Empire Elucidated

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com We wrote here about the consequences of Obamacare that are beginning to be felt, even before its provisions are implemented: Caterpillar said Obamacare will cost it an additional $100 million in the first year; Medtronic warned that the new tax on its products "could force it to lay off a thousand workers;" Verizon told its employees that it "will likely have to cut healthcare benefits to offset the new costs;" and AT&T announced that it will record a $1 billion non-cash expense in the first quarter and "will be evaluating prospective changes to the active and retiree health care benefits offered by the company." In my original post, I wondered why these companies had not spoken out sooner, when it could have done some good. I suppose this is the answer: they know how vindictive the Democrats are. The Democrats' reaction would have been even more hostile (and more dangerous to the companies' well-being) if they had dared to blow the whistle on Obamacare before Congress voted.

Not Together Again

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Lights Out

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Because North Korea Is Not A Role Model

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Thank Goodness It's Nothing Like Socialism

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com The Obama administration plans to overhaul how it is tackling the foreclosure crisis, in part by requiring lenders to temporarily slash or eliminate monthly mortgage payments for many borrowers who are unemployed, senior officials said Thursday. Banks and other lenders would have to reduce the payments to no more than 31 percent of a borrower's income, which would typically be the amount of unemployment insurance, for three to six months. In some cases, administration officials said, a lender could allow a borrower to skip payments altogether.

And I'm just a hate-monger for saying it.

Pot, Kettle

clipped from pajamasmedia.com UNION GOES AFTER GREEDY CAPITALISTS OVER EXCESS PAY: Those paydays that New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger and President Janet Robinson received last year are once again coming back to haunt them. The Boston Newspaper Guild, which absorbed more than $10 million in pay and benefit cuts to members last year in order to save The Boston Globe, has lashed out at the Sulzberger and Robinson 2009 bonuses and are demanding their lost wages and benefits be restored. “We were astonished to learn that the two of you received more than $10 million in stock awards and options in 2009,” the Guild wrote in an open letter urging its members to send to Sulzberger and Robinson. “During the year for which you were so richly rewarded, the 600 members of the Boston Newspaper Guild gave back almost the same amount in pay and benefit reductions — $10 million to be exact — after you threatened to close our newspaper, lay off hundreds of people, and strip Massachusetts of its largest newspaper.”

Why Indeed?

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For The Molestors

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Venn Of Venns

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O Moral Laid Bare

clipped from neoneocon.com Utterances—true or false—are of value to him only in terms of whether he judges them likely to help or hinder the achievement of his goals. “Some people screw up or are unlucky. We’re here to ensure they end up the same as you who don’t screw up or are luckier. We can’t say they are in any way culpable, so we blame either the system or you who are better off. The best way to level the playing field is to tax all we can, take our percentage, and redistribute the rest. Lots get hired to administer to even more. The rules don’t apply to ourselves, who are wealthy but not the targeted culpable. We know privately all this is not sustainable, but assume the better off will find a way to save themselves and thus us, before we bankrupt ourselves — after we are gone. And we don’t care really whether this is always legal, or fair, or workable, because we know it is moral and we are far more moral people than you.” Actually, I disagree with Hanson. I don’t think the word “moral” enters into it.

About 3 orders of magnitude too charitable to the jack*ss.

The Haj Again

clipped from pajamasmedia.com As Obama met with Netanyahu, news leaked in Israel that approval had been given to construct 20 additional housing units in East Jerusalem, in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. The United States had previously objected to the project, which would be built on the site of the Shepherd Hotel, the former home of the late Haj Amin Husseini, a former mufti, or Islamic law scholar, of Jerusalem… The author of those lines is a good reporter, Glenn Kessler.  I assume the facts are correct.  What turns my stomach is the description of the Mufti.  For Haj Amin Husseini was hardly an “Islamic law scholar.”   He was one of the Nazis’ favorite Arabs, a man who spent much of the war in Berlin working with high officials of the Third Reich (including Hitler and Eichmann), encouraging them to extend the “Final Solution” (that is, the extermination of the Jews, of which Husseini was a great enthusiast) to the Middle East.

Who apparently will live in hell on earth forever.

