Exactly....

Confusing but true. Letting rich people keep their money is capitalism taxing it and giving it to politically favored groups is not. You'll notice that this guy, Reich, can't get it through his head.

I contend that you don't have to tax rich people's income but their consumption. You only tax the money they spend because to make up income taxes on their income it comes out of our asses in higher prices, lack of services and innovation, and slower job growth.

My main point is that i agree with much of this post but taking from producers and giving to non producers  is self defeating. Of course, if you disagree show me anytime in history that this has worked for anyone but a handful of supporters of this kind of government.

As to his point of deficits getting out of control, I guess trillion dollar or so a year aren't out of control yet but must be getting close. But the truth is that there is absolutely no proof that a fiat currency can not run unlimited deficits until we have full employment. Then taxes have to be raised and interest rates jacked up, as Fed Chairman Volker did in the 70's, so inflation does not destroy the currency.

I'm sure we all are in agreement that we are a long long way from that!

Robert Reich (The Answer Isn't Socialism; It's Capitalism that Better Spreads the Benefits of the Productivity Revolution)

That’s why “supply-side” tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy are perverse. Corporations and the rich don’t need more tax cuts; they’re swimming in money as it is. The reason they don’t invest in additional productive capacity and hire more people is they don’t see a sufficient market for the added goods and services, which means an inadequate return on such investment.

But more Keynesian stimulus won’t help solve the more fundamental problem. Although added government spending has gone some way toward filling the gap in demand caused by consumers whose jobs and incomes are disappearing, it can’t be a permanent solution. Even if the wealthy paid their fair share of taxes, deficits would soon get out of control. Additional public investments in infrastructure and basic research and development can make the economy more productive – but more productivity doesn’t necessarily help if a growing portion of the population can’t absorb it.

Some voters believe they can make a difference.......

Snowe from Maine, Specter from Pennsylvania, and now Lugar and several others I can't remember. And perhaps, Hatch from Utah, all fired or driven from office for pretending to be voting with conservatives.

The main problem is that in order to get the job you have to lie. If you don't toe the official line you can't get the money to run. Ask Rick Santorum. You can't do shit, like Ron Paul , even if you are the only fiscal conservative in the race.

But guys  like him are for changing Washington politics and it ain't going to happen no matter how many Tea Party candidates run.

But every generation has to learn that voting for the working stiff is a waste of time.

Tea party favorite topples Lugar, Indiana's 6-term senator - Washington Times

The race was widely seen as a key test of tea party anger against incumbents two years after that same sentiment disrupted a number of Republican races and powered insurgent candidates to wins across the country.

Already, a challenger in Utah said the race is a model for his bid to unseat Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, another veteran senator under fire for his record of trying to work with Democrats in the Senate.

Democrats saw Mr. Lugar’s defeat as an unexpected opportunity. Polls show their candidate, Rep. Joe Donnelly, would have lost to Mr. Lugar, but is running neck-and-neck with Mr. Mourdock.

Mr. Mourdock assured supporters that he’s ready to take on Mr. Donnelly and said he was grateful to hear earlier that evening from Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican and chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, that the national party is committed to his race.

Spring time and vacation right around the corner...

And I sold my camper. Time to go shopping.

Today is garden day...

Make a video later but it's that time again.

Oops......

So much  for the boom, LOL. Didn't help when Oba mama raised our taxes by taking our $400 tax credit away.

Robert Reich (The Stall Has Arrived)

The economy has stalled. Friday’s jobs report for April was even more disappointing than March. Employers added only 115,000 new jobs, down from March’s number (the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the March number upward to 154,000, but that’s still abysmal relative to what’s needed). We need well over 250,000 new jobs per month in order to begin to whittle down the vast number of jobs lost in the Great Recession. At least 125,000 new jobs are necessary each month just to keep up with an expanding population of working-age people. With only 115,000 jobs in April, the hole is getting even deeper. Most observers pay attention to the official rate of unemployment, which edged down to 8.1 percent in April from 8.2 percent in March. That may sound like progress, but it’s not. The unemployment rate dropped because more people dropped out of the labor force, too discouraged to look for work. The household survey, from which the rate is calculated, counts as “unemployed” only people who are actively looking for work. If you stop looking because the job scene looks hopeless for you, you’re no longer counted. In the winter months — December, January, and February – hiring had seemed to pick up, averaging over 250,000 new jobs per month. Then the mini-surge stopped. The simplest explanation is that the mild winter across much of the United States gave an unusual boost to hiring then, leading to a correction by the spring.

I fired the whole network.....

Mt antenna doesn't even pick the channel up. And I quit the satellite service as worthless. Even Fox news is full of it lately. 

That's the only cure for "the media" brainwashing us. More lies and nonsense comes from these people than you can shake a stick at.

This time they got the blacks in riot mode and some poor bastard is under death threat for defending himself.

Now you see why they want to regulate the internet so they can continue their scams and invent all kinds of bullshit to make money even if innocent people get killed.

Third Employee Fired for Editing George Zimmerma Call | TheBlaze.com

TVNewser explains what happened with the latest incident: In a story for the “Today” show on March 20, Luciano used part of the George Zimmerman 911 call in which an entire phrase (italicized below) was taken from a later part of the conversation: Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good or on drugs or something. He’s got his hand in his waistband. And he’s a black male. Dispatcher: Are you following him? Zimmerman: Yeah. Dispatcher: Okay, we don’t need you to do that. But here’s how the call really went: Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about. Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he white, black, or Hispanic? Zimmerman: He looks black. NBC confirmed to Newser that Luciano is no longer with the network after having joined them a short 18 months ago from Univision. Her firing came after an internal investigation into the incident. Media watchdog Media Research Center (MRC) excoriated NBC over the news, especially considering the network has yet to deliver an on-air apology (it has, however, done so via a statement).

The store continues to have problems with sales....

We came in last in sales in the district so most of management is looking for jobs. Patti and I lost a couple of thousand in wages last year and this year. Supposedly the company is sending a new crew to straighten out the backroom and get the shelves stocked because the inventory system sucks.

One more year and we can retire and go back into business again.

So far it aint looking pretty for Oba mama....

High persistent unemployment, high gas prices, took our 400$ tax credit away, and everybody pissing and moaning about Obama care is just the beginning. 

The guy needs a liberal Republican to run against to have any chance..... Oh wait!!!

War on fossil fuels my ass.....

War on me and you more like it. Think of it as a tax on the rich because they will screw the money out of you. Everything you buy comes from oil. Everything you eat. Everything you need. 

With oil prices this high the depression continues 

DREVNA: War on fossil fuels continues - Washington Times

The April 30 resignation of Environmental Protection Agency Regional Administrator Al Armendariz after he was caught telling the truth - that he wants to “crucify” companies he claims don’t comply with environmental laws - will do nothing to slow the Obama administration’s senseless war on fossil fuels. Mr. Armendariz, the top EPA official for Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, said in a 2010 videotaped speech, which attracted notice only a few days ago, that he once told his staff about his “philosophy of enforcement” by using what he called a “crude analogy.” “It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean,” Mr. Armendariz said in the video. “They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they’d crucify them. And then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.” Mr. Armendariz said, “You make exa

Time to run......

No one can really say, like 'Nam, just what we were supposed to be  doing there. Other than surrounding Iran, the place is worthless. 

One thing we did do is save the heroin industry! 

Obama in Kabul: Afghan war near an end - Washington Times

Looking to deliver on his 2008 campaign promise to extricate the U.S. from two wars, President Obama on Tuesday night mapped out an agreement for an American withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a prime-time address from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama called for an end to an era of war. “My fellow Americans, we have traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war,” the president said. “Yet here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon. The Iraq War is over. The number of our troops in harm’s way has been cut in half, and more will be coming home soon. We have a clear path to fulfill our mission in Afghanistan, while delivering justice to al Qaeda.

Gee..... Who predicted this?......

Cut government spending during a Depression and the economy tanks. Duh!!!

This is not a left right argument but history of the Great Depression coming to a neighborhood near you.

RETAIL SALES, PMI REPORTS SHOW WEAKENING EUROZONE ECONOMIES | PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM

Carrefour, Europe’s biggest retailer, said it would focus on cutting prices to lure back consumers as it braced for another tough year as cash-strapped shoppers reduced spending. The French group, posting a 0.1 percent drop in underlying first-quarter sales, said it was hit by continued weakness in its core French hypermarkets and in austerity-hit Southern Europe, where shoppers cut back on purchases of discretionary non-food items. This problem is not unique to Carrefour. The Eurozone is experiencing a sharp contraction in the retail sector.

You can buy a lot of titties for 5 million....

