Friday, April 16. 2010
Congressman Henry Waxman, who never met a federal tax or mandate he didn't like to ram down Americans' throats, even when he discovers that the law he backed actually requires corporations to quickly report the negative financial impacts of ObamaCare, has decided to focus his attention on Americans' throats.
The Hill reports: Waxman calls on Major League Baseball to ban chewing tobacco.
 From the Comments:
"On behalf of the American people, I would like to submit an earmark for the next major piece of legislation, called "Bubble gum for Bubbas." This is to request $75 billion to buy smokeless tobacco from MLB athletes and to exchange it with bubble gum, just like we buy guns from people in inner cities to get those guns off the street. This legislation includes a rider for their third-party medical insurance plan that pays for any additional dental expenses that may in the course of this contract and for any reasonable time after the completion thereof be incurred by replacing said chewing tobacco with chewing gum."
And:
"The nanny state marches on. Since the government is now responsible for your healthcare, and can't afford the expense, be prepared for a rash of new restrictions. Obesity will be outlawed, alcohol consumption and lack of exercise will be next. Do you have any risky habits? Ride a motorcycle, sky dive, fly a light aircraft or hang glider? Dangerous and society should not be responsible to take care of you if you take these risks, so the government will say. Auntie Sam will take care of us all. Let's all take our morning "happy pill" and drone on like slaves."
There's another law he backed that Waxman forgets: Such a ban would have to be negotiated with the Players Union.
Can't wait to see the LA Dodgers and other teams send bottles of warm brown spit to Waxman's office.
 There is a dearth of good links out there today. This one is interesting, though: Contract With America.
I tend to agree with Spruiell's take on it.
Thursday, April 15. 2010
Can we avoid 70% of the cost of the huge Medicaid expansion within ObamaCare?. Yes, says a careful analysis, from a very knowledgeable source with practical experience.
Between 2014-2019, the estimated additional cost of the Medicaid expansion within ObamaCare, that accounts for over half those with added coverage, is $436.4 billion. That’s the figure analyzed by United Healthcare’s Center for Health Reform and Modernization. That ranges from $12.2 billion for Alabama, to $32.4 billion for California, to $28.1 billion for Florida, to $19.5 billion for Georgia, to $12.6 billion each for Indiana and Illinois, to $10.7 billion for Michigan, to $2.8 billion for Nevada, to $16.6 billion for Ohio, to $27.4 billion for Pennsylvania, to $59.5 billion for Texas, to $13 billion for Virginia.
The magnitude of each state’s added cost varies with how liberal its qualifications are already. Another factor is who gets new coverage.
Continue reading "First State-by-State Costs Of Medicaid Expansion: Save 70%?"
Globalistical warmening is at it again: Icelandic volcanoes. And Fireballs from outer space!
What's next? The full apocalypse? Or maybe not?
 We do not want to dwell on the Tea Party subject, but this is cute (h/t, NRO).
Note the cheerful and friendly demeanor, the unabashed patriotism, the good grooming, and the absence of a Che t-shirt: she is the New Wholesome Cool - and the Vanguard of the Revolution!
She needs a bio, though. I can easily come up with one, but I won't.
Let’s get to the bottom line: Those claiming that their industry is too big to fail are those who are failures, failing in their basic responsibilities to plan, manage and innovate, most often accompanied by rewarding themselves with high pay and perks.
In the 1980’s, many large corporations were acquired by vulture capitalists, broken up and otherwise disposed of. Yes, hundreds of billions of dollars were sometimes wasted on acquisitions that proved worthless, except to the wheelers-and-dealers’ fees, although in far more cases reorganized leaner and meaner competitors emerged. American industries, and those who wanted to keep their jobs, were forced to adapt if they wanted to remain viable. The American economy prospered anew. Many millions of employees were dislocated, struggled, but American unemployment was at new lows as new opportunities were created.
Those lessons, like most, need to be relearned anew with each generation.
Continue reading "Too Big To Fail: Tea Party Savior"
 Image of a Japanese breakfast (that is canned coffee, BTW) from Flares
Truly the I'm Not Dead Yet post of the day.
