Top 3 Liberal Cities In America Revealed

A Yahoo! contributor named Cassandra James recently wrote an article titled Top Three Most Liberal Cities in America to Live In: If You're Left-Wing You'll Love These Towns.  It is an interesting read, only because it reveals so much about the liberal mindset.  Let's cut through the suspense and get right to the cities.  Cassandra picks Berkeley, CA, Ann Arbor, MI, and Lawrence, KS.   That last one was what caught my attention.  You see, I live very close to Lawrence, KS, and I can say that it seems like most stereotypical Midwest college towns.  After all, it is the home of the Kansas Jayhawks.  But more on Lawrence later.  First, let's dive into Ms. James thesis.

As an American who now lives overseas, if I ever returned to live in American (which is highly unlikely), the only cities I would ever consider living in are liberal cities. As a past resident of Texas, living in a right-wing state, it felt like purgatory, and something I would never repeat. Living in one of these three liberal, progressive and left-wing cities though would be a good choice for any liberal like me, looking for a majority of like-minded people, as these liberal cities afford nice places to live with great communities and interesting culture.

Right off the bat there seems to be a kind of hatred for America. The author implies that there isn't a good reason to live in America, because apparently, if someone doesn't think like a liberal, they have no value and are not worth even being around.  The author makes it sound as if 99% of America is not worth living in.  I have traveled all over the USA and I have found good people everywhere.  I found beauty and culture and when you get down to it, there are individuals out there who care.  But for those liberals who are intolerant, don't despair, there is hope.  (Hey Han, isn't 'Intolerant Liberals' redundant? Yes, yes it is.)   You to can live in one of these towns with 'like-minded people' and be smug and self righteous to your hearts content.

What really mad me laugh, however, was WHY Lawrence is a top 3 liberal town.  Of course, C. James reminds us that Douglas County, which Lawrence is a part of, voted for Barry Obama in the 2010 election.  With those bona fides in place, the reason why Lawrence is a good-ole-liberal oasis is:

Lawrence has lots of liberal-style businesses, independent coffee shops and book stores, an incredible organic foods restaurant, theater groups, art galleries, and an amazing college radio station. Lawrence even has a four-day music festival for independent bands and artists that, in just a few years since its inception, now attracts almost 100,000 concertgoers every year.

Hmmm,  Wait a minute!?!?  If I like coffee shops and book stores and eat healthy, I am a liberal?  I think Cassandra has redefined what it means to be a lib.  I guess all it takes is going to concerts and listening to top 40 music on 105.9 KISS-FM. Since when did top 40 make a college radio station amazing?  When I was in college, we hated that pre-packaged, recycled music.  Why, back at Corellian University, real music came from the heart, not this stuff that is designed to rob 15 year old kids of their iTunes dollars.  But I digress.  What Cassandra is really saying can be summed up with her own intolerance:

If you're a liberal looking for a friendly liberal town to live in, populated by mostly left-wing people who vote the way you do and believe everyone has the right to live their lives the way they choose, then Lawrence, Kansas could very well be for you.

Cassandra only thinks you have the right to live your life the way you choose, only if you choose to be a liberal. Isn't this the real meaning of liberalism, Cassandra?  It has nothing to do with coffee, organic food, or 100,000 person hippie jams. It is thinking of yourself as open minded while you are being smug, condescending, and telling others how to live their lives.

 

Don't Buy Anything a Leftist Says -- Ever.

It doesn't have that much to do with this story, I just think it's awesome.

So how many times have we heard leftists decry the automobile? How often do we hear about the global warming, the evil SUV, and so on? Well if everyone just used buses more or even better, biked, how much better the mother earth would be! Anything to stop the evil oil companies.

Well in Chicago they got their wish. More and more people started biking. Mission accomplished right? Wrong cause it cut into their holy sacrament: taxes. Solution? Tax bikes. 

A city councilwoman’s recent proposal to institute a $25 annual cycling tax set off a lively debate that eventually sputtered out after the city responded with a collective “Say what?” A number of gruff voices spoke in favor, feeding off motorists’ antagonism toward what they deride as stop sign-running freeloaders. Bike-friendly bloggers retorted that maybe pedestrians ought to be charged a shoe tax to use the sidewalks. 

“There’d be special bike cops pulling people over? Or cameras? What do you do (to enforce this)?” asked Mike Salvatore, owner of Heritage Bicycles, a new Chicago hangout that neatly blends a lively cafe with a custom bike-building workshop in a 19th-century building.

The idea that this is even something that should be debated or even CONSIDERED in this country sickens me. No matter what activity we choose to do or not do, at some point, the left will decide it's evil and try to tax it. Nothing they do is about mother earth, healthy lifestyles, helping the poor, education, or whatever other reason they say they are passing whatever goddamn laws they are passing. It's always about one thing: control over your life. If everyone shunned cars and started walking, you better believe there would be a shoe tax.

Leftists are always anti-establishment even when they are the establishment. They want to stop whatever the masses decide they like. Wal-mart is popular? Destroy it. People like driving? Oil and car companies are the devil. Fox News gains popularity? Kill it. People start walking instead of driving? Philistines need to be taxed. So they need to control you but they also shun whatever the hicks and plebes start enjoying. So this is the idiocy we are now faced with, bike taxes. Because people are biking more instead of driving. Which the left wanted. Until they got it and saw how many commoners were now doing it. So tax it.

They are the most schizophrenic political movement ever. There is only one constant with the left: whatever you are doing, they won't leave you in peace to let you do it. They'll tax it, regulate it, or just plain hate on it. Unless it's abortion. They'll always defend that.

When Dave Barry writes, you can finally close out the year

The Year in review!

My favorite quote so far:

And for approximately the 250th time, the Obama administration pivoted back to the economy, which has somehow been recovering for years now without actually getting any better. Unfortunately, before they could get the darned thing fixed, the administration had to pivot back to yet another zombie issue, healthcare, because it turned out that Obamacare, despite all the massive brainpower behind it, had some “glitches,” in the same sense that the universe has some “atoms.”

Post Christmas, let's look at something interesting: History of Christmas Lights

Via GizModo

I knew we used to put candles in Christmas trees and thank you innovation and capitalism for creating something that prevented fires. Also, we were not very bright back then.

E-Cigs being Banned much like Water Pistols being Banned.. Cause they LOOK like the real thing.

Via HotAir. Fuloydo sent this to me. E-cigarettes are a godsend to those who want to quit smoking. You still can pretend to smoke but the vapor is the same thing your breath does on cold days. So of course nanny statists want it bad because of second-hand non-smoke or something.

No, the reason public “vaping” needed to be banned is that it simply looks too much like smoking. It’d inconvenience the cops to make them pause to determine whether you’re puffing a ciggy or an e-ciggy. And in any case, vaping … “re-normalizes” the practice of public smoking. If you let people do something that may be harmless or even good for them, insofar as e-cigarettes are steering smokers away from a carcinogenic alternative, then other people might be inspired to take up a more dangerous variation of the practice. By that logic, I guess, drinking water in public places should be banned too for fear that it might “re-normalize” public boozing. That’s what makes this Bloomy’s greatest triumph: He’s a master of precedent-setting baby-step nannyism, and this sets the precedent that behavior that merely resembles disfavored behavior can and should be aggressively regulated.

Next thing you know, they'll start banning cold days.

Someone Actually Competent Found their way to working on Obamacare WebSite, so of course she was ignored.

Via Hot Air:

Teresa Fryer, the chief information security officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), revealed the findings when she was interviewed Tuesday behind closed doors by House Oversight Committee officials. The security risks were not previously disclosed to members of Congress or the public. Obama administration officials have firmly insisted there’s no reason for any concern regarding the website’s security.

Let's compare the levels of incompetence that we have today vs. the moon shot. Would we have made it? Would the rockets have had "ACME" written on the side? Would Astronauts have been wearing water wings on splashdown?

Maybe the reason it would've been decided to have a "splashdown" is because after 5 or 6 times of planting the capsule into a mountain, they decided they really hated having to hose out the inside of the capsule now full of blood and brains and maybe make a change. This is after Jay Carney would tell us that everything is fine and the astronauts enjoy being smooshed.

