Movin' On Up

To that deluxe apartment in the sky. RIP to a wonderful actor, who made one of the grouchiest men on television loveable--Sherman Hemsley.

The Rings...My Precious!

Yet another chink in the AGW armor?

Tree-rings prove climate was WARMER in Roman and Medieval times than it is now - and world has been cooling for 2,000 years

For something on which the science is supposed to be settled, there seems to be a lot of "unsettling" information coming to light--the Argo data, satellite temperature readings, the rise of challengers to the IPCC, and now this.

What About A Little "Un-Foolish" Consistency?

Right now, I'm a pro-choice guy. But I'm consistent with that view. If you want to take drugs? Go ahead. Thins the herd, I say. You want to jump off a building? I wish you wouldn't, but I sure don't want hard-working rescue people risking their lives trying to stop you. You want to own a gun? That's your right, I say. But I'm not sure everyone else (especially that group I'm going to discuss in a minute) is all that consistent.

Take those people now arguing for stricter gun laws, or--at the extreme--for getting rid of them altogether. I could certainly understand how reasonable people could disagree over this issue. As I said to someone recently, "I think we all agree on our goal--the reduction of violence. We just disagree on how to accomplish it." But what I don't quite get is the inconsistency when it comes to the reasoning of said people. Specifically: I am not going to listen to your argument about how we should get rid of guns because too many lives are lost until you show that same concern about the subject of abortion. Period. You can argue that we don't have a Constitutional right to them, or some such, but don't try to mask your argument in concern for human life, unless you're going to extend that concern to all human life.

Try reading this:

"We should get rid of guns. They exist for no other reason than to kill human beings. Thousands die from guns every year. How many deaths are enough? People have all sorts of arguments about why people should be able to have guns, but do any of them overcome the taking of even one life?"

Now go back through it and replace "guns" with "abortion."

The logic doesn't change much, does it? And for the most part, the change is seamless. The one difference, I guess, is that you'd have to change "thousands die" to "over a million die." Why did I choose to compare these two? As I said, I'm a pro-choice guy. But across the board. However, it should come as no surprise to you that the same people who are pushing so hard for stricter gun control are the same ones who staunchly defend the right to have an abortion. And that, I can't understand. As I pointed out, a lot of the thinking is the same. For example, isn't one of the reasons for supporting legalized abortion that it prevents the dangers of illegal ones, which will happen anyway? And isn't that the same argument made for keeping guns legal--that criminals are going to get them anyway?

I just want some consistency, people.

So, This Means I Can Pay Next Year's Tax Bill In Cheers?

ThinkProgress tries to make a comparison between President Obama claiming business owners aren't responsible for those businesses, and Mitt Romney making a speech to the 2002 Winter Olympians.

Obama:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Romney:

You Olympians, however, know you didn’t get here solely on your own power. For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers, encouraged your hopes, coaches guided, communities built venues in order to organize competitions. All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted them. We’ve already cheered the Olympians, let’s also cheer the parents, coaches, and communities.

The comparison between Mitt Romney's speech to Olympians, and President Obama's speech would be a completely valid one...if Romney was asking those Olympians to give up the gold from their medals.

She Haas Me At @ihaas

Okay, I'll admit it--I'm completely smitten with Ingrid Haas. You might know her from the cross-country ATT commercial (see below), which is now my favorite commercial...although I generally hate them, so being my favorite isn't all that hard, I guess. Anyway, she has a new, improved look on her website, so check it out. But beware--those dimples are like black holes. You may never leave.


You can also follow her on Twitter at @ihass (which accounts for my tortured movie reference of a headline).

Let's (Not) Go To The Videotape...

Democratic stalkers. Wow. Did they learn nothing from the Giffords' incident? This crosses a line. If I were one of those Democrats up for re-election this year, I would get my ass in front of the cameras as fast as I could to denounce this type of thing.

Also, good for you, Whoopi:

Even ultraliberal talk-show host Whoopi Goldberg said she thinks her side of the aisle has gone too far. “I only think that’s valid if you yourself, Democratic people, are showing your houses and your families,” Miss Goldberg said on ABC’s “The View” on Monday. “Families are off-limits. Showing where somebody lives is off-limits. What the hell is wrong with y’all?”

I should also point out that Roll Call lists 7 Democrats among the top 10 richest members of Congress. Given that, and that nearly 50% of Congress happen to be millionaires, is this really a tactic the Democrats want to go with?

