Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Dems are in DEFCON 1 over Obamacare



 Oh my. After months of politicking by the mainstream media and the Democrats to try to sway the justices on the Supreme Court before oral arguments we find out that the SCOTUS couldn't care less what these wonks think.

The left have spent months scouring past decisions by Justices Kennedy and Roberts (supposedly the two most likely to uphold the law) trying to find something - anything - that would suggest that if either justice voted against the Affordable Care Act the liberals could invalidated the ruling (at least in the court of public opinion) as nothing more than the court playing politics with the American public's health care.

But after all these shenanigans we find that the Mandatory statute in the law is probably unconstitutional if not the entire statute. I absolutely love it when reality smacks these folks right in the kisser. What really has me excited though is just how hysterical the liberals have become. Let's look at what some of the spin meisters are already saying after just the three days of arguments. First up Gollum Carville on CNN via Forbes:

"I think that this will be the best thing that ever happen to the Democratic party because health care costs are gonna escalate unbelievably," Carville told CNN's Wolf Blitzer of a possible Supreme Court decision to strike down the law. "I honestly believe this, this is not spin."

Hell and yes! The best thing ever Jimmy! Let's overturn some more of Obama's legislative achievements that'll show em! Don't know about you guys but my bovine excrement meter just pegged. But wait Jimmy's not done yet - more from the same interview:

"You know what the Democrats are going to say – and it is completely justified: 'We tried, we did something, go see a 5-4 Supreme Court majority,'" Carville added. "The public has these guys figured out. Our polls show that half think this whole thing is political."

You see what he's doing there? If the Supreme Court votes along so called 'party' lines then it's all political and therefore invalid. I wonder if the vote went 5-4 the other way would he say that it was just as political. Hopefully we will not have to find out.

The other point I want to make here is that he goes to great pains to say that 'We tried, we did something'. This is what always infuriates me about liberals. In their world it's not the result that matters it's that WE selfless progressives TRIED. Never mind the fact that if Obamacare goes forward it will not only bankrupt the country it also had the advantage of actually killing people as well!  But all that really matters to these misunderstood selfless public servants is the fact that they DID something and they should get love and accolades for being brave enough to try.

But here's the kicker, it would take years for us to realize the true devastation this law will wrought on us and our kids, in the meantime these self righteous twits will be living large with taxpayer funded Cadillac health plans that they have conveniently provided for themselves. Hey Princess Nancy, if Obamacare is so great why do members of congress have a different plan? Just asking.

But Carville's not through, just for good measure he reminds us that this isn't spin yet again:

"Just as a professional Democrat, there's nothing better to me than overturning this thing 5-4 and then the Republican Party will own the health care system for the foreseeable future. And I really believe that. That is not spin,"

Wasn't it Queen Gertrude who said - Methinks he doth protest too much? OK she didn't say exactly that but my point is that if you gotta keep saying something over and over you're probably trying to convince yourself as well as your audience.

OK I've picked on Carvy enough let's go see what nuggets of knowledge Hot-Rod Harry Reid has to lay on us:

"There's a significant school of thought that the administration is -- it puts them in a better position for the election if it's turned down," Reid said.

Yeah that 'significant school of thought' is in his belly button where I am sure he spends an inordinate amount of time gazing at every day. But I assume he is saying this because Obamacare is wildly popular with the American public and the voters will make those mean conservatives pay dearly at the polls in November if the law is overturned by the court?

Golly Harry, don't want to be a downer or anything but if I remember right, in the mid-terms it was the Dems who paid a heavy price for passing Obamacare in the first place.Not sure how Harry works out that this will help the Prez. 

Oh and by the way, the most recent Rasmussen Reports poll shows complete repeal is favored 56 percent to 39 percent, and these numbers have been impressively stable. Doh!

The last super spin cycle (and my personal favorite) comes from none other than the big man himself vis-a-vis his press secretary:

"The Affordable Care Act is a bipartisan plan and one that we think is constitutional," Deputy White House press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters on Wednesday afternoon.