The fire on the landing pad seems like incompetence on the surface, (it wasn't) but really it's no comparison compared to the hilariously stupid stuff that happens in Obamacare. Apollo I would've been the entire rocket fell over because the third astronaut entering threw it off balance. That's the kind of dumb shit stuff we got going here.

Now imagine, all of this idiocy is a web site to get your insurance. That's it. That's ALL it really has to do. Imagine when they have to do something hard like heart surgery. Cancer treatment. Does this not frighten the bejezzus out of you?

#Pajamaboy shows a Leftist Wet Dream

I mean look at this guy. Smug expression, little baby pajamas, probably still demanding his parents stop running his life as he continues to not work.

Show of hands, who wants to smack him in the face with a garden shovel? This weiner is the most typically leftist voter I have ever seen.

"Gimme gimme gimme. GIMME!" he demands.

"Get your own!"

"You're greedy. I'm going to go protest in a tent on Wall Street while still not working. Dad I need money for a plane ticket."

And if I was his dad, I'd pay for it. Though I'd make it a one-way ticket.

This image is Obama's America. This is a proud American male, emasculated. Pussified. Immature. Arrested Development.

What happened to pushing images like this?

Or this:

What about #Pajamaboy instills the kind of feeling that these two images do? Or when you contrast these him with the other two, tell the truth now, do you feel revulsion?

If you ARE a pajama boy type, feel shame. Because even though that is a grown-ass man, he is being referred to as a BOY. A child. Adults don't want to be taken care of like children. But that's how Obama and the rest of the left sees us. As children. Spoiled, self involved, arrogant -but ultimately helpless- children.

Take your health insurance and your paternalistic attitude and shove it up your ass Obama. I'd like to think that's what the Duke would say. But he would be more blunt about it.

Barbara Walters Says What we Already Knew: The Left Thinks Obama is a God

We thought as much. That's what you get for putting all of your faith in a manchild. You get disappointment and failure.

Really, this is why you shouldn't put so much of your life in the hands of others, especially a bureaucratic mess of red tape that blows money on robotic squirrels.

The Waste, It Burns! A Deep Dive into the Pork Book

So I've gone over the waste book. I will take you through the more outrageous spending, indeed I detailed a few in my last post. But sometimes the waste is just incompetence. Take this one:

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) wastes $2 million in printing and manufacturing costs annually producing commemorative stamps that must later be destroyed. Several stamps series have been printed so excessively that had every person in the nation sent a piece of mail using them, there still would have been leftovers. 

Now apply this to your job. My company couldn't stay in business with waste like that, how about yours? We do need stamps, but if they are just getting destroyed, that means paper, ink, glue and peoples time all were tossed in the garbage. How about you greenies? The paper means trees and those trees were essentially tossed in the garbage for no reason at all. Economics is all about scarcity of resources, looks like the post office could give a fig about conservation.

As recently as October 2012, a federally funded program to help facilitate the sale of nearly 9,000 homes abandoned after Hurricane Katrina was still holding over 3,000 homes. Over $21.6 million was spent in the last year to maintain the homes and administer the program, with $5.8 million remaining. Since the program’s creation, the federal cost has been over $200 million, much of it coming through the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Here's an example of some program getting created and then forgotten. The government is just mindlessly spending $21.6 million every year. Sell them at auction or give them back to the state of Louisiana. Get out of the real estate business. Even if you just get rid of them, no way the loss is more than the $200 million over the last 9 years.

Soon, grandma may have to skip dinner to join her World of Warcraft guild in a dungeon raid. Researchers believe they have found another means to help our memories as we age: the “World of Warcraft,” a fantasy video game featuring characters like orcs, trolls, and warlocks. The team of academics used part of $1.2 million in grants from the National Science Foundation to continue a video game study this year.

Intriguing research to be sure. Do you and I as taxpayers have to flip the $1.2 million for it? Seems excessive. But at least it's there to help people! You rich people would just use the money on your yachts.

The Port of Los Angeles will be spending nearly half a million dollars in energy efficiency funds to upgrade its tour yacht’s engines.  

The Port uses the 73-foot Angelena II to provide tours, lasting 60 to 90 minutes, of the Port of Los Angeles facilities for up to forty guests. The yacht provides several hundred tours a year “to highlight the capabilities of the Port facilities to customers, constituents, public leaders, foreign dignitaries, media and stakeholders.” 

The mayor of Los Angeles insisted, “It’s not a yacht. It’s a boat,” but several boat insurance providers state boats are generally considered to be 26’ or smaller, and yachts are considered to be 27’ or larger.

Oh. Oops. Well that's owned by the city government. At least big business isn't getting anything.

The U.S. Department of Commerce provided $1 million to Ogden City, Utah, to create a “Mobile App Lab.” The “lab” will include a “code shop operated by the Weber State University Research Foundation, a training center, and office space from high-tech start-ups.” Some hope the lab will “inspire entrepreneurs to get creative in their application development.” With the spread of iPhones, tablets, and other portable devices, developers are rushing into the wireless sector in hopes of creating the next big app. Since the start of 2008, more than 30 billion mobile phone apps have been downloaded onto iPhones. At a time of trillion dollar deficits, it makes little sense to spend money in an economically thriving industry and force future generations to fund the next Instagram or Angry Birds. 

Isn't that nice? I should look into that. Wonder if they have anything for blog startups. Probably not if you're conservative. How much more is there? Well lots.

$450,000 - "The Oklahoma Aeronautics Commission (OAC) voted this year to keep a rarely used Lake Murray State Park Airport open simply to land more federal funds. The airport averages just one flight per month, has no planes based there, and is situated mere miles from two more heavily used airports."

$27 million -  Moroccan Pottery Classes. A program that they admit is not going to meet it's goals. "Project managers agreed with the IG’s comments on the pottery training, admitting the training was “ineffective and poorly implemented."

$325,000 -- Robot Squirrels. I kid you not. Robot Squirrels.

$3.3 million -- Bail out yacht tourist business. Again with the yachts.

$2 million -- Fees they automatically pay out to grants that don't exist anymore. Remember, every dollar is absolutely necessary according to the left.

$70 million -- Minting pennies. Because it takes two cents to mint one.

$1.5 billion (with a B) -- Free cell phone service to those who "need" it. This program was less than $100 million as late as 2007.

$516,000 -- Relive Prom Week video game.

Whatever feelings high school prom may elicit, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has provided taxpayers with a chance to relive the occasion. In 2012, the agency supported the creation of “Prom Week,” a video game simulating all the social interactions of the event. The project used part of a $516,000 grant from NSF.

I find it interesting that the foundation that makes the game is "NSF" which is really close to "NSFW".

$15 million -- Russia uses our funds to pay our scientists to make weapons for them. Yup, you read that right.

$505,000 -- Pet Shampoo. Seriously.

$350,000 -- To see if golfers need a bigger hole. Given our president's love of the sport, I'm calling double-shenanigans on this one.

$520,000 -- A bridge to nowhere. Another one. In Ohio.

$142,000 -- Free bus rides to the Super Bowl. No word on whether the ticket is included.

$697,177 -- A musical about climate change. Don't think it made it to Broadway. Probably because it featured flying monkey poop. No, I'm not kidding.

$388,000 -- For 5 bus shelters. These consist of two poles and a roof. A few lights as well. $78,000 apiece. You can get a house for that in some places.

$75 million -- FEMA would rather build new buildings than try to repair the old ones.

$1.1 million -- Sidewalks on streets that are nowhere near any place anyone would be walking. Ever.

$330 million -- Medicaid will pay for health costs of tax cheats. So if you don't pay your taxes, you still get other people's.

$700,000 -- Pentagon weapons division was tasked to make beef jerky. I don't believe that's a weapon but maybe if they made pork jerky to drop on the taliban....

$12.4 million -- NASA builds a new visitor center just a little ways from the old one. NASA has a lot of entries in the book which is probably why we aren't sending up space shuttles anymore.

$665,000 -- to watch re-runs. I've been doing that for free for years. Where's my check?

$3.2 billion -- Tax credit for college being used by millions who don't go to college. Including prisoners.

So there you go. There's plenty more but that gives you a taste. Try not to throw up.

But but but... we NEED every single tax dollar! Sequester! Rich people! Sputter sputter....

