Carson's Terrorists

This video illustrates the way the Tea Party is being demonized by the LEft and the powers-that-be.

Nanny of the Month

From Reason.com

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.

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.

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.

Twelve Anti-Family Gifts from Congress

from The Heritage Foundation
Posted December 25th, 2009 at 4.00pm in Family and Religion.

As Congress wraps up its final business for the year, there are at least a dozen detrimental policies included in the omnibus spending bill recently signed into law by the President. Taken as a whole, these policies devalue human life, weaken civil society, and undermine the family. Unfortunately, these provisions have largely gone unnoticed by the general public.

The Dirty Dozen

The Fiscal Year 2010 Omnibus Appropriations bill passed by Congress includes a slew of offensive items:

1. Elimination of abstinence education. Despite polling showing the vast majority of parents want their children to be taught that abstinence is best, the omnibus defunds the abstinence-based education program. In its place Congress creates another condom-based sex education program.

2. Spreading the wealth. The omnibus bill, as well as the other appropriation measures that have passed this year, represent a fulfillment of President Obama’s promise to “spread the wealth.” His 2010 budget reflects a 30 percent increase over President Bush’s last year in office on means-tested welfare programs such as housing, food stamps, and health care. Unfortunately, these programs do little or nothing to help recipients move off of the welfare rolls and into jobs where they can achieve independence and provide for their families.

3. Needle exchange. Tucked into the health portion of the bill is an allowance of federal taxpayer funds to be used for needle exchange programs whereby drug addicts can get new needles for turning in used needles. Ostensibly to prevent the spread of infection, these programs settle for “harm reduction” rather than overcoming drug addiction. The provision does allow local health agencies and local law enforcement to “opt-out.”

4. Planned Parenthood funding. Despite the country’s towering deficit, the omnibus bill boosts Title X family planning funding by $10 million to $315.5 million. The largest recipient of Title X funds is Planned Parenthood.

5. United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Despite its stated mission to “ensure that every pregnancy is wanted,” the UNFPA would receive $5 million more from U.S. taxpayers to, among other things, support China’s mandatory one-child policy, under which millions of wanted pregnancies have been ended.

6. International family planning. Shortly after his inauguration, President Obama rescinded the “Mexico City policy,” which banned funding to organizations that promote and/or perform abortion overseas. The omnibus bills would give these groups an additional $103 million.

7. Limiting free speech. The omnibus bill drops a ban on federal funds being used to enforce or implement the “Fairness Doctrine.” This policy would have the effect of shutting down conservative talk radio programs.

The section of the bill that funds the District of Columbia includes these disturbing provisions:

8. Ending the D.C. Scholarship Program. For five years, thousands of D.C. families have been able to send their children to safe and effective private schools. But the omnibus bill allows no new entrants into the program–despite a 2009 Department of Education report showing a statistically significant increase in reading scores for scholarship students.

9. Public funding of abortion. The bill lifts a ban on D.C. using local funds to promote and fund abortions for District residents.

10. Taxpayer-financed domestic partner benefits. The bill lifts a longstanding ban on the use of federal taxpayer funds to pay for health care benefits for domestic partners of D.C. employees. Federal funds would also now be used for domestic partnership registration.

11. Legalized medical marijuana. The bill gives D.C. the ability to use local funds to start and implement a medical marijuana program. This comes at a time when, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles is attempting to reel in its program. Medical marijuana dispensaries have become one of the fastest-growing industries in the city, with some 1,000 dispensaries cropping up since 2004.

12. Needle exchange for drug abusers. A decade-long ban is lifted in the bill to allow D.C. to use local funds to run a needle exchange program for drug addicts. Unfortunately, a provision keeping these programs from within 1,000 feet of any school, day care, or youth center was stripped out in the final bill.

Unwelcome Christmas Gifts

The Christmas season is a time when Americans celebrate life, family, and community. Unfortunately, the 12 unwelcome Christmas gifts in the omnibus bill, signed into law by President Obama last week, undermine these pillars of American civil society.

Author: Kiki Bradley

Orrin Hatch on Healthcare on the Senate Floor

WASHINGTON – Before tonight’s vote on the Senate $2.5 trillion health bill, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, offered an impassioned plea for senators to stand with the American people by saying no to a Washington takeover of Americans’ health care system.

“This is bigger than us, our parties or our ideologies,” Hatch remarked on the Senate floor. “This is about the very future of the greatest nation in the history of the world. It is about your children and my children. It is about your grandchildren and my grandchildren. It is about giving our future generations the same opportunities and the same sense of pride. It is about every American life and every American business that will be subject to this 2,074-page edict from Washington.”