SAY WHAT??? I bet this is news to Boehner and McConnell. Just for the record how many republicans actually voted for the final bill from either chamber? NONE! NADA! ZIP! ZERO! I mean the unmitigated gall for the White House to say this is simply beyond the pale. Can't you just smell the desperation? I can already see what's coming next - It's all Bush's fault?

What is really telling here is that part, if not all, of the law will be overturned and the Dems have lost their collective minds over its failure. And for anyone who's been paying attention it shouldn't come as a surprise. 

The Law was cobbled together by people who had no idea what they were doing. Reid played parliamentary tricks to get it through the Senate and nobody bothered to read the damn thing before it was signed by the president.

So it all boils down to this. The Dems passed a very bad law with devastating consequences for many generations to come. Simply put it is nothing more that a huge steaming pile of crap that the Democrats tried to shove down the throats of America and the Supreme Court is simply doing its duty by calling BS on it (and rightfully so).

So now the liberal elite are apoplectic with indignant anger that anyone would question their infinite wisdom. After all they are smarter than the rest of us and they know what's best for us much better than we do.

There is some good news though, the actual ruling is not due until late June. If the Dems are this worked up now, just think how much fun we are going to have over the next 90 days. I see full fledged tempy-tantrums daily!

All I gotta say is pass the popcorn.

 Exit question: how long until Verrilli gets thrown under the bus? 3. . . 2 . . . 1 . .

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Gun-Free Zones Work!

This might help all the anti-gun fanatics understand why the second amendment exists:



A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

College Degree: Bad bet for taxpayers?


OK - I got a great investment opportunity for you. Sshh - don't tell anybody, I'm gonna let you in on the ground floor. Here it is. You invest $1 trillion and get absolutely nothing in return. I know - I know sounds like a deal huh?

If you think that is a bad investment keep reading because that is exactly what we are about to see when the student loan bubble bursts.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau came out with a study suggesting that student debt has hit $1 Trillion. Wow That's a lot of scratch, we must have the most educated folks in the world if we've spent that much on college education. But wait here are a few other facts via College Board Advocacy & Policy Center:

  • It takes about 5 years to earn a degree
  • Only 57% earn a degree within 6 years
  • Of those who earn a degree most are in useless disciplines

OK so after 5 to 6 years you graduate with a Women's or African Studies degree, spending 10's of thousand (public university) 100's of thousand (private university) along the way, and once you are out you can't understand why no one will hire you.

Wait a minute at this point I want to show you something:

That's my shocked face!

The way we look at a college education this day is wildly distorted. From birth we were trained to think that 1) we had to go to college or we would be shoveling shit in the pig sty 2) Follow your heart and you will succeed 3) everybody else is doing it so you have to as well.

Unfortunately there is no market rationalization in the decision process. Nobody told you that if you spend a fortune getting a Fashion Design degree from Notre Dame that there is a 99.9% chance you will be waiting tables after graduation and owe $300,000. No one said to the prospective Library Science major that there are enough Library Science graduates each year to staff every single library in the world twice over.

My early morning shocked face!

So ultimately what this means is that consumers have borrowed $1 trillion dollars (most from taxpayers) betting it on future revenue in Fashion Design, Women's Studies, African Studies, Library Sciences etc. If my broker came to me with this proposition as a long-term investment I'd fire him. But unfortunately that's what we are stuck with thanks again to the wisdom of our elected officials who consistently make unbelievably bad decisions with our money.

How do we fix this? We have to make the prospective graduate and the university pay the price for stupid decisions. If someone chooses to get a degree that is perfectly worthless or the university offers a degree that is perfectly worthless then the taxpayers have the right to NOT fund it. If someone decide to get a degree in something worthwhile then we can talk. What ticks me off is the fact that the folks funding this boondoggle (taxpayers) don't have a say.

