Something Doesn’t Make Sense Here

 

Have a look at this photo of Tiger Woods’ car, after his crash:

 

Photo courtesy of TMZ.com, via the Washington Post.

Tiger’s wife, Elin, supposedly bashed out the rear window with a golf club so that she could get him out.  OK, why?  Look at the driver’s side door.  No damage.  Why wouldn’t she simply open the door and pull him out?  Because she was whalin’ away on the car, that’s why!  And the story that they have told is an attempt to explain how the back window got shattered when not even the windshield in this frontal impact was damaged.  And check out the gangster dubs being sported by the billionaire.  Sorry Tiger, the photographic evidence does not support the weak story.

Unprecedentedness

Hey, if you’re going to do something that hasn’t been done before, you might as well raise the bar really high; like, doubling the previous record.  This would be the equivalent of Usain Bolt running the 100 meter race in 4.79 seconds.  President Obama has doubled the budget that even George W dumped on us.  He’s done this in just eight and a half months in office.  He’s already spent one-fifth of the total that Bill Clinton spent in his entire eight years in office.

To be fair, spending comes from Congress, though they are often acting on a President’s demands.  One of the most dangerous times for our freedom and financial safety comes when we have stupidly managed to give one party control of Congress and the White House.  We did this with W and have done it again with O and the result is ruinous.  An economy in collapse, trust in government shattered, a country ideologically split.  I told everybody I could back during the election, when it became clear that Obama would win to go ahead and vote for him but to vote Republican for Congressional and Senate seats in order to emplace a forceful opposition to Obama.  (This was pre-blog, so not on the record anywhere; you’ll just have to take my word for it.)

So now we have a leftist President handing off the heavy lifting to the even more leftist Nancy Pelosi and the dweebish Harry Reid.  Obama sets the course and Pelosi and Reid push the spending through to advance their agenda and they seem to have little to no understanding of how the real world works out here.  They are finally making noises about juicing job creation but amazingly, they think that they can do that by raising taxes and heaping the health care entitlement onto the backs of business.  If the health care bill passes, we will get to see another spike in the unemployment rate and it will be permanent this time as businesses either leave the US or retrench in such a way as to function on lower revenues and with less staff.

Callous Children.

This Makes My Teeth Hurt

Well, he is the first, uh, the most unprecedented pop culture President ever:

ABC announces Oprah-Obama Christmas special

He can’t stand it, he has to be on a TV screen somewhere all the time, telling us how wonderful and unprecedented he is.  ABC has guaranteed that roughly half the people in the country now have zero interest in watching ABC that night.

Caption Contest

White House photo from here.

“I’m so sorry about what I did to your future!”

“If I could reach that flower vase, I would crack you a good one!”

The Pelosi/Reid Deception

 

The deception is that their proposed health care plan will begin collecting taxes in 2010 but not provide any benefits until 2014, despite the urgent pleas that we have to do something right now because Americans are hurting!  This will go unnoticed by the vast majority of American people; all they will understand is that the bill passed and now they don’t have to hear any more about it.  The depth of the deception is made clear by this chart that I stumbled across here (click to embiggen):

 

 

The timing of the increases is no accident.  There is no increase at all in 2010, during the Congressional midterm elections.  There is no significant increase in 2012, when Obama stands for reelection.  There is a huge acceleration in 2014, half way into Obama’s 2nd term (if there is one) but things really get cranked up in 2016 as Obama enters the home stretch of his final term in office.  Presumably, he will be leaving a mess for his successor to clean up, since this whole plan and its ridiculous cost virtually assures a stagnant economy and job market for the foreseeable future.

I really don’t know what they are thinking.  I wish just one of the three, Pelosi, Reid or Obama, had ever met a payroll so that they could understand what they are doing to us.  For a good example of what these government imposed higher costs do to a small business (hell, to any business), read this article that the AP ran yesterday.  This is how Atlas shrugs:

 

• Chuck Ferrar, who owns a liquor store in Annapolis, Md., expects to pay $9,000 in unemployment taxes next year, up from $3,000 this year. Health care costs for his employees will rise by $8,000, or 17.5 percent. "When you start adding this up, it turns into real money," he said. "If I lose an employee through attrition, I will not replace him. You can't afford to do it."

• Sam Schlosser, owner of Plymouth Foundry Inc. in Plymouth, Ind., said his unemployment tax bill could double next year. Revenue at the family-owned company, which makes iron castings for machine parts, has fallen about 50 percent, he said. In case of higher taxes, his company may have to consider layoffs, he said.