Projection

clipped from www.cashill.com Obama was particularly worried because he had spent $75,000 of the advance and had produced nothing. In 1993, the publisher canceled the contract but let Obama keep the money after he pled poverty due to "massive student loan debt." At the time, the Obamas, still childless, were making $250,000 a year between them. Michelle had a personal trainer and a closet full of Jimmy Choo shoes, but their creditors would have to wait. Personal debt is nothing new. “He that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing,” said Benjamin Franklin some 250 years ago. As I show in my new book, Popes and Bankers, we have been in debt as a nation and a people from the very beginning, Thomas Jefferson being a classic prodigal. The difference between Obama and Jefferson, though, is that the latter did not project his personal failings onto the nation as a whole.

Listing

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Flushed

clipped from gatewaypundit.firstthings.com Marxist Tyrant Fidel Castro congratulated Obama for nationalizing health care this week. Cuban Emergency Room toilet. Cuban Marxist Fidel Castro congratulated Barack Obama and democrats for seizing control of the health care industry this week.

The Lady Was Right

clipped from gatewaypundit.firstthings.com Washington Post reports: The Obama administration plans to overhaul how it’s tackling the foreclosure crisis, in part by requiring lenders to temporarily slash or eliminate monthly mortgage payments for many borrowers who are unemployed, senior officials said Thursday. Banks and other lenders would have to reduce the payments to no more than 31 percent of a borrower’s income, which would typically be their unemployment insurance, for up to six months. In some cases, administration officials said, a lender could allow a borrower to make no payments at all. I guess this lady was right…

Up From 4

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Only 9 percent of Israeli Jews believe that President Obama is pro-Israel, according to a poll taken by Smith Research on behalf of the Jerusalem Post. 48 percent said that the Obama favors the Palestinian side, while 30 percent said his administration is neutral. The remaining 13 percent expressed no opinion. The 9 percent number is up from 4 percent last August, but the difference is only slighly outside the margin of error. Moreover, the poll was taken before Prime Minister Netanyahu's chily reception at the White House on Sunday. President Bush was considered pro-Israel by 88 percent of Israeli Jews, with only 2 percent believing he was pro-Palestinian. And in May of last year, on the eve of the first White House meeting between Netanyahu and Obama, 31 percent labeled Obama pro-Israel, with only 14 deeming him pro-Palestinian.

Jack*ss In Chief

clipped from hotair.com It’s possible that there’s no grander strategic meaning to it at all, and that he really is just this petty. For a head of state to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of… After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on Jewish settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisors and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman who spoke to the Prime Minister said today. “It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages”, poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House phone line.

The Difference

clipped from powip.com The Boender trial was somewhat convoluted with a “number-of-dots-to-connect” and yet the U.S. Attorney still brought an indictment and the federal jury, in turn, convicted Mr. Boender on all five (5) counts. Given the credibility issues involved with both Ike Carothers and another witness, I was very surprised with the jury’s verdict. It appears Mr. Boender got a raw deal. On this note, I’d be interested to understand the U.S. Attorney’s interpretation of the material difference between Ike Carothers accepting a “bribe/kick-back” worth $37,000 in home improvements in exchange for the alderman’s lobbying of Richard M. Daley related to an uber-super-zoning designation that only the mayor himself could change and Marty Nesbitt accepting a $28,500 Obama Victory Fund campaign contribution after providing developers with a close to $1.3M discount on the sale of the former Chicago Housing Authority headquarters. It appears the only difference is that Marty Nesbitt is BFF with Barack Obama.

Better Legalize The Illegals Soon Barry

clipped from www.rasmussenreports.com Just before the House of Representatives passed sweeping health care legislation last Sunday, 41% of voters nationwide favored the legislation while 54% were opposed. Now that President Obama has signed the legislation into law, most voters want to see it repealed. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, conducted on the first two nights after the president signed the bill, shows that 55% favor repealing the legislation. Forty-two percent (42%) oppose repeal. Those figures include 46% who Strongly Favor repeal and 35% who Strongly Oppose it. In terms of Election 2010, 52% say they’d vote for a candidate who favors repeal over one who does not. Forty-one percent (41%) would cast their vote for someone who opposes repeal.