But many of these girls would do it for free just to impress their friends. Now I would think about getting one of these dvd's if some of the girls would bitch slap the guy behind the camera. or pulls out a big dildo. LOL

Mo. woman wins $5.8M in 'Girls Gone Wild' case - Washington Times

ST. LOUIS (AP) - The company that makes “Girls Gone Wild” DVDs is seeking to overturn a verdict awarding nearly $6 million to a St. Louis-area woman who claims her bare breasts were recorded without permission. St. Louis Circuit Judge John Garvey last month sided with Tamara Favazza in her suit against Mantra Films Inc. and MRA Holdings LLC, awarding her $5.77 million. She was a 20-year-old college student in 2005 when someone lifted her tank top during a party at a St. Louis bar, exposing her breasts. Another person filmed it. She later discovered the recording was part of the “Girls Gone Wild Sorority Orgy” DVD series. Favazza claimed in the suit originally filed in 2008 that she did not give consent and the resulting DVD damaged her reputation. A St. Louis jury sided with the DVD makers in 2010, but a retrial was granted. Garvey issued his ruling on March 5. On Wednesday, the defendants filed motions asking that the judgment be set aside and a new trial granted. Jeffrey Medler, an attorney for Favazza, said he w

He's not insane....he's European.....

Since when are Europeans mass murderers.....Oh yea, like for ever, right? Hitler, Stalin,  Mussolini, the Catholic church, every king in history, etc etc. 

Experts: Mass killer Breivik likely not insane - Washington Times

“Everyone’s first assumption is that Breivik must be insane because he’s done such terrible things,” said Dr. Simon Wessely, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London. “But it doesn’t automatically follow that he must be mad just because what he has done is inexplicable.” In a commentary published Friday in the British medical journal Lancet, Wessely writes that explanation is too simplistic. For the 33-year-old Norwegian to be schizophrenic _ as some psychiatrists have suggested _ his actions would have to be the result of delusions, or based on beliefs not shared by others. “As ghastly as his views are, there are other people in society who believe countries are being destroyed by multiculturalism and Islam,” Wessely said. Breivik’s extraordinarily well-organized and methodical massacre also undermines the idea that he was suffering from a serious mental illness. “It doesn’t tally with the kinds of disorganized crimes usually committed by people with mental health problems,” Wessely said.

Somebody has to pay for my Social Security.....

Since fewer Americans are paying taxes we need to bring them in. Teach them English but not let them vote for handouts. We have enough moochers now!

HURT: In this bad economy, U.S. needs border fence — to keep Mexicans in - Washington Times

Well, that’s one way to stem the tide of illegal aliens streaming across the border from Mexico. Jack up unemployment rates to near double digits, dunk America into a double-dip recession and put us so deeply into hock with the Chinese communists that it will take generations for us to recover. After long enough, living and working and trying to eke out bare survival in America becomes even worse than trying to get by in Mexico. A new study from the highly esteemed Pew Hispanic Center says the millions of Mexicans who risked their lives crossing the desert to get here to the promised land for a better life have given up on the U.S. This is no small feat. Have you ever been to Mexico? Not the ritzy beach towns with the gated resorts, but Nuevo Laredo? The dusty streets are filled with bony children selling gum and candy for just a few spare pennies.

80 degrees yesterday.....

Should be the same today so I got go fishing. Why else would anybody live here?, LOL.

As I've been saying....

No real excuse for higher gas prices except Oba  mama threating the oil companies with tax increases and refusing to let them drill.

I think he'll find a new plan to change this before November. After all, the eviro-fanatics have no one else to give money to and vote for!

Gas prices stall early in season - Washington Times

Gasoline prices appear to have peaked more than a month earlier than usual this year at less than $4 a gallon, reflecting reduced tensions with Iran and declining demand for fuel in the U.S. and China, oil analysts say. Average pump prices fell 4 cents last week to $3.90 a gallon after having peaked at $3.94 on April 6, the AAA reported. That is about a dime shy of the high point reached last year around the usual seasonal peak on Memorial Day, and 21 cents below the all-time high of $4.11, set in 2008. Gas prices typically rise in the run-up to the peak summer driving season, which starts May 31, and then fall from late summer through the winter when consumers use less gas and do not have to buy the more expensive super-refined fuels needed to fight air pollution during the summer. The early plateauing and decline of gas pr

Makes you proud don't it?....

I mean, as long as the Dems get away with it. After all, most military vote Republican. Of course, the shoe would be on the other foot iof we were talking about blacks or Mexicans, right?

EVERSOLE: Military votes don't count - Washington Times

Military voters must feel like Bill Murray’s character in GroundhogDay. Election after election, certain state and local election officials fail to meet the deadline for sending absentee ballots. The outcome is often the same - thousands of ballots are received too close to the election to be returned or, if they are returned, the ballots arrive after the deadline to be counted. In either case, the military voter is disenfranchised. Congress attempted to fix this time loop in 2009. The MOVE Act was a new law that created a simple requirement: State and local election officials had to send absentee ballots to military voters at least 45 days before an election. Yet, this simple requirement has been hard to follow. In 2010, for example, local election officials in at least 14 states failed to comply with the new law. The worst offenders, counties and boroughs in New York and Illinois, missed the deadline by more than two weeks. More than 40,000 military and overseas ballots were impacted by this failure with many of the ballots being sent only 25 days before the election. Two years later, military voters are waking to the s

Obama already soaked you and I ....

800 bucks is 800 bucks. Lost our credit for working we got from Bush. Be nice if these guys would get their shit together and quit this income tax on wages, wouldn't it?

EDITORIAL: Making Tax Day worse - Washington Times

Americans who thought Tax Day was bad this year could find it far worse next year. Tuesday happens to be Tax Freedom Day, the date by which taxpayers have earned enough to pay off Uncle Sam and start earning for themselves. This occasion will fall even later next year if President Obama succeeds in making the tax code more complicated and expensive. Mr. Obama has invoked Warren Buffett’s name at 49 different events since mid-August to justify his tax-raising plans. Despite the all-out White House lobbying effort, the president’s allies in the Democratic Senate failed on Monday to get the votes needed to pass the 30 percent tax hike on income over $1 million. Mr. Obama knew this bill was a nonstarter, but doing something concrete about the debt was never his goal. He’s trying to paint Republicans as protectors of the wealthy.

Yes, the should have waited for the boss.....

Just kidding.

This guy's administration is full of tax cheats and now we have to pay for their whores.

Sign me up!

Obama: 'I'll be angry' if Secret Service allegations are true - Washington Times

President Obama said Sunday that he would be “angry” if accusations prove true that his Secret Service agents hired prostitutes, while congressional Republicans called for investigations of the scandal that exploded over the weekend and overshadowed the president’s three-day Summit of the Americas trip to Colombia. In a news conference in Cartagena before he departed, Mr. Obama said the charges, if true, would dishonor both the U.S. and the agency charged with his protection. “If it turns out some of the allegations that have been made in the press are confirmed, then, of course, I’ll be angry,” Mr. Obama said in his first public comments on the incident.

EDITORIAL: Making Tax Day worse - Washington Times

Americans who thought Tax Day was bad this year could find it far worse next year. Tuesday happens to be Tax Freedom Day, the date by which taxpayers have earned enough to pay off Uncle Sam and start earning for themselves. This occasion will fall even later next year if President Obama succeeds in making the tax code more complicated and expensive. Mr. Obama has invoked Warren Buffett’s name at 49 different events since mid-August to justify his tax-raising plans. Despite the all-out White House lobbying effort, the president’s allies in the Democratic Senate failed on Monday to get the votes needed to pass the 30 percent tax hike on income over $1 million. Mr. Obama knew this bill was a nonstarter, but doing something concrete about the debt was never his goal. He’s trying to paint Republicans as protectors of the wealthy.

It's not often the left makes sense.....

We need to figure out what's going on. Almost a religious belief that taking money away from consumers will save an economy and bring it back to health.

 

When's the last time that has been tried successfullly? Read the whole post and let me know what you think might be going on.

Europe’s Economic Suicide - NYTimes.com

Nonetheless, the prescription coming from Berlin and Frankfurt is, you guessed it, even more fiscal austerity. This is, not to mince words, just insane. Europe has had several years of experience with harsh austerity programs, and the results are exactly what students of history told you would happen: such programs push depressed economies even deeper into depression. And because investors look at the state of a nation’s economy when assessing its ability to repay debt, austerity programs haven’t even worked as a way to reduce borrowing costs. What is the alternative? Well, in the 1930s — an era that modern Europe is starting to replicate in ever more faithful detail — the essential condition for recovery was exit from the gold standard. The equivalent move now would be exit from the euro, and restoration of national currencies. You may say that this is inconceivable, and it would indeed be a hugely disruptive event both economically and politically. But continuing on the present course, imposing ever-harsher austerity on countries that are already suffering Depression-era unemployment, is what’s truly inconceivable.