• Marjorie Feldman-Wood, president of Al's Beverages in East Windsor, Conn., which makes soda fountain syrup, said higher taxes would make pay raises less likely. Connecticut is borrowing from the federal government, and employers fear the state will have to raise taxes soon to repay the loan. "There's only so much money at the end of the day," she said.

Callous children.

Sarah Palin

 

I do not understand the Sarah Palin phenomenon at all.  Look at this video taken in Roanoke, VA:

 

 

That level of devotion is eerily…..Obama-like.  I am generally conservative but I don’t see any real substance to Palin, any more than I see any substance to Obama.  They are both lightweights, lacking in any meaningful training or experience that would justify the level of fervor they seem to inspire.

Obama got elected by virtue of being the most popular professor on campus and being able to make a good speech, as long as the teleprompter is plugged in and all filled up with the words.  As he is currently showing, to our peril, he has little real-world experience that he can look to for guidance and is left to working from the wish lists that were put together in the faculty lounge.

It would be easy to dismiss Palin’s popularity as being a result of her hawtness, except that most of the people in that video above are women.  To them, she seems to be Everywoman, the blank slate to which they can ascribe their hopes.  The next Oprah.  She inspires an equally strong repulsion among those on the other side of the electorate, the Left, who respond to her with a level of hatred that is just absolutely unhinged and makes no sense, since she is currently a private citizen and can have zero affect on policy.

The thought of Palin at the top of the Republican ticket in the 2012 presidential election and running against Obama just makes me want to pour bleach into my eyes.  I like her fine, but she’s no more ready for that office than Obama was when he ran.  We are devolving down into dueling cults of personality and that is not good.

I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I kind of miss Bill Clinton right about now.  At least he brought an energy to the office and still believed in American exceptionalism.  He started off poorly, too, but with the advent of the Republican Congressional majority in 1994, he learned how to be President.  It took the Gingrich revolution to push Clinton to the center; we can only hope that the same thing happens to Obama.

As the Worm Turns….

 

Drip, drip, drip—like Chinese water torture for Obama, the media is beginning to doubt him.  First the serious, here at Politico.

 

And then the funny:

 

 

And now the profane (if it hasn’t been pulled down yet):

 

The Press, and Maybe the Left, Are Starting to Have Their Doubts

 

Op-ed piece at Politico here, my comments there are reprinted below.

This is what denial looks like, in print:

"Certain things are not his fault: the unprecedented truculence of the Republican Party, scared silly by right-wing ranters on cable television; the unholy economic and foreign-policy mess that he inherited; the fact that he never had, as so many liberal commentators asserted, the 60 (or 58 or 59) Senate votes that would enable him to get what he wanted from the Congress. It’s not his fault that unemployment rates remain stubbornly high following a traumatic recession."

The Republican truculence is due to the offering by the President of plans and programs that are so antithetical to basic common sense as to make normal people incredulous. Economy crashing? Let's have a stimulus program that in reality is standard political patronage for getting him elected. Jobs slow to recover? Let's pass a health care bill that heaps even more cost to hire someone onto businesses. Gotta make a decision on a war where Americans are fighting and dying? Do it in March and then dither about it for months. GM dying? Let's step in and abrogate centuries of bankruptcy law by pushing secured creditors to the back of the line. Make a public statement that he is open to any good ideas then meet with the opposition and tell them to pound sand because, "I won".  His trip to Copenhagen to try to secure the Olympics for Chicago is one of the dumbest, most openly provincial acts I've ever seen a President undertake. He had absolutely nothing to gain by doing that and much to lose.

And yes, it is his fault that unemployment rates remain so high. He has taken a minimalist, philosophical approach to a real world problem. We needed liquidity in the financial markets and his solution was to borrow more money and redistribute it to large banks. A better solution would have been to offer an immediate tax amnesty for companies and individuals that hold money overseas to avoid our confiscatory tax rates, estimated to be as much as $13 trillion. Offer amnesty and that money comes home and is rapidly injected into the economy. (This idea was proposed by a Texas congressman, whose name escapes me. It was ignored because he is a Republican and because it was a good idea.) Instead, he dithers, mulling over various ways to seize or tax any few dollars that are laying around. He seems to thing that leading consists of making a speech and then handing the details over to Congress to work out, essentially throwing a giant pile of money into a pack of ravening hobos to fight over.

So, Ms. Drew, go back to the Washington salons and dinner parties and tell the people there that they helped to elect the most popular professor on campus, a brittle personality with much hubris and little accomplishment, not a man who was even remotely qualified to be President of the United States.

