;

Here's an analysis of the Government Accounting Office's study that proved that investment in early-childhood education don't make sense (when government is the party making the investments).  Most caring people in America have heard of this study.  Read it, for God's sake....

who have repeatedly blocked raising a minimum wage so if you work full-time in this country you're not living in poverty.... 

If, if, if....If, if, if....  That's like saying "if you get lucky enough as a low-skilled victim of public schools and the legal system and the drug war, you're not living in poverty."  We have a horrifying number of unemployed minority teens in this country.  They are unemployed because the minimum wage is too high.  The only alternative to that view is to believe that employers are now more racist than they were 70 years ago. 

...who scoff at the notion that we might have a problem with women not getting paid for doing the same work that men are doing.

I scoff at that notion.  I repeat....  I scoff at that notion.  And if you are honest, so will you.  Think of your workplace.  Think of someone who does your exact job, with your exact experience level, and your exact output, and your exact level of training. 

Thought of that person yet?  No?  Well, you never will.  He or she doesn't exist.  That's why this segment of Barack's Inequality Crusade is a red herring.  It's a feast for lawyers and the government's regulatory munchkins. 

Also, if you adjust for hours worked and education, women make virtually the same as men.  Barack's Pajama Boys pulled that 77% number out of their asses. 

So there you have it.  One paragraph of a Barack Obama speech.  Five misrepresentations of reality.  He could've said that Republicans are superstitious homophobes.  Well, maybe.  He could've said that they're scared of people with different skin colors from theirs.  Well, yeah, but so are Democrats.  Barack could've said that Republicans are Crony Capitalists of the worst possible sort, and I woulda stood on my coffee table and cheered. 

There's so much low-hanging fruit out there, just waiting on a politician like Barack to reach up and pluck it. 

He can't even do that properly. 

Sorry for the anger in this post.  But I'm so tired of that man.  I've spent a long, long day trying to hire and train victims of our public schools who first became victims of the Welfare State, who then became victims of the Drug War, and who then later became victims of "the helping professions" in government social work bureaucracies.  The system depresses me and terrifies me. 

Good night. 

But Obama graduated from Harvard! With honors!

One of the barroom arguments that I most often encounter goes something like this.... "If Barack Obama is a totally incompetent idiot, how did he manage to graduate with honors from Harvard?"

As it turns out, graduating with honors from Harvard isn't particularly difficult. 

Here's something from CNN:

In case anyone had a shadow of a doubt that most Harvard students are precocious, smart, if not learned, we hear from the lips of Harvard's Dean of Undergraduate Education, Jay M. Harris, that nearly all the students at Harvard are indeed above average -- so much so that the median grade given is an A- and the most frequent grade awarded is an A!

This is enough to put Barack into Lake Wobegon territory - "where the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all of the children are above average". 

But that doesn't mean it's easy to graduate with freakin' honors, does it?  Surely they don't hand out summa, magna, magma, omega and beta cum laude degrees as if they were Obamacare Exemptions? 

They do.  They do.  And it's been going on for a long time.  Here's something from The Boston Globe via SFGate (San Francisco):

Last June, a record 91 percent of Harvard students graduated summa, magna, or cum laude, far more than at Yale (51 percent), Princeton (44 percent) and other elite universities, a Globe study has found.
While the world regards these students as the best of the best of America's 13 million undergraduates, Harvard honors has actually become the laughingstock of the Ivy League.

That was written in 2001, BTW. 

Everything else about Barry's education is old news.  We don't know how he did at Occidental or at Columbia because he won't release his grades.  (You can go here if you want to learn about the academic performance of John Kerry, Joe Biden, The Goracle or George W. Bush.) 

Here's one thing we do know about grades and getting into Harvard.
I graduated from Delta State University with a 3.33.  
That wasn't good enough to get me into Harvard, but it was pretty damn good. 
If my undergrad record was good enough to justify admission to the Ivy League, you would read about it on this website once a week. 
I would scan my transcript and post it.  Look at my grades, dammit! 

Barack Obama's grades weren't good enough to get him into Harvard.  I know this, you know this, and he knows this.  He was an Affirmative Action student.  That's why he hasn't released the records.

Barack Obama's accomplishments weren't enough to get him elected president.  He was the recipient of Affirmative Action votes. 

Barack Obama's record as president has been horrible.  He's been blessed with an Affirmative Action media who believe their job is to shower his path with rose petals. 

It's the only treatment he's ever known. 

But he graduated from Harvard!  With honors! 

But in a Libertarian Society.....

Jay Carney Appreciates Your Questions! (Interactive)

From Yahoo! (of all places)

Jay Carney doesn’t have an answer for that. He hasn’t discussed that subject with the president. He will refer you to the Department of [insert agency here]. He refuses to speculate on that. He’ll have to get back to you.

But he appreciates the question.

