The New York Times Should Raise Its Price By 50% Between Now And 2016

How do you get people to purchase more of something?  According to the New York Holy Times, you raise the price. 

How do you make yourself more attractive to employers?  Keep raising your requested wage until someone says "I'll hire you". 

How do you increase employment?  According to the New York Holy Times, you put an added burden on people who purchase labor. 

Good God in heaven.....

Go here.  They've come out with another editorial demanding that the minimum wage be increased by some random amount yet to be determined. 

HOW HIGH SHOULD IT BE? There’s no perfect way to set the minimum wage, but the most important benchmarks — purchasing power, wage growth and productivity growth — demonstrate that the current $7.25 an hour is far too low. They also show that the proposed increase to $10.10 by 2016 is too modest.

You're damn right, there's no perfect way.  There is no way. 

I want to be paid as much as possible for my labor.  Employers want to pay as little as possible.  That varies from person to person, industry to industry, and enterprise to enterprise.  And the last humans on earth that I would want to determine that rate?  The New York Holy Times Editorial Board, Barack Obama, and the U.S. Congress.  The "perfect" rate will be determined by political considerations, not economic ones. 

I'm not going to rant about the racist origins of minimum wage legislation.  (Google the Davis-Bacon Acts.) 

I'm not going to rant about the obvious fact that if your skills aren't worth $10.10 per hour, it'll be illegal for you to work. 

I'm just going to ask the New York Times to raise it's price by 50% between now and 2016.  It will help sales.  600 economists have said so. 

One last thing.....

One of the favorite talking points that these guys like to trot out goes like this....   "If wages had kept pace with productivity, workers would be earning 43.07% more per hour."

Here's their chart.

That's probably an accurate chart. 

The other chart, the one they don't show, reveals that the iPhone in the typical minimum wageworker's pocket, would have cost 3.1 MILLION dollars in 1991. 

Is there anyone who thinks that the world would be better if cell phone prices were in line with worker productivity? 

200 years ago, something like 98% of us had to work on farms.  Food was a massive percentage of everyone's budget.  Do you with that your food costs reflect the increase in worker productivity, just out of fairness? 

God, they make me crazy. 

 

James B. Stewart, of the New York Times, is confused

James B. Stewart, a writer for the New York Holy Times who is often fairly sensible, is confused.  I don't ordinarily read the NYT, since I prefer to read Obama's press releases without editorial reworking, spell-checks, and other modifications, but I saw this article in Starbucks and it jumped out at me. 

Here's how it begins....

The Republican Party has long claimed to be the champion of business, large and small, and an advocate for fiscal responsibility. Yet now Republicans in Congress have precipitated a shutdown of the federal government and are threatening to let the nation default on its once Triple-A-rated debt.

      

How could this be?

Let's disregard the unfortunate likelihood that this is all Performance Art, and that all of the useless and/or redundant Federal employees will be retroactively paid for their inconvenience.  Let's pretend that the Republicans are serious, and that they really will shut down the government, and default on some of the USA's bills. 

I know it's a stretch, but let's pretend that there are some adults in those rooms. 

We are broke.  The Federal debt per taxpayer is about to hit $150,000.00.  (It's $50K per citizen, if that tells you anything about the maker vs taker problem.) 

The debt is increasing by 1.75 billion per day.  As long as the Republicans and Democrats can keep borrowing, some foolish countries and businesses will keep lending.  (In reality, we're buying a lot of our own debt at the Fed, just to keep the bubble going for a few years longer.)  And the Fed is printing an extra 85 billion a month.  When the inflation hits, it's gonna be ugly, ugly, ugly. 

Mississippi novelist William Faulkner once put an ad in the Oxford Eagle newspaper stating that he would no longer be responsible for his wife's spending and debts. 

I wish I could do the same, and put an ad in the New York Holy Times for the benefit of James B. Stewart, explaining that I no longer wish to be held accountable for Washington's debts.  Let me pull out what I've paid into Social Security, without interest, and I'll be happy.

Please, please, please.... Do not give my government any money.  They are not me.  They are not you.  Government is not "society".  We will not fail if they do. 

Please, do not voluntarily give them any money. 

