Pirate O The Beltway

clipped from www.moonbattery.com

COTD: Exceeding Expectations

clipped from thehill.com $16,000,000,000 / 30,083 jobs = $531,861.84 per job. Which "exceeded their expectations."

Monsters And Lunatics

clipped from www.northstarnational.com We learn from the agents Kessler interviews that John F. Kennedy was a serial adulterer (big surprise) and that Lyndon Johnson was essentially a serial adulterer and a lunatic.  Carter is portrayed as a phony according to the agents interviewed by Kessler. Carter would put on a show for the public to convey himself as a common man, but it was never anymore than an act. For instance, we are told that when Carter would make a point of carrying his own luggage in front of the press, he was really carrying empty bags. After his presidency, Kessler reports that when Carter would stay at a townhouse maintained for former presidents in D.C., he would take down pictures of other presidents and put up more pictures of himself! “The Carters were the biggest liars in the world,” one agent told Kessler of the Carter era.  Bush’s successor President Clinton comes across fairly well if sometimes inconsiderate, while Hillary Clinton is depicted as a monster. Obama is personally a decent man.

Of course the Manchurian Candidate will be nice. He probably doesn't even know what a monster he is. The Harvard brainwashing was very well done.

What a shock that both of our last two Presidents have Harvard degrees and are both complete morons.

Into A Neut

clipped from online.wsj.com For all the plausible reasons a broadband supplier might block a Web site, including the desire to give preference to its own competing voice or television service, there haven't been many such crimes against "net neutrality" to justify the enormous amount of wind spent on this particular threat to human freedom. Such worries so far have been assuaged by competition—consumers can be counted on to abandon a carrier that blocks access to services they crave. Guess what? The latest panic about wireless net neutrality is already succumbing to this principle too. And FCC chief Julius Genachowski, who fibrillates regularly about the subject, may soon discover he has a much bigger problem. Still, the resistance of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and others to usage pricing may be futile unless they're willing themselves to subsidize delivery of their services to mobile consumers—which would turn net neut precisely on its head.

My prediction: O Duce and his minions will somehow find a formula that favors big contributors like Google while stopping growth, profits (starting to capiche?) and innovation at the same time.

COTD: Maggots On Road Kill

clipped from pajamasmedia.com I think that in the future, if there is one, political historians will look back upon the 20th century as the time when the role of government took on a new and hideous form. But now, government is seen as an end in itself. Its an industry much like the heroin and cocaine cartels–its ultimate consumers are the losers. But unlike the drug cartels, its consumers have no choice about whether they want what the seller is buying. They have to pay and take it anyway. Non-consumption is not an option. It isn’t allowed. Laws and regulations breed like maggots on road kill. There is no way anyone could ever hope to keep abreast of all the “rules” that are constantly being generated, but the guiding principle is: “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” When you learn the rules they change the game. Rent seeking behavior has jumped to a new and higher quantum level, not just quantitatively different but qualitatively different as well.

That's too generous. Usually road kill isn't tortured to death.

No Hands Clapping

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Robert Reich has been widely quoted in the news and blogs lately, citing a 2007 speech he delivered at UC Berkeley in which he is supposed to have said of health care reform that: Younger people should pay more Healthier people should pay more Older people should just die- they’re “too expensive” There should be “less innovation” in medical technology You should not expect to live longer than your parents. A minimum wage doesn’t help as much as an earned income tax credit. Helping people at the bottom earn more is going to cost higher income people more money. Medicare will bankrupt the nation unless something is done and will impoverish the youth. The best way to ameliorate global poverty is to do away with farm subsidies. The student audience, which at first clapped enthusiastically as Reich started to tell his unspeakable “truths”  stopped clapping by the end.

Just Because

clipped from ace.mu.nu As the Cuban government struggles through a deep recession, its leaders have begun picking away at socialism in order to save it. But experts say the latest buzz by the Cuban government is simply another desperate fix to stem the slide of a failed economy that buckled long ago. Even one of Havana's leading economists recently said Cuba's economy needed to be turned upside down -- "feet up." So taxi drivers got private licenses, farmers now have their own plots of land and government workers have to pack their own lunches. "I think what they are trying to do is prepare the people for a hard landing," said Cuba expert Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado of the University of Nebraska. "The government is really saying in so many words: We've got limited resources and can only do so much. I think they are stuck." But it should probably work this time in America, because, well, just because.