Happy birthday Judy....

Brother jake's old lady getting younger every day, LOL.

Neither did Obama.....

As far as I know. None of these people have a clue about paying for gas, rent, utilities, and especially taxes. Everything these guys got came from me and you.

Gibe at Ann Romney opens a new front in 'war on women' - Washington Times

The importance of female voters to the 2012 vote came into stark view Thursday as President Obama’s campaign advisers furiously tried to contain the fallout from a prominent Democratic consultant’s comment that Ann Romney, wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the mother of five sons, “never worked a day in her life.”

You think if Zimmerman is found innocent.....

Sharpton and Jackson will go way? Not until Hell freezes over. No money in quitting.

Santorum out......

What's Romney going to do to win? Pray? Best I can see is gridlock until 2016. I think we're stuck with Oba mama.

What's wrong with raising taxes on the rich......

Raising a sales tax? No problem. But income taxes are passed down to us, the consumer almost immediately.

If not the rich get unrich.

The confusion is I work for wages and the rich work for assets that show a profit and can't be touched by income taxes. Raise taxes on the profits and they raise their prices of goods and services to you and I. Or fire us.

Besides, every time the politicians tries to tax these assets the rich bribe someone to run against them and runs them out of town.

Only sales taxes can gather more up front from the wealthy but eventually they get the money back from you by raising your prices or cutting your wages.

You don't get rich by giving the government your money but by giving the government someone elses money.

And as far as budgets go we seem to be terrified of big numbers that mean nothing because we have had record breaking giant budget deficits that will "strangle" our economy since World War II and all that has happened is we are all eating like bandits, over educated, control the land, air,sea and space. Have health care for everybody (just show up at the emergency room, you'll see) virtually no involuntary homeless and starving and way too many fat people pontificating about budget deficits that mean NOTHING!

The Gullible Center - NYTimes.com

The Ryan cult was very much on display last week, after President Obama said the obvious: the latest Republican budget proposal, a proposal that Mitt Romney has avidly embraced, is a “Trojan horse” — that is, it is essentially a fraud. “Disguised as deficit reduction plans, it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country.”

The reaction from many commentators was a howl of outrage. The president was being rude; he was being partisan; he was being a big meanie. Yet what he said about the Ryan proposal was completely accurate.

Actually, there are many problems with that proposal. But you can get the gist if you understand two numbers: $4.6 trillion and 14 million.

Of these, $4.6 trillion is the revenue cost over the next decade of the tax cuts embodied in the plan, as estimated by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. These cuts — which are, by the way, cuts over and above those involved in making the Bush tax cuts permanent — would disproportionately benefit the wealthy, with the average member of the top 1 percent receiving a tax break of $238,000 a year.

Weather getting more like spring....

Got to get my fishing license before it changes it's mind, LOL.

If only Zimmerman had simply laid down and took it like a man.....

Right?

And if this had taken place in, say California, Zimmerman would be in jail for having a gun.

The black thug? DEAD!

Lesson to be learned? Don't attack people with guns!

But for Hollywood  rich who live in gated communities they can pontificate and not leave their enclaves but the rest of us to be safe in our neighborhoods.

P.s why was this kid sneaking around at night so far from home?

SIMMONS: Bill Cosby weighs in on Trayvon Martin case - Washington Times

The gun.”

Those two simple words flowed easily from the mouth of social commentator Bill Cosby during an exclusive interview Friday regarding the Trayvon Martin case, arguably the most high-profile, citizen-on-citizen U.S. slaying facing the Obama administration.

Trayvon was killed Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla., by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, who told police that a “confrontation” with the unarmed 17-year-old led him to shoot in self-defense.

Mr. Cosby, a Navy veteran, said “the gun” empowered Mr. Zimmerman, whose actions have stirred a firestorm of debate, protests and remarks from President Obama.

Some of the gang from Chicago......

Oba mama kept a lot of great friends. Read the whole article.....

Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn bash uniformed military personnel (Video) | Washington Times Communities

CHICAGO, April 5, 2012 — Retired domestic terrorist Bill Ayers is upset because military personnel are allowed to board commercial flights ahead of him.

He, a rock star retired terrorist, has to wait while people who sacrifice, suffer, and serve are given preference. That would knock the wind of self-importance and self-esteem out of any famous progressive.

Evidently Ayers still harbors a deep-seated hatred of people who serve our country and denies that they should not even be extended a simple courtesy, let alone recognition and gratitude.

Bill Ayers has never served anyone or anything but himself. Born into a life of privilege his contribution to society was committing acts of terrorism and while advocating acts of violence.

When it came time to pay the price for his crimes he ran and hid like a coward. The notorious terrorists from the 1960s were never anything more.

How's Obama's attack on the oil companies working for you.....

Early in the game so may not affect his reelection. But 6 or 7 bucks a gallon ain't good for any incumbent.None the less right now Romney better start praying harder so he doesn't get whipped worse than McCain.

What do you think?: Vote for a black liberal or white? Or will Romney convince enough conservatives he was only kidding when he invented Obamacare, supported the bailouts and was pro choice.

I can say that Rick Santorum is the guy to beat in 2016 when there will be no incumbent in the White House. This is the pattern in the Republican party. The party picks a liberal who get's his ass kicked and then the genius' in the party run and hide and the conservatives take over and get the White House back.

Of course, this just proves that there's not a nickles difference between The Repubs and Dems, only between the minorities making up the right and left.

Poor Romney.....

Not a clue about real people. Bad enough running as a liberal Republican, Super rich spoiled white guy, Mormon with magic underwear, Yankee governor, boring as Al Gore, and to top it off the guy who gave us Obamacare just looks pathetic.

What were the Republicans thinking? Even if Jesus passes out the miracles this guy is toast when he get's hit with a half a billion in commercials.

I think I'll turn this into a fishing or money blog because the whole country is turning to shit.

P.s did you ever wonder why the media dug up Sharpton and Jackson because some black thug got his ass shot up by a Mexican half-breed?

My God it's like central casting sent him over to play the asshole Republican!

Humor a 2-edged sword when joke's on candidate - Washington Times

Done right, humor can be a huge asset for a politician. But it is fumbled easily in the overheated environment of a political campaign.

That may be why Mr. Romney’s aides sent him to the “The Tonight Show” last week with these instructions: “Don’t try and be funny.”

The Republican presidential front-runner largely complied, and that worked out just fine for him. But he apparently forgot his advisers’ advice the next day when he attempted to be funny on a conference call with people in next-to-vote Wisconsin.

Mr. Romney recounted what he called a “humorous” story about the time his father, then an auto executive, shut down a factory in Michigan and moved it to Wisconsin. Later, when his dad was in a parade while running for Michigan governor, the marching band kept playing the University of Wisconsin fight song.

“Every time they would start playing ‘On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!’ my dad’s political people would jump up and down and try to get them to stop,” Mr. Romney said with a laugh.

They slash prices every other year.....

First they took away our benefits or raised fees on our health insurance last year and now they cut our work hours by 10 to 20 per cent and cut the hiring .

Just a year before they fired a bunch of corporate big shots that tried to make the store  become more like Target....(Jaclyn Smith, Brittany Spears, Paula Odean, Justine Bieber, and let's not Miley Cyrus not selling much.)

Makes you wonder? Where is Sam when you need him. And who owns this company and what the Hell are they thinking?

At least our  stock is back up but who knows how long that will last with the screw ups we've been experiencing.

Slashing prices at Wal-Mart hurts retailer’s bottom line | The Columbus Dispatch

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s price cuts hurt its fourth-quarter profit, reminding investors that steps the world’s largest retailer is taking to bring back shoppers come at a cost.

Wal-Mart yesterday reported quarterly profit and sales short of Wall Street expectations. Forecasts suggest that results in this quarter and fiscal year might again disappoint analysts.

“Everything had the hint of conservatism in the guidance,” said John Tomlinson, a senior hardline retail analyst at ITG Investment Research.

Shares of Wal-Mart fell 4 percent, erasing most of the gains so far from 2012. The stock had been up about 29 percent since August as its U.S. sales turnaround plan was starting to show progress.
Home Depot

As far as I can tell the punk got what he deserved...

But I'm not trying to  make a buck off the incident. However, anybody that attacks me would get the same no matter how many race pimps there are.

Hey maybe the Zimmerman shot the wrong black?

Protesters march in Fla. town where teen was shot - Washington Times

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) — Thousands joined a march Saturday through the Florida town where 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer, vowing to continue protesting until an arrest is made.