Don't talk to me about how we don't have enough money. Don't talk to me about tax cuts for the rich. Don't even start with me. Not when you spend money on:

• Tax Breaks For Brothel Worker Breast Implants
• Government Study Finds Out Wives Should Calm Down 
• Lifestyle Coaching for Senate Staff
• Bridge to Nowhere Going Nowhere…But Still Getting Taxpayer Cash 
• You’re Invited to a Hollywood Party at Paramount Studios…Sponsored by U.S. Taxpayers 
• Federal Government Paying Salaries to Hundreds of Thousands of Tax Cheats

There are more. Senator Tom Coburn's book was just published, an annual rite of shame, if people who worked in the government actually had any shame.

Oh Scott. You had me at "Budget Cut"

Scott Walker is mulling over getting rid of Wisconsin's income tax. See, he already created a huge surplus so instead of spending it all on crap that has no return on investment other than to placate special interests that will give him voting blocks, he's going to ease the tax burden on the people of Wisconsin by letting them keep the money they earn at their jobs. What a weirdo.

“There are many states that do very well, better than most states in the country, that have no income taxes,” Walker said during a meeting at the Northern Economic Development Summit. “That’s one thing for us to look at. Is that feasible? What would that mean in terms of an economic boost? That’s not only for individuals, but small businesses in this state.”

Will you please announce your candidacy and save us all the wondering?

Krugman Defines Caring: Government taking to give to whom they deem fit.

Warning, sarcasm level is very high in this article.

This organized effort, built on a network of religious fanatics who sing songs together and recite prose in unison in cult-like meetinghouses across the nation, demonstrates the true villainy of the tithing culture and the vacuity of so-called “acts of charity” which exist in Republican communities. Remember: you only care about someone if you’re dedicated to compelling someone else to give money to an effort. The only purpose of giving of your own free will is self-aggrandizement. The only kind of spending which demonstrates actual care for the poor and unfortunate is government spending.

In other words, who are you to decide who is in need and who isn't? We in the government are so much smarter than you. I, Krugtron, have declared it so.

New Yorker Artists are Finding out Feel Good Legislation has Consequences

"I'm for it, but what is the reality of it?"

An interesting question. When those of us on the right hear it from the left, we find it is causing involuntary facepalms.

In much of the media, the stereotype of liberals is that they have hearts that bleed with concern for the poor and oppressed. The stereotype of conservatives is that they don’t, to put it mildly. But another way to look at it is that Americans may share a great many goals but differ in how much emphasis they place on the feasibility of a plan. 

Insurance for those without? Sounds nice. I’m for it. 

More money for those with the least hourly compensation? Two thumbs up. 

Doing something about the killing of innocent school children by crazed gunmen? Please! 

For some people being “for” something is sufficient reason to support most government action proposed in its name. This works even better if the legislation expanding government has a good name, say “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” or “The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013,” or “The Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act.” Who could oppose affordability or fairness or the protection of the Bill of Rights? If the political powers that be assure us that a bill is good and must be passed, we might be inclined to trust them.

This is the crux of the problem. It's not enough to be FOR something. Who isn't for better health care at cheaper prices? Well according to the left, we on the right aren't. Why? Because we aren't for their obvious solution, leading of course to the even more obvious conclusion that we are against better health care.

When liberals are for something, it invariably involves getting the government to do it. If it isn't getting done now, we need to make it happen. And laws are the only way to make things happen. If laws require money, we'll take it from people. If it requires telling people what to do, so be it. I'm certain if they are liberals like me, they'll pass the right law so I don't have to think about anymore.

So we pass laws now to find out what's in the laws, as Pelosi infamously said. And the consequence of the left's kneejerk reaction of having government fix EVERYTHING really are starting to kick in. Here's the problem: if your doctor sucks, you can go get another one. If your government sucks, well that's a lot harder to go get another one. Usually involves guns and blood.

Now we did set up this country to have states. States would make differing laws and if we didn't like it, we could go to another state to live. That's competition and that gives us as citizens choice. But when we make federal law, like Obamacare, where do we flee? Mars?

Yes we could go to another country but let's face it, almost every first world country these has more red tape than we do. We are, for some reason, starting to catch up. If we end up like western europe, god help us all.

Liberals Whitewash History, which is kinda Insulting when you realize it's Mandela

There's a very good piece in the federalist discussing the historical account of Nelson Mandela's struggle and how the west helped or didn't help him in his oh-so-obvious struggle against racism. The left conclusion is of course, Reagan and Thatcher were racists in not helping Mandela.

There is nothing more typically leftist than taking facts and drawing a simple minded conclusion that easily paints people into roles of "good" and "evil" or more specifically, "heroes" and "villains." This is from people who say we aren't nuanced enough. Usually they find that conservatives aren't nuanced when liberals are trying to defend the obviously evil.

For instance, the 9/11 terrorists are a perfect example of obvious evil. There is no real excuse or justification for their actions, so the left will bend over backwards to try to find one. They do this for mass murderers constantly if they are of minority descent. Hitler doesn't get a pass, but Che does. This is because any racial minority in the United States (we won't even talk about how provincial their thinking is on these matters, even as they turn their nose up at us hicks) is oppressed in their minds and therefore oppressed everywhere, even in places like Cuba where there are few whites and even fewer Americans.

But when it's the other way around, when conservatives do something they don't like, it's always racism. But even beyond that, when things don't seem to go the way they have built up in their minds -they have prejudged you might say- then it MUST be racism.

Take Leo Terrell on Hannity the other day. His logic goes something like this: Idaho has a small black population. Therefore Idaho is racist. There is no other explanation. His demeanor and attitude is so hateful that the irony is lost on him. Not on Hannity and his guest, Crystal Wright. (BTW, you MUST follow her twitter feed.)

So that takes us back to Mandela. To employ Leo's logic: Reagan and Thatcher didn't do anything to free Mandela, therefore Reagan and Thatcher were racists. There is no other explanation. Except there is:

In this telling, Reagan and Thatcher are portrayed as having no good or defensible reason for their actions. Instead, the narrative holds that external pressure on South Africa by liberal entertainers and politicians – including economic sanctions imposed over President Reagan’s veto in 1986 – freed Mandela, who went on to prove his conservative critics wrong and earn the admiration of the world. 

Not every element of this narrative is factually wrong, but it is missing so much critical context as to be grossly misleading. Reagan was wrong about Mandela but right about the world, and in judging Reagan, that was what really mattered; Mandela was wrong about the world but right about South Africa, and in judging Mandela, that was what really mattered.  

To understand Mandela’s flaws, why he was greeted with skepticism on the Right, and why he deserves to be lionized for rising above that skepticism, you must first consider both the global context of the Cold War and its regional impact on Southern Africa. And contrary to the liberal narrative, it was the end of the Cold War and the end of the regional agony of southwest Africa that made Mandela’s release and the end of apartheid possible.

There is always more to it than the liberal narrative. To say Mandela simply rose above racism actually diminishes the impact and culture of what was happening in the world at the time. These people are actually people, not whites and blacks engaged in a mythic struggle of race, a story to be told and retold like Star Wars. The left by not getting into the nuances of what was going on actually diminishes Mandela and the South African people as human beings in their attempts to elevate him because they only elevate him because of skin color.

There were people and countries making choices and creating consequences that may or may not have had anything to do with skin color.  The truth is the story of South Africa and much of Africa at large is FAR more interesting and has far more depth than just "whites vs. blacks." Even if you put blacks on the side of the angels because of their skin color, you still diminish them as human beings.

Take Mugabe for example:

Inland from Mozambique, and also bordering South Africa, lay Rhodesia, independent from Britain since 1965 and ruled by Ian Smith’s white-minority government. Rhodesia had declared its independence unilaterally, which was resisted by Great Britain (Rhodesia was never diplomatically recognized by South Africa, although its government ended up being effectively propped up by South Africa). Its white ruling regime faced a two-headed insurgency from the black majority population: the rural, Chinese-backed Maoist group ZANU, headed at the time by Robert Mugabe and Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, and Joshua Nkomo’s Soviet-backed ZAPU. In early 1978, under international pressure from – among others – the U.S. and South Africa, Smith agreed to a power-sharing agreement with moderate black Bishop Abel Muzorewa, an accord designed to ease Rhodesia into participation and ultimately majority control by the black majority, while explicitly preserving a political power base for the white minority (including guaranteed legislative seats) and empowering the moderate factions within the black majority. Unfortunately for Zimbabwe’s people, Mugabe and Nkomo rejected the agreement and refused to make peace, and Muzorewa wasn’t a strong enough leader to bring them to heel. By February 1980, the accord had been torn up and Mugabe elected President, where he remains today, with increasingly tragic consequences.