Iowahawk wants a pic of your worst wheels.
Regarding your gross old toenails
Why do colleges care about extracurricular activities?
The Puritan Left and life's little pleasures. Related: Banning corn syrup in NY?
Gotta laugh at Gordon Brown:
“A lot of things that the BBC does are incredibly creative and quite risky. But this is a necessary means of us being a creative society. I want to safeguard the independence of the BBC and I think the licence fee is the means by which you do it."
Sarah Palin kills moose miners. Eats them too, no doubt.
John Stossel has a blog.
More people have been killed by Oregon's windmills than died at Three Mile Island
Two subsidies: Ethanol and unconventional natural gas
Rasmussen:
Twenty-four percent (24%) of U.S. voters now say they consider themselves a part of the Tea Party movement, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. That’s an eight-point increase from 16% a month ago.
Europe's VAT Lessons: Rates start low and increase, while income tax rates stay high.
Ed Koch begins:
I weep as I witness outrageous verbal attacks on Israel. What makes these verbal assaults and distortions all the more painful is that they are being orchestrated by President Obama.
Wednesday, April 14. 2010
 Info about it via Jules in Beantown.
I think it's just great for people to take the trouble to show up and express themselves. The folks are getting flak from the MSM, if not scurrilous and dishonest attacks and attempted sabotages, which must be a tell that these demonstrations/protests mean something real. As Palin always says, you know you're near the target when you start getting the heavy flak.
There was a fair amount of hate expressed - by the haters of the Tea Party.
The message of the Tea Partiers to the gummint, I think, is "You guys have done enough damage. Leave us alone to run our own lives." Hewitt is along the same lines.
Some protests are good, it seems, and some are bad. Back in the day, anti-war protests were good places to pick up "revolutionary" granola gals with no morals. When I consider how six batty old Code Pink ladies used to show up and get non-stop front page coverage about their "moral authority," and compare it to the MSM coverage of the thousands of women that show up for these Tea events across the country, I just have to smile.
It is so predictable.
 A shout-out to our Prez: Quit embarrassing me, you big pussy. And I even do like Burger King. But how come foreign leaders don't bow to Obama? And who is Chief of Protocol? Mrs. Earthworm?
AVI is re-reading Screwtape. He feels convicted in every chapter. But I feel convicted on every page - so I win!
The best teachers aren't trained to teach. All the fancy private schools know that.
How TV-watching can alter your view of reality: Cultivation Theory
The Roosevelt Mythtique
Some violence is OK - if it's from the Religion of Peace...
Angela Merkel - More American than the O
The shift of unions towards big government
MRC Special Report: How the Media Have Dismissed and Disparaged the Tea Party Movement
How propaganda works today: Volokh. Kopel responds earnestly, as if truth mattered in that game.
Speaking of propaganda, Krugman does it again
How much money do Profs make these days?
Tea Party founders were small government radicals
Palin Derangement Syndrome in Boston. It's not about Palin: same thing would and will happen to any Conservative who rises to prominence.
Why taxing the rich won't work in New Jersey anymore. Related video: Christie is Reagan with a Jersey edge. A few quotes from the big guy via the Hot Air link:
The children will be the ones to suffer from your education cuts. “The real question is, who’s for the kids, and who’s for their raises? This isn’t about the kids. Let’s dispense with that portion of the argument. Don’t let them tell you that ever again while they are reaching into your pockets.”…
Budget cuts are unfair. “The special interests have already begun to scream their favorite word—which, coincidentally, is my 9-year-old son’s favorite word when we are making him do something he knows is right but does not want to do—’unfair.’ . . . One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life, and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits—a total of $3.8 million on a $120,000 investment. Is that fair?”…
Isn’t your talk of ’stopping the tax madness’ just another ‘Read My Lips’ promise? “[Mine is] much better than ‘Read my lips.’ I’m sorry, it’s just much better. Much stronger. . . . It’s gonna be how my governorship will rise or fall. I’m not signing a tax increase.”