Put another way, if my daughter came to me and said she got accepted to Stanford and she was majoring in Women's studies I'd say good luck with that. If she wants me to pay it is incumbent upon her to show me what I will get for my investment. If it's waiting tables after 4 years I would just have to turn that one down.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Winston’s Websites of the Day 3-24-12


Selflessly scouring the interwebs so you don't have to
Who loves abortion more than Obama and Sebelius? 
Via The Anchoress:

It's a serious question: is there a politician alive who loves abortion more than Barack Obama? Is there a bureaucrat alive who serves it more faithfully than Kathleen Sebelius?
Read More:

The Trayvon Martin killing, while sadly generic, is twisted into a platform for the Left's usual crew of race mongers 
Via The Bookworm:

What's missing from all this racial hysteria in Obama's America is the truth.  I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that the truth does not involve a wholesome black boy, in a "safe," "white" neighborhood, randomly killed for being black by a non-black man.  Instead, the truth involves a very large black kid on a five day suspension from school, in a dangerous, mixed-race neighborhood, pounding a Hispanic man into the ground.  Whether the Hispanic man was sufficiently in fear of his life to justify a self-defense shooting remains to be seen.  What's clear, though, is that the media narrative is a lie.
Read more:

Intermission:

Rockwell was a genius

 

Now back to our regularly scheduled program:

I Got Asked Again The Other Day, Rather Bluntly, Why We Don't Send The Kids To School 
Via Sippican Cottage:

It's science, biatches. The idea that if public schools had more money they'd be swell is nonsense. If you cut the education budget to zero, and had entirely unqualified teachers (parents) teaching their own children, children would be overwhelmingly better educated than they are right now.  And we'd be able to cut taxes by 400 billion dollars or so. All the good teachers (I know many) should be teaching in private schools and making more money anyway.
Read More:

FAIL 
Via From the Caer:

Sooooooo... the climate is changing dramatically and catastrophically? (insert Chicken Little here...) But we are supposed to move to sources of energy that are dependent on that catastrophically changing climate?  I fail to see the logic.
Cartoon:

Friday, March 23, 2012

How Liberals get their way


How is it that Liberals almost always get their way? Even though what they want is almost always bad policy often leading to disastrous consequences.

We have seen this in virtually every major liberal policy in the last 100 years. For example, Johnson's war on poverty which created our current welfare state. The liberals at the time hailed the ensuing legislation as the pinnacle of human development but in reality it has literally destroyed the black community.

Most of us are rational human beings, able to look at both sides of an issue and make the right choice. So how is it that the libs get remarkably bad policy through congress? Well, if you think about it their MO has changed very little since Woodrow Wilson, and it goes something like this:
  1. Create a victim (blacks, illegal immigrants, college students w/o birth control, Gaia, etc.)
  2. Exaggerate the plight of the victim (Protests, get on friendly media, protests some more, etc.)
  3. Find a villain you can blame the plight of the victim on (Big Oil, big banks, big coal, rich, Koch Brothers, big insurance etc.)
  4. Demagogue the villain (Fat-cat bankers, fat-cat oil execs, fat-cat fill in the blank).
  5. Get your way!
  6. Rinse and repeat
Don't believe me? Let's take the Sandra Fluke nonsense as one example. Nancy Pelosi wants abortions. I truly believe she thinks that killing babies is good policy but let's leave that for another post. Pelosi wants free birth control right? But if she just asks for it rational folks would tell her to take a hike. So what did she do: Check out the bullet points above:
  1. Got a victim? (Poor broke college student who can't afford to have sex) Check!
  2. Exaggerate the issue? ($3,000/year for condoms) Check!
  3. Got a villain? (Big bad insurance companies/Republicans) Check!
  4. Demagogue the villain? (Republicans WAGE WAR ON WOMAN'S HEALTH!) Big time check!
  5. Get your way? Well we'll see.
Still not convinced? Look at what the public unions are doing in Wisconsin; how about when the Dems passed Obama care. In each case they followed the same MO.