It’s Good to be the King

 

First, a nobel peace prize* for no good reason, then this.  Chuck Norris would kick his bony ass.

“Kiy-um, er, uh-AAA!”

*never to be capitalized here

At the Point of a Gun

 

This is an example of how oppressive government can be.  Rather than correct whatever conditions are present here in the U.S. that caused people to move money offshore, the government chose instead to take a foreign-based bank to court and essentially strong-armed them into surrendering their centuries old business model that relied on discretion and privacy.

The U.S. has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world and one of the highest personal tax rates and headed markedly higher soon.  In fact, U.S. tax rates are confiscatory, designed to take money from the politically disfavored and redistribute it to the politically favored.  It is no wonder that companies and individuals are hiding assets; we have created this ravenous monster in Washington that takes any spare change that is laying around and devours it.  Run afoul of it and face prison so that Nancy Pelosi can have enough money on hand to fund whatever nonsense strikes her fancy.

“Cyborg Sphincter”

 

No, there really is such a thing now, apparently.  “Cyborg Sphincter” would be a good name for a band.  It has a remote control!  Remote controlled bomb bay doors! 

“I Thought I Was the Emperor Now?”

 

Obama is learning slowly, painfully, that his mere utterance of words are not sufficient when you actually have to do the work of governing.  Gitmo, he now admits, will not be closed by the January 2010 deadline he had set for closure.  Closing Gitmo, he says, is “…just technically hard.”  That was kind of the idea, wasn’t it?  To put those animals into a type of retention from which they could not easily escape. Neither will he commit to a date by which it will be closed and then tosses the ball to Congress: 

"We are on a path and a process where I would anticipate that Guantanamo will be closed next year," he said. "I'm not going to set an exact date because a lot of this is also going to depend on cooperation from Congress."

That passage is full of indecision and gobbledygook and the passing of the buck.  First, let me rewrite it without the indecision and gobbledygook:  “We will be closing Guantanamo next year.”  I am not in favor of closing Gitmo, but I am in favor of a President, even one I do not care for, being decisive and acting like a leader rather than an organizer.  He has also shown a troubling tendency to simply toss all the tough actions to Congress for them to wrestle over.  He tossed the bailouts to them, he tossed healthcare to them and since Gitmo is not magically closing as he has decreed, he is now ready to toss that to them, too.

Obama in China

Our President goes to China and suddenly he gets that cost cuttin’ fevah!  After a little time with those true capitalists in China, he has just figured out that too much debt is bad for the economy.  Evidently, the President considers this to be an acceptable amount of debt:

 

 

I read a great quote somewhere, should have saved a link, that Obama’s trip to China was like a homeowner with a very large mortgage taking a plate of cookies by the bank that holds the mortgage.

Someday, I Want to be This Good at This Blogging Thing… (UPDATED)

 

…This piece, by DirectorBlue (with whom I am not familiar) at HotAir, is a great piece of bloggatation.

The Secret Scrapbook of Barack Obama. 

 

Kissing your money goodbye

UPDATE: or maybe I should say, BACKDATE.  Apparently, the scrapbook has been around since last year’s election.  First time I’ve seen it, though and there is much to add to it, now.

 

Saturday Morning Amazingness

Wasn’t planning this, but after seeing that soccer goal, found this.  Our bodies are amazing machines when we treat them right.  I can promise you that if parkour had been around when I was growing up, I would have been doing it.  Not this well, but no doubt about it, I’d have been bouncing off walls near you. 

 

Amazing trick at the 1:18 mark, and this guy can get in a car reeeaalllyyy fast.

Can We Trust the Saudis?

 

They claim this was a 2 second goal, but I don’t buy it.  Maybe 3.

America, uh, Just Watch This

Can’t believe that I haven’t seen this before now.  Awesome, and NSFW:

We Are Sucking Hind Teat to the Boomers Once Again

Health care reform, in keeping with politicians propensity to pick favored constituencies at the expense of others, is purely a pander to the Baby Boomers.  We have a giant glob, 77 million of them, of Boomers that are currently retiring and just in time comes His Wonderfulness to offer to them health care for the rest of their days.