So where we have blacks tossing off the white oppressors, we have Mugabe who is a brutal tyrant and blood still flows today. If we continue to frame all of these political, social, and economic problems only in terms of skin color and racism, we may miss a bigger picture and cause a lot of far reaching consequences. Just imagine:

 To put this in American terms, imagine that you were trying to rally support against Jim Crow in Florida, but the end of segregation in the rest of the region had resulted in oppression of whites and attempted genocide in South Carolina, a Marxist regime in Georgia, a civil war in Mississippi stoked by an army from Louisiana, and Alabama invading the panhandle arm-in-arm with an expeditionary force of Cuban Communists.

Vengeance is not justice. Because one race was wrong and used skin color to subjugate another race, doesn't make it right to turn it the other way and end up with the same issues, only to have the teams reversed.

So keeping all this in mind and remembering the horrors that communism produced in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, and Cuba, it makes sense that Reagan wouldn't be necessarily jumping on board to free a communist from prison in South Africa because he didn't want another Mugabe. Now it is important to note that Reagan and Thatcher were wrong about Mandela but the point is that their judgement had nothing to do with the color of his skin.  

In Reagan’s search for allies against Communist domination of southern Africa, it’s easy to see why Nelson Mandela would not have seemed a promising prospect. Because, for all his later merits, Mandela gave every impression of being cut from the same ideological and political cloth as Mugabe and the region’s other Communists and fellow-travelers. 

The true extent to which Mandela was a believing and active Communist in the early 1960s, or during his imprisonment, remains a matter of some debate to this day. After his death, the modern South African Communist Party claimed “Comrade Mandela” as having once been an active leader of the Party, but then its self-serving motives in wanting as large a piece of his legacy as it could grasp are fairly obvious.

I have noticed conservatives have knee-jerked a bit about Mandela with the "well he was a communist" criticism. This is true but what is also true is how he made South Africa into a much better place than what it was before. Political leanings have a tendency to cloud our critical thinking. The left will always think this way, it's important that we don't.

Sebelius, without a HINT of Irony, decries the Obamacare hearing as "Intimidating"

Poor wittle us.

Because making people disclose their personal information on a website with swiss cheese security, sending people to homes to get their minds right on Obamacare, taking peoples health insurance away while lying through their teeth about "keeping your insurance," having the IRS look into tea party activities, especially those who decry health care, auditing people who speak out against Obamacare... NONE of that is intimidating.

Just having to go up to these hearings to answer questions about these things you're forcing on people, that's intimidating. Just stop asking logical questions and let me get back to doing what's best for you. That's not at all creepy.

Hey Piers Morgan, How Come You Don't Report THIS Story?

Because it would interfere with his carefully constructed worldview.  

Via Ace:

Why the Arapahoe School Shooting Ended So Quickly 

Because there was an armed deputy sheriff at the school who raced towards the shooting and ended the attack in just 80 seconds. Thanks to his quick response only one student (still in critical condition) was shot.

That's right, Piers. Sometimes a good guy with a gun can stop bad guys with a gun. In fact, I would say that no "gun free zone" ever stopped mass shootings as effectively as a good guy with a gun.

By the way, the shooter? He was an 18 year old warped anti-gun statist.  Not that the media would tell you so.

Senior Chris Davis, 18, was among many students Saturday trying to make sense of Pierson's shooting rampage.

"He was a weird kid," Davis said. "He's a self-proclaimed communist, just wears Soviet shirts all the time."

 Again, go to Ace to read the best bits, I can't do it justice here. But seriously, where is Piers Morgan? The media of course makes this a non-story. Why? Well there wasn't any deaths for one. I don't blame the media on that one so much though. If it bleeds, it leads. But the second reason: it would interfere with their narrative. This is where I don't accept the excuses. The media loves to take a microscope and affix a spotlight to it to highlight where conventional wisdom has gone amuck. They want to make a difference, they want to show how we shouldn't have to accept things that are wrong simply because it's always been. It's their targets that bother me.

It's ok they go after our national attitude on guns. When people are getting killed, expect a couple of phone calls. But when they have to change their own opinions, when they have to challenge their conventional wisdom, they show how cowardly, stubborn, and closed minded they really are. When we show that a gun, in the right hands, in the right place, and used responsibly at the right time can PREVENT death, well... they go pretty silent, don't they?

I'm So Inspired By GOP Leadership, I Think I'll Shoot Myself in the Face

Sigh.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) says he was "pushed...into this fight to defund Obamacare" and that those who pushed him "never really thought it would work." 

In his weekly press conference yesterday, Rep. Boehner said defunding Obamacare wasn't his idea, but that of conservative groups - and he doesn't care what they do next.

John Boehner: The House Speaker brought to you by the GOP. Spine brought to you by Smuckers.

Sebelius: Don't Tell Me What I Said I Would Do, I'll Tell You What I Said I Would Do... Wait, you have video?

Hey, she's a busy lady. She can't be expected to remember every little thing she says during congressional hearings. There's been so many, who can keep track of it all?

At the Oct. 30 hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce , Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) asked Seblius, “Can you provide for the committee the list of insurers in the federal exchange who do not offer, as part of their package, abortion coverage?” 

During a somewhat heated back-and-forth, Sebelius said, “I think we can do that, sir,” and added, “I know that is the plan, I will get that information to you.” 

Yet during a Dec. 11 House subcommittee hearing, Sebelius declined to say whether she would provide the list requested and instead urged lawmakers and consumers to just look at the benefits package for each plan on the Obamacare exchange websites.

So when Mother Jones likes to snark at the GOP for taking plans that covered abortions, my question is how would they have known? Even Kathy can't seem to get us that information.

Don't Worry, Everything's Fine Now: Inspector Sebelius is on the Case

Just under the wire.

Recognizing that deeper problems may lurk behind the botched rollout of the health care website, President Barack Obama’s top health official Wednesday called for an investigation into management and contracting decisions. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a blog post early Wednesday that she is asking the department’s inspector general to investigate the contracting process, management, performance and payment issues that may have contributed to the flawed launch of HealthCare.gov.

Well I feel better now, how about you?

Re-Making History?

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast wrote how conservatives are on the wrong side of history on just about everything. Apparently we don't even like sliced bread.

Consider the great political earthquakes throughout history and imagine the contemporaneous—not retrospective, as we are seeing in these phony paeans to Mandela, but in-the-moment—conservative posture. The conservative position was wrong nearly every time—not just wrong, but often morally shocking from our later perspective. 

Do you support the American Revolution? I should hope so. You would not have, however, had you been a conservative in 1785. American Loyalists, perhaps 20 percent of the white population of the day, were devoted to king and crown for mostly the usual reasons: They were older, better established, had more money, were scared of change. 

How about the abolition of slavery? I reckon you’re on board with that. Well, Lord knows you wouldn’t have been if you’d been among the 1860 conservatives who started a war over it (and whose apologists today insist the Civil War was not about slavery).

 Over at the federalist, David Haransyi took him to task. For instance on the Revolution:

Indeed, a revolution led by the American gentry hit all the touchstones of the modern American Left: lower taxes, muskets, individual liberty and unfettered economic activity.

While I assumed he would simply roll his eyes and take to countering the inanity of each charge, he took a different tack. Indeed he appeared to start out that way:

Do you oppose fascism? I should hope so. You would not, however, had you been a liberal in 1920s when the American Left was busy praising this new ideology of coercion and statism emerging in Europe. 

Do you oppose communism? I should hope so. But if you would not have, however, had you been a liberal in 1920s and 1930s. Not only would you be rationalizing but often celebrating the oppressive regimes that were murdering tens of millions of people in the name of “progress.” 

Do you oppose needless war and bloodshed? I should hope so. But you would not, however, had you been a liberal in early 20th century, as you would probably have voted for a bitterly racist president who embroiled America in the one the most illogical, consequential and bloodiest conflicts in mankind’s history. 