Now none of this would work if we had an electorate that paid attention. But unfortunately many of us non-liberals have jobs and kids and many other things to worry about other than what the next lame brained idea Pelosi and her pals are about to come up with. And if for no other reason this is why these folks have to go.

It's one thing to have a wild-ass idea, but another altogether when these idiots actually get in a position to make them policy.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Unintended consequences: Obama’s war on first responders


Blinded by left-wing ideology, the administration is now putting firefighter's lives at risk all in the name of their misguided attempt to convert an unwilling public to lethal alternative-energy sourced transportation. This from Townhall.com (emphasis mine):

Last week, the Obama Administration sought to increase the Chevrolet Volt purchaser tax credit from $7,500 to $10,000.
All this for a car so dangerous to first responders that the Department of Energy allocated $4.4 million dollars for programs to prevent fire fighters from electrocuting themselves while trying to rescue crash victims.

You mean first responder now have to have special training to deal with an accident involving a Chevy Volt. What's next? A napalm powered car? Hell why not nuclear powered cars? Anything but highly efficient, affordable and SAFE evil oil.

Seriously, how many people need to be sacrificed at the alter of the alternative-energy God until the electorate wakes up and realizes that this is nothing more than liberal feel-good navel gazing?

So just for the record, not only are the owners of the Volt in mortal danger due to the car's inability to not catch fire, but now those who we pay to save lives in emergency situations are at risk as well.

Honestly, I don't have a problem if someone is stupid enough to buy this toxic time bomb. I figure that's just natural-selection working its way through the truly stupid among us. You know - culling the herd as it were. But when the decisions these self-righteous simpletons make put innocent first responder's lives at stake, then surely something has gone way way wrong here.

Do you think for one minute that if the government was not involved it this, ahem, project that it would have ever seen the light of day. Can you just imagine the discussion in the boardroom?

CEO: So let me get this straight - the Volt will cost (unsubsidized) over $100,000 - it only goes about 25 miles on a charge - oh and it has the propensity to blow the hell up. Have I missed anything?

Jr. Exec in charge: Um well yes sir, it seems when the battery goes bad it will cost the owner about $10,000 to dispose of it properly.

CEO: Son.

Jr. Exec: Yessir.

CEO: You're fired.

Jr. Exec: Yessir

However, that's fantasy-land folks, because the ever present Obama administration stepped in and got the ball rolling. Not because it was right for the market but rather because it was right with his ideology regardless of how many lives it will cost.

What's that you say? How is this Obama's fault? Well let's see - he and his administration is not only subsiding the manufacture of this rolling bomb but he is taking taxpayer money and offering up to $10,000 rebate on the damn thing.

It is just amazing the contortions liberals will go through just not to face reality. Oil is our best option right now not pixie-dust and car bombs. But, liberals, unable to help themselves and let the market decide when an alternative vehicle is right, they just gotta muck with it. And by doing so all these horrendous unintended consequences is the result.

And who ultimately will have to pay for all this nonsense? Well it looks like first responders with their lives and the rest of us with our wallets.

Winston’s Websites of the Day 3-20-12

Selflessly scouring the interwebs so you don't have to.

5 Reasons Socialism Is Inferior To Capitalism

By John Hawkins Via Townhall.com:

Saying that capitalism is better than socialism is like saying that winning a million dollars is better than being in a high impact car crash. In other words, if you have an open mind, a good grasp on human nature and economics, and a passing knowledge of world history, there's absolutely no question that capitalism is superior to socialism.
Read More:

How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp

This is an edited extract from Escape From Camp 14, by Blaine Harden and it is simply amazing.

After signing a secrecy form, father and son were handcuffed, blindfolded and driven away. Shin guessed they would be released but when the car stopped after about 30 minutes and his blindfold was removed, he panicked. A crowd had gathered. Shin was now certain he and his father were to be executed. He became acutely aware of the air passing into and out of his lungs. He told himself these were the last breaths of his life.