Technically, I am a boomer.  The Baby Boom ran from about 1949 to 1964 and I was born towards the end of that time frame, but the biggest chunk of them were born and came of age in the early to mid-60’s when I was just a kid.  Realistically, I have spent my whole life picking up the leavings of the goddamn Boomers.  They hold the best jobs, they will get the full measure of their Social Security benefits, they sucked up all the market capital then destroyed several trillion dollars’ worth of it and now they are poised to help themselves to 20 years’ more time of perpetuating their scorched earth lifestyles.  They will roar through the system, taking everything with them and leaving a mess in their wake.  And if you don’t believe that, take a look at the current value of your home.  If you are under the age of 50, think about whether or not you will see your Social Security benefits sliced before you retire, in favor of maintaining benefits for those who are about to retire or have already retired.  Think about the current value of your 401(k)’s and how long it will take to recover, if ever.  Think about working until the day you die.

So, we must fight the health care proposal and cap and trade and bailouts and demand the shrinking of the federal government.  If I’m tilting at windmills here, so be it.  But if you are under the age of 50, you better think about storming the gates of Congress.

A Modest Proposal

Here is a proposal, to send a message to the bastards.  Here is a link to IRS form W4.  For January of 2010, under-withhold your taxes.  In fact, fill out the form so that you have exactly zero taxes withheld for the month of January.  You can do this by claiming 10 or 12 dependents and little, if anything will be withheld.  Then, in February, change your withholding again to your normal rate, plus the amount you would have normally withheld in January, spread over the remaining 11 months of the year.  Let’s send a message to the dirtbags up there that we have had enough.  The only thing they want out of the producers of this world is money; take it away.  It’s the only way we will ever get their attention.  Don’t get your asses arrested; pay your taxes, but let’s put a little hitch in the cash flow up there.  Atlas needs to shrug a little.

Spread the word; if you don’t, who will?

GM Offers Discounts to Members of the National Community Action Foundation—You Know, Community Organizers

Government at work, picking and choosing its favored constituencies.  The left sees nothing wrong with this, the choosing of what they see as preferred parties to receive benefits.  Such actions are evident in everything that government does, particularly at the federal level and inevitably leads to market failures.

You know, like what happened with Fannie Mae and the whole loaning-money-to-unworthy-borrowers-thereby-causing-the-near-total-collapse-of-the-world-economy thing.

One of two things has happened here; either this incentive came down to GM from their New Boss, pictured here in his customary looking-down-his-nose pose:

Or, GM took it upon themselves to attempt to curry favor with The One.  Supplication to the gods, as it were.  Either way, it is politics-driven, not market driven and that is a problem.

More such shenanigans reported here by NRO.  Any chance that GM had to survive was doomed the minute it took government money.  They were probably going to go bankrupt soon anyway, now they will die the death of a thousand cuts, inflicted by politicians as they slice it up for their own ends.

Just Amazing

Hats off again to Captain Sullenberger, his crew and all involved with the ditching in the Hudson.  Here is a computer-animated reconstruction of the landing (not a crash, a landing!):

 

 

Be sure to embiggen it to full screen.  Another angle here:

 

Peggy Noonan Was Right

 

Been sick for the last few days, not much up to anything at all.  Even though I’ve been sick, I still don’t want Obama’s version of health care.

Politico has a column up today, link here, about the still-unknown cost of the bill.  Here is my post there on the story:

“Just a bunch of idiots up there in the White House.  They want to add "billions in new taxes...immediately on insurers, device manufacturers, and drug makers", eliminate pre-existing conditions and remove the lifetime cap on coverage and lower costs at the same time.  I really am beginning to think that our President cannot operate a calculator, let alone manage such a huge part of our economy.

He formulated all of these plans while ensconced squarely in his ivory tower where he could talk about such things ad nauseum with his fellow theoreticians, like a bunch of over-diploma'ed societal geeks building their own fantasy team of public programs.  Health care, cap and trade, "bending the cost curve", "spreading the wealth"; it's all just the mutterings of a man who hasn't got an original thought in his head, he is merely very good at parroting what he heard in the faculty lounge in Chicago.

Peggy Noonan was right, these are cruel children we have elected.

We are screwed and so are our grandchildren.”

OK, fine, I misquoted Noonan, she used the phrase “callous children” but the difference in meaning is slight.  They are not interested in our health, they are interested in consolidating power as the party that “gave” us health care and then daring any other party to take it away.  It would virtually assure their power for decades to come.  Until we go all the way broke, anyway. 

Obama and much of the leftists want us to be more like Europe as far as social programs and seriously, I am OK with that so long as everyone here understands that it means permanently higher unemployment rates, a drop off in business and scientific innovation, loss of vigor in our attitudes towards productivity and an increase in sitting around in sidewalk cafes wearing black, skinny-legged jeans and smoking thin, stinky cigarettes while bloviating about the ennui of modern life.