Protesters carried signs, chanted “Justice for Trayvon,” and clutched the hands of their children while they walked to the Sanford Police Department from a local high school that served black students during the segregation era. The march was organized by the NAACP was one of several taking place over the weekend.

“We live in the middle of an American paradox,” Rev. Al Sharpton told the crowd.

Get a load of this......

John Stossel's Illegal Everything

Now when are they going to get serious?.......

Aren't gas prices sky rocketing fast enough for these multimillionaires?  Oh wait, these guys don't buy gas we do for their Limos.....

Senate rejects Obama demand for end to oil tax breaks - Washington Times

President Obama on Thursday called for Congress to jettison $4 billion in annual subsidies to oil and gas companies, but minutes later the Senate blocked just such a proposal.

The 51-47 vote, which fell nine shy of the 60 needed to advance in the Senate, likely shelves the plan for this year, but gives both parties a political issue heading into November’s elections.

Mr. Obama, in a Rose Garden speech, said the oil subsidies should be cut so the money can be put into his priorities.

“We should be using that money to double down on clean-energy technologies that have never been more promising,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s the future. That’s the only way we’re going to break this cycle of high gas prices year after year after year.”

Republicans, though, said eliminating the subsidies amounts to a tax increase on oil and gas companies, which they will pass on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

“President Obama will say and do anything it takes to get reelected

Well, back to work....

Didn't win the Mega Millions. But of course I wouldn't tell anyone anyways. Get another shot Friday so if I end up in Tahiti you'll know why, LOL.

Go gridlock....

Remember that everything is against the law. If these guys keep at it we'll make the Soviet Union look like a workers paradise. (ask a smoker or parent with unruly children.)

Budget gridlock imperils national defense - Washington Times

Defense analysts and Capitol Hill insiders are anticipating that automatic federal budget cuts will occur Jan. 1 and force the armed forces to scrap plans for new weapons systems.

Washington’s polarized political landscape shows no signs of a compromise on taxes and spending that would head off the 2011 Budget Control Act’s requirement for across-the-board cuts to begin in nine months.

For the Pentagon, this would mean another 10-year, $500 billion spending cut in addition to the already budgeted $487 billion reduction. In the first year of the automatic spending reductions, the military would need to slash an additional $50 billion from its budget, likely ending a new long-range bomber and a new Army tactical vehicle, and shrinking the Navy’s fleet of 11 aircraft carriers.

Starting to get rough......

Gary and Muffin

Good thing for Oba mama that Romney is winning.....

The states that will go Democrat. Romney's in trouble in the South as I predicted and Mormons  need a lot of help to win. Just think a couple of Catholics kicked his ass in the South and no Republican, ask Dole and McCain, can beat a liberal without sweeping the South.

Not that there is a nickel's difference between these guys!

Evangelical states sketchy for Romney - Washington Times

Mitt Romney’s lopsided victory in Illinois this week showed again that he’s hard to beat in states with more moderate, less evangelical-minded voters — a good sign for the former Massachusetts governor when that describes most of the big prizes left on the Republican primary schedule.

In the weeks ahead, most of the delegate-rich states left on the map more closely resemble the electorates in Ohio and Florida, where Mr. Romney won, than the voters in Georgia and Mississippi, where evangelicals shied away from the former governor.

Temperatures in the fifties this coming week....

Time to get out the fly rod and attack the Moyie river. My lake is still got ice on it so it will be awhile till the water warms a little and we get a few bugs hatching.

Generally Mid April thru June is the best fishing until October. But that's why we live in Idaho. No one in their right minds like the winters!

Our gas prices are high enough......

The nuts and their lawyers are loose.  Even God would go broke paying for all natural disasters caused by weather......

EDITORIAL: Next time, sue the weatherman - Washington Times

On Tuesday, Federal Judge Louis Guirola Jr., in the Southern District of Mississippi, dismissed the case of Comer vs. Murphy Oil for lack of standing. Gulf Coast property owners had sought to hold a grab bag of energy companies responsible for damage they suffered from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The plaintiffs claimed the power companies knowingly had endangered them by emitting unsafe levels of carbon dioxide. The case was dismissed in 2007, then resurrected by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2009. The latest ruling should put an end to it.

This is what telling the truth will get you......

Old Rush simply objected to the taxpayers paying for this spoiled little rich girl screwing on our dime.

Remember if she can afford $45000 a year she can pay or have her sex partners (takes two to tango) pay for whoring around.

If I'm going to pay for a couple of dollars a month for birth control then I want my turn with the bitch. LOL

Radio campaign next step against Rush Limbaugh - Washington Times

NEW YORK — Rush Limbaugh’s opponents are starting a radio campaign against him Thursday, seizing upon the radio star’s attack of a Georgetown law student as a “slut” to make a long-term effort aimed at weakening his business.

The liberal Media Matters for America is using a past campaign against Glenn Beck as a template. In Limbaugh, however, they’re going after bigger game. He’s already fighting back and the group’s stance has provoked concerns that an effort to silence someone for objectionable talk is in itself objectionable.

Media Matters is spending at least $100,000 for two advertisements that will run in eight cities.

The ads use Limbaugh’s own words about student Sandra Fluke, who told congressional Democrats that contraception should be paid for in health plans. Limbaugh, on his radio programs, suggested Fluke wanted to be paid to have sex, which made her a “slut” and a “prostitute.” In return for the money, he said Fluke should post videos of herself having sex.

Onlt four inches of snow this morning....

At this rate I'll be here forever waiting for t-shirt weather, LOL. I plan on one more winter then I get my SS check and move south for the shit weather and come back here for the fishing. Patti qualifies for her check as soon as she goes on disability.

Only 750$ a month but it still beats working!

Thank you ALS Evergreen chapter....

Patti was donated a power chair and 1999 Chrysler mini van. Will show pictures later.

First day of Spring....

1 inch of snow! LOl

What reform?.......

The Dems had complete control of the government and gave us this mess. Simply reforming Medicare and fazing all adults into the system would have worked.

As long as we had the option to keep the insurance we had this (political) problem would have been over.

Hurray for Health Reform - NYTimes.com

The solution — originally proposed, believe it or not, by analysts at the ultra-right-wing Heritage Foundation — is a three-legged stool of regulation and subsidies. As in New York, insurers are required to cover everyone; in return, everyone is required to buy insurance, so that healthy as well as sick people are in the risk pool. Finally, subsidies make those mandated insurance purchases affordable for lower-income families.

Can such a system work? It’s already working! Massachusetts enacted a very similar reform six years ago — yes, while Mitt Romney was governor. Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who played a key role in developing both the local and the national reforms (and has published an illustrated guide to reform) has surveyed the results — and finds that Romneycare is working pretty much as advertised. The number of people without insurance has dropped sharply, the quality of care hasn’t suffered, and the program’s cost has been very close to initial projections.

And what is Oba mama going to do about it?.....

Nothing. he's in on the scam.......

Robert Reich (Why Republicans Aren't Mentioning the Real Cause of Rising Prices at the Gas Pump)

Gas prices continue to rise, which is finally giving Republicans an issue. Mitt Romney is demanding the President open up more domestic drilling; the super PAC behind Rick Santorum just released a new ad in Louisiana blasting the President on gas prices; and the GOP is attacking the White House on the Keystone XL Pipeline.

But the rise in gas prices has almost nothing to do with energy policy. It has everything to do with America’s continuing failure to adequately regulate Wall Street. But don’t hold your breath waiting for Republicans to tell the truth.

As I’ve noted before, oil supplies aren’t being squeezed. Over 80 percent of America’s energy needs are now being satisfied by domestic supplies. In fact, we’re starting to become an energy exporter. Demand for oil isn’t rising in any event. Demand is down in the U.S. compared to last year at this time, and global demand is still moderate given the economic slowdowns in Europe and China.

But Wall Street is betting on higher oil prices in the future — and that betting is causing prices to rise. The Street is laying odds that unrest in Syria will spill over into other countries or that tensions with Iran will affect the Persian Gulf, and that global demand will pick up as American consumers bounce back to life.

These bets are pushing up oil prices because Wall Street firms and other big financial players now dominate oil trading.

Financial speculators historically accounted for about 30 percent of oil contracts, producers and end users for about 70 percent. But today speculators account for 64 percent of all contracts.

Bart Chilton, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — the federal agency that regulates trading in oil futures, among other commodities — warns that too few financial players control too much of the oil market. This allows them to push oil prices higher and higher — not only on the basis of their expectations about the future but also expectations about how high other speculators will drive the price.

In other words, a relatively few players with very deep pockets are placing huge bets on oil — and you’re paying.

Chilton estimates that drivers of small cars like Honda Civics are paying an extra $7.30 every time they fill up — and that money is going into the pockets of Wall Street speculators. Drivers of larger vehicles like the Ford Explorer are paying speculators $10.41 when they fill up.