Time to count your blessings folks please read it all.

Intermission:

The world according to Frank
 
Now back to our regularly scheduled program:


115-year-old electric car gets same 40 miles to the charge as Chevy Volt

Meet the Roberts electric car. Built in 1896, it gets a solid 40 miles to the charge — exactly the mileage Chevrolet advertises for the Volt, the highly touted $31,645 electric car General Motors CEO Dan Akerson called "not a step forward, but a leap forward."
The executives at Chevrolet can rest easy for now. Since the Roberts was constructed in an age before Henry Ford's mass production, the 115-year-old electric car is one of a kind.
But don't let the car's advanced age let you think it isn't tough: Its present-day owner, who prefers not to be named, told The Daily Caller it still runs like a charm, and has even completed the roughly 60-mile London to Brighton Vintage Car Race.
Read more:

A Guide to the Liberal Mind

By Victor Volsky via The Amercian Thinker:

As a great fan of Jeff Foxworthy, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to use his hilarious you-might-be-a-redneck comedy routine in an attempt to characterize the liberal mindset. So, with apologies to the wonderful country comedian, here are some of the notable features of the liberal's mental landscape:
Read More:


 

Monday, March 19, 2012

Winston’s Websites of the Day 3-19-12

Selflessly scouring the interwebs so you don't have to

Obama's History Lesson

By Mark Steyn via National Review On Line:

So let's see. The president sneers at the ignorance of 15th-century Spaniards, when in fact he is the one entirely ignorant of them. A man who has enjoyed a million dollars of elite education yet has never created a dime of wealth in his life sneers at a crippled farm boy with an eighth-grade schooling who establishes a successful business and introduces electrical distribution across Michigan all the way up to Sault Ste. Marie. A man who sneers at one of the pioneering women in broadcasting, a lady who brought the voices of T. S. Eliot, G. K. Chesterton, and others into the farthest-flung classrooms and would surely have rejected Obama's own dismal speech as being too obviously reliant on "Half-a-Dozen Surefire Cheap Cracks for Lazy Public Speakers." A man whose own budget officials predict the collapse of the entire U.S. economy by 2027 sneers at a solvent predecessor for being insufficiently "forward-looking."
Read More:

Catholics, contraceptives and John Locke

By Michael Gerson via The Washington Post:

It is extraordinary how far some will go to knit the random scraps and patches of events into the quilt of a narrative. So the Susan B. Komen controversy, resistance to the administration's contraceptive mandate, a stag-party joke by Foster Friess and a cruel epithet from Rush Limbaugh somehow add up to a Republican war on women, sure to provoke the political backlash of an entire gender.
Read More:

Intermission:

Noir Time

 

Now back to our regularly scheduled program:

Watch Bernanke's 'Little' Inflation Capsize U.S.: Shlaes

Via Bloomberg:

Sometimes Bernanke doesn't even go that far. He simply says he doesn't see inflation. The Fed chairman recently described the prospects for price increases across the board as "subdued."
"Sudden" is more like it. The thing about inflation is that it comes out of nowhere and hits you. Monetary policy is like sailing. You're gliding along, passing the peninsula, and you come about. Nothing. Then the wind fills the sail so fast it knocks you into the sea. Right now, the U.S. is a sailboat that has just made open water, and has already come about. That wind is coming. The sailor just doesn't know it.
Read more:

The Land Devoid of Real Debate

By Greg Scaggs via The American Thinker:

This is self-strangulation.  Perhaps we should have seen it coming.  For in part, it is the inevitable result of a path our predecessors chose long ago.  In the simplest of terms, our nation and her people are the victims of a gradual abandonment of truth.
Read more:

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Why is he not running for the top spot?