Here, by the way, is Obama’s default position on all of us; looking down his nose:

We really are hosed.

New World Record for Congress!

Newly-elected Congressman from New York's 23rd district, has surely set a record for screwing his constituents over.  He broke 4 campaign promises in his first hour in office.  Just stunning; these guys really don't think that they work for us.  (Link is a little iffy; their server is getting hammered right now since the story is referenced on Drudge.)

If memory serves, this was a special election with about a year left in the term, so the possibility exists that the Dems put this guy up solely to cast his vote in favor of the PelosiCare bill and, if it gets to a vote, cap and trade.

Cutting Health Care Costs With Global Warming

More in the ongoing debate at Freakonomics.  This post, about whether or not global warming belief is a religion, has prompted a mini-debate in the comments.  In the course of responding to another commenter, I Googled the phrase “unexpected benefits of global warming” and found an interesting academic paper.  My Freakonomics post is here:

“STOP THE PRESSES!

I have stumbled over the trump card for this debate. I Googled the phrase, “unexpected benefits of global warming” and this is the first link that came up: http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/health.html

And, in the second paragraph of the Section II, “Health Effects” was this line:

“Thus the gain in reduced health costs from a warming of 2.5deg.C would be on the order of $3.0 billion in 1971 dollars or $21.7 billion in 1994 dollars, adjusting for population growth and price changes (using the price index for medical care).”

Why, this paper from Stanford is just full of interesting tidbits:

“Other studies of the influence of climate change on human health have examined a rather narrow set of potential medical areas. The underlying research has generally referred to Lyme disease, malaria, dengue and yellow fevers, and encephalitis, none of which is a major health problem in the United States. The IPCC (1995, p. SPM-10) has asserted that the “geographical zone of potential malaria transmission in response to world temperature increases at the upper part of the IPCC-projected range (3-5deg.C by 2100) would increase from approximately 45% of the world population to approximately 60% by the latter half of the next century.” On the other hand, the WHO notes that until recent times, endemic malaria was widespread in Europe and parts of North American and that yellow fever occasionally caused epidemics in Portugal, Spain and the USA. Stringent control measures … and certain changes in life-style following economic progress, have led to the eradication of malaria and yellow fever in these areas. (WHO 1990, p. 21).

Concern about tropical and insect-spread diseases seems overblown. Inhabitants of Singapore, which lies almost on the equator, and of Hong Kong and Hawaii, which are also in the tropics, enjoy life spans as long as or longer than those of people living in Western Europe, Japan, and North America. Both Singapore and Hong Kong are free of malaria, but that mosquito-spread disease ravages nearby regions. Modern sanitation in advanced countries prevents the spread of many scourges found in hot climates. Such low tech and relatively cheap devices as window screens can slow the spread of insect vectors.”

I’ve only skimmed this and will look further into it over the weekend, but lemme ask something: What about that “scientific consensus”?

Attack at will.

— DaveyNC”

Can’t wait to see the responses that that provokes.

More on Republicare…

…from Hot Air, the CBO has now scored the Republican plan and it looks very reasonable and worth pursuing.

“Their plan, which relies on interstate competition, HSAs, and tort reform, would only cost $61 billion in the first ten years of the plan — or slightly less than 6% of what Democrats plan to spend to overhaul the entire system…”

Makes so much sense, using existing concepts instead of trying to create something new out of whole cloth.

Good Job, Mr. President!

Hey, when he does something right, I’m willing to say so!  Nice video here of a teachable moment with one of his daughters, reflecting that he and Michelle seem to be excellent parents (via Breitbart):

Kinda funny, though, that when he announces that he is going off teleprompter, there is nervous laughter from the crowd.