More Quotes From The Drunk

clipped from ace.mu.nu Yeah, we knew that but now Sen. Max "Hey My Girlfriend Would Be A Great US Attorney" Baucus admits it. ...the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind. Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America. But don't you dare call it socialism!

Obamaklatura

clipped from pajamasmedia.com JAMES TARANTO: The Obamaklatura. “If you and Larry Summers both get sick and need a treatment that the Medicare Advisory Commission (dysphemistically known as the Death Panel) deems too expensive, what are the odds that you’ll find a way to get it anyway and he won’t? How about the other way around? In the Soviet Union, those privileged by political connections were called the nomenklatura. Here, we can call it the Obamaklatura.”

Slooooooow Joe

clipped from www.redstate.com Early Wednesday night, roughly sixty Democratic donors paid $2,500/plate (or about $150,000) for the privilege of having Vice President Joe Biden show up and tell them - on the day after their party had just (barely) passed the health care legislation that will supposedly save them at the polls - that their money is going to end up going to unsuccessfully defend doomed incumbents in the November elections.  Think I’m not being fair? Barack generated such an overwhelming turnout and enthusiasm (in 2008), that we had the biggest turnout in history. It was gigantic. And a lot of really good Democrats got washed up on shore and all of a sudden were Congressmen, in districts that Democrats have no business having Congressmen. I’m not here to tell you we’re gaining seats. Mercifully for the above Congressmen, he didn’t name names: that particular parlor trick is reserved for the $5,000/plate fundraisers.

Leveled

clipped from www.victorhanson.com President Obama has crossed the Rubicon with the healthcare vote. The bill was not really about medicine; after all, a moderately priced, relatively small federal program could offer the poorer not now insured, presently not on Medicare or state programs like Medicaid or Medical, a basic medical plan. We have no interest in stopping trial lawyers from milking the system for billions. And we don’t want to address in any meaningful way the individual’s responsibility in some cases (drink, drugs, violence, dangerous sex, bad diet, sloth, etc.) for costly and chronic health procedures. No, instead, the bill was about assuming a massive portion of the private sector, hiring tens of thousands of loyal, compliant new employees, staffing new departments with new technocrats, and feeling wonderful that we “are leveling the playing field” and have achieved another Civil Rights landmark law.

"Fairer"

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com In many ways, the health system, and many other arrangements in the former East Germany, were fairer than those in the former West Germany. Wages were more equal, for instance. And, except for members of the Communist Party, there were no rich people. None of the obscene spectacles, in the capitalist West, that people might glimpse from their rooftops -- the bright lights and vulgar display of the Kurfürstendamm. No, East Germany was the worker's paradise, even a place of leisure -- "we pretend to work and you pretend to pay us." And East Berlin so wonderfully grey. Indeed, it was such a paradise, that the Communist authorities had to erect the Berlin Wall, to keep the victims of capitalism from flooding into their country. That, at least, was the subtle argument they advanced when they began building it. And in those good old days, there were fellow travellers in the West, willing to play subtle variations on that theme.

O Wow

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com A native Minnesotan who is now a small business owner in Florida writes: I own a small business in Florida (under 25 employees). We offered health insurance, but all the younger ones refused (their share was under 30 bucks a week). I am a pretty staunch conservative who has voted Republican only because I have not found a Libertarian I would vote for and they all know it. The youngest ones (under 30) are mostly Puerto Rican, Cuban, Columbian, Mexican and all legal and they are liberal (Democrats), yet without exception they are livid about Obamacare. They understand that they are going to " foot the bill " for the older generation, like me. Nearly all voted for Obama, yet they all are now saying he needs to be impeached. Wow. I have followed politics for decades and have never seen such a reaction before. If the media and the Democrats can not spin this enough by November, there will be no Democrats left in national office. I am afraid that the Republicans will mess it up again

O China Syndrome

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COTD: We Want It All And We Want It Now

clipped from www.qando.net I understand that the next piece of legislation the ‘Democrats’ are going to pass will force car companies to sell Porsche Boxsters (or the equivalent) to all Americans for $2000 (with an exemption for GM and Chrysler). After this, they will take on the profiteers in the citizen-enslaving food industry by requiring Safeway and all other supermarket chains to charge no more than $10 per bag of groceries (hemp bags only, and all food will be organic). Can you imagine how awesome this will be? We’ll stick it to The Man and all drive bitchin’ roadsters, and have cheap, abundant, healthy food! After this, they intend to pass a law making it illegal to age past 35. We shall become a nation of young citizens!! We’ll all live forever, driving roadsters full of cheap groceries!!!