Loyalty

clipped from radioequalizer.blogspot.com Thanks to the Washington Post's Roman Oben, we now have complete clarity on the new rules for potential NFL team owners: Obama critics need not apply. In a candid moment during today's Al Sharpton radio show (probably not intended for the rest of us to hear), Oben admitted that Rush's political views regarding Obama were key to the opposition that appears to have derailed his bid to purchase the St Louis Rams. Welcome to America circa 2009, where loyalty to the ruling class determines private ownership of assets. Sound more than a bit like Chavez's Venezuela?

Read My Lips: 23%

clipped from taxprof.typepad.com Following up on last week's post (80% Marginal Tax Rates After Health Care Reform), there is an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal by former Director of the Congressional Budget Office Douglas Holtz-Eakin, The Baucus Bill Is a Tax Bill; Middle-Class Families Would Get Hit With a Double-Digit Increase in Their Marginal Tax Rate: Most astounding of all is what this Congress is willing to do to struggling middle-class families. The bill would impose nearly $400 billion in new taxes and fees. Nearly 90% of that burden will be shouldered by those making $200,000 or less. It might not appear that way at first, because the dollars are collected via a 40% tax on sales by insurers of "Cadillac" policies, fees on health insurers, drug companies and device manufacturers, and an assortment of odds and ends. But the economics are clear. In other words, earning another $12,000 raises their bill by $2,800—a marginal tax rate of 23%.

The Rich Jack-sses

clipped from www.usatoday.com Democratic members of the House of Representatives now represent most of the nation's wealthiest people, a sharp turnaround from the long-standing dominance that Republicans have held over affluent districts. A USA TODAY analysis of new Census data found that Democrats represent a far different constituency today than they did in 2005, when they were the minority in the House, or in 1990, when they were the majority. The Democratic-controlled House is now an unusual combination of the richest and poorest districts, the best and least educated, and the best and the worst insured. The analysis found that Democrats have attracted educated, affluent whites who had tended previously to vote Republican. Democrats now represent 57% of the 4.8 million households that had incomes of $200,000 or more in 2008. In 2005, Republicans represented 55% of those affluent households.

O-vercharged

clipped from ace.mu.nu I hope that big red reset/overcharge button wasn't connected to anything. In an interview published today in Izvestia, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Kremlin’s security council, said the new doctrine offers “different options to allow the use of nuclear weapons, depending on a certain situation and intentions of a would-be enemy. In critical national security situations, one should also not exclude a preventive nuclear strike against the aggressor.” What’s more, Patrushev said, Russia is revising the rules for the employment of nukes to repel conventionally armed attackers, “not only in large-scale, but also in a regional and even a local war.” Funny but I don't remember the Bush/Cheney Evil Twins threatening to preemptively nuke someone. Yet they were the dangers to the world and the Russians are the ones we need to reengage with in a kinder and gentler way. So, we throw eastern Europe under the bus by scrapping missile defense and we get no help on Iran.

Pork And Progress

clipped from pajamasmedia.com It has always been assumed that “the gap” would be filled by Russian Soyuz flights, as it was during the previous “gap” created when the Shuttle was shut down for almost three years after the loss of Columbia. But there was always a bug in that ointment, called the Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA). It is a U.S. law that prohibits purchases from countries that aid those countries for which it is named in their efforts to develop missiles and nuclear weapons. By the letter of the law, Russia has always been in violation of it, realistically, but it has always maintained sufficient plausible deniability to allow Congress to grant it waivers so that NASA could continue to get Russian support for ISS, which has been difficult to maintain without it, even with the Shuttle operating. the logjam between pork and progress that has long stood in the way of NASA support of the commercial space industry will finally have to break.

Huh?

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com Moore declares capitalism evil, but he's never clear about what "capitalism" means. Considering how much time he spends documenting the cozy relationship between business and government, I thought he might mean "state capitalism." But then he uses the term "free market" as a synonym for what he doesn't like. What does the free market have to do with businesses manipulating government and strong-arming Congress for bailouts? Moore properly condemns both. What does he want instead of "capitalism"? He's coy about that. Claiming that the public became increasingly curious about socialism once Obama was accused of favoring it, he goes to the only self-described socialist in Congress, Sen. Bernie Sanders, to ask for a definition. Socialism, Sanders tells Moore, means "the government represents the middle class and working class, not the wealth." Huh? That's socialism? It's not government ownership of the means of production and the abolition of private property and free exchange?