Farleigh-Dickinson Poll Finds Dems Less Informed Than Republicans

 I've been wanting to write a post about the recent Farleigh-Dickinson poll, but haven't gotten around to it until now. I distrust polls in general, because when you start breaking them down, there's almost always some kind of bias inherent in them. The one in question is no exception. (Otherwise, why would I bother, right?) It proffers the claim that people who watch only Fox news are less informed than people who watch no news at all.

Well, they don't come right out and say that, but as you can imagine, that's what most of the liberal media and bloggers latched onto. For example, here's the headline at The Huffington Post:

Study Finds Fox News Viewers Least Informed Of All Viewers

And this one from The Nation:

It’s Official: Watching Fox Makes You Stupider

Of course, I have to point out that The Nation's headline is just factually incorrect. Even if the poll does find Fox News viewers to be least informed, a) being informed and intelligence are two different things, and b) correlation is not causation, and the poll shows no causation. Anyway, you get the idea. Most on the left were drooling over this. But maybe not so much by the time I'm finished...

There are a couple of problems I saw right off the bat. The sample is pretty small to represent the entire nation (1,185), and it does have a MOE of +/- 3%. I would also venture that most people would admit that among the cable news networks, Fox leans right and MSNBC leans left. Yet they include self-described Democrats who watch Fox and Republicans who watch MSNBC, with no indication of why those people were watching a channel they—at least on the surface—are opposed to ideologically. I think that’s important if you’re going to look at whether or not they’ve “learned” from watching. For example, if someone is watching for a news “watchdog” group, they’re watching for incidents of bias, not necessarily watching to glean information.  Should those numbers be included with these statistics? For example, on both international and domestic questions, conservatives watching Fox news scored better than "no news."

But more importantly, if you’re going to accept this as a valid examination of knowledge of current events, you’re going to also have to accept a few of the numbers that they buried. For example:

1. There are eight questions (nine if you count the a & b parts of K6). On all but two of them (K1, K3, K4, K5, K6B, K7, and K8), a higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans answered that they “don’t know” the answer. On the other two (K2 and K6A), it was a tie.
2. A higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans got 0 domestic questions correct, and got 0 international questions correct.
3. A higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats (52%-45%) got 4 or more questions correct.
4. Finally, on every single question, a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats chose the correct answer (unless I missed one myself, but you can easily follow the link and check me).

Given that a higher percentage of Democrats "don’t know" the answers to these questions, a higher percentage of Republicans got at least half of the questions correct, and—when looking at individual questions—a higher percentage of Republicans got the correct answer on every question, if one argues that this poll is an accurate representation of knowledge of current events, doesn’t one also have to then accept that when looking at their respective groups, Republicans are better informed about current events than Democrats? What other choice is there? If the numbers are valid in one case, they must be valid in the other.

Obviously, I’m being a little facetious about this (hence my own biased headline), but that’s the problems with this type of poll: people can twist the numbers into whatever conclusion they want them to reflect. At least until someone else comes through and twists them another way. You might say, those who live by the statistics die by the statistics. Or maybe better said, those who live by the statistics must live by ALL the statistics.

The More, The Maher-ier

I've noticed that after four years, my number one page in terms of hits is still the one asking when did Bill Maher become such an asshole? Apparently he really pisses people off. Although I can't speak for the masses, I can tell you why he pisses me off. It's not just that he's gotten much less funny and much more bitter over the years. It's not that much of the time he's just flat-out wrong with the "facts" he spews. It's that when he does shoot his mouth off, most of the time without any kind of support, he's so damn smug about it. And since he's usually doing it in a monologue, there really isn't anyone there to challenge him. So he has all the righteous condescension of the gold medalist in a one-person race. But hey, I support his First Amendment right to lie his ass off, but I also support my First Amendment right to call him a giant douchenozzle.

Anyway, here's a couple of other people taking him to task, and doing it much more eloquently than I.

To Answer Bill Maher's Question of What Has Obama Done to Make Conservatives Angry.

Tea Party Understands Economics Better Than Obama or Bill Maher. (This one's a must read.)

Un-Truth Team?

Here's a little re-cut I made of Obama's latest ad. Everything in here was in the original, which can be found here.