American Exceptionalism

Vladimir Putin took to the pages of The New York Holy Times a few days ago, bent Barack Obama over his knee, and gave him a firm spanking.  Most of Putin's editorial was about Syria, but some of it addressed the issue of "American Exceptionalism". 

Here is Putin's money quote:

 I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

Yeah, France thinks that is exceptional because of the French food and lifestyle. 
Italy believes that it is exceptional because Italians have the misguided belief that no one else in the world can make decent wooden chairs. 
The Chinese pictogram for "China" literally means "Middle Kingdom", as in "China is halfway between earth and heaven", which is taking exceptionalism to the next level. 
Great Britain believes that it is exceptional because it really used to be exceptional, and ruled half the globe from a few buildings in London. 

Here's how Wikipedia defines "American Exceptionalism":

American exceptionalism is the theory that the United States is "qualitatively different" from other nations.  In this view, America's exceptionalism stems from its emergence from a revolution, becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipsett called "the first new nation" and developing a uniquely American ideology, "Americanism" based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, populism and laissez-faire.  This ideology itself is often referred to as "American exceptionalism."

IMHO, here's the only thing that has ever made the USA exceptional - the opening salvo from the Declaration Of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

We are exceptional, and have prospered, and gotten richer than the founders could've imagined, because our government was founded on the idea that government is to serve us, and not vice-versa.

We have the right to Life,

Liberty,

and the pursuit of Happiness (not a guarantee, but we can sure chase it and occasionally run 'er down.)

 It's not our insane foreign policy that makes us exceptional, it's not about us being Jesus's favorite tribe, and it's not about our willingness to go to the Lands Of Brown People and blow up their wives and children. 

We have certain rights, and the government is supposed to acknowledge them - Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  Whenever the government is "destructive of these ends" it is the "Right of the People to alter or to abolish it".   

The current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue believes that we are a collective, and that there is such a thing as "Group Happiness" and this plays hell with those of us who march to a different drummer. 
He believes that we have the right to organize, to confiscate, to re-appropriate, and to transfer property. 
He believes that we have the right and responsibility to abide by the will of the majority, no matter how harmful the majority opinion reveals itself to be. 
He believes that we have the right to bomb other nations (in an "incredibly small" and not time-sensitive way) in order to please our military contractors. 
He has no concept of the difference between democracy and liberty.   

Barack Obama's idea of American Exceptionalism is radically different from anything that might have made us exceptional in the past.  We are now buried in debt, we are governed by con-men, and we now have to read accurate and timely lectures from KGB strongmen in our paper of record.

We are on the path to becoming the next Bulgaria.  American Exceptionalism was nice while it lasted.   

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". 

Kurt Andersen and The Downside Of Liberty

Kurt Andersen has an editorial in the New York Holy Times called "The Downside of Liberty".  He gets it half right:

THIS spring I was on a panel at the Woodstock Writers Festival. An audience member asked a question: Why had the revolution dreamed up in the late 1960s mostly been won on the social and cultural fronts — women’s rights, gay rights, black president, ecology, sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll — but lost in the economic realm, with old-school free-market ideas gaining traction all the time?

There was a long pause. People shrugged and sighed. I had an epiphany, which I offered, bumming out everybody in the room.

What has happened politically, economically, culturally and socially since the sea change of the late ’60s isn’t contradictory or incongruous. It’s all of a piece. For hippies and bohemians as for businesspeople and investors, extreme individualism has been triumphant. Selfishness won.

From the beginning, the American idea embodied a tension between radical individualism and the demands of the commonweal. The document we’re celebrating today says in its second line that axiomatic human rights include “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” — individualism in a nutshell. But the Declaration’s author was not a greed-is-good guy: “Self-love,” Jefferson wrote to a friend 38 years after the Declaration, “is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.”

IMHO, we've experienced prosperity because our founding documents declare that people should be left the hell alone. 

People make their best decisions when they're trying to decide what to do for themselves and for their own.

If a dude wants to sleep with another man, own 300 guns, get higher than the space shuttle, eat between 6 to 11 helpings of bread and pasta per day, or even fail to read the Harry Potter books, that's his business. 

Selfish?  Maybe. 

But here's another kind of selfishness, and here's where Kurt Andersen goes off the rails. 