Not Dead Yet

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emOluments

clipped from www.washingtonexaminer.com In The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, Robert Delahunty makes the point that it wasn't merely the cash or a title of nobility that had the Framers worried: "The delegates at the Constitutional Convention specifically designed the clause as an antidote to potentially corrupting foreign practices of a kind that the Framers had observed during the period of the Confederation. ... Wary, however, of the possibility that such gestures might unduly influence American officials in their dealings with foreign states, the Framers institutionalized the practice of requiring the consent of Congress before one could accept "any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from ... [a] foreign State." By coincidence, Federalist Paper No. 22 uses Sweden as an example of the ability of foreign powers to meddle in domestic affairs.

Preposterously Porky Pelosi

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Did I Forget To Mention Rubes?

clipped from pajamasmedia.com UH OH: Dollar Reaches Breaking Point as Banks Shift Reserves. “Central banks flush with record reserves are increasingly snubbing dollars in favor of euros and yen, further pressuring the greenback after its biggest two- quarter rout in almost two decades.” Meanwhile, Charles Austin writes, “Just asking. But has anybody checked George Soros’ trading activity recently as the dollar started its sharp decline? He does have more practical experience in bringing down a country’s currency than anyone else I can name.”

Rubes (Part 94,493)

clipped from pajamasmedia.com GOLD HITS another record high. Related: Oil up above $74 in Europe as dollar weakens. UPDATE: Still more: Obama Dollar Retreats Most Against Commodities in Wealth Shift. “President Barack Obama’s effort to lead the world economic recovery by spending the U.S. out of its recession is undermining the dollar, triggering record commodities rallies as investors scour the globe for hard assets.” ANOTHER UPDATE: Indeed: Honeywell Chief Executive David Cote, a Republican who supported Mr. Obama in the election, says he was taken aback by the president’s rhetoric on the tax issue. “You can’t love jobs and hate those who create them,” he says. Another rube catches on . . . .

Bum Rush

clipped from pajamasmedia.com BILL WHITTLE: THROW THE BUMS OUT. “We already pay farmers not to farm. Why can’t we pay legislators not to legislate?”

Idiots On Stilts

clipped from pajamasmedia.com WHY PEOPLE ARE BAILING OUT OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN INCREASING NUMBERS. “Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.” The excuses offered for this piece of idiocy are even more damning than the idiocy itself.

Tricky Dick II

clipped from pajamasmedia.com PRESIDENT OBAMA’S FAVORITE WORDS: “Let me be clear.” (Via Blithe Spirit). UPDATE: Reader Peggy Heath writes: I’m in my mid-fifties, and when I hear Obama say either, “Make no mistake” or “Let me be clear”, my memory inserts the word “perfectly” and I’m listening to Tricky Dick again. I haven’t heard anyone else remark upon it, though. Indeed.

At Least He Can Count On Pelosi

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Gain

clipped from www.jpost.com Similarly, Russia's strategic and tactical interests cannot be ignored. Russia is probably unhappy with nuclear weapons being positioned so close to its own territory, yet seems sure that these weapons won't pose a threat to its sovereignty. This is because Russia stands to benefit greatly from Iran's opposition vis-a-vis the United States and the United Nations Security Council, for two reasons: First, Iran is primarily a threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. This will increase regional tensions and strengthen Russia's position there. Good relations with Iran could position Russia as a mediator between these countries and the Islamic republic. For example, the recent cancellation of the deal to sell Iran anti-aircraft complexes was used to leverage Russia-Israel relations. Finally, Russia and Iran are both significant suppliers of oil to the world market. Every increase of political tension in the region influences oil prices, from which Russia can only gain.

Net Bankruptcy

clipped from online.wsj.com WASHINGTON -- Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is proposing that the agency apply tougher open-Internet rules broadly, raising concerns of cable and phone companies and some lawmakers that the government could try to control efforts to offer products such as digital cable or premium business services. Mr. Genachowski's proposal suggests everything in the Internet pipe is covered by rules prohibiting discrimination against any legal Internet traffic, known as net neutrality, unless the agency says otherwise, according to FCC officials familiar with a draft circulating in the agency. In a Sept. 21 speech announcing his proposal, Mr. Genachowski said that managed services may offer benefits "in limited circumstances." "I believe such services can supplement -- but must not supplant -- free and open-Internet access, and that we must ensure that ample bandwidth exists for all Internet users and innovators," he said.