Maher-Ginalizing The Left

Apparently, this is what passes for insightful commentary on the left these days:

Maher pontificates in that smug, condescending manner of his, and hopes, I guess, that people won't call him on his bullshit. (I suppose if you do so on your own show, with a friendly audience and guests, that's probably true.)

Unfortunately for Bill, the reality isn't "simple." The problem is that taxes have already been signed into law; they just haven't taken effect yet. Here are 21 of them. You'll notice that two that have already kicked in--taxes on tanning and smoking--are clearly behaviors only practiced by the super-wealthy. (Actually, if these taxes remain, you'll probably be able to read that sentence without the slightest hint of the sarcasm with which I wrote it.)

We can argue all day long about whether those are worthwhile taxes or not, but the fact is that they exist. Maher trying to distract you with a silly hat doesn't change that.

I suppose he could argue that those taxes don't count because he's talking about what taxes did, not what they're going to do. To that, I would remind him that paying a woman for sex afterwards instead of beforehand doesn't make her any less of a hooker.

And finally, I have to admit that I don't know just when he said this. It may have been before Obamacare (which contains most of the taxes) was passed. If that's the case, I'm sure he corrected his statement once it was passed, right?

P.S.: The cost isn't exactly improving, either, as this image from The Washington Times makes clear.

Aw, Nuts! Part Two!

The (Cheap) Shot Heard Round The World

Despite my thinking I was done talking about this one, looks like it's not going away:

"Obama has hitched his wagon to an alien ideology touted by a tainted candidate who might be too liberal even for Massachusetts.

I don’t think this is going away. It is a theme handed to Romney on a silver platter, a silver platter built, of course, on roads the rest of us paid for.

It is a game changer. And we have Elizabeth Warren to thank for it."

If you take a cheap shot at those who have built, and continue to build, our nation, you've gotta expect to take some heat for it. After all, you work for us, and insubordination is a fire-able offense.

Aw, Nuts!

This is, I believe, the very definition of "adding insult to injury."

"Man shoots his own genitals, goes to jail"

Okay, So I Was Wrong About The "Last Words" Part Of The Last Post...

But this--from Jon Lovitz--was too good to pass up:

My First--And Last--Words On The "Nobody Does It Alone" Speech (Probably)

I'm not sure what to make of Obama's speech, in which he downplays the importance of the business entrepreneur in...well, in creating the business. It's a little like downplaying the chef in creating the meal--sure, the owner provided the space, but without the chef, you've just got a room full of hungry people.

Two things that I think stood out were the fact that he more or less cribbed it from Elizabeth Warren, and that he was off the teleprompter when he did so. The former makes him seem a little (a lot?) unoriginal, and the latter makes him seem a little reckless. At least it wasn't one of his "go-fuck-yourself-San-Diego-Anchorman" gaffes, like the time he introduced people twice because the teleprompter told him to.


The big problem I have, though, is with his logic. Follow along with me, won't you?

1) Obama cites roads and bridges, created by government, as being partly responsible for the success of businesses. The logic here is that those two structures facilitated the acts of your going to work, transporting supplies and merchandise, etc., and resulted in the success of your company.

2) Each year around 40,000 people die in auto accidents on America's roadways. A few more commit suicide by jumping from a bridge. (About 20 a year just from The Golden Gate Bridge alone.)

3) Those roads and bridges certainly facilitated those deaths, at least as much as they facilitated those businesses Obama was talking about.

4) By Obama's logic, since government was responsible for those roads and bridges, and those roads and bridges were partly responsible for those deaths, then the government is partly responsible for those deaths!

And there are a number of other horrible things we could attribute to the government, using Obama's standard. The serial killer who picks up his victims by the side of the government-built road, and then transports them elsewhere? Government helped do that. What about mass shootings, such as Columbine? Those government-built public schools brought all those targets together in one place, under little security. According to Obama, Klebold and Harris didn't do that themselves.

Now, obviously, I don't believe the government was responsible for those events. I only bring them up to illustrate my point. My conclusion is ridiculous, but I hope you'll see by comparison that the president's is equally so. And you can't simply separate the two by claiming that the bad events don't count. If they count for the good, they must count for the bad.

One other thing I have to point out: the government doesn't actually have any of its own money. You know where it gets it from? Taxes. You know who pays taxes? Wealthy entrepreneurs. Well, not all of them, but the top 20% (average income of $273,000), pay about 67% of total federal income taxes. So while Obama implies that "government" built those roads and bridges? It's really the financially successful entrepreneurs who built them.