When person A forces person B should give his stuff to person C, then person A is one selfish son of a bitch.  Especially if person A takes a wee little bit off the top of the transaction for himself and for his supporters. 

There are lots of ways to be unselfish with your stuff.  Churches, charities, donations to panhandlers, foundations and outright gifts. 

But fighting to keep a pack of Chicago con artists from getting their hands on more of your stuff isn't selfish.  It's common sense. 

There are a lot of people who care about the poor, the uneducated, the hungry and the great unwashed and who want to do something about their problems.  But they want to do it on their own terms, not those of The Teleprompter Jesus. 

So who is more selfish, the guy who wants to control his own stuff, or the egomaniac who wants to control everybody's stuff?

Maureen Dowd on Rick Perry's and Barack Obama's college transcripts

Here's an excerpt from Maureen Dowd's latest editorial in the New York Holy Times:

Traveling to Lynchburg, Va., to speak to students at Liberty University...., (Rick) Perry made light of his bad grades at Texas A&M.


Studying to be a veterinarian, he stumbled on chemistry and made a D one semester and an F in another. “Four semesters of organic chemistry made a pilot out of me,” said Perry, who went on to join the Air Force.

“His other D’s,” Richard Oppel wrote in The Times, “included courses in the principles of economics, Shakespeare, ‘Feeds & Feeding,’ veterinary anatomy and what appears to be a course called ‘Meats.’ ”

He even got a C in gym.

Perry conceded that he “struggled” with college, and told the 13,000 young people in Lynchburg that in high school, he had graduated “in the top 10 of my graduating class — of 13.”

It’s enough to make you long for W.’s Gentleman’s C’s. At least he was a mediocre student at Yale.

Yeah, bad grades are a problem.  Going to Jerry Falwell University to address the Baptists in Lynchburg is a bigger problem, but not for most Republicans. 
So how do Perry's college grades stack up against those of our current Commander-In-Chief?  Let's got to the Occidental College website.....

The 1974 federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (34 CFR Part 99) protects the privacy of student education records. We, therefore, cannot disclose students’ classes, grade point averages, majors or other such information. President Obama's transcripts and other student records have not been released by Occidental.

Nor will they ever be.  They're too damn embarrassing.  Based on my own research, I've been able to determine that teleprompters were not allowed in the classroom in the early 1980's.  Therefore, Obama's college grades sucked. 

I suspect that Barack Obama failed Economics, he failed American Government, he got a "D" in Political Science, a "D" in Speech, and a "Fails" in a couple of simple "Pass/Fail" basic math courses.  Those are just suspicions on my part, though, based on the current evidence. 

Enough about Rick Perry vs. Obama.  We don't have Obama's transcripts to hold up to one of Dowd's pitiless investigations. 

Here's another section from Dowd's editorial, which is primarily about how Republicans disregard college transcripts in choosing who to put at the top of the ticket:

The Republicans are now the “How great is it to be stupid?” party. In perpetrating the idea that there’s no intellectual requirement for the office of the presidency, the right wing of the party offers a Farrelly Brothers “Dumb and Dumber” primary in which evolution is avant-garde.

Well, yeah, the Republicans might have difficulty finding their way out of a sack.  That's why they aren't Libertarians yet.  But who are the scholastic giants that the Democrats put on the ticket prior to the Scholar From Chicago/Kenya/Indonesia?

Here's an evaluation of the college transcript of St. Albert, The Goracle Of Music City Tennessee:

Gore arrived at Harvard with an impressive 1355 SAT score, 625 verbal and 730 math, compared with Bush's 1206 total from 566 verbal and 640 math. In his sophomore year at Harvard, Gore's grades were lower than any semester recorded on Bush's transcript from Yale. That was the year Gore's classmates remember him spending a notable amount of time in the Dunster House basement lounge shooting pool, watching television, eating hamburgers and occasionally smoking marijuana. His grades temporarily reflected his mildly experimental mood, and alarmed his parents. He received one D, one C-minus, two C's, two C-pluses and one B-minus, an effort that placed him in the lower fifth of the class for the second year in a row.