Fred Singer: Climategate Whitewash
Robin of Berkeley's apology letter to America
Neptunus on his taxes:
Having recently completed my taxes for 2009 – and receiving rather a nasty shock at the bottom line – I can only hope to be less productive in 2019 than I am now.
Very soon now – if I am not there already - I simply won’t be able to afford to succeed.
NYT says it now: It's about rationing care
Money from wind: It's the subsidy that will make you rich. I believe that is termed rent-seeking.
Cheerful graph from Willisms:
Tuesday, April 13. 2010
And to make matters worse, try finding this federal tax on a receipt.
I would be in favor of replacing the federal income tax with a VAT, however.
Addendum: Excellent policy piece on VAT
 More bowing to dictators. I think it's more than a twitch and I think it's more than a submissive character trait. What do our readers think?
Says Ledeen:
It’s worse than you thought, Victor. It’s not confusion at all. It’s a campaign to cut America down to size.
Insane: Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again
More insanity: Unlearning whiteness. He includes this quote:
To ignore race is to be more racist than to acknowledge race. I call it neo-racism.
Then call me a neo-racist. Call me anything you want. I don't care. Sticks and stones...
Wilkinson: Do Libertarians Have Anything Interesting to Say to Liberals?
Phil Jones is unraveling
Surber: "Here’s an idea: Let FedEx and UPS take over the post office."
The cynical politics of immigration
More cynical politics: Incentives Not to Work - Larry Summers v. Senate Democrats on jobless benefits.
VDH: The Ongoing Melodrama of Victims and Oppressors. A quote:
...the president seems to fail to acknowledge that there are plenty of actions an individual can take to avoid becoming part of that growing crowd of "less fortunate." Instead, in Obama's world, there exists a simple zero-sum melodrama of victims and oppressors.
Bad times in South Africa. Do they want to be Zimbabwe?
The hatred never ends: Hateful East Coast Leftists Attack Sarah Palin Before Her Boston Rally… Media Silent
WaPo: We Haven't Seen Any Evidence of Tea Party Racism Yet, But Hang Tight While We Investigate
Cookbook medical care coming to the US?
Prof B: Swapping their Birthright of Freedom for an iPad
Monday, April 12. 2010
 Anchoress: The Celibacy Lecture. I say, if you want perfection, look to God for it, not to clergy or any other mortal souls.
So generous: Washington will spend $31,406 per household this year. Where's my check?
Tom Smith:
I like women. I wouldn't want to do without them. But if I were making the case for men without women, I would find Maureen Dowd very useful. Glib, self-satisfied, and neither as smart nor as good looking as she thinks, she makes a long fishing trip with nothing but the guys and a case of scotch a pretty inviting prospect.
Bob Geldof: Buffoon. He thought Africans were so pathetic that they needed mediocre Western rock musicians to "help" them.
A reporter attended a workshop for community organizers. Apparently there are a lot of people with way too much time on their hands and very little contact with the real world...
The sexism in Vet schools is approaching the crisis point. Or do girls just "love animals" more than guys? Why do you want to be a Vet? "I love animals." Sheesh. So be a farmer. Or get a rescue dog. What the world needs now is more hot babe dentists..."Why do you want to be a dentist?" "I love teeth."
All Criticism of Obama Is Racist ... Again. I love that placard.
PC Pinheads Want to Ban the Word 'Obese' So As Not to Offend Fat Kids. Did Michele O get the memo? Is Pinch a poofter? Love that word.
Spittlegate. A MSM scandal
What really drives climate changes? The Milankovitch Cycle
For Mad Men fans, a post on their props, via a piece at Driscoll
The people who do not want medical insurance
Dalrymple: Very Few Innocents in Housing Market Collapse
Parks on Leftist racism. A quote:
...I also knew that I believe in the uncelebrated work fellow black conservatives do to this day (and endure) as racism is only allowed in our society when it’s aimed at us, and instead of turning tail and running, we keep on. I think we’ve shown more guts than any ratings-driven media pundits anyday.