COTD: Crippled

clipped from www.qando.net Progressives have a peculiar and crippling cognitive defect: They’re thankful for all that the free market has created, but incapable of understanding where any of it came from, and incapable of imagining that the same cornucopia might ever toss out anything new in the future. For people who yammer so much about “change”, they’re oddly committed to imposing stasis wherever they can.

Directive 10-289 Update

clipped from www.qando.net Or, as Surber puts it: Government-run health care is about saving money, not lives. Think back and think it through. What government is promising is insurance for all (more cost) and lower cost insurance plans Those seem to conflict, but in reality, they can be accomplished even though you’re very likely not to like the result. How? Severe rationing and imposed cost controls. If it can order individuals to buy insurance on pain of fine, what is to stop it from ordering doctors and other health care providers to take anyone with insurance, regardless of the reimbursement rates? Well, don’t forget, almost every practice out there is a small business. And if they make over $250,000 (and the vast majority do) they’re going to first and foremost be taxed at a higher rate. You know, because they’re “rich”. how long will the better doctors put up with this I’m guessing this will be the first sector in the economy where Atlas will do some shrugging.

Bill's TerraPower

clipped from news.yahoo.com TOKYO (AFP) – A company backed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Toshiba are in early talks to jointly develop a small nuclear reactor, the Japanese electronics giant said Tuesday. The Nikkei business daily earlier reported that the two sides would team up to develop a compact next-generation reactor that can operate for up to 100 years without refueling to provide emission-free energy. The daily said the joint development would focus on the Traveling-Wave Reactor (TWR), which consumes depleted uranium as fuel. Current light-water reactors require refueling every few years. "Toshiba has entered into preliminary talks with TerraPower," said Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Ohmori. "We are looking into the possibility of working together."

Lucifer

clipped from gatewaypundit.firstthings.com Here is Saul Alinsky’s dedication from Rules for radicals: “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer

Saul's Constitution

clipped from gatewaypundit.firstthings.com Here’s a picture posted in February 2008 at PrestoPundit of Barack Obama in Chicago teaching the principles of Saul Alinsky. Notice the flow chart indicating the flow of money and power out of productive businesses (“CORP”) and into the political class (“MAYOR”): The heading at the top reads “POWER ANALYSIS”. The sub-heading reads “RELATIONSHIPS BUILD ON SELF INTEREST”. The symbol on the arrow between “CORP” and “MAYOR” is the “$” sign. Saul Alinsky came up with the idea of power analysis, which looks at relationships built on self-interest between corporations, banks and utilities. Barack Obama was teaching students in Chicago the Alinsky Principles. After watching the bribes, kickbacks, lies and threats this past year as Democrats fought to take over the health care industry, it’s obvious that the only Constitution Obama follows includes Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals… Not the Constitution of the United States.

We The Government

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The Good And Welfare Clause

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Are you familiar with the "Good and Welfare" clause of the US Constitution? Here's how it reads: The federal government can do anything it wants whatsoever, no matter how outrageously intrusive and tyrannical. Here John Conyers — the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee — uses the clause to justify ObamaCare: Conyers is evidently referring to the General Welfare clause, which actually reads like this: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States… The Constitution then goes on to explicitly enumerate the federal government's powers, in hopes of preventing it from becoming the bloated monstrosity it is today. If statists and cretins like Conyers are going to use the General Welfare clause to justify every conceivable power grab, what's the point of even having a Constitution? They could replace it with six words: Government will do as it pleases.

And don't forget that this genius is the chair-nitwit of the judiciary committee...

All The Really Professional Con Jobs Work This Way

clipped from pajamasmedia.com REIHAN SALAM: PREPARED FOR FAILURE. “The Democrats already have their excuse ready when their health-care reform falls short. The solution, of course, will involve more spending.” UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch writes: “All the really professional con jobs work this way.”

Paul Krugman's Salem Witch Trials

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