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Why did you vote Democrat?

When your friends can't explain why they voted for Democrats, give them this list. They can then pick a reason.

10. I voted Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't.

9. I voted Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

8. I voted Democrat because Freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

7. I voted Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves.

6. I voted Democrat because I believe that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius.

5. I voted Democrat because I'm not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies through abortion so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

4. I voted Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits.

3. I voted Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the democrats see fit.

2. I voted Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.

1. I voted Democrat because my head is so firmly planted up my ass it's unlikely that I'll ever have another point of view.

Earth Day Predictions, 1970

"We have about five more years at the outside to do something."
Kenneth Watt, ecologist

"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind."
George Wald, Harvard Biologist

"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years."
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

"By...[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s."
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

"It is already too late to avoid mass starvation."
Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

"Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions....By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine."
Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

"Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support...the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution...by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...."
Life Magazine, January 1970

"At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable."
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

"Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone."
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

"We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones."
Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

"By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate...that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, `I am very sorry, there isn't any.'"
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

"Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
Sen. Gaylord Nelson

"The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age."
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

I particularly liked the last one.

Happy Earth Day!

Nuclear blast victims would have to wait

The White House has warned state and local governments not to expect a "significant federal response" at the scene of a terrorist nuclear attack for 24 to 72 hours after the blast, according to a planning guide.

President Obama told delegates from 47 nations at the Nuclear Security Summit on Tuesday that it would be a "catastrophe for the world" if al-Qaeda or another terrorist group got a nuclear device, because so many lives would be lost and it would be so hard to mitigate damage from the blast.

Bullshit. It would take 24 to 72 hours for Obama to get his head out of his ass and then only do what is politically expedient for him.

Basically, what he just admitted to the world... and our enemies, is that WE ARE NOT READY to deal with this. What a loser. "Wahhhh... it would be so hard..." Duh! That's why WE pay YOU the big bucks to make sure IT DOESN'T HAPPEN! And it's OK to criticize Bush for Katrina?

Maybe now he'll rethink pussyfooting around with Iran?

Nah... get serious.

Original USA Today story here.

Schooled!

He may be a little heavy handed, but it just goes to show that these people have no knowledge, much less respect or regard, for the US Constitution. Nor do they have respect or regard for the people they represent, although LoBiondo is at least meeting with constituents.

Nearly half of US households escape fed income tax

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.

Most people still are required to file returns by the April 15 deadline. The penalty for skipping it is limited to the amount of taxes owed, but it's still almost always better to file: That's the only way to get a refund of all the income taxes withheld by employers.

In recent years, credits for low- and middle-income families have grown so much that a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte Tax.

Tax cuts enacted in the past decade have been generous to wealthy taxpayers, too, making them a target for President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress. Less noticed were tax cuts for low- and middle-income families, which were expanded when Obama signed the massive economic recovery package last year.

The result is a tax system that exempts almost half the country from paying for programs that benefit everyone, including national defense, public safety, infrastructure and education. It is a system in which the top 10 percent of earners -- households making an average of $366,400 in 2006 -- paid about 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.

When will we get to the point where there are more people taking than producing? We're at 50%. When are they going to learn that:

lower taxes on everyone = economic growth and more jobs and productivity = increased volume in revenues to the govt.

Instead, they tax the producers and create freeloaders (or government dependents). Every time tax cuts are applied the economy takes off.

AP article here. Even they are starting to notice.

I would also suggest that you look into the Fair Tax. At this point anything sounds better than the crap we have now. How about a flat tax? I would gladly pay up to 25% if everybody else does.

How Is the Stimulus Money Allocated?

by Veronique de Rugy

Unemployment isn’t a factor, but politics is. Your stimulus dollars at work.

Using recipient report data from Recovery.gov, as well as economic and political data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, GovTrack.us, and others, I have compiled a series of facts about stimulus spending. The complete dataset used for this report is available for download at Mercatus.org — it covers the fourth quarter of the calendar-year 2009 Recovery Act contracts and grants only — but here are the main facts.

First: The idea behind the $787 billion stimulus bill is that, if the government spends money where it is the most needed, it will create jobs and trigger economic growth. Hence, we should expect the government to invest more money in districts with higher unemployment rates.

Controlling for the percentage of the district employed in the construction industry, a proxy for the vulnerability to recession of a district, I find no statistical correlation for all relevant unemployment indicators and the allocation of funds. This suggests that unemployment is not the factor leading the awards. Also, I found no correlation between other economic indicators, such as income, and stimulus funding.