A Yahoo News analysis of the 444 briefings through June 18 that Carney has held since becoming White House press secretary has identified 13 distinct strains in the way he dodges a reporter's question. Since Carney held his first daily briefing with reporters in the White House Brady Press Briefing Room on Feb. 16, 2011, for example, he’s used some variation of "I don’t have the answer" more than 1,900 times. In 1,383 cases he referred a question to someone else. But will he at least speculate on hypotheticals? No. In fact, he has refused to do so 525 times.

In the following interactive, you can browse all 9,486 of Carney’s most-used responses and verbal crutches.

Video available below the chart.  But really, you gotta play the game.  Good stuff, folks.  Good stuff. 
. .

311,604 Federal Workers doing their part to prevent government waste

Several years ago I began awarding trophies called "The Whitey" to citizens who did their part to eliminate government waste.
The best way to eliminate government waste is to avoid paying your taxes.  If you don't give them your money, they can't waste it.  
An astounding number of Whiteys went to rejected (and confirmed) members of Obama's cabinet.  Timmy "TurboTax" Geithner, Tom Daschle, etc etc etc all did their part to keep their hard earned dollars out of The U.S. Treasury.  Hit the "Whiteys" label at the bottom to read about previous award winners.

Lord have mercy, they're still trying to devalue the trophy.  

From the Tax Prof Blog:

311,566 federal workers and retirees owed more than $3.5 billion in back income taxes in 2011 (up from $3.4 billion in 2010, $3.3 billion in 2009, $3.0 billion in 2008, and $2.7 billion in 2007).

And from Investor's Business Daily.  Looks like 40 of Barack's lackeys and handmaidens have been doing their share:

A new report from the Internal Revenue Service has just revealed that 40 of Obama's White House aides owe their employer, the federal government, a total of $333,485 in back taxes.
This is the third straight year that the chief executive of the United States has been unable to get his own staff members to keep up with a citizen's legal income tax obligations. to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes owed. All this while Obama has made such rhetorical hay about corporations and the wealthy paying their fair share.

That's 311,604 current and former suckers of the government tit who are doing their part to keep their own money from being wasted by Barack H. Obama. 

Here are your Whitey Awards !!

The Real Cost Of Shrinking Government

The New York Holy Times is having a conniption fit over the slight chance that government spending will be cut.
Most of this "sequester" spending cut is bullshit.  It's a cut from the rate of increase, not a "cut" in the sense that you use the word.
Here we go....

In less than two weeks, a cleaver known as the sequester will fall on some of the most important functions of the United States government. About $85 billion will be cut from discretionary spending over the next seven months, reducing defense programs by about 8 percent and domestic programs by about 5 percent. Only a few things will be spared, including some basic safety-net benefits like Social Security, as well as pay for enlisted military personnel.

Considering that we need to cut by about 50%, and then go further, this is a good thing.

The sequester will not stop to contemplate whether these are the right programs to cut; it is entirely indiscriminate, slashing programs whether they are bloated or essential. The military budget, for example, should be reduced substantially, but thoughtfully, considering the nation’s needs. Instead, every weapons system, good or bad, will be hurt, as will troop training and maintenance.

I've been through these types of cutbacks before with various companies.  It's fairly easy.  It hurts, but it's easy.  However, John Boehner has been confronted with a 3 billion dollar cut to an aircraft engine program in his district.  Defense Secretary Gates said we didn't need the engines.  Boehner said that the military did indeed need them.
That's why you'll never see "thoughtful" cuts.  We need slash and burn.  Your share of the debt (if you're a taxpayer) is more than 50K.

These cuts, which will cost the economy more than one million jobs over the next two years, are the direct result of the Republican demand in 2011 to shrink the government at any cost, under threat of a default on the nation’s debt. Many Republicans say they would still prefer the sequester to replacing half the cuts with tax revenue increases. But the government spending they disdain is not an abstract concept. In a few days, the cuts will begin affecting American life and security in significant ways.

Horseshit, horseshit, horseshit.  If Washington is putting their Corvette and caviar purchases on maxed-out credit cards over and over again, no sane economist would claim that their stopping would cost the economy more than one million jobs.
If taxpayers don't have to pay for pork projects, they'll use the money for other things - things that they choose, not what Washington and The New York Holy Times choose.  I'd like to buy another Ford F-150 instead of another F-16.  

While some departments may have exaggerated the dire effects of their reductions, Congressional budget experts say they have little doubt that the size and pervasive nature of the sequester will inflict widespread pain. Here are some examples from the government departments most affected:

They go on to list, department by department, the horrific outcomes we should expect from any cutbacks at all.  Most of these departments should've been privatized years ago.
Don't believe what they're selling.  They're partying their butts off on your dollars.
How long are you going to tolerate it?  

A long rant about Paul Krugman

If Barack Obama/Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid and Co. were to break into Fort Knox, throw all the gold into the Atlantic,  then shoot the CEO of every Productive (i.e.  non-green) company, and then, as a follow-up, pour radioactive waste into every functioning oil well in North America, I wonder what Paul Krugman of the New York Holy Times would do to justify it.  Because he would find a way to justify it.    

If the only way to hire one more government bureaucrat involved adding 3 trillion to the national debt, selling our children to China as household slaves, and worsening the condition of every low income family in the nation, I wonder what Paul Krugman would write to justify it. 

Because he would find a way to justify it. 

There are people in politics that I admire.  I think Ron Paul is as close as they come to being an American hero.  But he plugged in the occasional earmark here and there.  Ask him why, and he'll say that that's how the game is played.   It's what the system requires.  He shouldn't have done the earmarks. 

He also should've paid more attention to his newsletters in the 80's, and not allowed any racist commentary to get in.  If you want to be president, you've gotta keep your eye on the ball. 

See???  I just criticized Ron Paul.  I think it helps my objectivity a bit. 

I think the world of former New Mexico governor and LP presidential candidate Gary Johnson, and would probably volunteer to be the mother of his next child.  But I totally disagree with his stance on privatizing prisons, and I don't care how much money it saved the state of New Mexico.  The government should have a monopoly on initiating force.  It's that simple.  I think Gary Johnson is wrong, wrong, wrong on this issue. 

But Paul Krugman?  If Barack Obama were to start locking up people for bing left-handed, confiscating their illegally earned left-handed incomes, and sending them to Montana for "re-education", I truly believe that Paul Krugman would write a column about how this will eventually help the economy. 

Jesus Christ Almighty, what a puppet....

"I can't be overdrawn. I haven't run out of checks." by Paul Krugman

Here's something from Paul Krugman of the New York Holy Times, on why we aren't having a debt crisis. 

We are not having a debt crisis. 
It’s important to make this point, because I keep seeing articles about the “fiscal cliff” that do, in fact, describe it — often in the headline — as a debt crisis. But it isn’t. The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to cover its deficit.

There you have it, folks.  From the #1 New York Times cheerleader and apologist for The Teleprompter Jesus. 
It's a variation on the old joke/bumpersticker that says "I can't possibly be overdrawn - I haven't run out of checks". 

Barack Obama has received our petition to secede

All of the post-election secession talk that's been going around disturbs me. 
We've got a great constitution in the U.S.  It's the greatest idea for a country ever, an idea the could be summed up as "leave everyone alone". 
We just need government to stick to the limits of the constitution, get the spending under control, and we really, really could come out of this mess intact. 
(Unfortunately, we now have to come up with $16,000,000,000,000.00 before we rise back up to the debt level of a homeless wino.  It could happen...?) 

A Statist with time on her hands (Dianne Self Wing?) recently composed this satire of a "Goodbye Letter" from Barack Obama to the Great State Of Texas. 

Rather than being funny, it's a terrifying glimpse into the mind of a Nanny State victim.

 
1)  All military bases in Texas will be closed.... 
You promise?  We won't have to pay for any more bloated military???  No standing army/navy/air force/marine groups going off to kill babies in the Middle East?  We could keep an army about the size of, say, Brazil's and do just fine.  More money in our pockets instead of Lockheed's. 

2)  They're going to revoke our passports. 
We'll have to get a passport if we want to see Texas A&M play a Southeast Conference "away" game, or visit a debt-laden Blue State.  Yawn. 

3)  The Feds are going to revoke our highway and infrastructure funding. 
Wait, let me rephrase that....  We won't have to send money to Washington, let them take a huge cut off the top, and then get a little bit of it back.  I don't see a downside yet, do you? 

4)  The FAA will no longer exist. 
Good.  They've had major problems with Air Traffic Controllers sleeping in the towers.  Canada privatized their Air Traffic Control system and hasn't had that problem.  So far, so good. 

5)  The FCC will no longer be able to grant regional monopolies to Clear Channel. 

6)  Anyone receiving payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Disability will have to re-apply. 
There is no longer such a thing as Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.  In a real world accounting system, they're bankrupt.  There's nothing there.  It's been spent.  Disability payments are another story.  These suddenly skyrocketed during Obama's 3rd year, and at one point the number of people filing for disability payments exceeded the number of people who found jobs.  This will be a good opportunity for Texas to determine who is really disabled, right? 

7)  Goodbye to the U.S. Coast Guard. 
Well, we don't fear drug smugglers in Texas.  More and more of us favor legalization.  Plus, if we're no longer going to be associated with Barack's Brigades who are going around the world blowing up other people's stuff, the need for a massive Navy/Coast Guard is going to drop off.  This'll be a good break for Texas.  But I suspect we'll have to put a border fence between ourselves and Oklahoma.  And Louisiana.  And New Mexico.   