For all of Gore's later fascination with science and technology, he often struggled academically in those subjects. The political champion of the natural world received that sophomore D in Natural Sciences 6 (Man's Place in Nature) and then got a C-plus in Natural Sciences 118 his senior year. The self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet avoided all courses in mathematics and logic throughout college, despite his outstanding score on the math portion of the SAT. As was the case with many of his classmates, his high school math grades had dropped from A's to C's as he advanced from trigonometry to calculus in his senior year.

Here's how The Goracle performed while going through the seminary associated with Vanderbilt:

(Gore) took the religious studies courses while also working full time as a journalist at the Nashville Tennessean, and after getting off to a strong start with an A-minus in Ethics, he failed to complete any of the three courses he took in the fall of 1971, and those incompletes eventually lapsed into F's. He returned for another semester in the spring of 1972, when two more incompletes turned into F's.

In the meantime, George W. Bush, our first president to earn an MBA, was knocking out a 2.75 GPA in a Harvard MBA program while, by all accounts, he was partying his ass off. 

I repeat.... While The Goracle was flunking 5 out of 8 courses at a freakin' seminary, Bush was doing ok in a Harvard MBA program. 

W. was not a good president.  Until The Teleprompter Jesus came along, George W. Bush did more to increase the national debt than any other president.  But I can assure you that George W. is not the anti-intellectual dolt that the Maureen Dowds of this world have portrayed him to be.  While I was running bookstores in Dallas, GWB was a regular visitor, purchasing Current Events, Politics, Sports, and lots and lots of history.  I don't know if he read 'em, but he sure bought 'em and knew how to talk about them.  Ask anyone who worked at the Dallas Preston/Forest Bookstop back in the day. 

Well what about John Kerry?  Surely he outperformed Bush?  Naw.  He didn't.  Here's CBS News:

Senator John F. Kerry's grade average at Yale University was virtually identical to President Bush's record there, despite repeated portrayals of Kerry as the more intellectual candidate during the 2004 presidential campaign.

No, their grades weren't "virtually identical".  Bush's grades were 1 point higher. 

Kerry had a cumulative average of 76 and got four Ds his freshman year - in geology, two history courses and political science, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday.

His grades improved with time, and he averaged an 81 his senior year and earned an 89 - his highest grade - in political science as a senior.

"I always told my dad that D stood for distinction," Kerry said in a written response to reporters' questions. He said he has previously acknowledged focusing more on learning to fly than studying.

Under Yale's grading system in effect at the time, grades between 90 and 100 equaled an A, 80-89 a B, 70-79 a C, 60 to 69 a D, and anything below that was a failing grade.

In 1999, The New Yorker magazine published a transcript showing Bush had a cumulative grade average of 77 his first three years at Yale, and a similar average under a non-numerical rating system his senior year.

Bush's highest grade at Yale was an 88 in anthropology, history and philosophy. He received one D in his four years, a 69 in astronomy, and improved his grades after his freshman year, the transcript showed.

Kerry, a Democrat, previously declined to release the transcript, which was included in his Navy records. He gave the Navy permission to release the documents last month, the Globe reported.

So the best Dowd would be able to say about Kerry is that he wasn't quite as sharp in the classroom as Bush. 

How about Republican John McCain, another Republican dunce?  He barely passed. 

How about current Vice President Joe Biden?  How did he do in school? 

Biden graduated College in 1965, with a Bachelor of Arts and a double major in Political Science and History.  He was 506th in a class of 688.

At Syracuse University of Law, 1968, Biden graduated 76th in a class of 85. 

Wow. 

I couldn't find anything on Ron Paul's GPA or his college transcript.  But if grades really are that important, let's point out the obvious....  Ron Paul did well enough to get into medical school.  But then, he's not really a Republican.  He's a Libertarian.  And a genius. 

I'm with Maureen Dowd on this one.  Grades matter !!!

Somebody please tell Maureen Dowd that Maureen Dowd is the Maureen Dowd that Maureen Dowd has been waiting for

Maureen Dowd, disappointed and feeling jilted, is surprised that Barack Obama is still the same guy with the exact same faults that she wrote about here. These blurbs are from a 2007 editorial about Obama's debate performances:

But often he reverts to Obambi, tentative about commanding the stage and consistently channeling the excitement he engenders....

In the South Carolina debate, Senator Obama was — absurdly — taken by surprise when Brian Williams asked the requisite Dukakis question designed to elicit manly passion: How would he respond if Al Qaeda hit two American cities?