Unless They're Not

clipped from ace.mu.nu To make sure that Republicans were damned if they do, damned if they don't, our civil libertarians and First Amendment fans in the Democratic Party made sure they drafted the provisions as odiously and as unconstitutionally as humanly possible. First, the committee -- controlled by majority Democrats, of course -- inserted the hate crimes measure into the House bill, where it had not been before. Then lawmakers made some crucial changes to Brownback's amendment. Where Brownback had insisted, and the full Senate had agreed, that the bill could not burden the exercise of First Amendment rights, the conference changed the wording to read that the bill could not burden the exercise of First Amendment rights "unless the government demonstrates ... a compelling governmental interest" to do otherwise. That means your First Amendment rights are protected -- unless they're not.

Stark Raving Watermelon Nuts

clipped from ace.mu.nu All. Including, I guess, human respiration, and the respiration of farm animals too. Europe, of course, gets to wait until 2025-2030. China gets to 2035. The IPCC says that rich industrial countries must cut emissions 25 to 40 percent by 2020 (from 1990 levels) if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. By contrast, the WBGU study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020—i.e., quit carbon entirely within ten years. Germany, Italy and other industrial nations must do the same by 2025 to 2030. China only has until 2035, and the world as a whole must be carbon-free by 2050. The study adds that big polluters can delay their day of reckoning by "buying" emissions rights from developing countries, a step the study estimates would extend some countries' deadlines by a decade or so.

Comatose

clipped from pajamasmedia.com This story has been floating around the net for the past day or so, but this report comes from a person who is in a position to know such things.  As I know very well (having been gulled into wrongly announcing Khamenei’s death a while back), it is easy to be misled, and Khamenei has had previous medical emergencies in the past, and recovered, but the source is excellent. Nonetheless, it’s always smart to apply the Reagan Caution:  Trust, but verify.  I’m doing my best. Here is what he/she says: Yesterday afternoon at 2.15PM local time, Khamenei collapsed and was taken to his special clinic. Nobody – except his son and the doctors – has since been allowed to get near him. His official, but secret, status is: “in the hands of the gods”. 8. johnt: Why worry, we have an entire White House and related party that’s comatose and so far we’re surviving.

Destruction

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com It is the interest on the national debt that makes our future unstable. The exploding size of that burden suggests that, short of devaluing the dollar and taking a large bite out of the middle class through inflation and taxation, there is no way to ever pay down that bill. The revenue estimate included $904 billion from individual income taxes. This means the cost of interest on the debt represented more than 40 cents of every dollar that came in from individual income taxes. ... During Jimmy Carter's years in the White House, Treasury yields reached 15%. The 2009 average interest rate on the debt was only 3.2%. With our mounting national debt and budget deficits, it is reasonable to assume that in the near future interest rates on new and refinanced debt could double or triple. In stark but simple terms, unless Americans are made aware of this financial crisis and demand accountability, the very fabric of our society will be destroyed.

Ole And Sven Execute M.Z.

clipped from online.wsj.com Suppose this year's Nobel Peace Prize had gone to the scores of Iranians now on trial for having protested the fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last June. For the three defendants who were sentenced to death over the weekend, a Nobel might have made all the difference in the nick of time. At a minimum, it could have validated their struggle. Our friends in Oslo had a different idea, which means that the fate of the three defendants—known officially by their initials M.Z., A.P. and N.A.—are at the mercy of Iran's appellate and supreme courts. It's a slender hope in a country that is the leading executioner of juveniles, and whose leaders have only become more truculent toward dissenters since the election.

O War And Peace

clipped from pajamasmedia.com HEH: “He gets the Nobel Peace Prize one week, the next week he’s declaring war on Fox News and gay bloggers.”

Scream Now: Accomplices To Evil

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Every time I watch one of these, I am reminded again of Martin Luther King Jr.’s great line, that when it is all over, we will remember the silence of our friends more than the actions of our enemies.  And so I marvel at the leaders of the West, who with rare exceptions remain silent, and who have become accomplices to evil. Which is why I wrote Accomplice to Evil, now in the bookstores that will admit to having it…

Scream Now

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Stupidity

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Today's big news story is the release of a report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers on the impact the Senate Finance Committee's health care "reform" bill will have on health insurance premiums. PWC concluded that the cost of health insurance for the average family will rise by $4,000 by 2019, as compared with doing nothing: Now, think about it: if you know that you don't have to buy health insurance when you are young and healthy, but if you should get sick, or just get older, you can apply for health insurance at any time and it will be illegal for the insurance company to turn you down, what would you do? It is as though you could wait until you die, and then your heirs can buy life insurance on you. This isn't reform, it is stupidity.

