Obama Now More Loathed than Bush at the end of his term

December 22nd, 2009

According to Rasmussen, via Gateway Pundit.

Man, that’s got to sting. That’s what happens when you ignore mounting job losses to push expensive legislation that everyone hates.

Hey, just imagine if Obama announced that he was asking Congress to kill ObamaCare and cap-and-trade, and instead concentrate on bringing down the deficit and eliminating government disincentives to growth? Just imagine how much his poll numbers would rebound!

Nahhhhhh. That would take someone more politically savy, someone willing to turn his back on the unpopular liberal nostrums of his core supporters to save his own political skin. Someone like…Bill Clinton.

Did you ever think we’d be comparing Obama unfavorably to Clinton before the first year of his first term was even out?

Tags: , ,
Posted in Democrats | No Comments »

ClimateGate Supression of Dissent: A Case Study

December 21st, 2009

Here are the authors of a study critical of the consensus AGW narrative which the leaked CRU letters talk about how to suppress. The letters discuss how to stack peer reviewers in favor of AGW and against dissenters, and how to bypass the normal peer review cycle to cram a response in immediately after the critical paper.

Hint: this is not the way disinterested science is supposed to work.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Richard Epstein says Reid’s ObamaCare Bill is Unconstitutional

December 21st, 2009

Noted Constitutional law scholar Richard A. Epstein says Harry Reid’s ObamaCare bill is unconstitutional.

“The Supreme Court’s basic constitutional requirement is that any firm in a regulated market be allowed to recover a risk-adjusted competitive rate of return on its accumulated capital investment. See Duquesne Light Co. v. Barasch, 488 U.S. 299 (1988).

“The Reid Bill emphatically fails this test by imposing sharp limitations on the ability of health-insurance companies to raise fees or exclude coverage. Moreover, the Reid Bill forces on these regulated firms onerous new obligations that they will not be able to fund from their various revenue sources. The squeeze between the constricted revenue sources allowable under the Reid Bill and the extensive new legal obligations it imposes is likely to result in massive cash crunch that could drive the firms that serve the individual and small-group health-insurance markets into bankruptcy.”

I’m not even remotely enough of a Constitutional Law scholar to know if his argument is correction, but Epstein is certainly one of the heavy-hitters in that field, and his book Takings is is one of the most important works on the subject of the federal government exceeding its constitutional power in the last quarter century. And he actually appears to have read the bill, which probably puts him one up on, oh, more than half the Senators voting on it…

Tags: , ,
Posted in ObamaCare, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Spending Lots of Taxpayer Money to Accomplish Nothing

December 21st, 2009

If there’s a theme for the Obama years, and for the Pelosi/Reid legislation Obama has embraced, it’s that of spending tremendous amounts of taxpayer dollars to accomplish almost nothing. Consider:

What all three have in common?

  • All are hugely expensive. How expensive no one knows, but given the vast increase we’ve seen in the cost of Social Security, Medicare, etc., my guess would be tens of trillions of dollars over the next 30 years.
  • All are exteremly unpopular among the taxpayers who are being asked to foot the bill.
  • All accomplish almost nothing except increase the size of the federal government and channeling money to Obama allies like ACORN and SEIU.

The way things are going, the slaughter of Democratic incumbents in the 2010 election could make 1994 look like a picnic by comparison…

Update:

Greetings Farkers!

&#60Troy McClure&#62Hi, I’m Lawrence Person! You may remember me from such Flamewars as “ObamaCare is all about choice, or rather, taking choices away from American citizens and giving them to government bureaucrats” and “From Iran to Honduras, millions of people around the world long for freedom and democracy. And wherever those seeking freedom can be found, Obama will be there…grinding his bootheel into their face”.&#60&#47Troy McClure&#62

Come in and sit a spell. Have a beer and stretch your feet out to the toasty flamewar goodness. Feel free to buy a book or check out my other, completely non-political blog.

And, above all, Obey the Hypnotoad!

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Democrats, ObamaCare, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »

Nancy Pelosi TechnoChicken Remix

December 20th, 2009

Watch if you dare.

In a way however, this strange juxtaposition is deeply unfair, and even cruel. The chicken is a noble (if dimwitted) creature that provides desperately needed sustenance to a hungry world. It is an insult to conflate it with such a corrupt, evil and debased entity as Nancy Pelosi…

Tags: , ,
Posted in Democrats | No Comments »

The Constitution is not a Suicide Pact, but ObamaCare is

December 18th, 2009

Given that it’s no so extrordinarily unpopular that it threatens to unseat numerous Democratic senators next year.

  • “A recent Zogby poll showed 28% of state voters support ‘reform.’ A full 40% said they’d be less likely to vote for Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan next year if he supports a bill. In a theoretical matchup with Republican Gov. John Hoeven (who has yet to announce), Mr. Hoeven wins 55% to 36%. Mr. Dorgan has been in the Senate 17 years; he won his last election with 68% of the vote.”
  • “In Arkansas, 32% support this health-care legislation. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, also running next year, trails challengers by more than 50 points among the 56% of voters who strongly disapprove of the health plan.”
  • “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the public face of health reform, can barely break 38% approval in Nevada.”

Maybe they should be calling it “doctor-assisted political suicide”…

Tags: ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Russians now saying their climate data was distorted, cherry-picked

December 16th, 2009

According to this report CRU “probably tampered with Russian-climate data.”

It goes on:

“Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

“The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.”

The deeper people look into the data, the more data manipulation they find. Insert your own “tip of the iceberg” joke here.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Global Warming | 1 Comment »

Global Warming: Data from the Greenland Ice Cores

December 15th, 2009

I’m not an expert, but if the information presented here is accurate, it makes a pretty compelling case that the warming trend we experienced in the 20th century was quite normal within the overall geological time-frame.

Tags:
Posted in Global Warming, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Recessions are for the Little People

December 14th, 2009

During the recession, government employees have had to make serious cutba–ha, ha, oh sorry, I could even keep a straight face while typing that. They’ve made out like bandits:

  • “Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months — and that’s before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.”
  • 2008: there was only “one career federal worker making an annual salary of $170,000 or more at the U.S. Department of Transportation when the current recession began. Today, 18 months later, there are more than 1,600 career employees making that much.”
  • “In the first six months of the year, the federal government was adding 10,000 jobs per month, and over the recession had grown the ranks of bureaucrats by 9.8 percent. The private sector, during that same period, shed 7.3 million jobs.”
  • “The $448 billion appropriations bill approved last week by the House contained more than 5,000 earmarks, many of which will ultimately benefit the favored few rather than the suffering many.”

And just think of the additional billions they’ll be able to rake in for cap-and-trade and ObamaCare…

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »

Did liberals get their John Edwards mixed up?

December 13th, 2009

According to Pew: “Conservatives and Republicans report fewer experiences than liberals or Democrats communicating with the dead, seeing ghosts and consulting fortunetellers or psychics.”

Now, who was it that was part of the “Reality-Based Community” again?

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Democrats, Uncategorized | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »