Maggie's FarmWe are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for. |
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Wednesday, March 24. 2010Cheerful newsJesse Abbate with Glock 18 on full auto: This was an ad for a vacuum cleaner. I need one of those Rowenta vacuums: A good rantIn Keep Your Stinking Paws Off My Body and Out of My Pocket, You Damn Dirty Apes!, Gagdad Bob comes down from his double-wide cloud and begins thus:
Good wholesome funHate-filled anti-haters. Good old Ann is a born comedienne and a mocker of the status quo - sort of my Lennie Bruce. I can't believe these jerks who have no sense of fun and who cannot take a jab. She is having good fun with this. Public Pension Fraud Increases, On Top Of ObamaCare Fraudulent Accounting$3-trillion of actual public pension liabilities on top of $trillions of actual ObamaCare costs and $trillions of ObamaCare taxes. All private and public pension funds took a shellacking over the past few years. Tougher accounting rules are leading private pension funds to decrease risk, and thus the required contributions, by reducing their percentage of funds in stocks. Public pension funds, by contrast, are increasing the risks they are taking, to reduce voting taxpayers’ sticker shock at the unsustainable promises made to government employees. Greenwich Associates, one of the top investment research firms, calls it a “swing-for-the-fences” attempt to avoid fiscal realities.
The American Enterprise Institute’s study says that, contrary to public pension funds’ official accounting that they are about $½-trillion in actuarial deficit, their actual deficit is closer to $3 trillion.
Today’s Some states and localities are trying to make adjustments to future pension liabilities to their employees, but the adjustments are relatively minor in comparison to the burden on and cuts to other government services. Top that off with the new huge budget burdens upon the states mandated by ObamaCare’s expansion of Medicaid eligibility. Fourteen states are already suing to block ObamaCare’s effects on the states. For example, the Christian Science Monitor reports:
Actually, at the cost of schools, roads, policing, and other high-priority government services. The number of government employees, however, keeps increasing while the number of taxpaying workers decreases and their taxes increase. Wake up and smell the tea.
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Weds. morning linksScience museums tamed by agendas
So true. That was when they had the term "prosperously plump." Now people spend thousands to try not to be plump, and the stats say the "poor" are the most plump. Why that is, I do not know. What I do know is that body lard is unattractive to me. If people want to be fat, though, it's their choice and I would never hold it against them. Why Germany would decide to further enable Greece's socialism and corruption is beyond me. The NYT thinks they should. Althouse: Are tea parties racist? Related: Figures. NY Times Still Pushing Bogus Tea Party N*gger Story Despite Video Proof That It Was Made Up Conservative vs. Leftist industries in the US. h/t Chicago Boyz Diversity training doesn't work Amusing: Coulter to file grievance with Canadian human rights At the time of the American Revolution
Why isn't this guy in jail? From the Chicago Trib in As America Trots Down The Same Doomed Path, Chicago Tribune Notices Illinois Is Broke:
9th Circuit nominee John Liu says he “envisions the judiciary…as a culturally situated interpreter of social meaning.” Is he a social worker, a forensic Psychiatrist, or a nut? Image via Protein: WSJ: Why ObamaCare makes us nostalgic for the Cold War. Good summary of the reconciliation bill at Hennessey Related: I am going to let 3 guys go Mead: Why can't DC think outside the blue box? “Already Insured? Get Ready to Pay More” Free Viagra is in the health bill? How about penile enlargement? Every guy wants that. In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality. Duh. But not by making it easier for people to create wealth - if wealth is what they want. No, just by taking mine and giving it to somebody else, preferably to a Dem voter.