Funny, but I don’t hear Republicans rail against Wall Street speculators. Could this have anything to do with the fact that hedge funds and money managers are bankrolling the GOP as never before?

Wall Street isn’t bankrolling Democrats nearly as much this time around because the Street is still smarting from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law pushed by the Democrats, and from the president’s offhand remark in 2010 calling the denizens of the Street “fat cats.”

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is trying to limit how much speculators can bet in oil futures — a power it was given by Dodd-Frank. It issued a rule in October, but it won’t take effect for another year.

Meanwhile, Wall Street has gone to court to stop the rule. It’s already won a stay.

As rising gas prices start wagging the election-year dog, the President should let America know what’s really causing prices to rise.
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Amend2012

The First Amendment Upside Down. Why We Must Occupy Democracy

You’ve been seeing this across the country … Americans assaulted, clubbed, dragged, pepper-sprayed … Why? For exercising their right to free speech and assembly — protesting the increasing concentration of income, wealth, and political power at the top.

And what’s Washington’s response? Nothing. In fact, Congress’s so-called “supercommittee” just disbanded because Republicans refuse to raise a penny of taxes on the rich.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court says money is speech and corporations are people. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision last year ended all limits on political spending. Millions of dollars are being funneled to politicians without a trace.

And a revolving door has developed between official Washington and Wall Street – with bank executives becoming public officials who make rules that benefit the banks before heading back to the Street to make money off the rules they created.

Other top officials, including an increasing proportion of former members of congress, are cashing in by joining lobbying power houses and pressuring their former colleagues to do whatever their clients want.

Millionaires and billionaires on Wall Street and in executive suites aren’t contributing all this money out of sheer love of country. Their political spending is analogous to their other investments. Mostly they want low tax rates and friendly regulations.

Why else do you suppose tax rates on the super rich are now lower than they’ve been in three decades, and why – even though the long-term budget deficit is horrendous – those rates aren’t rising? Why else do the 400 richest Americans (whose wealth is larger than the combined wealth of the bottom 150 million Americans) now pay an average tax rate of only 17 percent?

Why do you think Wall Street got bailed without a single string attached – not even being required to help homeowners to whom they sold mortgages, who are now so far under water they’re drowning? And why does the financial reform legislation have loopholes big enough for bankers to drive their Ferrari’s through?

And why else are oil companies, big agribusinesses, military contractors, and the pharmaceutical industry reaping billions of dollars of government subsidies and special tax breaks?

Experts say the 2012 presidential race is likely to be the priciest ever, costing an estimated $6 billion. “It is far worse than it has ever been,” says Republican Senator John McCain.

If there’s a single core message to the Occupier movement it’s that the increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top endangers our democracy. With money comes political power.

Yet when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with all this, they’re told the First Amendment doesn’t apply. Instead, they’re treated as public nuisances – clubbed, pepper-sprayed, thrown out of public parks and evicted from public spaces.

Across America, public officials are saying Occupiers have to go. Even in universities – where free speech is supposed to be sacrosanct – peaceful assembly is being met with clubs and pepper spray.

The First Amendment is being stood on its head. Money speaks, and an unlimited amount of it can now be spent bribing and cajoling politicians. Yet peaceful assembly is viewed as a public nuisance and removed by force.

This is especially worrisome now that so many Americans are in economic trouble. The jobs recession grinds on, seemingly without end. Homes are being foreclosed upon. Qualified students cannot afford college. Or they’re forced to take on huge debt loads they can’t repay in a jobless economy. Schools are firing teachers. Vital social services are being axed.

How are Americans to be heard about what should be done about any of this if they are not allowed to mobilize and organize? When the freedom of speech goes to the highest bidder, moneyed interests have a disproportionate say.

Now more than ever, the First Amendment needs to be put right side up. Nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake.



Stop the Austerity Train Wreck!

The biggest question right now on Planet Washington is whether the congressional supercommittee will reach an agreement.

That’s the wrong question. Agreement or not, Washington is on the road to making budget cuts that will slow the economy, increase unemployment, and impose additional hardship on millions of Americans.

The real question is how to stop this austerity train wreck, and substitute the following:

FIRST: no cuts before jobs are back – until unemployment is down to 5 percent. Until then, the economy needs a boost, not a cut. Consumers – whose spending is 70 percent of the economy – don’t have the money to boost the economy on their own. Their pay is dropping and they’re losing jobs.

SECOND: Make the boost big enough. 14 million Americans are out of work, and 10 million are working part time who need full-time jobs. The President’s proposed jobs program is a start but it’s tiny relative to what needs to be done. It would create fewer than 2 million jobs. We need a big jobs program – rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure, and including a WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps.

THIRD: To pay for this, raise taxes on the super-rich. It’s only fair. Never before has so much income and wealth been concentrated at the very top, and taxes on the top so low. Go back to the 70 percent marginal tax we had before 1980. And include more tax brackets at the top. It doesn’t make sense that any income over $375,000 is taxed at the same 35 percent, even if it’s a billion dollars. And tax all sources of income at the same rate, including capital gains.

FOURTH: Cut the budget where the real bloat is. Military spending and corporate welfare. End weapons systems that don’t work and stop wars we shouldn’t be fighting to begin with, and we save over $300 billion a year. Cut corporate welfare – subsidies and special tax breaks going to big agribusiness, big oil, big pharma, and big insurance – and we save another $100 billion.

Do you hear me, Washington? Do these four things and restore jobs and prosperity. Fail to do these, and you’ll make things much, much worse.

Mario Savio Memorial Lecture, November 15, 2011

THE SEVEN BIGGEST ECONOMIC LIES

The President’s Jobs Bill doesn’t have a chance in Congress — and the Occupiers on Wall Street and elsewhere can’t become a national movement for a more equitable society – unless more Americans know the truth about the economy.

Here’s a short (2 minute 30 second) effort to rebut the seven biggest whoppers now being told by those who want to take America backwards. The major points:



1. Tax cuts for the rich trickle down to everyone else. Baloney. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both sliced taxes on the rich and what happened? Most Americans’ wages (measured by the real median wage) began flattening under Reagan and have dropped since George W. Bush. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke.

2. Higher taxes on the rich would hurt the economy and slow job growth. False. From the end of World War II until 1981, the richest Americans faced a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent or above. Under Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Even after all deductions and credits, the top taxes on the very rich were far higher than they’ve been since. Yet the economy grew faster during those years than it has since. (Don’t believe small businesses would be hurt by a higher marginal tax; fewer than 2 percent of small business owners are in the highest tax bracket.)

3. Shrinking government generates more jobs. Wrong again. It means fewer government workers – everyone from teachers, fire fighters, police officers, and social workers at the state and local levels to safety inspectors and military personnel at the federal. And fewer government contractors, who would employ fewer private-sector workers. According to Moody’s economist Mark Zandi (a campaign advisor to John McCain), the $61 billion in spending cuts proposed by the House GOP will cost the economy 700,000 jobs this year and next.

4. Cutting the budget deficit now is more important than boosting the economy. Untrue. With so many Americans out of work, budget cuts now will shrink the economy. They’ll increase unemployment and reduce tax revenues. That will worsen the ratio of the debt to the total economy. The first priority must be getting jobs and growth back by boosting the economy. Only then, when jobs and growth are returning vigorously, should we turn to cutting the deficit.

5. Medicare and Medicaid are the major drivers of budget deficits. Wrong. Medicare and Medicaid spending is rising quickly, to be sure. But that’s because the nation’s health-care costs are rising so fast. One of the best ways of slowing these costs is to use Medicare and Medicaid’s bargaining power over drug companies and hospitals to reduce costs, and to move from a fee-for-service system to a fee-for-healthy outcomes system. And since Medicare has far lower administrative costs than private health insurers, we should make Medicare available to everyone.

6. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Don’t believe it. Social Security is solvent for the next 26 years. It could be solvent for the next century if we raised the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax. That ceiling is now $106,800.

7. It’s unfair that lower-income Americans don’t pay income tax. Wrong. There’s nothing unfair about it. Lower-income Americans pay out a larger share of their paychecks in payroll taxes, sales taxes, user fees, and tolls than everyone else.

Demagogues through history have known that big lies, repeated often enough, start being believed — unless they’re rebutted. These seven economic whoppers are just plain wrong. Make sure you know the truth – and spread it on.



The Truth About the Economy

Ready for $6 a gallon.....

Bye bye Oba mama! The guys not too bright taking these guys on in an election year.

Even Romney could beat a Jimmy Carter!