Comments on the Ferguson essay about behavioral economics, which we posted yesterday, at Volokh
What entitlement crisis?
The Islamist Ghost Haunting Europe
Hennessey: Should taxpayers subsidize underwater homeowners?
Amil Imani: Jews as scapegoats
The KKK in Rhode Island. It's a crisis.
Crash course: Your illustrated guide to the Tea Party saboteurs
Sunday, April 11. 2010
 Ferguson's excellent essay at Weekly Standard, titled Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink: Behavioral economics—the governing theory of Obama’s nanny state, quotes the Prez:
“Far more is now known about regulation—not only about when it is justified, but also about what works and what does not. .??.??. In this time of fundamental transformation, that process—and the principles governing regulation in general?—should be revisited.”
Gee whiz, it sounds very "scientific." My response to the notion that my supposed betters need to regulate and nudge me and my life is not printable on a family website such as Maggie's. I do not care whether it "works" or not. Mussolini made the trains run on time, too.
I believe that our Maggie's team and our readers know far more about life than Barack Obama or Cass Sunstein will ever know.
Saturday, April 10. 2010
Among our link dump Friday morning was a piece on a Cyberspace Bill of Rights.
We need no "rights." We are a free people. Our own Bill of Rights was an unfortunate (if politically necessary) error of the time. Why an error? An error because it made it appear that only the listed "rights" were the rights of citizens.
In the USA, it is the government which has (or had) strictly circumscribed powers. The rest are ours alone - our individual powers - not our "rights." Americans do not have circumscribed "rights." We are not supposed to need them.
Ed Morrissey and Professor William Jacobson inform us about the tragic death in an airline crash of the brave Polish president and a large number of Poland’s leadership, on their way to a joint commemoration with Russia of the 1940 slaughter of 22,000 Polish officers by the Soviet Union.
For those of you who don’t recall Katyn, I wrote about it last August.
Katyn: In 1962, one of my later mentors published the first definitive book proving that the Soviets committed the massacre of Poland’s military elite at Katyn. This is a very important key to understanding the Captive Nations outcome of WWII and the Cold War. I just rented the film, Katyn, directed by Poland’s most famous director. Anne Applebaum, steeped in Soviet history, has an interesting review of the film, “A Movie That Matters.” An excerpt:
"Certainly its Polish viewers know how it will end, long before they enter the cinema. Katyn, as its title suggests, tells the story of the near-simultaneous Soviet and German invasions of Poland in September 1939, and the Red Army's subsequent capture, imprisonment, and murder of some 20,000 Polish officers in the forests near the Russian village of Katyn and elsewhere, among them Wajda's father. The justification for the murder was straightforward. These were Poland's best-educated and most patriotic soldiers. Many were reservists who as civilians worked as doctors, lawyers, university lecturers, and merchants. They were the intellectual elite who could obstruct the Soviet Union's plans to absorb and "Sovietize" Poland's eastern territories. On the advice of his secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria, Stalin ordered them executed.
"But the film is about more than the mass murder itself. For decades after it took place, the Katyn massacre was an absolutely forbidden topic in Poland, and therefore the source of a profound, enduring mistrust between the Poles and their Soviet conquerors. Officially, the Soviet Union blamed the murder on the Germans, who discovered one of the mass graves (there were at least three) following the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941. Soviet prosecutors even repeated this blatant falsehood during the Nuremberg trials and it was echoed by, among others, the British government.
"Unofficially, the mass execution was widely assumed to have been committed by the Soviet Union. In Poland, the very word "Katyn" thus evokes not just the murder but the many Soviet falsehoods surrounding the history of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. Katyn wasn't a single wartime event, but a series of lies and distortions, told over decades, designed to disguise the reality of the Soviet postwar occupation and Poland's loss of sovereignty."
Obama snubbing Poland for 70th anniversary of WWII? Poland was the most screwed over country going into, during, and after WWII. Those of its soldiers who escaped the Nazis and Soviets were among the bravest fighters with the Allies. Poland and Poles deserve more respect.