Wrong, wrong, wrong, and so on. 

It does can confusing, though. Does the racism of the early progressive movement count? How about the nihilism of the 60s Malthusian? Remember the America Firsters! Forget Japanese internment camps. It must take a selective memory to always — “always” — find yourself on the right side of history.

This is true and we on the right are just as guilty of it. There are two problems, one are those who inaccurately or simply are ignorant of history, the "doomed to repeat it" crowd. But there are also those who know plenty of history but wrongly attribute the time and culture of the past to today.

It's very easy for us to correctly point out that the KKK was founded by southern democrats, but is it useful? Do any of us really believe that the modern left is ready to put on sheets and start lynching blacks? Moreover, we do know that much of the left DOES believe the right is ready to don said sheets and grab a burning cross. Do we want to employ the tactics and muddled thinking of the left?

Whatever the history of the labels of "left" and "right" that doesn't really affect what the current liberal and conservative movements are for and against NOW. Indeed as David pointed out:

Now, it would take considerable effort to untangle the muddled revisionism of Tomasky’s piece. For starters, it rests on the idea that American philosophical divisions have remained static for hundreds of years.

Now he does dismantle many of the historical tropes that Tomasky points out:

But let’s just take the inane insinuation that conservatives would support slavery if only they had an opportunity. It was the flourishing of classical liberalism that helped bring about the end of slavery around the world – for starters. And these days actual ‘liberals’ like Adam Smith, John Locke and Frederic Bastiat are extolled by libertarians (“kookoos” who peddle, according to Tomasky, an “overrated” intellectual consistency) and many conservatives, but rarely by the modern American Left.

But more importantly, he looks at what the left is today and what are they trying to accomplish versus what conservatives are trying to accomplish. The question really is, what policies and laws are we enacting now and are they successful? And are we even defining the terms "Left" and "Right" by standards we can all agree with? Even Tomasky can't even seem to be accurate on that:

But while Tomasky’s understanding of conservatism is misleading, his definition of liberalism is humorous: liberals are people, he explains, “who weren’t happy with things the way they were and saw they had to change, and who have been on the side of personal liberation and de-concentration of political power. Those people are virtually by definition liberals and reformers and radicals.” 

(Good to know those who advocate reforming Social Security, Medicare and abortion laws will find ourselves on the right side of history.)

Exactly. We also embrace change if we feel that the change will work. Tomasky wants to use association to invalidate your beliefs and we conservatives love to play that game too. The point isn't to show how Kennedy was actually very conservative on taxes, for example, so ha ha, you're entire world view is invalid. The point is to show how lower taxes benefit the economy. That is a conservative position, the opposite is a liberal position, as defined currently in the modern world. Perhaps it was different 50 years ago. Perhaps it was even more different 100 years ago. That's not what it is now.

Just because you find out someone you find vile in history did something you liked, that doesn't mean everything you believe in is invalid nor does it mean that you support the horrible things that person in history did. Just because I am against Mussolini fascism, doesn't mean I don't want trains to run on time. And if I do want trains to run on time, I am not Mussolini nor do I support fascism.

The right side of history is not determined by who was labeled "left" or "right" at the time, but by who did what things that benefited mankind. History will figure it out in time, we just have to adopt those things that worked. The left gets very selective or downright lies about who was on what side. The programs like Social Security were enacted in a very different way at a very different time than what the country is now. People who were for or against it then are nothing like the people who are for or against it now.

We'll never beat the left by playing their games and by their rules. The solutions we offer have to stand on their own. They are good solutions, but we have to work hard to show it to the masses.

They are good reads in contrasting thinking. Tomasky has the typical leftist thinking of a child while Harsanyi takes a much broader and more mature approach rather than playing tit-for-tat.

Spreading the Wealth, Just like Obama Promised

He warned you.

The top 40 percent of households by before-tax income actually paid 106.2 percent of the nation’s net income taxes in 2010, according to a new study by the Congressional Budget Office. 

At the same time, households in the bottom 40 percent took in an average of $18,950 in what the CBO called “government transfers” in 2010. 

Taxpayers in the top 40 percent of households were able to pay more than 100 percent of net federal income taxes in 2010 because Americans in the bottom 40 percent actually paid negative income taxes, according to the CBO study entitled, “The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2010.”

So when dems scream "tax cuts for the rich," they mean "anyone who pays taxes is rich."

So it's not too early to start picking candidates, is it?

Cause so far, I got mine: Scott Walker:

Ok. Not him.

Him:

Walker has turned around Wisconsin simply by standing up to the teacher's union. See the Unions are thugs. What's that you say? Union's are awesome, gentle, and only interested in helping kids? Oh ok. So in that vein, it makes it ok to:

1. Go to Scott Walker's house and intimidate him and his family. (Also, since you are liberal member of the media, be sure to note address several time in the story.)

About 1,000 demonstrators have gathered Tuesday night outside Gov. Scott Walker's house on N. 68th St. in Wauwatosa to protest Walker's proposed state budget repair bill. 

Demonstrators filled the sidewalks on both sides of N. 68th St. chanting "Kill the bill" and carrying signs saying "Stop the attack on workers' rights." 

Police began blocking traffic on 68th St. between Wisconsin Ave. and Blue Mound Road at 6:20 p.m. 

Thomas Ellis, 47, a math and science teacher at Ronald Reagan School in Milwaukee and a member of the teachers' union, who was participating in the protest, was asked why so many people came out to demonstrate and why they are so angry: "It's very simple, the right to negotiate as a union."

2. Get Businesses to display pro-union signs, and if they disagree with you, make sure you put them out of business.

 A union official asked Union Grove business owners to display pro-union signs, and threaten to boycott businesses that either didn't support unions or wanted to stay neutral. That move had the opposite effect the union actually wanted. Now, the union says it was a mistake, and the threatened businesses are benefiting. 

The head of AFSCME has publicly said that the boycott threat was the action of an "overzealous" worker saying the unions stand behind small business. Ironically, the threat of boycott actually boosted business. 

Village Dollar Owner Dawn Bobo says, "We support Union Grove. We don't support someone coming in threatening our businesses...last year we lost four businesses in town. I don't know why they would want to pick on the remaining ones."

 This was a very prudent move as the backfire was epic. People really like it when you're perceived as a bully. They really respect that.

3. If that doesn't work, bully special Olympics kids. Nothing gets people on your side like when you punch handicapped kids in the face repeatedly.

4. Finally, for the kids mind you, make sure you fake call in sick so you aren't actually teaching any kids. For their own good, of course.

Some Wisconsin doctors threw their support behind teachers protesting the Republican governor's efforts to strip unions of their bargaining powers, saying they would write sick notes for teachers to skip work to demonstrate. 

The union protesters have been picketing the state capitol in Madison for five days, angered by Gov. Scott Walker's proposed bill, which has the backing of the Republican controlled state Senate. 

The Madison School District has said teachers who call in sick to protest won't be paid, but a group of licensed Wisconsin doctors came to the capitol today saying they would write a physician's note for anyone who asked. 

Dr. Kathy Oriel told ABC affiliate WKOW-TV in Madison that the doctors realize they could get in trouble for their offer.

For some reason, this has caused Scott Walker to poll better than the Unions. This has caused the NRA to poll better than the Unions. I think bread mold tied the Unions but it's a little unclear.

A telephone poll recently conducted on behalf of EAGnews.org finds Wisconsin residents think more highly of Gov. Scott Walker’s job performance and the National Rifle Association than they do the state’s largest teachers’ union. 

This is interesting given the post-Sandy Hook school tragedy debate about guns in schools. 

The NRA has taken a public stance in favor of arming some school personnel. 

The two national teachers unions – the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers – quickly opposed that idea. 

According to the poll, Wisconsin residents would likely trust the positions of the NRA more than the unions. Fifty percent of poll respondents expressed a positive opinion of the NRA, while only 46 percent said the same of the state’s teachers unions. 

The poll also found that Walker enjoys a 55 percent job approval rating (61 percent of self-described independents), which puts him in a strong position to continue his push for education reform. Walker had a 52 percent positive name identification in the poll that had a +7 Democrat respondent identification. 