8)  Thanks for giving us an opportunity to start paying the national debt now, instead of decades from now. 

Can you believe that this is the best someone could do?  There are so many great, great things about being associated with the USA.  But all that Dianne Self Wing could list were armies, busted programs, bureaucracies, and debts.  In other words, the Bush/Obama legacy.   

Kinda sad. 

The Life Of Julia - Libertarian Remix

The Obama campaign has rolled out an unintentionally hilarious slideshow called "The Life Of Julia".  It shows the life of a woman through her government benefits.  If you have even the slightest interest in Victimology, you've gotta check it out.  I don't care who you are, or which hoss you support in this race.  This thing is funny.  The parody potential is massive.  For starters, just look at the first slide.  It touts the benefits of HeadStart?!??!!!   Really?  Even if the Department of Health And Human Services says HeadStart probably doesn't make a difference? 

Want to know what else is super creepy about this accursed thing? 

Tribalism. 

Not only can Julia not exist without help from Dear Leader, The Teleprompter Jesus, but she might also have some difficulties if she doesn't align herself with a tribe.  (In case you're new to my blog, I see religious, ethnic, and national tribalism as the #1 curse on humanity.)  Check out this drop-down menu from the Obama campaign at the beginning of the slideshow:

I honestly can't believe that the Democrats had the cajones to put LGBT Americans on their site.  Barack Obama is the highest ranking gay marriage opponent in the United States.  But enough about the obvious....Julia needs the government for almost everything, and she needs to be aligned with a special-interest group, right?  Right. 

Parodies of this thing are all over the place.  Iowahawk's is greatness. Go there. 
 
Reason magazine is a much bigger outfit with a much bigger budget for these amusements, so I'm going to borrow most of their pics.  Go here to see the pics in context.   And please go here every day.  It's great stuff.

Here goes, from Reason:

Then, just 6 months later, disaster strikes Julia's family:

Julia turns 18, and is ready to take on the world !!!  (Be sure to check out Iowahawk's parody.  At this point, Iowahawk has Julia going to get a degree in Feminist Website Design.) 

Just seven years later, Julia graduates.  And like most recent graduates, she's a victim of Barackaganda. 

Julia's son goes to school.  There is no mention of Julia's sperm donor on the Obama website, BTW.  Who needs a Daddy when you've got a Big Brother? 

Thanks to the new, Weimer Germany-levels of government debt and inflation, Julia is able to start a business !!

Julia is now resigned to working the rest of her life, providing stimulus funds for Washington to send to supporters and campaign contributors.  A life well-spent and well-lived, Julia.  You have the thanks of a grateful nation.  The government was bribing you with your own money the whole time, but you didn't bitch about it.  Great job !!

Go here, to Reason Magazine, to see the actual stats backing up the jokes (also known as Obama and Romney policy statements.) 

One other thing - Here's a good breakdown of the Obama/Julia Victimization Slideshow from Hot Air. 

3 years old – Julia gets a new-and-improved Head Start, which a new HHS study shows won’t do anything for her anyway.

17 years old – Race to the Top improves Julia’s SAT scores. Is there any evidence at all to support that argument? Even so, she’s down the list from all of the home-schooled children and the charter- and private-school students who actually got an education rather than an NEA indoctrination. However, thanks to the NEA indoctrination, Julia is now better prepared for a life on the government dole.

18 years old – Julia’s family qualifies for a $10,000 tuition tax credit spread out over four years, while Obama’s student-loan subsidies drive tuition costs up even faster.

22 years old – Julia undergoes surgery, which has to be funded by her parents’ employers despite Julia being an adult, and which will be most likely delayed as providers decline in number thanks to the economics of ObamaCare.

23 years old — Thanks to the Lily Ledbetter Act, trial attorneys get rich by filing lawsuits against employers that otherwise wouldn’t have been brought, leaving fewer resources to hire Julia. No college job for our intrepid Julia!

25 years old – Julia finally gets her 4-year degree in seven years, thanks to the inability to handle the tuition bubble and the lack of work. However, the good news is that the $200,000 in student loans will only hang over her head for 20 years, while taxpayers like Julia end up paying for the costs of default.

27 years old – Julia wants to have sex for the first time in her life, apparently, and is looking for contraception. Her employer would provide it for free thanks to the ObamaCare HHS mandate … if she could only find a job.

31 years old – Julia gets pregnant, which tells you all you need to know about free contraception. Oddly, Julia hasn’t gotten married first, probably because the economy is so poor by this time with the huge entitlement debt crisis breaking that no one can conceive of putting a home together. Fortunately, ObamaCare makes pregnancy possible, because until Obama took office, no one ever got pregnant, since government support and approval for it didn’t exist.

37 years old – Julia’s son Zachary, named after his sperm donor, starts school. Head Start has long since disappeared, apparently, but Race to the Top still exists. Must be a marathon.