So be sure to thank those people come November. You know how.

Location, Location, Location

So...what you're saying is that Bain is kinda like Bill Ayers' house and Reverend Wright's church?

Wait, Have You Ever Actually SEEN "Star Trek"?

My sister just sent me a link to Gail Collins' newest op-ed column in the New York Times. I have to hand it to her--in a short amount of space, Collins manages to get most of the Democratic talking points in, and even manages to make a (somewhat tortured and unfunny) "Star Trek" joke. The main thrust of the column is that it is very confusing that somehow Romney was in charge of Bain Capital, but at the same time, not responsible for its results. I find this somewhat funny, because I would have thought Democrats would have no trouble understanding this, since President Obama has been in charge of the country for nearly four years, and yet he seems to take no responsibility for the results of that period.

The other main thing I noticed was that Collins pointed out that maybe Romney should release 10 years of tax returns, and that that would satisfy the Democrats. She's probably right, because look how satisfied they were when Obama released his school records, his health records, and the documents that could shed light on who was responsible for the deadly Fast & Furious gunwalking scandal...oh, wait.

It's Very Simple, Really...

I'm getting a little tired of the "it's all political showmanship" argument regarding the Fast & Furious scandal. Do Republicans benefit from the hearings? Absolutely. But that's an effect of the program, not a cause. The Republicans didn't make the administration hand out guns like they were lollipops. The Republicans didn't decide not to track them. It's not the Republicans fault that the guns were used to kill hundreds of people. Holder and the administration are in this mess because they put themselves there with bad decisions. The fact the the GOP benefits from that is besides the point.

And if someone wants to argue that the whole thing "isn't a big deal," ask them one simple question:

If this were any other group, would you still argue that?

That is, if we were to find out that some American corporation somewhere sold guns to foreign drug dealers, and that those guns were later responsible for the deaths of several hundred foreign nationals as well as a U.S. Border Patrol agent, shouldn't we pursue any and all avenues to find out who was responsible for those guns getting into foreign hands, and make sure he or she receives just punishment? Because you can bet your ass if it were to happen that way, the same people who are now saying "move along, nothing to see here" would be trumpeting this to the rooftops as a national tragedy and calling for tougher gun laws.

The hypocrisy is even more glaring if you take a more personal view. If I get liquored up one night, and the next morning they find the DNA of 300 dead Mexicans and a dead Border Patrol agent in the grill of my car, and the DA happens to disagree with me politically, it's not a political witch hunt when he prosecutes me; he's simply doing his job.

Sloppy Secondscare?

I'm not a fan of Romney's, as those who know me personally will attest. I do think he's the lesser of two evils, though, so I'm about to defend him. I've noticed one of the new Democratic talking points after the Obamacare decision is that Romney is a poor person to carry the message against Obamacare since he created Romneycare in Massachusetts. I feel just the opposite--I think he's one of the best people to do so. Who better to point out the flaws in Obamacare than the person who has experienced them firsthand? For example, if you're a football player heading into the Super Bowl, who would you expect to get he best advice from--a player who's never been, or one who has, even if that trip wasn't a successful one?

If I were writing up the GOP talking points, that's how I would try to shape that message, anyway. Point out the differences in the two, and point out that your candidate is not only qualified, but uniquely qualified to elaborate on Obamacare's pitfalls.

Enrico Palazzo! Enrico Palazzo!

Chief Justice Roberts--I'm not buying that he's an evil genius and that somehow this is actually a win for Republicans (and non-republicans like me who are strongly against Obamacare). I think it's a huge loss. I think it's a horrendous decision, one that may speed up the bankrupting of our country, and I'm not sure what was going through his mind. He may have succeeded in putting restraints on the Commerce Clause, but as others have pointed out, what difference does that make if he gave them the power to do essentially the same thing through levying taxes? Others have speculated that he may have been trying to preserve the image of the Court. Again, I don't think so, but if that's the case, then I'm even more dismayed. The Court's job is to interpret law, not to worry about politics or their image. It's the reason that they have life terms, so as not to be swayed by those things.

Roberts said he was going to be like an umpire, calling balls and strikes, but I feel like what he did was to see a ball coming and change the strike zone, in order to "legitimately" call it a strike.

BTW: anybody know the film reference in the title?