Respondents – by a whopping 61 percent – support expanding the state’s private school voucher program so all Wisconsin students can “attend the public or private, including religious schools, of their choice.”

So the Unions are losing losing power and prestige for some reason, completely unrelated to the reasons I mentioned above, of course:

 The National Education Association has lost 230,000 members, or 7 percent, since 2009, and it’s projecting another decline this year, which will likely drop it below 3 million members. Among the culprits: teacher layoffs, the rise of non-unionized charter schools and new laws in states such as Wisconsin and Michigan freeing teachers to opt out of the union. 

The American Federation of Teachers has been able to grow slightly and now represents 1.5 million workers — but because many new members are retirees or part-timers who pay lower dues, union revenue actually fell last year, by nearly $6 million, federal records show.

And there's plenty more abuse listed here. Scott Walker stood up to this unbelievable and unscrupulous pressure with the kind of backbone not seen in Washington in quite a while. And the results? Impressive.

Madison — Strengthening the case for a property tax cut likely to pass the Senate on Tuesday, Gov. Scott Walker's administration said Monday that the state surplus as of June was $89 million more than expected. 

The annual report from the Department of Administration showed the surplus for the budget ended in June was $759.2 million in the state's main account, up from the last estimate of a $670 million balance that was used to plan the current 2013-'15 budget. 

The news comes a day before lawmakers are expected to vote on a bill to spend down part of this surplus to cut property taxes by $100 million over the next two years. 

"When we took office two years ago, we said we would be good stewards of the taxpayers' money, and this report shows we're on the right track. Our tough, but prudent, decisions are paying off for Wisconsin families," Walker said in a statement.

Keep in mind that before he started, Wisconsin had a deficit of $3.6 billion before he took office. He claimed it could go to $484 million surplus. He was wrong, it was a $759 million surplus. That's results.

What more could one want?

The Cake Is a Lie

Much like the Economic Recovery. Via Ace, this article is a must read. There are several reasons why the economic recovery is bullshit. The media can tell us lots of stuff but here's some pull quotes that disproves it:

On Friday, it was announced that the unemployment rate had fallen to "7 percent", and the mainstream media responded with a mix of euphoria and jubilation.  For example, one USA Today article declared that "with today's jobs report, one really can say that our long national post-financial crisis nightmare is over."  But is that actually the truth?  As you will see below, if you assume that the labor force participation rate in the U.S. is at the long-term average, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent.  

There has been absolutely no employment recovery.  The percentage of Americans that are actually working has stayed between 58 and 59 percent for 51 months in a row.  But most Americans don't understand these things and they just take whatever the mainstream media tells them as the truth.

I went over the employment/unemployment number here and how they can be messed with. But that's only the tip of the iceberg in this article:

#1 The only reason that the official unemployment rate has been declining over the past couple of years is that the federal government has been pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans no longer want a job and have "left the labor force". As Zero Hedge recently demonstrated, if the labor force participation rate returned to the long-term average of 65.8 percent, the official unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent. 

#2 The percentage of Americans that are actually working is much lower than it used to be. In November 2000, 64.3 percent of all working age Americans had a job. When Barack Obama first entered the White House, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.6 percent of all working age Americans have a job. In fact, as you can see from the chart posted below, there has been absolutely no "employment recovery" since the depths of the last recession... 

#7 In November 2007, there were 121.9 million full-time workers in the United States. Today, there are only 116.9 million full-time workers in the United States. 

#17 Thanks to Obama administration policies which are systematically killing off small businesses in the United States, the percentage of self-employed Americans is at an all-time low today.

There are 33 more reasons worth reading. Please check it out.

Obamacare Success! Pathetic, Pathetic Success!

Tears were shed.

It took two months, weekly visits to the jammed-up federal website and a half-dozen phone calls, but JoAnn Smith finally got health insurance Monday. It’ll only cost her $3.19 a month to cover herself and her husband. 

“I just instantly burst into tears,” she says. 

... 

Smith’s employer doesn’t provide health insurance. “They took a vote at the company and people wanted more money in their pockets,” she says. And business has been thin. “I have had four paycuts in one year,” says Smith, who estimates she will earn $23,000 this year for her 40-hour a week job. 

This makes her eligible for a hefty federal subsidy.

This story has all the standard boilerplate liberal feel good crap. Remember, we have blown up the health care system, put doctors out of work, doubled and tripled premiums on millions of people, made men buy prenatal care for Christsakes, spent hundreds of millions on a website that doesn't work, and now.. finally... we have some kind of success story that gets 2 more people dependent on the government.

I think if we had all chipped in a couple dimes, we could have just paid for this couple's insurance and been done with it. Maybe then I wouldn't have to read this asinine story and we all wouldn't be in this mess.

Matthew Yglesias: People are Using Parking Spaces. It's like Getting a Check from the Government!

People are using the parking spots their company supplies to their employees. He's not happy about that:

And all across America, companies are providing their car driving employees with subsidized transportation in the form of parking. Either the company owns or leases the parking lot or parking structure outright and makes it available for employee use, or else the company pays for employees to get free or discounted parking at a commercially operating garage. This kind of parking benefit is even subsidized by the federal tax code, which allows a parking subsidy to not be counted as income. Indeed, it's the tax deductibility of subsidized parking that help explain why it's such a ubiquitous perk.

He really, really hates the parking lots people use to go to work. These are "subsidized" in the form of federal tax breaks, in his words. Because "not paying as much as others" is the same as "getting a check from the government, over and above what you already have."

Because receiving 5 dollars from your Grandma at your birthday is exactly the same as not paying the 5 dollars you already own to the bully at school. This is what Matt and other liberals actually think.

What an asshole.

Matthew Yglesias Throws his Support to The New Gas Tax.. Also In Breaking News: Water is Wet

Because a liberal never saw a tax he didn't like.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon—who represents the Portland area and is best known as Capitol Hill’s leading bicycling advocate—wants to change that. Last week, he introduced a bill to phase-in a 15-cent hike in the gas tax, followed by an indexing of the tax to inflation. 

The idea is a total nonstarter in Congress and politically toxic to boot. Even bothering to discuss it is somewhere between pointless and insane. It’s manna from heaven for Republicans who've been on the defensive over taxing the rich and would love to shift the conversation to Blumenauer’s plot to make the middle class pay more at the pump.

Because you know, you have to pay more to the government. Cause they need it. Cause poor people and stuff. Every single dime we are already paying is efficiently spent and accounted for.

The knee-jerk defense of more money to the government is so woefully ingrained to yahoos like Yglesias, it never occurs to them that money should be for some sort of purpose. But when you and I spend money, it's to achieve a purpose. Matt sees it as a way to control behavior. Never mind silly outdated notions like freedom to choose. That's only for abortions.

Gasoline, you see, is very useful as a fuel for automobiles, but it also causes quite a bit of pollution when you burn it. Some of this, of course, is the carbon dioxide pollution that contributes to the greenhouse effect and the global threat of climate change. But a lot of it relates to other kinds of dirty particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone that lead to drastically higher rates of asthma for kids who grow up near highways, for example. Burning gasoline by driving your car also imposes nonecological external costs. Bored kids cruising around in circles just to get out of the house and people taking extra trips to the grocery store rather than planning in advance take up space on the road, thus slowing everyone else down. And every additional vehicle-mile driven increases the chances that you’ll collide with somebody else, killing or injuring him. 

See you need him to look out for you. Otherwise you'll just be polluting the earth, letting your kids do what kids have been doing for the last 80 years or so, going to the store, and just basically living your life but not the way he would like. If you would start conserving, we could get rid of those gauche stores like WalMart. But he's smart. He knows what's going on. Let's bask in his intelligence:

But any time you tax anything, some of the real cost is borne by producers, who sell less stuff now that the price is higher. Except nobody really produces oil—it’s just sitting around in the ground.

This may be the two most stupid sentences ever put to paper. People, whether or not gas prices go up or down, I and everyone else still have to drive the same amount of miles to work, we still have to go to the store, we still have to do our day to day stuff. Sure we might postpone a road trip or make different choices to save on gas. But then I am not able to do as much and those stores I would shop at now get less business. Anything they sell costs more anyway because gas prices figure into producing anything, especially with shipping. You have to get the product from point a to point b somehow. All of this decreases economic activity and hurts the poor, not the producers. They are still selling. If they do have to sell less, they get rid of workers and cap wells. Nice Matt.