Second: On average, Democratic districts received one-and-a-half times as many awards as Republican ones. Democratic districts also received two-and-a-half times more stimulus dollars than Republican districts ($122,127,186,509 vs. $46,139,592,268). Republican districts also received smaller awards on average. (The average dollars awarded per Republican district is $260,675,663, while the average dollars awarded per Democratic district is $471,533,539.)

Of course, there are more Democratic districts than Republican districts in the Congress. So I checked for the correlation between political indicators and stimulus funding. I found that with the exception of the district’s party affiliation (whether the district’s representation was Republican or Democratic), political variables had no effect on stimulus funds allocation.

So how much did party affiliation matter? Well, while the effect was significant, because of the specifications of the model more confidence should be placed in the relationship between the two variables than on the quantification of that relationship. In other words, while we know that whether the district is represented by R or D mattered for funding, I can’t tell you how much this factor mattered compare to other factors.

Third: In this second quarter for which Recovery.gov reports are available, over 65,000 contracts and grants were awarded. The total spending topped $170 billion.

Fourth: The total number of jobs claimed as created or saved overall by the stimulus actually declined from last quarter, shrinking from about 634,000 to a little over 597,000.

This job shrinkage could be the result from changes made by the White House to its method for counting jobs. However, I doubt it. The new job count considers that every job paid for with stimulus dollars is a job created. This logic applies to pay raises.

Five: I found that an average cost of $286,000 was awarded per job created, a 16.3 percent increase over the previous period.

To sum it up: It’s a lot of money for jobs that are disappearing, and the money isn’t going to high-unemployment districts, probably because politics gets in the way.

You can watch my testimony on the issue here. The whole report is here.

Original blog by Veronique de Rugy here.

A bit of a heavy read, but it says a lot about the partisan bullshit going on in congress and how this stimulus really isn't about helping Americans, rather helping out and rewarding faithful Democrat Congressmen and the districts that perpetually elect them.

Here's a follow up from Veronique de Rugy.

"You Picked a Fine Time to Lead Us, Barack" by Jonathan McWhite

A bit of fun for the weekend.

Doctor Fights Back!

Wow. Talk about taking a stand at your own peril. I'm sure he'll be audited this year.
Story here.

Go get 'em!

I like this guy! maybe I'll buy his book.

Wonder where the next 'crisis' will be manufactured

by David Coughlin

The Democrat political template is very predictable and depends on a complicit liberal Mainstream Media (MSM) to cover up and obfuscate for shortcomings in policy execution. The Democrat political strategy to inundate, exaggerate, obfuscate, and inoculate policies is evident in domestic policy initiatives as well as foreign policy efforts. The process begins with a classic Cloward-Piven strategy to overwhelm the public with "crisis" after "crisis" that only Democrats can successfully address.

These "crises" are many times based on real national problems, but are exaggerated and personalized to manufacture the idea of impending doom that will appeal to the emotions of the electorate, without factual backing or scientific proof. The housing crisis, the banking crisis, the automotive industry crisis, the climate change crisis, and now the health care crisis all focused on real problems, but hyperbole and exaggeration ruled the debate. Catastrophic consequences are predicted for inaction, and exaggerated results are guaranteed with Democrat intervention. The liberal MSM acted as a cheerleader during these phases of the policy debate, finding anecdotal evidence and writing puff pieces to support the need for action.

Legislation was then crafted that is so huge and complex that it is not understandable by the public or even the Congress, camouflaging government waste and over-reach at every turn. The Bailout bill was $700 Billion and passed without reading, and every major initiative afterwards was over 1,000 pages long, close to $1 Trillion, and unreadable. Once passed visible "low-hanging fruit" aspects are feted while insidious top-heavy bureaucracies are defined and staffed, with organization continuation and expansion as the primary mission. The "saved or created" jobs are a classic example of obfuscation to disguise a absence of any real positive results.

Now the MSM plays a vital role covering up initial results that fall well short of "expectations" and the financial justification erodes before our eyes. Never once does the MSM compare real versus actual results, or re-examine the business case, or question the ability to achieve the desired outcomes. The stimulus inability to create jobs and the inconsequential climate improvement promised by the "cap and trade" bill are conveniently ignored by the MSM. The Mainstream Media is an active co-conspirator to government greed and manipulation, hiding in plain sight, and has forfeited any credibility as a fair and balanced check and balance of power.

And everybody else is the "fearmonger." The MSM is complicit in promoting this horrible agenda for america. Be glad we have alternative media to learn what is really going on... or at least other views of it.

Original article here.

We're gonna lose GUAM!

Gee... I wonder what his vote on the healthcare bill was? These are the people in charge? We're doomed.

BTW... this is NOT an April Fools joke.

I'm thinking of blogging again!

Things are just getting too good (or bad as the case may be) out there!!!

Stay tuned...