Hatch’s complete remarks on the Senate floor follow:

Mr. President, We are rapidly approaching perhaps one of the most important votes for each of us here in the United States Senate. This is bigger than us, our parties or our ideologies.

This about the very future of the greatest nation in the history of the world. It is about your children and my children. It is about your grandchildren and my children. It is about giving our future generations the same opportunities and the same sense of pride. It is about every American life and every American business that will be subject to this 2,074-page edict from Washington.

I am going to spend my time before this historic vote to highlight some very important numbers, so every member of this chamber understands what they are voting to advance. Make no mistake, our actions today will not be without consequences. History and our future generations will judge us on this. Here are some numbers:

• 0 – the number of provisions prohibiting the rationing of health care.

• 0 – the number of government-run entitlement programs that are financially sound over the long-term.

• 10.2 percent – our national unemployment rate, the highest in 26 years.

• 70 – total number of government programs authorized by the bill.

• 1,697 – times the Secretary of Health and Human Services is given authority to determine or define provisions in this bill.

• 2,074 – total pages in this bill.

• 2010 – the year Americans start paying higher taxes to pay for this bill

• 2014 – the year when this bill actually starts most of the major provisions of this bill

• $6.8 million – cost to taxpayers per word

• $8 billion – the total amount of new taxes on Americans who do not buy Washington-defined health care.

• $465 billion – Cuts in Medicare at a time when it faces a $38 trillion unfunded liability to finance more government spending.

• $494 billion – total amount of new taxes in this bill

• $2.5 trillion – the real cost of the bill

• $12 trillion – our total national debt

These numbers are facts. They are undisputable.

Let me finish by reading an excerpt from a letter from one of my fellow Utahans from Provo, who is worried just like me about what this bill will mean for our country:

“I am writing out of deep concern over the increasing expansion of government. I moved here from Germany 20 years ago. I love America because it is free – freer than Germany in that I have the freedom to choose, among other things, how I want to insure my family (we have six children). I’m all for affordable health insurance which requires affordable health care. I am self-employed and have been hit hard by the economy.

There is a good chance that we would actually benefit from [this bill]. Business has been so bad that we would qualify for free school lunches if we asked for it. But I don’t want more government handouts.

I don’t want the government telling me what kind of insurance I need to have. I don’t want the government telling me what services I can receive when I need them. I don’t want them taking an ever greater part of my income to help finance government programs such as the ‘public option’ and the army of government employees it will take to administer such a program. I do not want more government. I want less. A lot less."

Source

A Few (Better) Ideas Of Their Own

From Investors Business Daily

Reform: Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., made headlines this week with two claims, both wild and neither true: Republicans' health care plan consists of urging the sick to "die quickly," and the GOP has no proposals of its own.

The first charge is so juvenile that it doesn't even deserve a response. But the second — "the Republicans' health care plan was a blank piece of paper" — requires a response.

Republicans do have alternatives to the legislative mess that Democrats are pushing, and they've been offering them for years. The left, however, has bitterly resisted these ideas — not because the policies won't work, but because they would, and Democrats apparently have no interest in improvement.

They prefer a system in decline so that their push for government health care can look to many like a practical solution. The Republican ideas that have been either hobbled or outright blocked by the Democrats include:

• Health savings accounts/medical savings accounts: Americans who hold these tax-free accounts, up to $5,950 for a family, use them to pay for basic medical services.In 1996, the Republican Congress passed a medical savings account demonstration program that, in deference to Sen. Ted Kennedy's opposition to MSAs, severely restricted the number of participants. Kennedy tried to kill the MSA provision, but settled on a compromise — a limit of 750,000 accounts.

He was willing to allow a few Americans to have the accounts because he needed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which the MSAs were a part of, to pass. In the end, Kennedy won. He got the framework of health care rules that were part of the law, and, due to the bill's heavy regulations, only about 75,000 MSAs were ever sold.

In 2003, the MSA program was replaced by health savings accounts legislation, and roughly 7 million Americans now have them. But Democrats including Rep. Pete Stark of California, who called the accounts "weapons of mass destruction," tried to destroy HSAs through excessive mandates in last year's Taxpayer Assistance and Simplification Act. Fortunately, that bill never became law.

In recent years, Republicans have tried to advance policies that would increase the number of Americans who have HSAs. But Democrats have sat on the proposals. They don't like HSAs because they put patients in charge of their own medical care and push government further away from the process.

• Insurance competition: Republicans have also been trying for years to change the law that lets state governments bar insurance companies from selling individual health plans across state lines. If the practice were ever allowed, consumers would have more providers and plans to choose from. The competition would, as competition always does, drive down prices as well.