Obama: End tax breaks for oil companies - Washington Times

The president didn’t mention one of the few direct actions he could take to try to lower gas prices in the short term — releasing oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Mr. Obama called for that solution as a candidate in 2008 when gasoline prices neared $4 per gallon, and he reportedly discussed the option earlier this week with British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Instead, Mr. Obama said his administration is cracking down on oil profits — on traders who “distort the price of oil, and make big profits for themselves at your expense.” And he called on Congress again to eliminate $4 billion in annual tax breaks for oil companies.

“Your member of Congress should be fighting for you,” Mr. Obama said. “Not for big financial firms. Not for big oil companies.”

A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service last year found that eliminating the subsidies would likely result in higher gas prices in the short term.

The address was the president’s second speech on gas prices and energy in three days. Public opinion polls are showing that the president’s job-approval rating, on the rise earlier in this election year, has dipped again as gas prices have risen. Retail prices on Friday rose a penny to a national average of $3.83 per gallon.

The world is afloat in oil.....

Speculation and politics are the reason We are going broke paying for gas so Oba mama and his buddies make out like bandits. Remember Gore made millions off of the global warming fraud so why shouldn't Oba mama get in on the action.

Of course, if he isn't then he's stupider than a box of rocks!

The Oil Card - Global Economic Warfare in the 21st Century, by Jim Norman

Challenging the conventional wisdom behind oil pricing, this compact book sheds an entirely new light on the workings of "free" commodity markets and oil industry supply and demand "fundamentals." Its purpose is to look at the use of oil as an economic weapon.

The book assembles a now well-documented chronology of how the US and its allies, including Saudi Arabia, pushed down oil prices dramatically in the 1980s, and kept them low for a decade. It was a concerted and stunningly successful effort to break the former Soviet Union by depriving it of desperately needed hard-currency income.

It then raises the question whether those same price-control levers have lately been pushed in the opposite direction to rein in another target: the oil-short Peoples Republic of China. Contrary to popular perceptions, media commentary and official explanations, the book methodically lays out the geopolitical logic and the market mechanisms behind the stunning 12-fold run-up of oil prices from 1998 to mid-2008. It also offers an explanation for the sudden price drop from almost $150/barrel to under $100 as Russia again flexed its muscle by invading Georgia.

We'll never know....

WILL MITT ROMNEY BE A BIGGER SPENDER THAN PRESIDENT OBAMA? | PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM

he Tax Policy Center has crunched the numbers on Mitt Romney’s tax plan and the findings are pretty interesting. They used the CBO’s baseline estimates and then included the various tax cuts that Governor Romney is calling for. Of course, this is only the revenue side so we don’t know what kind of spending cuts Romney might have in store for us, but just looking at the revenue side one might be inclined to argue that Romney will be a bigger spender than Obama is! Here’s the Tax Policy Center on the plan:

“Last week, Mitt Romney proposed a new tax plan that would, among other things, reduce individual tax rates by 20 percent across the board and repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax. To get a rough sense of what those two tax cuts would cost, the Tax Policy Center crunched the numbers. The result: They would be really, really expensive.

Romney can't win in the South.....

Told you so..... Going to be hard for him to become President because too many conservatives will stay home.

Ask McCain.

Santorum boosts conservative claims with sweep of Alabama, Mississippi - Washington Times

Bolstering his claim that he’s the strongest conservative in the Republican presidential field, Rick Santorum swept the Alabama and Mississippi primaries on Tuesday, sending a strong signal to Mitt Romney that the GOP front-runner still isn’t connecting with a big chunk of the party’s deeply conservative base.

The twin victories, though, were not enough for Mr. Santorum to make up ground on Mr. Romney in the chase toward the 1,144 delegates needed to wrap up the nomination, as the former Massachusetts governor would later emerge victorious in the smaller caucus contests in Hawaii and American Samoa — ending the day with bigger delegate gains compared to his rivals.

Ah.....DUH!!!!!!

He's not a Christian, either. By Moslem theology a man born to Islam is Islam for life. No Really!

Sheriff Arpaio: Obama birth certificate a 'forgery' - Washington Times

PHOENIX — Armed with a new 10-page report he commissioned, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Thursday he suspects the birth certificate President Obama released last year is a “computer-generated forgery” — and also raised questions about the authenticity of the president’s selective service registration card.

In an extensive — and at times combative — press conference in Phoenix, Sheriff Arpaio repeatedly said he is not questioning the president’s legal status under the Constitution nor alleging fraud on Mr. Obama’s part, but did say there is evidence crimes have been committed by someone and his investigation continues.

“Based on all of the evidence presented and investigated, I cannot in good faith report to you that these documents are authentic,” Sheriff Arpaio said. “My investigators believe that the long-form birth certificate was manufactured electronically and that it did not originate in paper format as claimed by the White House.”

Maybe we are getting tired of welfare for the young.....

Nothing raises the price and cheapens the product like the governemnt paying for it.

Need a degree in trans-gender studies? How about another million grads in bi-racial relations....or maybe a few hundred thousand more lawyers?
 
Or just give every high school grad a degree is something and find them a job as an apprentice. Worked for me!!

Ignorance Is Strength - NYTimes.com

One way in which Americans have always been exceptional has been in our support for education. First we took the lead in universal primary education; then the “high school movement” made us the first nation to embrace widespread secondary education. And after World War II, public support, including the G.I. Bill and a huge expansion of public universities, helped large numbers of Americans to get college degrees.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman
Go to Columnist Page »
Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal
Related in Opinion

Op-Ed Contributor: A Smug Education? (March 9, 2012)
Room for Debate: Should College Be for Everyone? (March 1, 2012)

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But now one of our two major political parties has taken a hard right turn against education, or at least against education that working Americans can afford. Remarkably, this new hostility to education is shared by the social conservative and economic conservative wings of the Republican coalition

I have a solution.....

let's pass a law that let's illegals  vote Republican and move them all here! LOL.

E-Verify group to pressure Boehner with ads - Washington Times

Immigration is one of the thorniest political issues as the general election in November approaches. Immigrant rights groups have blasted President Obama for failing to move a legalization bill, but NumbersUSA’s decision shows there is just as much frustration on the other side with Republicans, who won control of the House in 2010 while promising to get tough on illegal immigration, but who have not pushed through any major crackdown.

Mr. Beck wouldn’t say how much money would be spent on the ads, which will target various districts that may include Mr. Boehner’s in Ohio.

Bring back Reaganomics....

You have to read the whole article but Krugman whines that we did better under Reagan.

Where was he in 1984? Saying the exact opposite of course.

States of Depression - NYTimes.com

Why did government spending rise so much under Reagan, with his small-government rhetoric, while shrinking under the president so many Republicans insist is a secret socialist? In Reagan’s case, it’s partly about the arms race, but mainly about state and local governments doing what they are supposed to do: educate a growing population of children, invest in infrastructure for a growing economy.

Under President Obama, however, the dire fiscal condition of state and local governments — the result of a sustained slump, which in turn was caused largely by that private debt explosion before 2008 — has led to forced spending cuts. The fiscal straits of lower-level governments could and should have been alleviated by aid from Washington, which remains able to borrow at incredibly low interest rates. But this aid was never provided on a remotely adequate scale.

This policy malpra

Apologise for what?.....

Unmarried women who can't get their dates to pay for rubbers or a couple of dollars a month for the pill?

Why should you or I or any other taxpayer pay for it if we ain't getting any?

Limbaugh apologizes for making slurs about Georgetown student - Washington Times

Rush Limbaugh apologized Saturday for sexual slurs he made on the air about a Georgetown student who has become a public advocate for President Obama’s new contraception coverage mandate.

Earlier this week he called Sandra Fluke, a third-year law student, a “slut” and a “prostitute” for testifying before Congress that employers should cover contraception, accusing her of wanting to “be paid to have sex” and even suggesting she should post sex videos online in return.

The comments sparked outrage and fed political tensions between Republicans and Democrats over the issue, prompting President Obama to call Ms. Fluke on Friday to thank her for speaking out. While Mr. Limbaugh had initially doubled down on his comments, he posted an apology on his website on Saturday, saying he didn’t mean to personally attack Ms. Fluke

Snow....

making up for none since a week before Thanksgiving. Oh well.

It's a religeous thing.....

Romney Mormon Santorum Catholic. Latinos Catholic. What do you think? I think it will be interesting if being a Catholic gets you the Latino swing vote.

Does that mean Oba mama is toast?

Think the Mexicans will vote to deport their relatives? Yea, right!

Arizona set to test Romney's appeal to Hispanics - Washington Times

PHOENIX — With this weekend’s endorsement by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, Mitt Romney has amassed the backing of what could be considered the trifecta of hard-liners on illegal immigration — and he will put that to the test with Hispanic voters Tuesday in Arizona’s GOP primary.