In the New Hampshire debate Sunday night, Mr. Obama again missed his chances. Hillary is the one he needs to unseat, but he treads gingerly around her....

Mr. Obama let the opportunity for a sharp comment pass....

He missed another chance when Hillary said at the beginning of the debate that she believed “we are safer than we were” before 9/11, even though the Democrats won Congress with the opposite argument last fall, and even though the Iraq war has clearly made the world more dangerous than ever.....

And now, to prove that leopards don't change their spots, here's M. Dowd's editorial from earlier this week:

The leader who was once a luminescent, inspirational force is now just a guy in a really bad spot....


 As James Carville acerbically noted, given a choice between watching an Obama speech and a G.O.P. debate, “I’d watch the debate, and I’m not even a Republican.”


The White House caved, of course, and moved to Thursday, because there’s nothing the Republicans say that he won’t eagerly meet halfway.

No. 2 on David Letterman’s Top Ten List of the president’s plans for Labor Day: “Pretty much whatever the Republicans tell him he can do.”


MSNBC’s Matt Miller offered “a public service” to journalists talking about Obama — a list of synonyms for cave: “Buckle, fold, concede, bend, defer, submit, give in, knuckle under, kowtow, surrender, yield, comply, capitulate.”


And it wasn’t exactly Morning in America when Obama sent out a mass e-mail to supporters Wednesday under the heading “Frustrated.”


It unfortunately echoed a November 2010 parody in The Onion with the headline, “Frustrated Obama Sends Nation Rambling 75,000-Word E-Mail.”


“Throughout,” The Onion teased, “the president expressed his aggravation on subjects as disparate as the war in Afghanistan, the sluggish economic recovery, his live-in mother-in-law, China’s undervalued currency, Boston’s Logan Airport, and tort reform.”


You know you’re in trouble when Harry Reid says you should be more aggressive.


If the languid Obama had not done his usual irritating fourth-quarter play, if he had presented a jobs plan a year ago and fought for it, he wouldn’t have needed to elevate the setting. How will he up the ante next time? A speech from the space station?


Republicans who are worried about being political props have a point. The president is using the power of the incumbency and a sacred occasion for a political speech.


Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion, the idea that he can come down from the mountain, read from a Teleprompter, cast a magic spell with his words and climb back up the mountain, while we scurry around and do what he proclaimed.


The days of spinning illusions in a Greek temple in a football stadium are done. The One is dancing on the edge of one term.


The White House team is flailing — reacting, regrouping, retrenching. It’s repugnant.


After pushing and shoving and caving to get on TV, the president’s advisers immediately began warning that the long-yearned-for jobs speech wasn’t going to be that awe-inspiring.


“The issue isn’t the size or the newness of the ideas,” one said. “It’s less the substance than how he says it, whether he seizes the moment.”


The arc of justice is stuck at the top of a mountain. Maybe Obama was not even the person he was waiting for.

Hey, folks, we're Americans.  We're not sheep.  We're not supposed to be waiting on anybody.  We need political "leaders" like we need testicular cancer.  You are the one you're waiting for.  I'm the one I'm waiting for.  Maureen Dowd may have been waiting on Obama to lead her to some New York Holy Timesian Promised Land, but she should be the exception.  We have a great system of government, but The Founders didn't put enough safeguards in place to save us from people who want to save us. 

 Hell, can you imagine Thomas Jefferson rolling out proposals for economic growth?  John Adams worrying about saving or creating jobs? 

Heck, Libertarians think a lot of Ron Paul, but we generally don't think refer to him as He Who The Prophets Foretold, or the One Who Will Bring Balance To The Force (except in jest).  We simply believe that he really would take a chainsaw to government.  Nothing too special about it. 

(Actual Campaign Poster)

The Libertarian Party awaits your support.  We want to march on Washington and demand nothing.  We envision a system of government so small, so inconsequential, that the major TV networks would never dream of televising our debates about Afghanistan, or our speeches on the economy.  

Afghanistan and the economy are none of our business.  Or Barack Obama's. 

On "The Tea Party's War With America"

Joe Nocera has an editorial in The New York Holy Times that almost perfectly illustrates the difference between the Statist and Libertarian mindsets.  Fisking the entire thing would grow tiresome, but the main points show up in the first few paragraphs. 
Here's Mr. Nocera:

You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them.