Oh you know what Matt? Every product created is made from materials sitting in the ground. There has to be some sort of refinement process to create milk, shoes, Ipads, and yes.. even Oil and Gas. No oil goes from a hose in the ground directly to your car. So the stupidity of that sentence trumps the previous one.

Feel free to read the rest of this idiocy if you like. Matty is a typical religious zealot, it's just his religion isn't Christianity. It's big government. I hope he's the first one picked when the Hunger Games inevitably starts.

Remember Filthy #Filner? The Courts did

He gets sentenced. Not nearly enough in my opinion.

Bob Filner was sentenced Monday to three months of home confinement and three years of probation for harassing women while he was mayor of San Diego, completing the fall of the former 10-term congressman who barely a year ago achieved his long dream of being elected leader of the nation's eighth-largest city. 

Filner, who resigned amid widespread allegations of sexual harassment, pleaded guilty in October to one felony and two misdemeanors for placing a woman in a headlock, kissing another woman and grabbing the buttocks of a third.

Obamacare finally has a superlative: It's more Infamous than New Coke

Impressive. New Coke was one of the greatest blunders of the 20th century. Possibly in the history of bad corporate decisions, New Coke is at the top. Even those who weren't alive then have some passing knowledge of the complete idiocy of replacing a very good product that had an incredible market share and turning it a dumpster fire.

Just how bad is Obamacare? It’s managed to supplant New Coke and the BP oil spill in the pantheon of public-relations disasters. 

Politico reports that communications firms around the country are now using the Obamacare rollout as a textbook case of how not to handle such a large PR disaster. For example, H + A International, a Chicago-based communications firm, sent its customers a 15-point analysis of the administration’s handling of the rollout; Boston-based CHT group released a guide titled “Obamacare and Health Insurance Exchanges: A PR Makeover,” critiquing the administration’s crisis management.

I really can't overstate how bad the New Coke debacle was. If Obamacare is supplanting it, it could mean a bigger turnaround for the GOP than 1994. New Coke may not have been quite as bad as people remember but the perception the switch has created and the distance over time has created a legacy that pretty much has people believing that New Coke was actually malted battery acid and all the Coca-Cola executives were lobotomized spider-monkeys. In truth, New Coke actually was rebranded "Coke II" and lasted 6 years on the shelves.

Now if Obamacare is creating a perception of THAT level of failure, a level I believe is quite a bit more accurate than the perception of failure of New Coke, then imagine what its legacy will be in 30 years. Let's face it, that our sugar water tasted a little different wasn't the end of our way life, but Obamacare certainly has far reaching consequences. How will the failure create a new mindset in this country? Could we start seeing a new, healthy, level of distrust in the government again? Assuming we can get it repealed, will it last as a warning to future generations not to mess with a tried and true formula, called free-market economics?

If Coke could still be brought up as a poster child for failure in corporations, let's hope that Obamacare could be the poster child for failure in government.

@Toure Shows us how Oh-So-Clever he is.

I hate white people.

Ridiculous.

Toure wants us to deal with white on white violence. See what he did there? Because conservatives are rightly pointing out black on black violence that's rampant in the inner cities, he wants to turn it around and show us how he has had a grand epiphany on how smart he is and how we are so stupid.

Problem is that blacks, (that is LIBERAL blacks) wrap up their actions and cultural identity completely in their skin color. Whites don't really think about skin color anymore. Sorry Toure, but we don't. Conservatives especially don't because our cultural and political identity is completely wrapped up in the idea of Individual Responsibility. In other words, each person is unique and the reasons they do what they do is on them, not on their skin color.

So white on white violence motivations are never skin color. However the gangsta culture that has sprung up in the inner city is a direct result of the intentional separation of the black culture from the rest of the nation, not to mention keeping them dependent on the system in order to keep democrats in power.

When white guys bag on each other, they always do it based on character. But blacks actively call each other the N-word. Everything they do or believe starts from the simple basis of skin color. Until that stops, they will continue to be exploited by the likes of Toure.

Maybe they should start calling the Redskins, the "Obamacares"

Neither of them had a real good weekend. But there is hope in the new fixit man. 

As Obama’s top lobbyist for Congress, Phil Schiliro was instrumental in pushing Obamacare to passage in 2010. Before that, he spent decades on the Hill as a top aide to Representative Henry Waxman of California, a co-author of Obamacare and the chief liberal cheerleader for expanding Medicare and Medicaid. Schiliro’s commitment to the cause of more government health care is unquestioned. So it’s significant that Schiliro is moving back after leaving the White House two years ago and moving to New Mexico. 

Obamacare is really in trouble and Schiliro’s now been coaxed back to serve as a legislative strategist to defend it. He is meant to play the role of the “fix-it” guy on the policy side that former budget official Jeff Zients has played in trying to revive the critically ill HealthCare.gov website. 

No one doubts Schiliro’s discipline or his skills, and his appointment is a sign the administration realizes Obamacare faces more turbulence in the coming months. But he will have to negotiate a difficult obstacle course, including the continued unwillingness of Obama to further shake up his White House staff or replace even one official responsible for the botched website.

Note he is there to defend it. That's called "fixing it" in Washington, getting more people to fall for your bullshit than the other side.

Still, none of this may matter to Hispanics who are still waiting on a website they can understand..

Obama wants young people to sign up, but he’s not talking about Hispanics, who could make or break the law—and so far, with Spanish tools delayed on HealthCare.gov, the outlook is grim.

Welcome to the new website, same as the old website.

I talked with several people in and close to the insurance industry who told me they see scant evidence that any “big rollout” of publicity directing people to Obamacare is under way or imminent. One insurance executive bluntly told me: “In addition to continued problems with the data, there is zero evidence they have fixed the security vulnerabilities of the website. We don’t want to send people to a site where their data could be compromised or stolen.” Indeed, David Kennedy, the founder and principal security consultant of TrustedSec, told CNBC in late November that “security wasn’t built into” the site. Last week, Kennedy told the Washington Free Beacon that “it doesn’t appear that any security fixes were done at all” during the recent relaunch.

Will Obamacare cause the same midterm change as it did in 2010?

Three years after President Barack Obama admitted that his party took a “shellacking” in the midterm elections, Republicans are setting their sights on another political wave in 2014. It’s a new battle, but the GOP is using the same weapon: public skepticism over Obamacare. 

In 2010, Republicans rode a wave of frustration over the economy and health-care overhaul, recapturing control of the House of Representatives. This time around, they’re focused on keeping that majority and looking toward gains in the Senate – and they’ll rely on the bungled HealthCare.gov rollout to fuel voter support. 

As the hobbled website becomes more functional, the president is offering more vocal praise for his signature domestic achievement. But some Democrats are keenly aware that the program’s poor debut could weigh them down in November. It’s already helped drag Obama’s approval ratings to a new low and distracted from perceived GOP failures during the shutdown. 

Republicans have to score six seats to regain control of the Senate. Democrats would have to muster a net-gain of 17 seats to wrestle back power in the lower chamber.

Zeke Emanuel, a key Obamacare architect made some interesting admissions this weekend on Fox News Sunday, especially when it comes to keeping your doctor:

 “The president guaranteed me I could keep my doctor,” said Wallace.
 “And if you want to, you can pay for it,” said Emanuel.

That's is what we call a "bait and switch," padawans. Here's the video:

Oh by the way, you can't use the O-word anymore (Obamacare) cause it's no different than the N-word. Melissa Harris-Perry:

“I want to talk today about a controversial word,” Harris-Perry began. “It’s a word that has been with us for years. And like it or not, it’s indelibly printed in the pages of American history. A word that was originally intended as a derogatory term, meant to shame and divide and demean. 

“The word was conceived of by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man, to render him inferior and unequal and diminish his accomplishments. 

“President Obama has been labelled with this word by his opponents, and at first he rose above it, hoping that if he could just make a cause for what he’d achieved, his opponents would fail in making their label stick. 

Then Harris-Perry claimed the president “embraced the word and made it his own, sending his opposition a message they weren’t expecting: ‘If that’s what you want me to be, I’ll be that.’
“Y’all know the word that I’m talking about: Obamacare!”