Mr. Romney also has the support of former California Gov. Pete Wilson and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who together with Ms. Brewer have led state immigration crackdown efforts during the past two decades. Their backing solidifies the former Massachusetts governor’s credentials as the toughest candidate on the issue.

Another liar about global warming....

What's interesting that even if they were telling the truth and we were warming the planet no one would believe them anyhow.

Kind of like Iran, a country barely out of the stone age, is much of a threat to us.

One aircraft carrier could destroy them in a couple of weeks! One nuke in 15 minutes!

miltonwolf.com: Manbearpig update: More global warming fraud exposed

Remember when the science was "settled" and if you dared to doubt the apocalyptic warnings from the high priests of the church of global warming, er, climate change, you were called a "denier"?

The outright collapse of the Global Warmists continues unabated. First came ClimateGate. Then ClimateGate 2.0. Now Michelle Malkin exposes Eco-fraud: Global warming crusader admits lying, stealing, smearing:

It was all For The Planet, of course.

Global warming zealot Peter Gleick, in the name of defending “rational debate,” committed flabbergasting fraud to try and bring down the free-market Heartland Institute.

He’s finally ‘fessed up. But the Heartland Institute is going to fight for its reputation and for justice — in court.

In Gleick's confession, he claims he committed fraud because "a rational public debate is desperately needed." Really? I thought the global warming science was settled.

Just be glad your not trying to make excuses for Oba mama....

The guy is all over the map. I thought he was a Democrat. Of course, most people thought he was a Christian!

Today Oba mama says the only thing the Republicans want to do is drill! Since he refuses to drill gas prices have doubled and most people can't get a decent job. He gave us the criminal gang in the  Solyndra company, closed down the Gulf, and now wants to raise taxes on then oil companies.

I suppose living in Washington does make people a little stupid and we can forgive him because he's a black guy, you know, and it would be racists of us to treat him like any other politician who lies!

Oil speculators got us into this economic mess and until we do something constructive about our energy needs will continue to rule the roost.

Buy food. If you need another car go for the mileage. Move closer to work. Be ready for collapse II.

Robert Reich (The Gas Wars)

Nothing drives voter sentiment like the price of gas – now averaging $3.56 a gallon, up 30 cents from the start of the year. It’s already hit $4 in some places. The last time gas topped $4 was 2008.

And nothing energizes Republicans like rising energy prices. Last week House Speaker John Boehner told Republicans to take advantage of voters’ looming anger over prices at the pump. On Thursday House Republicans passed a bill to expand offshore drilling and force the White House to issue a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. The tumult prompted the Interior Department to announce on Friday expanded oil exploration in the Arctic.

Obama makes a fool of himself.....

Sounded like Jimmy Carter to me. Without Republicans in Congress he's screwed on gas prices and they know it!

Even Romney can beat him if he whines about it, LOL.

Sessions: Obama 'defeatist' on rising gas prices - Washington Times

President Obama’s indignant defense this week of his administration’s energy policies has done nothing to deter GOP critics, as gas prices continue to rise amid worries that their continued climb could throw the economic recovery off course.

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said in a letter to Mr. Obama Friday that the president was taking a “defeatist view” when it comes to trying to reduce gas prices.

“I reject the defeatist view that says the nation that won two world wars, pioneered space travel, and overcame the Soviet empire is now helpless in the face of high prices at the pump,” Mr. Sessions wrote. “We are not at the mercy of dictators, cartels and events beyond our control.”

Got about 10 inches or so of snow last night......

Come on summer.......

Just be glad your not trying to make excuses for Oba mama....

The guy is all over the map. I thought he was a Democrat. Of course, most people thought he was a Christian!

Today Oba mama says the only thing the Republicans want to do is drill! Since he refuses to drill gas prices have doubled and most people can't get a decent job. He gave us the criminal gang in the  Solyndra company, closed down the Gulf, and now wants to raise taxes on then oil companies.

I suppose living in Washington does make people a little stupid and we can forgive him because he's a black guy, you know, and it would be racists of us to treat him like any other politician who lies!

Oil speculators got us into this economic mess and until we do something constructive about our energy needs will continue to rule the roost.

Buy food. If you need another car go for the mileage. Move closer to work. Be ready for collapse II.

Robert Reich (The Gas Wars)

Nothing drives voter sentiment like the price of gas – now averaging $3.56 a gallon, up 30 cents from the start of the year. It’s already hit $4 in some places. The last time gas topped $4 was 2008.

And nothing energizes Republicans like rising energy prices. Last week House Speaker John Boehner told Republicans to take advantage of voters’ looming anger over prices at the pump. On Thursday House Republicans passed a bill to expand offshore drilling and force the White House to issue a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. The tumult prompted the Interior Department to announce on Friday expanded oil exploration in the Arctic.

You ever notice.....

That the biggest war mongers among us have never fired a shot or have a shot fired at them from the evil enemies?

Be a different story if they or their children had to participate, right? Should be a law that these over zealous frothing at the mouth would be Rambos had to shoot it out in some God forsaking dump.

But there are plenty of patriotic suckers to do it for them so no danger of peace in the world so far!

Even some of the left-wing lackies agree with me.....

Firing government employees and cutting people's checks is idiotic during a bust.

Now Oba mama is terrorising Iran  into Armageddon. Even though high gas prices, refusing to drill for oil, and telling the Canadians to shove the pipeline up their asses is suicidal to his re-election campaign.

Oh but we did get to keep a couple of dollars a week after he robbed the Social Security tax, right?

Everyone in the media was giddy that he finally got something through Congress. Of course they're idiots but destroying the system has been the gangsters on Wall Street's plan for many years.

Imagine if all those billions were going to the crooks that fucked over and got us into this Depression.

Oh wait, that's only a matter of time, isn't it?

Pain Without Gain - NYTimes.com

Specifically, in early 2010 austerity economics — the insistence that governments should slash spending even in the face of high unemployment — became all the rage in European capitals. The doctrine asserted that the direct negative effects of spending cuts on employment would be offset by changes in “confidence,” that savage spending cuts would lead to a surge in consumer and business spending, while nations failing to make such cuts would see capital flight and soaring interest rates. If this sounds to you like something Herbert Hoover might have said, you’re right: It does and he did.

Now the results are in — and they’re exactly what three generations’ worth of economic analysis and all the lessons of history should have told you would happen. The confidence fairy has failed to show up: none of the countries slashing spending have seen the predicted private-sector surge. Instead, the depressing effects of fiscal austerity have been reinforced by falling private spending.

Furthermore, bond markets keep refusing to cooperate. Even austerity’s star pupils, countries that, like Portugal and Ireland, have done everything that was demanded of them, still face sky-high borrowing costs. Why? Because spending cuts have deeply depressed their economies, undermining their tax bases to such an extent that the ratio of debt to G.D.P., the standard indicator of fiscal progress, is getting worse rather than better.

Oba mama scaring the Iranians....

Time to raise gas prices. I guess the guy doesn't want to win. He'll have his hands full against Santorum if the Romney campaign finally dissolves. (Romney, a fellow liberal, can't beat him.)

Time will tell but he shouldn't be in this position but who said these people aren't arrogant.

Makes you wonder don't it.......

If Social Security was going broke why rob the funding? But I already posted many times that deficits are accounting gimmicks and we can print, borrow, or steal all the money we need to finance our government. We always have and always will.

The experts just like to lie about it!

Congress passes payroll tax cut - Washington Times

Acting with striking bipartisanship, Congress on Friday passed a full-year extension of the payroll tax cut and renewed enhanced unemployment benefits, sending the bill on to the White House and delivering a major victory to President Obama.

Mr. Obama had made both the tax cut and the jobless benefits chief pillars of his economic plan, and he and fellow Democrats outmaneuvered Republicans and ended up shaping most of the package.

One of our local gas stations raised their price....

6 cents a gallon. Oil up to 103$. Oba mama better move or he's toast this November.

They own us....

You ain't seen nothing yet. And our kids will think it's normal for the government to feed, clothe, babysit, employ us, cure our illnesses, clean up after us, etc. etc.

The Republicans will do it after giving you a tax cut and the Dem's will do it because they are busy bodies so don't blame anyone else just keep voting for these fascists and it will all get better. LOL

Did anyone notice we've declared war on Iran? No?

Watch the price of oil. Make sure you have some food stashed away and don't be surprised if gas bumps $5 for awhile. I'm not betting on it but Oba mama will have to move fast to stay in office so "talks" will be instituted fast or he's toast.

After the election it will be bombs away!

NC School Officials | Preschooler's Homemade Lunch | The Daily Caller

A North Carolina elementary school forced a preschool student to eat cafeteria chicken nuggets for lunch on Jan. 30 after officials reportedly determined that her homemade meal wasn’t up to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s standards for healthfulness, according to a report from the Carolina Journal.