42 years old – Julia starts a business with an SBA loan, which also apparently never existed before Obama took office. Her student loans are just three years away from defaulting onto the backs to taxpayers, so that’s good news.

65 years old – My, how time flies! (Do women do nothing of value between 42 and 65?) Julia enrolls in Medicare, which ceased to exist decades earlier, thanks to the fact that Obama and Tim Geithner didn’t have a plan to address the debt crisis — all they knew was they didn’t like anyone else’s plan. You can get the cards at Spencer’s as a gag gift.

67 years old – Julia retires, since the entitlement collapse wiped out her business and the rest of the American economy. The timeline stops here, which suggests that the IPAB probably denied her care, as she was nothing but a drain on society by this time, and the few resources they have left had to be used to pay for face lifts for members of Congress.

There you have it — a timeline filled with government interventions in a fantasy lifetime, with absolutely no sense of the cost it would take to provide Government Nanny to Julia and the rest of the country. At least they picked the right name for their fantasy woman trapped in an all-encompassing government; Julia was the name of the lead female character in George Orwell’s 1984, after all.

Lord have mercy, I'm glad to be alive for all this.  Interesting times, interesting times. 

Not if Joe Biden has anything to say about it !!!!

Some blowhard named "Joe Biden" sent me a very aggressive email a few days ago. 
It's been a while since I've been on the receiving end of so much bluster and unbridled testosterone. 

Whited --


We know who our opponent is, and we know what he wants to do:

Knock this president out of the White House, tear down the progress we've made, and take our country backward.

Not if I have anything to say about it.

How about you?

Pitch in $3 or more today, and welcome our opponent to the race:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Starts-With-You

Thanks.

Joe

Just a regular, hard-working, two-fisted guy, that Joe.  He's not going to put up with any crap from someone wanting to tear down the progress (sic) that we've made in the last four years. 
Unemployment below 5%? 
A national debt under 16 trillion dollars? 
Just a couple of undeclared wars at a time? 
Two dollar gasoline?
No way.  Not if Joe has anything to say about it. 

We'll never go back.  If that's what you want for your nation, send Joe some money. 

How To Improve The Unemployment Rate - (encourage more people to give up)

I've heard a lot of Lamestream Media members almost pissing their pants for the last few weeks, gushing over the improvements in the U.S. unemployment rate. 

Yes, some people have gone back to work.  But here's why appearances are deceiving. 

The Washington drones who monitor the nation's employment stats don't count people who give up looking for work.  If you haven't applied for a job in several months, you don't count as "unemployed".  You enter the ranks of Obama's Disappeared. 

Nearly ONE MILLION WORKERS have disappeared from the work force under the regime of Barack Obama.  That's ONE MILLION WORKERS who have said "screw it", and moved back in with Mama, decided to work off the books, become a kept man, or go into the drug trade.  ONE MILLION. 

Here's a chart showing the increased number of workers in each post-recession recovery, going back to 1954:

Hey, if you operate from Chicago, where a massive number of dead people still vote, it's just as easy to assume that ONE MILLION WORKERS don't exist.

King Barack declares that fuel efficiency will improve, or we will face his displeasure

Having failed in his quest to lower sea levels around the world, Barack Obama has declared that big rigs will get  better mileage. 

WASHINGTON--President Obama announced the first-ever fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas standards for long-haul rigs, work trucks, and other heavy duty vehicles Tuesday, the second mileage pact with manufacturers in less than a month.

The regulations call for reductions on fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 2018 of 9 to 23 percent, depending on the type of vehicle. Trucks and other heavy vehicles make up only 4 percent of the domestic vehicle fleet, but given the distance they travel, the time they spend idling and their low fuel efficiency, they end up consuming about 20% of all vehicle fuel, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

These things always puzzle me.  If you're going to go into the business of improving efficiency by Imperial Decree, why stop at 23% ?  Why not declare that "I, King Barack Of Chicago, hereby mandate that all semi-tractors will reduce fuel consumption by 50%, or ye shall face my wrath."

Experts say that a 20 percent reduction in heavy vehicle emissions would boost fuel efficiency to an average of 8 miles per gallon from 6 miles now.

Precisely.  And if the driver could be replaced by the Walt Disney Animatronic Driver, payrolls and other transportation costs would be slashed by 25%.  If tires could be made of Mississippi mud instead of rubber, replacement costs would be lowered by 89%.  If we ever get that big engineering breakthrough, the one where they make diesel engines out of Play-Do, vehicles will be 23% cheaper.  And on and on and on.....

Ok, rather than Fisk the rest of this piece of White House Boosterism, which would become tiresome, I'm just going to highlight the individual words that I think are funniest.  If you have any understanding of how the world works and why auto companies are going along with this crap, and the concepts of "collusion" and "corporatism", you'll get it. 