In 2007, GOP Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina offered an amendment that would have permitted Americans to shop for individual plans across state lines. But the Democratic majority in the Senate rejected it.

• Tort reform: The Pacific Research Institute estimates that the practice of defensive medicine wastes more than $200 billion a year. With trial lawyers and plaintiffs seeking fortunes through medical malpractice suits, doctors routinely overtreat patients to cover themselves in the event they are sued. They also pay higher malpractice insurance premiums because insurers often have to pay dearly in malpractice cases. These conditions increase costs.

For years Republicans have tried to bring down health care expenses though legislation that would place reasonable limits on the amount of damages a jury can award. But they have had little success at the federal level going against the party that's inextricably linked to the trial bar and its generous campaign contributions.

• Current legislation: Just this year, the GOP has proposed more than 30 health care bills in just the House. But those bills, which cover issues from costs to portability, have gone nowhere in Democratically controlled Washington. "The White House, in spite of saying they look forward to meeting with anybody who wants to solve these challenges, has rebuffed us at every turn," GOP Rep. Tom Price of Georgia told the Examiner newspapers.

In response to calls that he apologize for his inflammatory comments, Rep. Grayson sarcastically said he would "apologize to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust in America."

Give the first-term congressman credit. Having distracted the media with his sideshow, they don't have time to report on the Republicans' efforts to improve health care in America through consumer-driven policies.

Obama's Twitter Posts

Hat tip to fark.com

The Government Can!

Time to drain the Swamp...

...Charlie Rangel should be the first to go. As a native new Yorker, I have always been embarrassed by him. He's been in power since I was 8 years old.

Earlier this month the Chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee "amended" his 2007 financial disclosure form—to the tune of more than a half-million dollars in previously unreported assets and income. That number may be as high as $780,000, because Congress's ethics rules only require the Members to report their finances within broad ranges. This voyage of personal financial discovery brings Mr. Rangel's net worth for 2007 to somewhere between $1.028 million and $2.495 million, while his previous statement came in at $516,015 and $1.316 million.

When you're a powerful Congressman and working diligently to increase tax rates to pay for President Obama's health-care plan, we suppose it's easy to lose track of one of your checking accounts. That would be the one at the federal credit union with a balance somewhere between $250,001 and maybe as high as $500,000. And when you're crunched for time and pulling together bills to pass in a rush, we guess, too, that you might overlook several other investment accounts, even if some of them are sizable, such as the ones Mr. Rangel missed at JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Oppenheimer and BlackRock.

Another interesting point of this story... "Congress's ethics rules only require the Members to report their finances within broad ranges."

I'm sorry but... WTF? How about a "broad range" on my 1040? What a bunch of skunks. Time to drain the Swamp.

WSJ article here. More on the story from the NY Post here.
Charlie.. in his own words here.

Journalism and the Truth

If you’re a journalist, want to help people and want to tell the truth, what truth are you going to tell? Why, the truth you think helps people, of course!

Technically, that’s the truth.

But it’s very different than the truth.

Click here to read an excellent article about the state of Journalism today by Barbara Oakley from Psychology Today.

Disquieting Thought

From Neal Boortz--

We've put our economy, our security ... our very lives ... into the hands of a group of men and women who have shown no particular skill beyond their ability to please their constituents through the expenditure of money seized from the private sector. They produce nothing of value, nor do they demonstrate any particular skill other than pandering to voters. They loot from the productive to buy votes from the moocher class. If you had your entire financial future invested in stock in one business, how well would sleep at night knowing that Barack Obama, Barney Frank, Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters were running that business? Their very survivability depends on their ability to use force to achieve their goals.

These are the people we are going to allow to completely change the nature of health care in America. Amazingly, some Americans still think that these people are actually working hard to figure out a way to deliver better health care to the American people at a lower cost. They're wrong. These DC political hacks are simply trying to control, not improve health care. Control means power, and power is the currency of Washington. If we expect anything but a complete disaster, we deserve what's coming.

Congress Needs A "Read-The-Bill" Bill

Honesty: Lawmakers voted on the stimulus and global warming bills without having read either. Eventually they'll vote on health care legislation that could fund unrelated items. Time to end this systemic fraud.

The stimulus bill, signed into law less than a month after Barack Obama took office, reached 1,434 pages and will eventually cost the nation more than $1 trillion.

Waxman-Markey, the global warming bill, passed the House last month after Democrats added a 309-page amendment at 3 a.m. the morning before the vote, bringing that package of nonsense up to 1,200 or so pages.