You know what's coming after that, right?  Yeah.  The people who want more freedom for themselves and for others are "terrorists".  To paraphrase an Instapundit commenter,  "This has to be the first ‘Terrorist’ movement in the history of mankind that, if it gets everything it wants…will leave you the hell alone.”

Back to Mr. Nocera:

These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people.

Oh for the love of God.  Washington D.C. has indebted every f-ing taxpayer with a $130,000.00 bar tab.  The Statists want to increase that debt.  They've already doubled the debt since Bill Clinton left office.  The Tea Party Republicans have trotted out a 2.4 trillion in cuts (over 10 years), a 2.4 trillion that will be cut out of future increases, not from the current geysers of gloppy glutinous pork.  And these people making the pitiful little efforts to reduce the spending are jihadists ????

Back to Mr. Nocera:

Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took.

I, for one, don't want America to have any more credit.  I want those Chinese bastards to stop mailing credit cards to Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner.  I want it to stop now.  I don't want my daughter to be burdened for the rest of her life with paying for George Bush and Barack Obama's ineffective wars on poverty, illiteracy, inflation, unemployment and brown people. 

Seriously, can you imagine a credit card company sending a card application to a person whose debt was 100% of his yearly income? 

Mr. Nocera thinks it would be a great idea.  Otherwise, things would, er....change. 

Like ideologues everywhere, they scorned compromise. When John Boehner, the House speaker, tried to cut a deal with President Obama that included some modest revenue increases, they humiliated him. After this latest agreement was finally struck on Sunday night — amounting to a near-complete capitulation by Obama — Tea Party members went on Fox News to complain that it only called for $2.4 trillion in cuts, instead of $4 trillion. It was head-spinning.

Well, numb-nuts, we are 14 trillion dollars in debt.  A 4 trillion dollar cut over a ten year period is nothing.  2.4 trillion cut from a 10 year period doesn't even cover the defict of each year. 

The "Tea Party" Republicans have suffered a hellish defeat.  Despite all the howling and cloth-rending from the Statist side, nothing has changed.  This is 100% business as usual. 

There's no point in going further with this.  Hit the link to read the rest of Nocera's editorial, in which he explains why taking money away from legit job producers and giving it to bureaucrats is the best way to end unemployment.  Gag me with a dirty diaper. 

The New York Times has felt a disturbance in The Force

From Nate Silver, writing in The New York Holy Times:

Libertarianism has been touted as the wave of America’s political future for many years, generally with more enthusiasm than evidence. But there are some tangible signs that Americans’ attitudes are in fact moving in that direction.
Since 1993, CNN has regularly asked a pair of questions that touch on libertarian views of the economy and society:

Some people think the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Others think that government should do more to solve our country’s problems. Which comes closer to your own view?
Some people think the government should promote traditional values in our society. Others think the government should not favor any particular set of values. Which comes closer to your own view?

A libertarian, someone who believes that the government is best when it governs least, would typically choose the first view in the first question and the second view in the second.
In the polls, the responses to both questions had been fairly steady for many years. The economic question has showed little long-term trend, although tolerance for governmental intervention rose following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The social libertarian viewpoint — that government should not favor any particular set of values — has gained a couple of percentage points since the 1990s but not more than that.
But in CNN’s latest version of the poll, conducted earlier this month, the libertarian response to both questions reached all-time highs. Some 63 percent of respondents said government was doing too much — up from 61 percent in 2010 and 52 percent in 2008 — while 50 percent said government should not favor any particular set of values, up from 44 percent in 2010 and 41 percent in 2008. (It was the first time that answer won a plurality in CNN’s poll.)



Whether people are as libertarian-minded in practice as they might believe themselves to be when they answer survey questions is another matter. Still, there have been visible shifts in public opinion on a number of issues, ranging from increasing tolerance for same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization on the one hand, to the skepticism over stimulus packages and the health-care overhaul on the other hand, that can be interpreted as a move toward more libertarian views.
The Tea Party movement also has some lineage in libertarian thinking. Although polls suggest that many people who participate in the Tea Party movement have quite socially conservative views, the movement spends little time emphasizing those positions, as compared with economic issues.