The announcement comes less than two weeks after Obama and the country’s automakers unveiled new fuel economy rules for passenger vehicles that would boost fleet-wide average gas mileage to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, from about 27.8 miles per gallon now.

The success of the Obama fuel efficiency program (!!!!!!!), some of it hard-won through difficult talks with car makers, stands in sharp contrast to the failure of other environmental initiatives, like climate change legislation.

At a time when nearly all major corporate lobbying groups and the Republican Party insist that the administration’s environmental regulations destroy jobs, the auto makers, the United Auto Workers union and now truck and large engine manufacturers are collaborating on rules they think could create jobs. Most environmental groups also praised the new truck standards.

The automobile industry has been more cooperative with the government since the federal bailout of two major car makers, General Motors and Chrysler. It is also mollified by the fact that the new, 2025 auto rules have what critics consider loopholes that allow the carmakers to improve fuel efficiency on their most popular models at a slower pace.

Moreover, the new standards encourage car and truck makers to use off-the-shelf technology, some of which they have already deployed, rather than invest in scientific breakthroughs.

“We’d be able to meet the standards by reducing weight, using low rolling-resistance tires to cut down on drag, making vehicles more aerodynamic and have less idling: those are available in the U.S. now,” said Jed Mandel, president of the Engine Manufacturers Association, the truck and engine makers’ trade group. The federal government has “done a great job in allowing flexibility for truck makers to build vehicles.”

Sorry.  I've got to interject something here.  The Federal Government has no damn business "allowing flexibility" in anything that doesn't harm someone else.  Period.  They've done a great job in allowing flexibility.  They've done a great job in allowing flexibility.  They've done a great job in allowing flexibility.  That's another way of saying "As long as we behave in the way they like, they'll let us get away with a few things." 

We're a nation of sheep, bleating about how our Master allows us greater flexibility. 

Gag. 

The new standards would increase the cost of heavy duty trucks, which cost tens of thousands of dollars, by several thousand dollars each, depending on the vehicle. But the administration and the manufacturers’ group estimated that the higher costs would be recouped very quickly, often within a year or two, because of savings at the pump, one of the biggest expenses for any cargo or trucking business.

The administration estimated that businesses using big trucks could save about $50 billion in fuel costs over the program’s duration.

And in the meantime, competition is decreased.  Barriers to entry are erected.  Choice is eliminated.  Government and trade group alliances are strengthened. 

Mission accomplished.  And it doesn't have a damn thing to do with fuel economy or the environment. 

End of rant. 

The pic of Ozymandias came from here.  The posters came from Dan McCall's Facebook page. 

A modest wager about NPR funding

Ok, unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard something about this video.

James O'Keefe posed as a potential NPR donor, and extracted the following from Ron Schiller (then president of the NPR Foundation and senior vice president of development):

The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamental Christian. I wouldn't even call it Christian; it's this weird evangelical kind of move.


The current Republican Party is not really the Republican Party, it’s been hijacked by this group; that is, not just Islamaphobic but really xenophobic. I mean, basically, they are, they believe in sort of white, middle American, gun toting — I mean, it's scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.

Besides bashing the Tea Party movement, Schiller also advanced the bigoted stereotype that the media is Jewish-owned and/or has a pro-Israel bias. He and Betsy Liley, another NPR executive at the lunch, both reveled over the joke that NPR stands for “National Palestinian Radio.”

Oh, I forgot to mention....O'Keefe was posing as a donor from the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Ok, all of this skullduggery merely confirms what anyone with one eye and half-sense already knows.  NPR is a seriously biased news organization.  Big deal.  CNN, Fox, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, and the Sunflower County News are all seriously biased news organizations.  Bias is what happens when you sit down and start typing. That's why governments should never be allowed to fund journalism.  

The point of all this is to get the Republicans to defund NPR.  NPR recently fired their only remotely "conservative" commentator, Juan Williams.  One of the money shots from the O'Keefe video is when Schiller affirms that NPR would be better off without government funding. 

NPR has totally crapped in the punch bowl.  They are the leading Statist propaganda tool. 

And the Republican Party will NOT defund them.  Republicans don't cut programs.  They just talk about it. 

I repeat....The Republican Party is going to continue funding NPR.  I'm betting $20.00 to the first commenter that NPR will still be getting government funds until the 2012 elections. 

Any takers? 

Obamacare: The Comic Book

Some of you might remember this Barackaganda comic book, the one where Spiderman and the newly-inaugurated Teleprompter Jesus teamed up to fight evil.  Or success.  Or profit.  Or high employment.  Or something like that. 

As quoted in Reason magazine, someone is about to take it to the next level.  You see, ObamaCare® is greatness.  Pure undiluted greatness.  That doesn't explain why so many unions and corporations are demanding and getting waivers from it, but still....  It's greatness.