I Do Battle with the Global Warming Crowd

I’m a big fan of the Freakonomics blog at the New York Times.  The Steves, as they are known there, have really tweaked the noses of the environmentalists in their newest book, “SuperFreakonomics”, and the war has raged on their blog.  Today’s installment of the kerfuffle is here, and is about the supposed misrepresentation by the Steves of Ken Caldeira, one of the leading climate experts.  As you can see, the Steves did no such thing, at least not intentionally.  The whole flame war started with this post and continued here, here, here and here.  You will see comments from me throughout these posts and Nathan Myrhvold even quoted me directly in his response, here.  The Steves continue to tweak, with today’s posting, noted above and this one as well
Today’s article has a comment from a guy named Rob; here is his comment, followed by my response.  I thought some of the ideas in my response were worth posting here.
“Are all the new right-wing fans of Levitt and Dubner actually as happy with SuperFreakonomics as they sound? After all, this is a chapter that says flat out that global warming is real and humans caused it.
If the Steves’ venture outside of their area of expertise helps the debate turn into “global warming is real and we should do something about it” (the environmentalist position) versus “global warming is real and we should do nothing about it” (the SuperFreakonomics position), that’s at least an improvement.
— Rob”
“Rob@3: Speaking as a "right winger", global warming (or more specifically, climate change) is real. The book does not say that humans alone caused it and it for sure doesn't say that it is worth completely remaking the world's economy in order to stop it. The cost-benefit analysis doesn't work. The world is not going to end because of warming.
Al Gore and the like have sown fear that the planet's coastal areas will be inundated. According to the book, the seas have been rising now for 12,000 years. They've risen 425 feet in that time frame and most of that was in the first 1000 years. Most projections have the seas rising about 18 inches over the next 100 years. So, when the seas rise that .18 of an inch each year, at some point the people in Miami will walk out, see the ocean at their back door, and do something about it. They may build a seawall, they may move or they may dig a moat. And they will bear the cost for that and that is as it should be. But they're not gonna have to swim out of there.
My own personal theory is that Florida is just one giant sandbar anyway. If you look at the way that it is shaped, hurricanes come in from the Atlantic, hit the coast and carve out the coastline as they turn and move north. Over a few hundred thousand years, it is bound to erode the coastline and it has exactly zero to do with man's activities. The harm comes from man having built in that area. Take a look at this Google satellite image, link here.
See that underwater ridge offshore of the east coast of Florida? Follow it up the coast; it exactly follows the existing coastline. Do you think that once upon a time the Florida coast was a bit further out at sea? Now zoom out even further, so that you can see both the east and west coasts of Florida and you can see that what is left of Florida is far smaller than what must have existed billions of years ago. For that matter, the entire eastern coast of North America looks like it was bigger. What's going on in Florida is Mother Nature running her course, nothing more. Ocean currents and winds and storms are and have been eroding the coastline and won't stop or even slow down because we suddenly stop emitting carbon.
I love Google's satellite view.
-DaveyNC”

Republicans Health Plan Alternative

Haven’t had a chance to go through it, but if this article from Breitbart is correct, I like what is in the bill.  They should have offered this plan sooner and more publicly, maybe in the brief reply they had following President Obama’s prime time speech on health care.  (And has anybody noticed that the prime time speeches have dropped off significantly?)
Heh.

Click on image to enlarge

Here is What Healthcare Will Be Like Under ObamaPelosiReidCare

Via Slate:

Assembly line medicine, coming to a clinic near you!

Lobbying at Work Before Your Very Eyes!

This is how it looks when a lobbyist is successful.  There is a special little exemption carved out in a giant, onerous piece of legislation.  Speaker Pelosi, rather than reaching across the aisle and including some form of tort reform in the Health Care bill, took the opportunity instead to stick her hand out to the legal bar and ask for votes and money.

So much for honesty and transparency and considering other, helpful ideas in crafting the bill.

“Crafting” the bill’; now there is a misuse of a word if ever there was one.  It’s a common enough phrase, to “craft” a piece of legislation, as if the legislator is some sort of artisanal craft worker or wildly skilled artist, gifted in the ways of taking a dictionary and removing all the words that do not express the artist’s vision.  There’s no “craftwork” afoot here; merely naked political power, used to force the views of the few onto the many.  Throw ‘em all out and limit congressional sessions to three months of the year and send them home to their districts instead of having them all grouped together in that big ass high school known as Washington DC.

It’s in Their Nature…

…Democrats, that is.  Specifically, Hilary Clinton.  She doesn’t think the Pakistanis are taxing their people enough.  She seems to forget that most of them are probably subsistence farmers.  At least, the ones who aren’t dug in with an AK-47 and a pile of loaded clips easily at hand.

I’m starting to wonder when the Dems are going to simply propose to hire everybody in the country to be on the government payroll.  That way, they can pay us and tax everything we earn and then just hold on to the money.  Throw us a FEMA trailer and some government cheese to live on.  I hope the Pakistanis toss her the hell out. Oh, wait---they DID tell her to go pound sand.  And heaped a “sharp rebuke” or two on top of that.  I love when that happens.

Seriously, sending an overly bossy woman over to that part of the world who then takes it on herself to tell them what to do as far as taxation and their Israeli policies is just asking for a sharp rebuke. right in the ass.