Elective Suicide


I often wonder what the general public in Rome were doing during the last few years before the Empire fell. Probably laundry or taking out the trash or helping their kids with their homework. Same stuff we are doing now I suspect. I wonder if there were any folks like Eric Cantor-Arilius or Marco Rubio-Maximus decrying that not only did the emperor have no clothes on, but his disastrous policies will certainly bring down the empire in short order.

I saw this article from The American Thinker by Rael Jean Isaac called Global Warming and National Suicide(emphasis mine):

Landes describes those who initiate and build support for these movements as roosters, for they crow an exciting new message, and their opponents as owls, those counseling caution and skepticism.  To drown out the warning owls, roosters must rally elites to their cause.  That is how the global warming movement made its inroads: with governments and a small cadre of activists taking the lead.  Once the authorities pronounce themselves in favor of the prophecy and it "pays" to believe, many more ordinary people will join in.

This got me to thinking. It's not just the global warming nonsense that the current administration has wrong and has the country chasing its collective tail in a race to economic suicide. The Obama's monetary, foreign, energy and domestic policies would give any cold war era Soviet wet dreams. This administration is systematically tearing down every component of this country that makes it uniquely American.

At this juncture of the Obama's presidency one has to wonder; is he truly this stupid or is he single handedly trying to do in four years what the Soviet Union couldn't do in forty? I ask because you could overtly try to dismantle this country and not do a better job.

Let's take a look at some of Obama's highlights:

Energy Policy - Rather than increasing domestic production or at the very least import from an ally (i.e. XL pipeline) this administration has shut down virtually all off shore production - invested in Brazil's oil production and enriched our enemies in the Middle East. Now, I am not so naive to believe in so called 'energy independence' but we could certainly create a more stable supply especially with countries like Canada and for God's sake increase supply at home.

Foreign Policy - From this administrations abject distain for Israel to molly coddling a (soon to be nuclear armed) Iran, you'd be hard pressed to create a less stable environment - not just in the region but security of the rest of the world is at stake here as well. The longer Obama puts off real leadership, countries like Iran and peoples like the Taliban and the knuckleheads in Palestine will become more embolden and increase their attacks on freedom loving countries everywhere while we do nothing but talk about it. Russia and China have to be licking their chops at our abdication as a world power. Nature arbores a vacuum and their influence will increase as ours declines.

Domestic Policy - From the passage of Obamacare to the overreach of non-elected boards like the NLRB and EPA (not to mention attacks on religious freedom), this administration's assault on the Constitution is nothing less than treasonous. Yet Obama and his allies in the media have effectively helped re frame the argument so that it looks like it is the Republicans who are conducting an all out war on women's health or the environment.

Monetary Policy - What round of quantitative easing are we up to now? 13? 14? I've lost count. One of the best ways to destroy a country is to destabilize its currency just ask George Soros.

Economic Policy - Cash for clunkers - TARP - "Investment" in Green products - Auto Bailout that preferred Unions over Bond holders - Release of Strategic Oil Reserves as an answer to high gas prices. These are just a few of the gimmicky short-term nonsense Obama calls economic policies.

At every opportunity to make a meaningful decision that will decide the direction of the country, Obama has consistently made the wrong one further bringing this great country closer and closer to ruin.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

U.S. Marines' New Microchip Technology Allows Terrorists to talk with God!

Breaking News: Amazing new microchip implant allows Islamic Terrorists to Speak to God.

This incredible breakthrough was created by those clever folks at the U.S. Marines to specifically ease tensions between Islamic Terrorists and the rest of the world.

How does it work? Well, the implant is specifically designed to be injected into the forehead of any terrorist and, when properly installed, it will allow the terrorist to immediately speak directly to God.

How cool is that?

And that's not all! This unique device comes in an amazing variety of designers bullets, er um, microchips as well (Generally ranging  from .223 to ..50 cal.). No one size fits all here!

10 Convenient sizes to choose from

Recent field testing has shown no less that a 100% success rate when properly administered.

However, just like all new technological breakthroughs there may be some side effects so I would be remiss if I didn't give the legal disclaimer: