National Debt Put Into Perspective

These are always enlightening. The U.S. Debt Ceiling visualized in $100 bills.

1 Billion dollars is 10 pallets of $100 bills.

4th Grade Teacher's Letter to Obama

Here's a little taste of the letter that 4th grade teacher, Ms. Kathlene Lyday, sent to the White House.

You are so self-righteously offended by the big bankers and the American automobile manufacturers yet do nothing about the real thieves in this situation, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Frank, Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelic, the Fannie Mae bonuses, and the Freddie Mac bonuses. What do you intend to do about them? Anything? I seriously doubt it.

What about the U.S. House members passing out $9.1 million in bonuses to their staff members on top of the $2.5 million in automatic pay raises that lawmakers gave themselves? I understand the average House aide got a 17% bonus. I took a 5% cut in my pay to save jobs with my employer. You haven’t said anything about that. Who authorized that? I surely didn’t!
Executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be receiving $210 million in bonuses over an eighteen-month period, that’s $45 million more than the AIG bonuses. In fact, Fannie and Freddie executives have already been awarded $51 million not a bad take. Who authorized that and why haven’t you expressed your outrage at this group who are largely responsible for the economic mess we have right now?

Jon Stewart Vs. Sebelius on Obamacare

Link, because the Blogger/YouTube interface sucks, and won't let me embed the particular video.

You probably know that Jon Stewart is a flaming leftist, and hosts a "fake news" show on Comedy Central called The Daily Show.  Kathleen Sebelius is the Health and Human Services Secretary.  Even Jon Stewart doesn't think it's fair that corporations get a year before fines (or taxes, take you pick) are imposed, but the individual mandate takes place immediately.  Jon even brings up that the "Affordable Care Act" is leading to full-time employees being cut back to less than 30 hours, so that employers don't have to pay for their healthcare.

Jon is effectively agreeing with Republicans!

He does however, want to go to "single-payer" healthcare.  That would be socialized healthcare.  Government-run healthcare, as they have in Canada, the U.K., and Cuba.

EDIT:  The individual mandate has been pushed back, so that it doesn't kick in until after the 2014 mid-term elections.

Feinstein - "First Amendment is a Special Privilege"

Here they go!  Trying to block those that aren't part of their leftist politburo.

Happy Dependence Day From Pelosi

No, that's not a typo.  I typed Dependence Day intentionally, and I mean it that way.

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says:

. . . soon we'll all be leaving for the 4th of July recess, next week, for when we celebrate Independence Day.  We'll also be observing health independence.  This week marks one year, since the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act.  It captures the spirit of our founders, they wrote in the Declaration of Independence.

'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," and the Affordable Care Act offers just that.  A healthier life, the liberty to pursue a person's happiness, to be free of constraint, to be job locked, because they are policy locked.  And so, if you want to be a cameraman, a writer, you want to be self-employed, you want to be assertiveness (sic), you want to change jobs, whatever it is that you want to do, you are free, you have the liberty to do.

So, we've had Social Security, Medicare, and now health independence, and that's something our members will take home to celebrate over this Independence Day. 

What!!!???? 

These things she's mentioned aren't about independence, they're about dependence.  Dependence on government for a retirement income.  Dependence on government for income for months, and months, and months if you are unemployed (don't try getting a job, or anything too extreme like that).  And now dependence on government for health care.

I'm pretty certain that The Founders never expected the day when the federal government would tax people for not buying something.  They would have never expected the government requiring that people with serious illnesses receive their health care at the same price as healthy people.  I don't think the founders would have provided themselves with no-cost top-notch health care, while the proletariat receive only minimal coverage, or what they can pay out-of-pocket for.

Pat yourself on the back a little more, Ms. Pelosi!

Things They WON'T Spend Taxpayer Money On [RANT]

I was listening to Alan Colmes on the radio on the way home.  He was poo pooing the millions of dollars that it would take to secure the border.

Leftists will spend:

• $2.6 million to teach Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly while working. We're borrowing money from China to help prostitutes, in China?
• $45 million to pay the full price of Nebraska's Medicaid coverage to get Senator Nelson's vote on Obamacare  (the Cornhusker Kickback).
• $300 more in Medicare money to Louisiana to buy a vote for Obamacare (Landrieu's Louisiana Purchase)
• Taxpayer dollars to pay for Georgetown Law students' birth control (Sandra Fluke).  If not, then it's a "War on Women."
• Billions of dollars to bailout General Motors.

They won't spend on:

• Enforcing immigration laws.
• Securing the border by putting up fences or walls.
• Prosecuting violent criminals who use firearms in crimes.
• Arresting and prosecuting prohibited persons who fail the background check when trying to buy a firearm.
• Teaching children gun safety.  This is paid for, by and large, by the NRA and individual parents.
• Anything involving gun violence beyond law enforcement.  These costs are to be paid for, specifically, by gun owners through fees and taxes.

I don't know why I subject myself to such garbage.  It only irritates me.

How To Convince a Socialist

You can view the video here also, or download it in mp3 audio format if you like.  You won't miss much listening without video.  He's really just standing there, the whole time, without any visual aids.

Okay, so I've been greatly troubled by the fact that I'm having difficulties talking about gun control with leftists.  I think their main argument is that the government needs to ban guns for the greater good.  I have tried using facts and logic to argue that gun control just doesn't work, but that really just doesn't work.  I believe that the universe may have delivered what I needed in the form of this lecture on video.