This is the level of intellectual observations you get at MSNBC these days.

Finally, being a Chief's fan, let's look at just a fun time:

The Minimum Wage: Destroying the Labor Force and Hurting the Poor -- Pt 2 in a Series

See my screed on Sarbanes Oxley for Pt 1.

So I started this a couple of weeks ago, and boy do I apparently know liberals because guess what they are starting to bleat about again. That's right, the minimum wage. I love it when my timing is awesome.

Last week the Barack Obama official twitter account let us know scientifically via a chart to make it look all scientific and stuff how the minimum wage increase is teh awesome because look! Charts!

Here's how to improve our economy and create hundreds of thousands of jobs: #RaiseTheWage. http://t.co/NLM2t9NyhS pic.twitter.com/UDTcTSaqZJ
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) December 4, 2013

So let's dismantle this twit's idiocy and quickly. The economy is only just now recovering from the last wage hike (if you can call it "recovering.")

What determines a wage, any wage? The value of the job being performed to the employer and the availability of workers for the job. The less workers there are, the more jobs will pay, because the resource is scarce.

To create a scarcity of workers, you can do two things, exterminate people or create more jobs than there are people. I'm pretty sure option 1 is out so let's look at option 2.

Creating jobs is not a goal of any company in and of itself and it NEVER has been. There is a need or a want for a product or service. Let's take an Iphone. The demand for this product was high. So Apple needed to produce them faster and that meant work for programmers. But the device was able to run applications if you could write for it. So companies began producing applications like Angry Birds or Pandora. This created a need for more programmers to create these applications.

The demand for programmers continued as Apple wasn't the only one needing them. So we have many, many companies competing for good programmers. Company A offers what is the going rate but company B counters with a higher wage because of the scarcity of programmers. As this continues, the wages for programmers continues to rise. This makes programming a lucrative and enticing field for people coming into the workforce or perhaps those looking to make a change in their career.

As more and more programmers come in, a threshold is met and wages may level off or even go down if there are too many programmers. But then perhaps a change happens, Android starts taking off for instance. Now programmer demand begins anew.

So what set these wages? I'm over simplifying a bit but the marketplace set the wages. Or rather, there is no set wage, it is an individual transaction between a programmer and the employer. Some may elect to take less money for the perks of extra vacation days or a free mobile phone. Others may want more due to a higher skill set or experience. While you can do surveys every year and obtain a median wage that programmers make across the country, this wage isn't set because someone on high decided it. It's because that's how these millions of transactions have leveled out.

"Well that's great if you have programming skills, but minimum wage people don't have the luxury to be picky."

Not true, they do. If you looked at when the minimum wage $5.15 back through the 90's and early aughts, check what the average starting wage was. I remember clearly most McDonald's starting people at 7.00 an hour. How could that be?

Simple, there was a scarcity of minimum wage workers BECAUSE the minimum wage was so low. This drove up the starting wages of lower end workers because there weren't enough to go around. But why was the labor pool so low? Cause labor was cheap.

Let me let you in on something: All minimum wage jobs are not at McDonald's or even fast food. There are tons of mom and pop business out there that need cheap help. They could afford the minimum wage and some teenagers didn't mind taking a little less in exchange for working a job that granted them better job skills than a fast food restaurant did. Many small white collar offices could afford to let college kids do internships at the lower wages, giving the low end worker a chance to get experience they couldn't get at McDonalds.

As soon as Washington arbitrarily raised the minimum wage, the McDonald's and big retail corporations were the ones that won. You hear me lefties? I know you hate big corporations (WalMart) and love small shops. Your feel good legislation has just made it too hard for the mom and pop organizations to pay these kids. They can't just raise their prices, they still do have to compete with WalMart. WalMart however can raise prices by mere pennies because of the bulk sales they make. Walmart doesn't necessarily want have to pay more for their workforce but until the wage was raised, they were already paying above minimum because of the scarcity of workers. So the sting wasn't felt by them right away. Same with McDonald's.

So now small businesses either can't afford to keep workers or have to raise prices. Many didn't make it and went out of business, which now reduces competition and reduces the job pool. More people are out of work and can't find jobs because there is now a surplus of workers. Getting paid nothing, I might add. But minimum wage is higher so Yea! We feel good about ourselves!

If we want more people to work and get paid more for the work, if we want kids to be able to have more choices to get job skills, we need to LOWER the minimum wage, not raise it. I know that sounds counter-intuitive but that is simply how economics work.

Oh and those people who are not working anymore? They are getting unemployment or welfare. Which comes from taxes. Taxes that are getting raised to pay for it all which means even less money in your pocket and your company's pocket. If you don't have more money to spend on goods and services, how will company's make profit to expand? If companies can't expand, how will there be more jobs?

It's a vicious circle, and the left would know all about being vicious.

"Look, Yoda, if that is your real name..."

It isn't.

"Well whatever, doesn't it help people to have more money in their pocket when you raise the wage?"

Let me let James Sherk, an economist at the Heritage Foundation shed some light:

Supporters of the minimum wage intend it to lift low-income families out of poverty. Unfortunately, despite these good intentions, the minimum wage has proved ineffective at doing so. Indeed, it often holds back many of the workers its proponents want to help. Higher minimum wages both reduce overall employment and encourage relatively affluent workers to enter the labor force. Minimum wage increases often lead to employers replacing disadvantaged adults who need a job with suburban teenagers who do not. 

This can have long-term consequences. Minimum wage positions are typically learning wage positions—they enable workers to gain the skills necessary to become more productive on the job. As workers become more productive they command higher pay and move up their career ladder. Two-thirds of minimum wage workers earn a raise within a year. Raising the minimum wage makes such entry-level positions less available, in effect sawing off the bottom rung of many workers’ career ladders. This hurts these workers’ career prospects. 

Even if minimum wage workers do not lose their job, the overlapping and uncoordinated design of U.S. welfare programs prevents those in need from benefitting from higher wages. As their income rises they lose federal tax credits and assistance. These benefit losses offset most of the wage increase. A single mother with one child faces an effective marginal tax rate of 91 percent when her pay rises from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. Studies also find higher minimum wages do not reduce poverty rates. Despite the best of intentions, the minimum wage has proved an ineffective—and often counterproductive—policy in the war on poverty.

Ineffective. And as I stated before about stage 2 thinking, it's the unintended consequences that really keep people in poverty. Extra taxes, less available jobs, and no prospects. It's a good read, I highly recommend it.

Why do they do it? Well it's an easy way to get the poor vote because all they see is they get an instant raise. Never mind what that does to their buying power. Second, many union contracts are tied to the minimum wage. You don't just give poverty workers an instant raise, you give union workers an instant raise too, many of whom are making in excess of $40 and hour. Those unions know how to produce votes too.

"But how is someone supposed to support a family on minimum wage?"

You aren't. But even more so, that stereotype doesn't fit the majority of minimum wage workers:

Many advocates of raising the minimum wage argue it will help low-income single parents surviving on it as their only source of income. Minimum-wage workers, however, do not fit this stereotype. Just 4 percent of minimum-wage workers are single parents working full time, compared to 5.6 percent of all U.S. workers.[11] Minimum-wage earners are actually less likely to be single parents working full time than the average American worker.

Four percent. Guess what: raising the minimum wage actually hurts that 4 percent. Because those low skilled workers are the first to be laid off so the company can stay in business. Well done lefties.

A minimum wage job is not a job to support your family, it's to learn. It's for the flexibility a student or part time worker might need (emphasis mine):

Workers have a say in how quickly they get promoted. Most minimum-wage earners work part time, and many are students and young adults who desire this flexibility. But minimum-wage workers who choose to work longer hours gain more skills and experience than those who work part time and, as expected, earn larger raises. A typical minimum-wage employee who works 35 hours or more a week is 13 percentage points more likely to be promoted within a year than is a minimum-wage worker putting in fewer than 10 hours per week.[14] 

The notion that workers are trapped earning $7.25 an hour for much of their working lives is mistaken and ignores the primary value of minimum-wage jobs. Their importance lies not so much in the low wages they pay in the present, but in making workers more productive so they can command higher pay in the future.

So it could be said that raising the minimum wage to help the present is robbing people of their future. So much for "forward," eh Obama?