The great unwashed masses just can't understand it.

That's why we're getting....ObamaCare® - The Comic Book !!!!
Maybe we'll like it better when we don't have to wade through the 2700 pages in the Senate bill and the 6000 pages of requirements that the program has added to the Federal register. 

Heck, I wish I had thought of it.  Instead of 10,000 pages of regulations, lets boil it down to "illustrated, bite-sized panels". 
But enough of me, and my inability to contain my excitement.  Here's Reason:

The MIT economics whiz who crafted President Obama’s national health-care overhaul now plans to explain the complex and controversial plan to the masses — in one long comic book.


Jonathan Gruber, a nationally recognized health economist who devised the economic underpinnings of Obamacare (Gruber hates the term), said his three comic-loving kids encouraged him to use the hip format of the graphic novel — basically an expensive comic published in book form — to tell the story of the complicated plan to 300 million Americans.

Unlike most comic books, Gruber’s won’t have a superhero like Batman or Captain America or a villain like the Joker, he said.
“I’m going to use the facts to tell the story,” Gruber, 45, told the Pulse yesterday. “I’m the narrator guiding the reader through the law. It’ll have lots of pictures and text.”
Hill and Wang, a division of publishing powerhouse Farrar, Straus and Giroux, plans to release Gruber’s book, tentatively titled “Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How it Works” this fall.

And if that's not enough to have you hanging out with the other geeks at the Comics Shop on release day, here's The Boston Herald:

Even one of the national health plan’s fiercest critics, Michael F. Cannon of the free market Cato Institute in Washington D.C., tipped his hat to Gruber’s comic book.

“I’ve got to hand it to him,” said Cannon, the think tank’s director of health policy studies. “It’s a brilliant idea.”

Ok, seriously....I know the Cato Institute.  I've met people who work there.  Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute is not quite telling the truth, IMHO.  He does not think ObamaCare® The Comic Book is a brilliant idea.  He's giving Jonathan Gruber enough rope (and encouragement) to hang himself. 

Michael F. Cannon and the Cato Institute had rather have access to this comic book than a free month in The Playboy Archives.  They can't wait to get a copy.  Neither can I. 

*******************************************

Here's a shout-out to my ex-boss, Marvel Variants.  (We're still employed by the same company, he's just put a buffer between us, a new guy who will soon be known on these pages as Colonel Klink.  The new guy looks a LOT like Werner Klemperer.) 

Mr. Variants, you have made a ton of money by hoarding and re-selling "variant" copies of comic books.  That's why your blog is called....Marvel Variants. 

Do you think that Mr. Gruber will publish a variant SEIU version of his book, outlining the waivers that they've received from the program?  Will there be a collectible United Auto Workers Waiver cover?  Perhaps one that sells for a different price? 
Mr. Variants, do you have any interest at all in persuading Mr. Gruber to issue a variant Baptist Retirement version of the comic book?  Complete with a cover depicting Obama shaking hands with the director of the Southern Baptist Annuity Board ?  (Hey, look at #714 on the waiver list.)

I can't wait.  I just can't wait.   

The State Of The Union, 2011, LiveBlogged

Ok, here we go. 

Laptop - Check

Dachshunds on couches - Check

Six pack of Michelob Ultra - Check

We're awaiting President Obama's entrance. 
John Boehner, of the Boehnk Boehlout fame, has taken the place of Nancy Pelosi this year.  We won't have to watch her jump up and applaud madly every time The Teleprompter Jesus sees a comma on the screen.  This is good, I guess. 

The House and the Senate are all sitting by their new play dates.  This is good, I guess.  No point in continuing the illusion that we have a multi-party system. 

She Whose Name Is Not Spoken is wearing a massive blue jacket that ends somewhere between her knees and the place where her Red Satan Tail attaches to the bottom of her spine.  We both need to cut back on the cholesterol, but I'm not on TV very often.   

They've applauded Obama, Boehner, and the empty chair in the Arizona delegation, set aside to mark the absence of wounded Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.  I hope he doesn't force any Oprah moments about the shooting. 

Obama begins by reminding us of how the assassination attempt on Giffords reminded us that we are all part of one family.  We are still bound together as One People. 
This is true.  We are a family.  Unfortunately, we have taken in a bunch of alcoholic uncles, brothers-in-law, and cousins with a long, long history of irresponsibility with Dad's credit cards.  The Libertarians want to do something about the problem, but they're considered "extreme". 

He's listed some signs that the economy is improving.  But we have to take on some challenges..... God help us, get ready.  We have challenges.  Cover you wallets, lock up your daughters, and bury the silverware in the back yard. 

Now he's talking about how technology and globalization are changing the world.  China and India are figuring things out.  China is now the home of the world's largest solar research facility.  (Get ready for a shot o' stimulus in the solar research field.  Congratulations, guys !)

"The future is ours to win.  We can't just stand still," he says, followed by a Kennedy quote.  "We need to our-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world."  That gets him a standing-O. 

Here's how we're gonna get there:

1) Encourage American Innovation.  "None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be, or where the jobs will come from."  But that didn't stop us from throwing 3/4 of a trillion away while trying to make lucky guesses.  I wish he could've had that insight in 2009. 

"This is our Sputnik moment."  We're going to "invest" in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology. 

(Congratulations to all in the biomedical, computuer, and green bullshit fields !  You're getting some more stimulus.  Good job, guys.) 

"We've begun to re-invent our energy policy.  We're not just handing out money; we're issuing a challenge." 

He really did say that.  My god, my god, he really did say that.  Raise your hand if you want some challenge. 

We're going to be the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. 

He's going to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies.  Instead of subsidizing yesterdays energy, let's "invest" in tomorrow's." 

Meet the New Boss, same as the Old Boss.  Yesterdays pork is tomorrow's investment. 

2) We have to win the race to educate our kids.   I'm not even listening to what this goober says any more on this subject.  This is the man who shut down the only Federal education program with a great track record - the Washington D.C. school voucher program. 

This man who put his own kids into a private academy, this man who wouldn't dream of putting his own daughters into a public school, this man refused to give low income children the same privilege. 

Giving people a choice is the greatest tool for improving anything.  There is no better way to instantly reward success and punish failure. 
The D.C. voucher program was the only Federal program that Barack Obama has ever seen that he didn't like. 

3) Rebuilding America - High speed rail and high speed internet. 
We're going to continue building railroads to Bill Clinton's bridge to nowhere. 

He's going off into something about high-speed rail.  The best source on the boondoggle that is high-speed rail is Randal O'Toole of the Cato Institute.  I suspect that his reaction to this speech will be worth checking tomorrow.  Go here.  It will be worth reading when O'Toole gets around to it. 




We have to knock down barriers to the success of businesses.  He acknowledges that we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world.  He's asking that we simplify the system and get rid of the loopholes.  Go here for a decent summary of how it would work.  The biggest problem is that the House and Senate earn their contributions by selling exemptions to the tax code.......

To reduce barriers to growth and investment, I've ordered a review of government regulations.  When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will fix them.  The biggest problem with this is that the House and the Senate earn their contributions by selling exemptions to these regulations.  Good luck with that, Barry ! 

He just acknowledged that the Healthcare law is an abortion.  There are things that need to be fixed.  He's not willing to go back to the days of insurance companies turning away people with pre-existing conditions.  If your house has burned down, you can still get on an insurance plan, and that company will have to rebuild your home.  Or something like that. 

4) We have to make sure that we aren't buried under a mountain of debt.  We have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in. 

Wait a damn minute, Barry, what about steps 1-3 ?  How you gonna reconcile with #4 with all of that stuff? 

We're going to have a domestic spending freeze for the next five years. 

This is like going through the all-you-can-eat buffet three times, and deciding to lose weight by eating at that high level, BUT NO MORE.  NO MORE THAN THAT.  FOUR TIMES THROUGH THE BUFFET WOULD BE TOO TOO MANY.  Restraint is the key word here. 

We're going to have to cut some domestic and defense spending.  We're going to have to look at Medicare and Medicaid.  We're going to have to strengthen Social Security for future generations. 

If my daughter collects Social Security, I'll eat the lining out of my coffin.  That's a promise. 

We're going to work to rebuild people's faith in the institution of government.  Because you deserve to know how and where your tax dollars are spent, you'll be able to go to a website for the first time in history. 

Because this site for tracking the stimulus spending worked so well....

He just told a throwaway lie about vetoing any bill with earmarks in it.  I didn't catch it word for word, but he's not going to veto any bills with earmarks in them.  He was lying.  You heard it here first. 

"The Iraq was is coming to and end." 
"We're responding with the strength of our communities." 
"This July, we will begin to bring our troops home."
 
"Yes, we know that some of them are gay.  Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love." 

That's a good line, and a good policy.  But the Joint Chiefs Of Staff now look like they're trying to collectively pass a peach pit. 

"This is the place where you can make it if you try."
"This is the place where anything is possible."
"This dream is why a working class kid from Scranton is sitting behind me." 
"This is why someone who began by sweeping the floors of his Cincinatti bar can preside as Speaker Of The House in the greatest nation on earth." 

What is all this reminding me of ? What is Obama invoking here? Ah ! I've got it !
Here's some Liza Minelli:

The guy whose company got the miners out of the Chilean mine just got a standing-O.

We dare to dream.  That's how we'll win the future.  We dream big things.  Our destiny remains our choice. 
Our jouney goes foward, and the State Of Our Union is strong, and may God bless the United States Of America.