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Tuesday, March 23. 2010The best-named blog is gone: “Conspiracy To Keep You Poor and Stupid”The best-named blog in the blogosphere is gone: "The Conspiracy To Keep You Poor And Stupid" by my friend Don Luskin. Don got me started in blogging in October 2004, when he posted a long, documented piece by me about the Swiftboat hypocrisy of the New York Times and its then ombudsman (also erroneously called its public editor). I just received the following two emails from Don:
Don Luskin (bio) knows a thing or three about making money. The bidding is open. Or, will Don contribute the proceeds to a cause that works to end the Conspiracy? Or, will Don designate a heir? There’s no replacing Don Luskin’s blog. But, there is carrying on to end the Conspiracy To Keep You Poor And Stupid. The conservative and libertarian sides of the blogosphere have come a long way forward over the past years, so I can see Don’s logic, always sound. But while losing Don, his contributions have been seminal. Thank you Don. Tuesday morning links"The Bully State." That is the perfect term. Sort of related: Healthy Community Initiatives: A Microcosm of What We're In For Some pundits have said that Obamacare completes the welfare state project begun back in the Progressive era and by FDR and Johnson. Does that mean there is nothing else they want to do? Cobb has a message for black male youth. h/t, Vandy. I wonder whether Cobb appreciates that his message is for everybody (he probably does). Federal efforts on education do not work. Of course not. Explain to me why anyone would equate racism with being opposed to goverment medical care. Google vs. China Guardian admits wind causing Arctic ice loss Sharpton: “Americans Overwhelmingly Voted For Socialism When They Elected Obama” British Wind Farms Failing Due to Lack of Wind. I have an idea for all those bird-chopper wind machines: Plug them all into a power source and use them as fans to cool the rapidly baking planet. No chance that courts will strike down individual mandates. I agree. "Commerce" has come to mean anything. Repeal is hokum. Sad to say, I agree. Adjustments possible, but repeal will not happen. Krauthammer has it right:
Lowry: Dem win is built on sand Zomblog: The real reasons Americans hate government healthcare
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Monday, March 22. 2010Up Yours, Mr. PresidentSo much for President Obama’s virtual colonoscopy, not approved as cost-effective for ordinary folks’ coverage. But, then Obama would have had to been out during a routine colonoscopy and VP Biden would have been President for an hour or two. Imagine how much worse that would have been! Senator Grassley tries to set matters right.
The senior Congressional Committee and leadership staff who wrote the ObamaCare bills are also exempt from it.
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19:32
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A few more thoughts for a grim and rainy Welfare State MondayWe have experienced one more giant step towards becoming a boring, worn-out, lazy, demoralized and weary European-style welfare state. VDH at Pajamas begins:
And the smart and savvy Paul Ryan predicts the future. One quote:
Same for me, Coyote: My Health Insurance Policy Just Became Illegal Regulating porn, etcFrom Steyn's "Deemocracy" in Action:
Part of the fun in reading Steyn is imagining his voice speaking it. He writes like he talks. Monday morning linksIf you've been away this weekend, please scroll down and catch up with Maggie's. Some good stuff there. Steyn: Happy Dependence Day!
Devastating non-trends in US Climate Coulter: I was hoping for a fruit basket, not a threat to prosecute
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Sunday, March 21. 2010Healthcare Bill Will Stir The Next Greatest GenerationOur fathers and mothers, or grandfathers and grandmothers, were the “greatest generation” that took the world back from tyranny in WWII and from poverty after. Ask them, and they were just doing what was right. Those who served in Now, three generations who just did what was right will be joining with the next generation to just do what’s right. Together, in the chilling dawn of the wake-up call that is the bankrupting powergrab sham that is ObamaCare and the sliming of integrity with which it has been pressed, with the abandonment of allies and the kowtowing to foes, the heavy prices will fall most upon them along with the rest of us. “Damn Dems” will be the next greatest generation’s battle cry. A cross-generational battle cry. BTW
This reminds me of this: It's not over 'til we say so.