Good grief.

Throw all these bums out.

Now.

Into prison.

Taboo

clipped from atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com An exhibition in Berlin that through light on the Muslim/Nazi corroboration during the holocaust was cancelled for fear of Islam. The publically funded mulitcultural center in Berlin, "Werkstatt der Kulturen," is located in a heavily Turkish and Arab neighborhood. Karl Rössel, the German journalist responsible for  the exhibition, "The Third World in the Second World War" ,  wonders why the people who so one-sidedly regard Israel as the region's main problem never consider how the Mideast conflict would have developed had it not been influenced by fascists, anti-Semites and people who had just returned from their Nazi exile. I can assure Mr. Rössel it would have turned out exactly the same. read the Quran. read Dr. Andrew Bostom's The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.. Muslims were/are not inspired Hitler and the Nazis. Hitler and the Nazis were inspired by Islam. I have written on this very thing extensively (here).

A Viable Candidate

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Rising Fast

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk America is not going to bleed its wealth importing fuel. Russia's grip on Europe's gas will weaken. Improvident Britain may avoid paralysing blackouts by mid-decade after all. The World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires last week was one of those events that shatter assumptions. Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically, altering the global balance of energy faster than almost anybody expected. Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, said proven natural gas reserves around the world have risen to 1.2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent, enough for 60 years' supply – and rising fast. "There has been a revolution in the gas fields of North America. Reserve estimates are rising sharply as technology unlocks unconventional resources," he said. This is almost unknown to the public, despite the efforts of Nick Grealy at "No Hot Air" who has been arguing for some time that Britain's shale reserves could replace declining North Sea output.

Coming Soon To A Country You Live In

clipped from www.bloomberg.com Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Argentina’s Senate approved a government-backed bill that puts new limits on television and radio ownership and will probably force Grupo Clarin SA, the country’s biggest media company, to sell off assets. The Senate handed President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner a victory, passing 44-24 a law she said will “democratize” the airwaves. After a session lasting almost 20 hours, senators approved the 164 articles of the bill without change. The central provision of the law limits ownership of cable and broadcast operations in a single market. In pushing the bill, Fernandez said Clarin holds 73 percent of Argentina’s radio, television and cable licenses. Critics of the bill, such as Senator Luis Petcoff Naidenoff of the Radical Civic Union party, said its aim was in fact to “silence voices” of dissent after Fernandez and her husband, former President Nestor Kirchner, began accusing Clarin of bias in covering their policies.

COTD: WAH

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Be sure to track down the comments by fellow Harvard Law Review students who knew Obama did nothing but claimed he was "working at home" and that he would only show up from time to time with the attitude that his mere presence was intended to confer benediction on his position as President. The best line was he liked being President of the HLR rather than doing anything as President of the HLR. How does that reality compare to his/Ayers version of this HLR position that again Obama never earned or produced any substance or merit as a result of this putative honor?

Even WaPo Is Skeptical Of More Stimulus

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com AT 9.8 PERCENT, the unemployment rate is higher than it has been since it hit 10.1 percent in June 1983. Since the recession began 21 months ago, the economy has shed nearly 7 million jobs. Whole industries -- cars, housing, finance -- have been devastated and may never recover fully. Nevertheless, White House economists reported in September that "employment is estimated to be between 600,000 and 1.1 million higher than it would otherwise have been" It does not necessarily follow, however, that the economy needs more stimulus now. Government has managed to blunt the recession, but at a cost -- a higher national debt burden, which future Americans must pay off by working harder and saving more than they otherwise would have. The real question is whether the benefits of pumping even more government fuel into America's engine outweigh the risks. We see several reasons to doubt it. The first is the sheer immensity of stimulus policies already in place.

It's short so RTWT -- and wrong in places of course. But maybe the useful idiots are in danger of slipping out of their coma for a minute or two. At least this morning they can remember that history didn't start yesterday.