Perhaps instead, I appeal to the desire of the leftist for greater government control, and try to paint a picture where they are a victim of government control, for the greater good,

Far more people are killed and injured by car accidents, than with firearms.  Shouldn't the government have direct control over what you can drive, how many miles you can drive, how far from work you are allowed to live?  Can it mandate that you take a bus or a train because, statistically, they are safer modes of transportation, regardless of how much time you'll waste waiting for the train, or waiting for your shift after your train arrives where you are going?  Can the government decide that, for the greater good, it needs you to work in Kansas, and that your spouse is badly needed in Washington?  Can the government decide that the skills you have aren't right for a teaching job, and for the greater good, we need you to work in a factory that produces the wheels for train cars?  I don't want to be limited to what guns I own, or told that I can't own any.  Why shouldn't government be able to tell you where you can live, or what you do for a living, regardless of what you want?  Can you still be happy living under government control, where the greater good demands that you must make sacrifices?  Do you really not believe that humans, Americans, have free will and property rights, than government has more power over your life than you do, regardless of what you want?

There may be something to this. 

All I Want For Christmas Is. . .

(From the Three Percenters FaceBook page)

Great Post-Election Analysis

America Commits Suicide, by Alan Caruba

I HATE ELECTION DAY!!

How?  Again?  Seriously?  6 FRICKEN TRILLION DOLLARS IN 4 YEARS!!!

Romney Stuff? Trouble?

I saw a Romney bumper sticker on the way in to work today. I am pretty sure I have not seen any stickers or lawn signs up until that. Obama and Paul stuff, yes, but not Romney. I think we may be in trouble.

Health Care Reform = Redistribution of Income?

Oops!  After months and months of talking of bringing health care to the uninsured, helping those with "pre-existing conditions," and lowering the deficit (?, still don't get that one), Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont., Senate Finance Committee Chairman, by the way) has blabbed about how the "health care reform" law ". . . will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America."

I'd like to see how much money the good senator has socked away in savings accounts, stock and bonds, real estate, 401k, and other investments; for us to judge whether it's an unjust amount considering some of the poverty across the nation, and the national debt.  Fair's fair, right?

FoxNews article on the Baucus slip

John Lott (who's blog I got the story from) has linked a video of Howard Dean agreeing with Baucus.

Obama Exploits Another Loophole, Disses Republicans. . . Again

Link to Yahoo! News article

Obama, frustrated with having his appointments denied or stalled by Republican senators, made 15 recess appointments.  Normally his appointments would have to be approved by the Senate, but with the Senate out on recess, Obama's appointments will go through without approval.

The Republican's largest complaint is the appointment of Craig Becker, a lawyer that works for the Service Employee's International Union (SEIU)* and the AFL-CIO.

The president also appointed 3 new members to the Equal Opportunities Employment Commission.  Are we really still doing that shit!?!


"I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government," says Obama.  I'm tempted to repeat an idiom about pots and kettles, but will refrain because I'm sure someone misuse it as proof of racism, rather than my trying to point out hypocrisy.


* - Maybe you've seen them helping the man posing as a pimp, work out ways to get tax credits on YouTube.

There's Patrick Henry... And Then There's Obama

Just heard something interesting.  The famous quote from Patrick Henry, the "Give me liberty, or give me death!" one, was said on the same date that Obama signed the "health care reform" bill into law.

That's kind of ironic.

Wikipedia entry - "Give me Liberty, or give me death!"

Tom Hanks on the Racism of WWII

I though maybe Tom Hanks was one of a few celebrities that had his head on pretty straight.  I'm really not one to follow the talk shows, though.  Some recent comments on World War II have changed my mind.

In an interview with TIME magazine about the WWII miniseries that he produced, entitled "The Pacific," Hanks made some rather unusual comments about racism and the war.  And no, he wasn't even talking about the Nazis.

Certainly, we wanted to honor U.S. bravery in 'The Pacific', but we also wanted to have people say, ‘We didn’t know our troops did that to Japanese people.’

Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar by any chance, to what’s going on today?

The war in the Pacific was a war of terror and racism, of suicide attacks. Both sides viewed the other side as being subhuman dogs from a civilization that didn’t recognize the advancement of human kind. Sound familiar? Sound like something that might be going on?

Hanks made similar comments in an interview with MSNBC's Morning Joe.

'The Pacific' is coming out now, where it represents a war that was of racism and terror. And where it seemed as though the only way to complete one of these battles on one of these small specks of rock in the middle of nowhere was to - I’m sorry - kill them all. And, um, does that sound familiar to what we might be going through today? So it's-- is there anything new under the sun? It seems as if history keeps repeating itself.

Um, yeah Tom.  We started the war in the Pacific because we didn't like Asians and religion.  It had nothing at all to do with the bombing of Pearl Harbor or Japanese ties to the Nazis.  The "kill them all" comment seems to have come entirely out of his ass.

Hanks plans for the future?  A project dealing with the JFK assassination.

If we do it right, it'll be perhaps one of the most controversial things that has ever been on TV.

At this point I'm thinking it involves a conservative conspiracy, involving GWB as one of the triggermen, but that's just spitballing.

Sheesh!

Sources:
Quotes from TIME magazine, and some basic information lifted from this Fox News article.
Quote from Morning Joe from this CBS News article.
Quote from TIME magazine article, on the JFK project, lifted from this flimsy USA Today article.

I had heard of Hanks' comments from a radio talkshow a few days ago.  Which one, I could not tell you.  Something just jogged my memory earlier today, and dug into it a bit further.