May this trend continue !!!

Can you balance the U.S. budget in 5 minutes?

The New York Times has posted a budget simulator that allows you to mess around with the current U.S. budget deficit by cutting programs and salaries or by raising taxes. 

This being the New York Times, they don't acknowledge that if you raise too many taxes to a higher level, the amount of revenue drops. 
The Bush tax cuts raised the amount of money coming into the Treasury. 
The percentage of the total taxes paid by the evil top earners increased after the Bush tax cuts. 
Getting the NYT to admit this would be like getting them to acknowledge the effectiveness of HUD.  Or busing.  Or rent control. 

The simulator won't allow you to cut military spending by 75%, bring the boys and girls back home, and have the remaining troops defend the borders.  (Our borders.  Not Korea's.)

You can't legalize weed, allowing for a 50% cut in police, judges, narcotics agents, border guards, parole officers, probation specialists, jailers, counselors, piss-testers, urine samplers, stool-sniffers, and Sharia Law enforcers. 
You can't eliminate the Departments of Energy or Education.
You can't sell off the prime real estate currently occupied by the U.N. 
 
Other than that, it is a interesting little exercise. 

My employer, Jukt Micronics, went through a similar exercise a couple of years ago.  The only difference?  It was real.  We had to cut employees.  We had to examine every penny in purchasing.  For the second time in the company's existence, some people had to take pay cuts.  Forget about pay raises.  The percentages in cuts that we had to deal with were twice as large as the cuts proposed by the Times.  We sold off every unnecessary asset.  We sold off some assets that were necessary.  (Lee, I'm still pissed off about those 8 tires of mine that you sold.) 

If we hadn't done these things, we would be out of business.  (We can't print money.  Go here to see how Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is trying to harm low income people for the benefit of those at the top who want the spending orgy to continue.)

If you take the test, you'll see that Starving The Beast won't be easy,but it should be simple.  We just have to decide when we're going to do it.  So why the delay?  Here's a comment from an Instapundit reader:

I think they are sending the wrong message with this calculator– it shows me how easy it is to eliminate the deficit! I was able to do so in a few minutes, even within the constraints imposed by the NYT’s calculator. If I can do it so easily, why can’t the politicians?


That’s a rhetorical question– the answer is that there are not enough opportunities for graft in deficit elimination.

There you have it. 


The cartoon came from here.  The "grim reaper on a budget" poster came from here. 

The Old Media is not happy with The New Media. Government must intervene.

From The New York Times, via Reason magazine's Hit & Run blog:

Google says it only tweaks its algorithm to improve its searches. Some Web sites that have accused Google of unfair placing are merely collections of links with next to no original content of their own, precisely the kind of sites that Google’s search algorithm screens out to better answer queries....Still, the potential impact of Google’s algorithm on the Internet economy is such that it is worth exploring ways to ensure that the editorial policy guiding Google’s tweaks is solely intended to improve the quality of the results and not to help Google’s other businesses....

Full disclosure, before I go any further into this rant.  Google owns Blogger/Blogspot.  It doesn't cost me a dime to use Blogger/Blogspot.  And when I put Google ads on my site, my traffic from Google searches increased by about 50%. 
In my arrogant opinion, that's nobody's business but mine and Google's. 
For reasons that I don't understand, this site is now one of the top search results for pictures of Macaulay Culkin.  Do I have the best pictures of Macaulay Culkin?  I don't know or care.  But people are using Google to find them here.  If they don't like what Google and I provide, they can use Yahoo.  Or Bing.  Or Dogpile.  I don't think anyone has ever put a gun to anyone's head and forced them to use Google. 

Now, let's continue....

Some early suggestions for how to accomplish this include having Google explain with some specified level of detail the editorial policy that guides its tweaks. Another would be to give some government commission the power to look at those tweaks.

Oh God.  Some idiot wants a government commission to look into the problem. 
And finally....

....if Google is to continue to be the main map to the information highway, it concerns us all that it leads us fairly to where we want to go.

Reason magazine's Peter Suderman, of course, politely suggests that The New York Times and The United States government butt the hell out of Google's succesful business model. 
Mr. Suderman doesn't take it far enough. 
Let's re-write that last sentence from the NYT:

....if The New York times is to continue to be the biggest newspaper in the Dead Tree Media, it concerns us all that they give us balanced information, or at least an admission of Statist bias, in everything they publish. 