The next piece of deception up for legislative consideration is the $1.6 trillion health care bill, a Washington lightweight at a mere 615 pages. The Boston Globe reports that it contains a provision for funding walking paths, bike paths, streetlights, gym equipment and farmers' markets.

More poop coming out the pipe, people...
From IBD.

U.S. Will Suffer So Dems Can 'Save the Planet'

By Jay Ambrose

The recently passed House bill on global warming is a 1,500-page political sucker punch that could give family finances a bloody nose and ultimately flatten the economy while proponents pretend it will save the planet.

In and of itself, it won't do an inch of good. Assume if you want that all the talk of unperturbed greenhouse gases finally frying us is true and that the bill would slowly reduce carbon emissions in the United States to roughly the level of 100 years ago. The impact of holding down an increase in world temperatures by the end of this century would still be something utterly unnoticeable.

That's right, all the current sound and fury would signify nothing unless the rest of the world joined in, especially China and India, which probably won't do any such thing. As we all know, those two countries are growing like crazy, but still remain fundamentally poor and will stay poor if they should sign on to really, truly serious efforts to phase out fossil fuels before markets and entrepreneurs come up with efficient, cost-effective alternatives beyond the capacity of central planners to devise.

Of course, the House bill is not really, truly serious. Although disastrous consequences can be discerned deep in its long-term intentions, political observers have noted that the Democrats played all kinds of games so that very little that is either nasty or meaningful transpires until the 2010 elections are past and that, even then, carbon emissions from coal burning could continue to increase for a decade before decreasing.

Before long, however, the Senate will have its say, and no one is sure whether it will soften things up more (further aggravating environmental groups already peeved), toughen things up (further imperiling the general welfare) or simply pass this time around. If it does do something, there is one thing you can count on: We will have cap-and-trade, which is to say, we the people will suffer.

Cap-and-trade refers to a system with emission limits that allows industries to barter with each other about who emits how much. Advocates refer to it as free enterprise, but there is nothing free about it - it would be a government-mandated, bureaucratic monstrosity. It hasn't worked to solve much of anything in Europe, and economist William Nordhaus of Yale fears it could cost trillions more to implement than whatever warming damage it might prevent.

The main reason for the thing is that most of those discussing it do not call it a "tax," which is a word voters do not like. A straightforward carbon tax would be preferable to cap-and-trade many on both the left and right believe, but there's that ugly, awful word. The obvious truth is that cap-and-trade is in effect a tax, and depending on how it is carried out, could be a very steep one for industries that would pass the cost on to consumers. Utility bills could go up by thousands of dollars in constant dollars for a family of four as the decades pass, some analysts believe.

Meanwhile, rescue for an economy increasingly squeezed by the politics of warming alarmism is supposed to come in the form of "green jobs," only it won't. Various researchers are figuring out that we could lose more manufacturing and other jobs than we would gain, and that many of these green jobs as currently outlined would be non-productive and subsidized.

The capper of cap-and-trade is that the globe hasn't been warming lately and, according to one study, may undergo more cooling for another decade or more. Despite all the talk about sure-enough, catastrophic, human-induced warming, the number of doubting Thomases in the sciences is growing, as are some interesting ideas of relatively inexpensive means of saving ourselves if reliable evidence develops that the worst possibilities are almost certainly true.

Congress, spare us.

Real Clear Politics original OpEd here.

The Economic Impact of the Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade Bill

It is clear that cap-and-trade is very expensive and amounts to nothing more than an energy tax in disguise. After all, when you sweep aside all the complexities of how cap and trade operates--and make no mistake, this is the most convoluted attempt at economic central planning this nation has ever attempted--the bottom line is that cap and trade works by raising the cost of energy high enough so that individuals and businesses are forced to use less of it. Inflicting economic pain is what this is all about. That is how the ever-tightening emissions targets will be met.

Excellent piece on the real cost(s) of cap and trade across the board, not what the media would have you believe.
Read on here

The nerve...

What a smug, arrogant liberal bitch. What is lost on her, is that in the military, one refers to superiors as ma'am or sir. He was showing her proper respect. When Boxer interrupted him with her request, he should have said, "Senator, could you please address me as Brigadier General, I have earned that as well. If we are going to be professional, then let us all be professional."

Does this kind of behavior kind of remind you of being corrected in 6th grade? How dare this woman... er... excuse me... "Senator"... scold this decorated hero who's spent his LIFE in his country's service.

Hey "Senator"... he worked alot harder than you did to get to where he is. Show him the respect HE deserves.

Typical liberal distain for the military.