Wonder what hollow words President Obama will utter now?
Today’s loss is devastating to Poland, to the United States, and to the world. President Kaczynski was a distinguished statesman who played a key role in the Solidarity movement, and he was widely admired in the United States as a leader dedicated to advancing freedom and human dignity. With him were many of Poland’s most distinguished civilian and military leaders who have helped to shape Poland’s inspiring democratic transformation. We join all the people of Poland in mourning their passing.
As usual from Obama, contradicted by his undercutting of Poland volunteering to host anti-missile defense and his disdain for Polish President Lech Kaczynski when alive. Israel surely gets the point.
The New York Times asks: "For Poland, the losses raise the question of how a country of 38 million can replace a whole political class." It had to before and will again, because Poles and their leaders have clearsighted historical memory and courage.
 Shrinkwrapped: How the poor are different
Video: Jimmy Doolittle talks about the raid on Tokyo
Rates of casual sex swelling. We are just monkeys, aren't we? Or are we not?
The Great Books are the answer. The Bible is one of them.
Malanga: The bloat in NJ's schools (h/t, Tiger)
Great news for Billings, MT - and for your grandkids who will pay for this crap.
40,000 Cuban advisors now in Venez
All the proles need to know about government medical care:
“It’s like the back of the refrigerator. You see all these wires and the rest. All you need to know is, you open the door. The light goes on.”
That Pelosi sure is a deep one.
Good fun with supply and demand curves re health care
The death panels medical rationing that is to come
Britain "bringing climate change to the heart of the national curriculum." Nothing else to learn, is there?
Front Page: The power of the drones
How did people ever survive for 20,000 years in Europe without massive EU regulation?
HuffPo: The battle for the soul of the Dem Party
A hungry Leviathan. The VAT, at Q&O:
Revenue, folks, revenue – the beast is hungry and insatiable. And it has a very serious problem looming the future. It wants no part of lean and mean. Instead, it wants to be fat, happy and expanding – and VAT would do that. And you, dear wage earner, are the means to its dreams.
Keynes vs. Hayek. Of course, we know the only reason that Keynesian stimuli remain popular is pure politics - a justification to reward those one wishes to reward with $.
If the US Europeanizes, Europe is in trouble
Lenin the politician:
An ideological hardliner, he was ready to fudge even the issue of nationalization when his Bolshevik colleagues objected. Call it the people’s ownership, he suggested.
Friday, April 9. 2010
 Do not eat your vegetables:
HIGH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE CONSUMPTION doesn’t do much to prevent cancer. “People who hate vegetables will be happy about this report.”
Henninger: Youth joblessness in the US, and the Eurozone's jobs dystopia
Why should we need a Bill of Rights for Cyberspace? We already have free speech
In Bid To Reform Fannie and Freddie, Obama Can’t Shake Crony Clintonistas Who Caused the Mess
Steyn: Strange that the more Canada congratulates itself on its ‘tolerance’ the less it’s prepared to tolerate. He quotes some uncloseted totalitarian:
“We don’t have a First Amendment, we don’t have a religion of free speech,” she explained patiently. “Students sign off on all kinds of agreements as to how they’ll behave on campus, in order to respect diversity, equity, all of the values that Canadians really care about. Those are the things that drive our political culture. Not freedoms, not rugged individualism, not free speech. It’s different, and for us, it works.”
That is, we don't need no steenkin freedom.
Roseanne Barr: Parents Who Take Children to Catholic Church Should Lose Custody
Dick Morris: DEM STRATEGISTS HAVE IT WRONG
Big Journalism: The Mainstream Media: Fourth Estate Or Fifth Column?
RedState: Democrats plot two-pronged attack on Internet freedom
Our friend Skook with a Moose story - and nuclear weapons
Give me niceness or give me death
GM: More Troubles Coming Down the Road
Driscoll: Twilight Of The Gods: CNN’s Current, Pitiful State
Time for a fresh look at the Commerce Clause? Will the Individual Mandate Hold up in Court?