The newspaper reported that the four-year-old girl brought a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, potato chips and apple juice in her packed lunch from home. That meal didn’t meet with approval from the government agent who was on site inspecting kids’ lunches that day.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Child Development and Early Education requires that all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs must meet USDA guidelines. Meals, the guidelines say, must include one serving each of meat, milk and grain and two servings of fruit or vegetables. Those guidelines apply to home-packed lunches as well as cafeteria meals.

The Carolina Journal reported that the girl and her mother wish to remain anonymous to avoid public scrutiny, but she did write to her state representative to complain about it.

“I don’t feel that I should pay for a cafeteria lunch when I provide lunch for her from home,” the mother wrote in a complaint to her state representative, Republican G.L. Pridgen of Robeson County.

Big battle in Conservatism.....

Conservatives lost the argument about health care when they signed on to Medicare in '65. Once a benefit is given it can't be taken back.

And not putting everyone on Medicare a couple of years ago makes the issue worse. It becomes a pissing contest because of all the different ways health care is administered. But mostly it means that we have to pay for our own health care and for everyone else's health care.

And yes, it's Oba mama's fault. If he and the Dems had fazed all Americans into the Medicare system this argument would be ancient history and our government could have concentrated on paying for it and reforming the mess that they created.

Then the insurance industry could find something else to do for a living  like everybody else

Coulter Care - Peter Ferrara - Townhall Conservative

Why the Individual Mandate Equals Socialized Medicine

Here is why the individual mandate inevitably leads to full-blown socialized medicine, as it has with Obamacare: When the government mandates that you have to buy health insurance, then it has to specify what health insurance is required to satisfy the mandate. This means politics is involved in deciding what must be included and covered by that insurance.

And once politics is involved, that means you can't leave anything out, as that would be takenas an offense and a slight to both the consumers and the providers of the excluded service. Mental health benefits and counseling, drug rehab, maternity benefits (even for men and seniors), abortion -- everything must be covered. We will see that when the final regulations are issued for Obamacare by the Supreme Dictator, Kathleen Sebelius (who looks and acts the part of a villain from an Ayn Rand novel). We are already seeing that the mandated services must include sterilization and "morning after" pills, which even Catholic institutions will have to pay for in regard to their own employees.

That means the mandated health insurance will inevitably be extremely expensive, as we are just starting to see with Obamacare. To make such a mandated expense politically palatable, the government must provide extensive welfare subsidies well into the middle class and beyond, again as we see with Obamacare. The biggest expense there is not the explosion of Medicaid, as bad as that is. It is the entirely new entitlement program providing benefits (subsidies) for the purchase of the mandated insurance for families making up to $88,000 a year to start, indexed to grow to over $100,000 in the near future.

Another exercise in fantasy...

Oba mama comes up with a budget and the  Greeks get another bailout. Someday we'll here something real and then no one will report it.

Even the leftwing nuts are getting it...

Our system is rotten no matter who is in Washington.

Robert Reich (The Sad Spectacle of Obama's Super PAC)

How many billionaires does it take to buy a presidential election? “With so much at stake” wrote Obama campaign manager Jim Messina on the Obama campaign’s blog, Obama couldn’t “unilaterally disarm.”

But would refusing to be corrupted this way really amount to unilateral disarmament? To the contrary, I think it would have given the President a rallying cry that nearly all Americans would get behind: “More of the nation’s wealth and political power is now in the hands of fewer people and large corporations than since the era of the robber barons of the Gilded Age. I will not allow our democracy to be corrupted by this! I will fight to take back our government!”

Small donations would have flooded the Obama campaign, overwhelming Romney’s billionaire super PACs. The people would have been given a chance to be heard.

The sad truth is Obama has never really occupied the high ground on campaign finance. He refused public financing in 2008. Once president, he didn’t go to bat for a system of public financing that would have made it possible for candidates to raise enough money from small donors and matching public funds they wouldn’t need to rely on a few billionaires pumping unlimited sums into super PACS. He hasn’t even fought for public disclosure of super PAC donations.

And now he’s made a total mockery of the Court’s naïve belief that super PACs would remain separate from individual campaigns, by officially endorsing his own super PAC and allowing campaign manager Jim Messina and even cabinet officers to speak at his super PAC events. Obama will not appear at such events but he, Michelle Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden will encourage support of the Obama super PAC

Who says crime doesn't pay....

Just bribe Oba mama and you get away with billions and only have to pay back peanuts.

Just ask his buddies in the banking racket. They got away with it. Oh, and they knew what they were doing. They made loans to people who couldn't pay it back and now blame the government for making them do it!

Except they bribed the Feds into giving them permission to lend these broke dicks the money in the first place knowing damn well that you and I would have to pay for it for electing the gang in Washington in the first place.

They were right!

Speculators getting antsy....

May you live in interesting times. Who's going to buy all that 100$ oil in Europe?

More oil comes on line from Canada and then good old USA and prices collapse.

Plus a dozen assholes in California buy a hybrid and we have a glut! LOL.

Expect Oba mama to come up with a "new" drilling plan a little later to squash any oil price surge that makes him look helpless later this year as he enter reelection mode.

Crude Oil Trades Near Six-Week Low on Forecast of Rising U.S. Stockpiles - Bloomberg

Oil fell to near a six-week low in New York before a report forecast to show that U.S. stockpiles increased last week. U.S. crude’s discount to North Sea Brent oil surpassed $20 for the first time since October.

West Texas Intermediate futures extended yesterday’s decline, bringing this week’s loss to 1.8 percent. Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos will meet the country’s political leaders today to discuss measures for securing a second European Union-led bailout. U.S. crude inventories probably rose to the highest in more than four months and gasoline supplies climbed for a second week, according to a Bloomberg survey before an Energy Department report tomorrow.

“The market is oversupplied, which is putting pressure on WTI,” said Carsten Fritsch, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt, who forecasts oil will slide this year. “But fears of supply disruption are keeping Brent supported. The widening of the spread is the constant factor in the market.”

Oil for March delivery dropped as much as $1.07, or 1.1 percent, to $95.84 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and was at $96.03 at 1:07 p.m. London time. It fell to $95.44 a barrel on Feb. 2, the weakest level since Dec. 20. Prices have declined 2.8 percent this year.

Romney shits himself....

Santorum sweep: Wins Missouri, Minnesota, Colorado - Washington Times

DENVER, Colo. — Rick Santorum clobbered Mitt Romney in a head-to-head match-up in Missouri’s non-binding primary, easily won Minnesota’s caucuses and snagged a close victory in Colorado’s caucuses in a clean sweep Tuesday that once again rewrote the story of the Republican presidential nomination battle.

None of the three contests leads immediately to any delegates being awarded toward the nominating convention in Tampa, Fla., this summer, but Tuesday’s results suggest a strong pool of support for Mr. Santorum

Walmart fazes out the people greeter job.....

Patti and I will be able to stay on but after we quit the job no longer exists.

It's open season for shop lifters!!!

Go Giants....

If the defense plays like they did against the Packers going to be a good game.

I like being right....

Expect billions to come home and fire up the boom. Then we slash the budget and bust all over again.

Oh wait President Romney will bring us hope and change and Wall Street will be told to take a hike.

Yeah right.

I think the Aztecs have a better chance, don't you?

EMPLOYMENT DATA CRUSHES EXPECTATIONS | PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM

This morning’s employment data is likely to turn the “double dip” discussion into a “double rip” discussion. It’s now crystal clear that all of last year’s recession talk was well off the mark. The USA continues to be supported by a healthy budget deficit that is serving as a buffer to any downside in growth. This doesn’t mean problems don’t remain, but the bears have greatly exaggerated the weakness in the US economy.

Econoday has the details on this morning’s employment report which showed a healthy jump in private sector employment to 240K jobs in January as well as a decline in the unemployment rate to 8.3%:

Very few poor people vote....

The ones that do would never vote for a super rich snob like this guy.

Right now I'm still betting on the black guy because when the election is between two liberals the liberal always wins. Of course, it doesn't really matter which one wins for the average guy because he will pay for it.

Romney Isn’t Concerned - NYTimes.com

Faced with criticism, the candidate has claimed that he didn’t mean what he seemed to mean, and that his words were taken out of context. But he quite clearly did mean what he said. And the more context you give to his statement, the worse it gets.

First of all, just a few days ago, Mr. Romney was denying that the very programs he now says take care of the poor actually provide any significant help. On Jan. 22, he asserted that safety-net programs — yes, he specifically used that term — have “massive overhead,” and that because of the cost of a huge bureaucracy “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.”