Flag of the Resistance:
Inside the Pelosi Sausage Factory:
NYTs Understated: Legal and Political Fights Are Looming for Democrats
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FDR Redux?Sunday morning linksWe make the rules up as we go along... Dick Morris: Why Democrats Are Doomed if ObamaCare Passes From 1996, Milton Friedman's A Way Out of Soviet-Style Health Care - Solzhenitsyn's prophetic warning about the depersonalization of medicine I will always be a Marine wife Sippican's ancestors Vandy: Welcome to Your Small World, Suckers Image on right via Theo Image below via Moonbattery's Dems Explain Why ObamaCare Must Be Stopped
Image below from DC yesterday via NRO: Saturday, March 20. 2010Creating a crisisBy its built-in logic, Obamacare will cause the health care industry to go bankrupt within months. This is entirely deliberate, and straight from the playbook: make such a mess that people beg for government help.
Saturday morning linksEpigenetics: The limits of Darwinian evolution Coburn: We won't permit deals for jobs for pols. Related: Lose the battle but win the war Putin showing no respect for the O Admin Van Jones: Tell me again - why is he at Princeton? GOP candidate recruitment at Powerline:
AmeriCorps: Obama’s Scandal-Plagued Indoctrination Machine. Related: Admin restores full funding to ACORN Human shields: Jules Is this legal? Imagine if Bush...
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Friday, March 19. 2010America's ComebackThanx, BL: A few more morning linksLiberals and atheists are "more evolved." Everybody knew that already, didn't they? We ignorant uneddicated knuckle-dragging throwbacks nonetheless persist in clinging to Jesus and our firearms. Why they let we Neanderthals vote and have websites is beyond me. Just like Crichton's novel: Warming goes on trial. It could be another Scopes trial: The warming religion vs. skeptical science The Euro in Crisis - In Greece and elsewhere, statism proves riskier than free markets. No surprise there.
Sick of health care yet?- The problem with socialist solutions is always that there isn't quite enough socialism (or enuf $) - How Obamacare screws the middle class - 65% say Do nothing or Start Over - Virginia: If you ram healthcare through, we'll see you in court next week - People want coverage of pre-existing conditions, but they don't want to pay for it. So who do they want to pay for it? Thursday, March 18. 2010The Real Budget Score Starts To EmergeThe Democrats are exultant over the preliminary CBO score (preliminary because even the Congressional Budget Office hasn’t had time to examine whether it jives with the previous Senate bill) issued this morning. The score (costing) is on the Democrats’ reconciliation adjustments to the Senate ObamaCare bill that it remains under $1-trillion in spending and that together with added revenues will further reduce the deficit. There’s increasing amazement at this bald-faced assertion. The real score will be seen this weekend in the Democrats' trickery vote and the consequences they face next November. The Republican leadership is still trying to decipher the fine print, but are quickly getting to the bottom line. Senator McConnell issued a press release saying: “They get there with even higher taxes and deeper Medicare cuts than the first Senate bill.
That’s real. There’s more that’s real and unreal. The $500-billion taken from Medicare is real in its impact on seniors' health. That doctors will have their fees further reduced is not real, many already operating at a loss on Medicare business and losses being shifted on to private insurance plans. The tens of billions of spending in future years mandated upon the already near-bankrupt states for expanded Medicaid is real, though not counted by CBO. The negative impacts on employment and the economy are real. The Washington Post’s WonkRoom says:
The Washington Post reports on throwing into the unrelated health care bill the entirely unrelated federal takeover (except for Democrat Senator Conrad’s state) of student loan lending:
On the Cadillac Tax, the New York Times reports:
The National Taxpayers
Page 24 of today’s preliminary CBO score says that $129.7 billion will be taken from Medicare Advantage plans, versus the $118.1 billion the CBO said a week ago would be taken away. Then there’s the timing shenanigan of loading revenues up front and costs at the backend of the first 10-years. What else lurks in the hearts of the Democrats rammming down a non-roll call vote they are planning for this weekend? Will a stake be driven through it? P.S.: Federal budgets expert Keith Hennessey adds much more info.