Unemployed slackers:
Is it the president's fault that Americans are better off than they were 30 years ago, and are thus not desperate to take whatever job that comes along?
I have heard this plenty of times: "With the extension, I have nine more months of unemployment, so I'll start looking seriously in a few months"?
CT Post: That's Greece in the mirror
Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd wants to impose some changes on the way that financing for new ventures works in America
VAT attack. Beware: 'Value-added tax' is an economy-killer
Powerline: 10 reasons not to walk away from your mortgage
Thursday, April 8. 2010
 The Moonbat Left can never decide whether they are for free love, or whether all sex is rape.
Multiple census forms to some neighborhoods?
Moran: DON’T SLANDER STATES’ RIGHTS
Harsanyi on Michelle Obama's misguided war on childhood obesity
Michelle: True Confessions from America's Census Workers
Dr. Clouthier's slick new site: Liberty Pundits
Villianous asks how do you marginalize a majority?
Black conservative tea party backers take heat
The people who do not need to pay taxes. Related: Welcome To Vermont Where We Subsidize (Almost) Everyone. Related at No Pasaran: The Land of the Free Freeloader
Insty:
THE KEY BIT ON A VALUE ADDED TAX: “But politicians love the hidden aspect of a VAT as way of duping voters. To them opaqueness is a feature, not a bug.” And my chief objection.
Plus it's an easy way to tax the middle class and the poor.
Wiz: Massachusetts health care system killing insurance companies?
Wednesday, April 7. 2010
At Pajamas, excellent brief tragi-comic post on Jefferson Co, Alabama. One quote:
Maybe someone can stop Wall Street from corrupting the politicians by putting the politicians in charge of Wall Street. Find someone from Chicago who can do it. Or, if that doesn’t work, abolishing capitalism will get results so that in the first place there’s no money to corrupt anyone. Either more government or no business. That’s sure to work in the same sense that you can avoid cancer entirely by having all your organs removed.
Excessive Arctic sea ice endangers cute baby seals, Polar Bears, this year.
Hey! Where's my free medical care?
How has the American diet changed over the past 100 years?
Goldberg: How much taxation is enough?
They sent Volcker out to say it first
The Power to Regulate Commerce Across State Lines Is Also the Power to Regulate Non-Commerce Within a State
The guy who is going up against Barney Frank
The world's tallest building opens
Too late to short carbon stocks?
Current Senate race rankings
Gaming medical insurance in Massachusetts
Catch 22: Higher CAFE standards and more ethanol - but ethanol lowers MPG. And why ethanol anyway?
Electric cars: The Coal-Powered Car And Its Discontents
A (Teddy) Rooseveltian concept: limit the size of banks. My question of the day, though, is this: Is KKR "too big to fail"?
The chutzpah here is something to behold. Having passed the largest entitlement expansion in half a century, in the most partisan manner imaginable, the president now wants Republicans to provide political cover to Democrats as they search for ways to finance the welfare state of their dreams.
The Case for Common Educational Standards. In 1950, 60% of the jobs required no particular skills. The world has changed.
UPDATE: Related, from Clarence Page: “President Barack Obama’s election has inspired a record number of African-American candidates to run for Congress this year. What’s surprising is that they’re running as Republicans.”
Liberals have a narrative: Tea Parties are fringe, violent racists.
There is not a mirror big enough to capture the liberal hatred at their rallies.
Tuesday, April 6. 2010
 White & guilty: ‘Whiteness’ workshop helps expose your inner racist
Will you still need her, will you still feed her, when she's 64?
Next Bailout - Hospitals Hurt By Obamacare
From Tiger: Thor Heyerdahl meets recycling: Follow the voyage of the Plastiki.
Surber on academic idiocy:
...let me get this straight: A 15-year-old can have an abortion, no problem.
But a 22-year-old cannot have sex with another adult.
Many grow happier with the years, experts say. And then you die.
Chris Currey: How the GOP Purged Me
Update: A Complete List Of Bad Things Attributed To Global Warming
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