We need a government commission to look at the statist, lefty bias of the New York Times.  We need to be sitting in on their editorial board meetings.  We need the power to preview every article they publish, with an eye toward detecting favoritism toward their preferred politicians, causes, and advertisers. 
Granted, nobody forces anyone to purchase The New York Times.
But that's not the point.  They're successful.  If they're successful, they're powerful.  If they're powerful, we need to be able to control them. 

Dammit, somebody, somewhere is reading things that somebody else doesn't like. 

Government must intervene. 

Things that don't fit the preferred narrative

But I thought the Tea Party movement was filled with ignernt hillbillies? 
Here's The New York Times:

Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The Dime Store Deity

The Photoshoppers at the New York Times have taken it to a new level.  I found it, appropriately, at Moonbattery.  Here's their latest aid to Lenten worship, a devotional icon centered on the lonely battle of He Who Now Dwells Among Us.

Pigs Fly

Put a million monkeys on a million typewriters for a million years, and one of them will reproduce the works of Shakespeare.

Equally unlikely: Frank Rich of The New York Times has written an editorial on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" that actually makes sense.

The "Pigs Fly" picture came from The Whited Mama.

Ross Douthat of The New York Times needs help defining Barack Obama

Ross Douthat of the New York Times is having a hard time defining our president.



Here's Ross: "Every presidency is the subject of competing caricatures. But almost a year into his first term, there’s something particularly elusive about Barack Obama’s political identity. He’s a bipartisan bridge-builder — unless he’s a polarizing ideologue."

Somewhere or another, I missed the bipartisan-bridge-builder part, but let's keep going.

He’s a crypto-Marxist radical — except when he’s a pawn of corporate interests.

Agreed, with one caveat: Ross, do you know what you call crypto-Marxist radicals who are pawns of corporate interests ???? You don't ??? Be patient. All will be explained in due time.

He's a post-American utopian - or else he's a willing tool of the national security state.

While Obama is doing his dead-level best to bring about an extremely post-American century, I'm going to go with the latter option. Look at Gitmo, Afghanistan, rendition, wiretaps, etc. The man is a tool.

The press has churned out a new theory every week, comparing Obama to John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt, to George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter — to every 20th-century chief executive, it often seems, save poor, dull Gerald Ford. But none of the analogies have stuck. We’re well into the Obama era, but neither his allies nor his enemies can quite get a fix on exactly what our 44th president really represents.

I don't know why Mainstream Media Typists find this so difficult to say.

It isn't difficult. Barack Obama is a fascist. This is from the Library Of Economics And Liberty:

"Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.)

Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions."

Not a perfect fit, but it shoulda been close enough for Ross Douthat to slap himself in the forehead and start wondering if Obama will take over the newspapers.

The Obama As Fascist pics came from here and here and here and here and here.

The New York Times Is Decadent And Depraved

A friend of mine sent me this chart from the February 27 New York Times. It shows the gap between federal spending and federal receipts.
At first glance, the projected deficit doesn't look that bad, does it? We've been through worse, haven't we?



But after I looked at it for a few seconds longer, I saw what was wrong. Where is the Reagan revenue boom (and the Clinton/NAFTA) echo?
The chart shows the federal receipts, spending, and deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product. Hit the link above if you can't read the fine print.

We mustn't scare the New Yorkers, but....there are more honest ways to present that information, especially if you are going to display it beside a document entitled "A New Era Of Responsibility".

Here's what those numbers really look like in millions of dollars, instead of as a percentage of another number. Can you imagine the NYT printing this chart alongside the "New Era Of Responsibility" payoff pamphlet ?

The first question you should ask is "What the hell is happening to the value of the dollar?" (Answer: They're printing them as they go.)

The second question is "Why did the NYT go out of their way to make the latest giveaway/bailout numbers look less threatening?" (Answer: The hope and change thing.)

The third question is "What is the total of all this deficit spending?"
(Answer: Here's the national debt as of last year. I don't have an update for all the latest ladles of slop and neither does anyone else, but you get the idea.)


And people wonder why newspaper readership is declining.

From Marktaw.com