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Another political quote of the dayVia Surber: On Monday, after heavy rains, Gore held a teleconference to leap on the rain as proof of Apocalypse and Armaggedon: “Just look at what has been happening for the last three days. The so-called skeptics haven’t noted it because it’s not snow. But the downpours and heavy winds are consistent with what the scientists have long warned about. Wasn't he warning us that weather wasn't climate just two weeks ago? Wednesday, March 17. 2010Obama’s Wiley Coyote New International (Dis)OrderPresident Obama has jettisoned the
What has Obama replaced it with:
Meanwhile:
Obama's Wiley Coyote foreign policy is taking the US and its allies over the cliff with him.
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11:59
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Monday, March 15. 2010Random Monday linksA few links left over from yesterday - New England got hit hard by the nor'easter and Maggie's HQ is without power. A blogger is a (compulsive) writer. Human rights are from God, not from governments. Governments' jobs are to secure them. Where does a sexually strange prom fit in? David Brooks says he knows how the O thinks. How does he know? She talks like I would talk: Sarah Palin Lashes Out at Liberals, D.C. and Media Shut up and act, Tom. VDH. Actors are not known for knowing things. No global climate data from 50% of the world. Free medical care for artists? Sheesh. Hey, I am a blog artist. Or at least a blog artiste. Does higher ed mean more money? No. And that's not what it is for, either. Texan textbooks. Good deal. Capitalist Pig: Sulzberger to 6 mill/yr Cold weather kills.
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Sunday, March 14. 2010Netanyahu is being Sharoned by the Obama AdministrationWhat the heck is the Hurva, and what is its current role in Israel-Palestinian and Israel-US tensions? The Hurva (“ruin” or “wreck” in Hebrew) has become a target for the Palestinian campaign to denigrate Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is trying to avoid being smeared as was former Prime Minister Sharon as justification for Palestinian attacks upon Israel and Israelis, that the Obama administration is in its misguided incompetence encouraging. Former Prime Minister Sharon was falsely accused of inciting the Second Intifada by the Palestinians by his visit to the
Before Here’s an aerial photo from 1940. The Jewish quarter is at the bottom of the image. The two large domes are the Hurva Synagogue, at the lower right, and the Tiferes Yisrael Synagogue. Both were destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948, after starving out the Jewish inhabitants of the Jewish Quarter.
In 1948, British officers led their Arab Legion to destroy the Hurva, and other synagogues in the Jewish Quarter. The Jordanian commander is reported saying: "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible." In sum:
Christians also suffered under Jordanian rule.
Israel commemorated the Hurva site with an arch. Eight years ago a reconstruction of the Hurva started, and is to be opened this Monday. (Notice that the nearby Moslem minaret is undamaged under Israeli rule, as all Moslem and Christian sites are not damaged by Israel, in contrast to the fate of Jewish sites under Moslem rule.) As an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal concludes: “What is clear is that the inauguration of the old-new Hurva—twice destroyed, and now twice rebuilt—represents a deep and irrepressible Israeli urge to heal and rebuild, not in order to obscure memory but to preserve it.” But, the Palestinians, seeking another way to attack
The Palestinians are encouraged by the Obama administration’s reaction in February to
This reflected the Obama administration’s anxiety to show some progress after a year of alienating Israel has good reason to be protective of its heritage sites, as demonstrated by the October 2000 Palestinian sacking and burning of Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus and the September 2000 destruction of archeological remnants of the Jewish Temple on the Mount. Other examples. We know the Palestinians won’t be satisfied by anything less than the utter destruction of As Caroline Glick said last June in receiving a prestigious honor: “Our enemies are right in choosing their targets. They are right because they know who we are. We are the children of P.S.: Worth reading at the Washington Post. The unreality of Obama's Israel policy. Also see Obamá's latest pretext for attacking Israel at Powerline. UPDATE March 16: The New York Times reports on the Hurva dedication, sorta. But forgets to mention that Hamas announced a "day of rage" for Tuesday and that Fatah echoes in competition for being worthy negotiation partners, according to Obama anyway.
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