To protest Obamacare, San Francisco holds a sick-in

Liberals hold sit-ins. When protesting Obamacare, a 'sit-in' didn't seem appropriate: a 'sick-in' did. Carrying with them their crutches, bandages, and fake blood, a crowd gathered today by the Ferry Building in San Francisco to protest what Obamacare would do to our health.
The building on the left above is the Ferry Building. The suspension bridge in the background on the right is the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Below is another shot of the crowd looking in the other direction:One woman made a point that I had to agree with: "If you're not outraged, then you are not paying attention":In the background above is one of SF's well recognized symbols, the clock tower on the SF Ferry Building, which can also be seen below in the portrait of a zombie:
If you watch movies, you know that zombies are nearly indestructible. This zombie makes the point that even he would get ill if he had to depend on PelosiCare.

The protester below, with the bandaged but still bleeding (fake) head wound, used a chart of the bureaucracies to be created by ObamaCare to explain what many think is the real agenda of Obamacare: it is an SEIU jobs program.
Another protester, also braving an Obamacare-induced head wound, made a related point about Obamacare being not a reform but a takeover:
During the campaign, candidate Obama famously said that matters of life and death were "above his paygrade." Now, as president, Obama seems all too happy to decide what medical care grandma deserves:This sign reminds us that Obamacare is part of the Obama deficit spending spree:The point of having a 'sick-in' is, of course, to emphasize that government-medicine will kill you:
If the "unbiased" media considers the people who value freedom of choice in healthcare to be an "angry mob," then this protester was proud to be a member of that mob:Actually, she is a very nice grandmother but don't let the "unbiased" reporters hear that.

As the protest went on, a double-decker tour bus went by:I suspect that the last thing that the tourists in that bus expected to see was conservatives and libertarians protesting in San Francisco.

This protest was organized by the San Francisco Bay Area Patriots.

WELCOME to Michelle Malkin readers! Thanks also to Bookwormroom, The Snooper Report, and Newsvine for their links.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of local protests and tea parties:
A Tea Party greets Obama in San Francisco (Oct. 15)
Videos of the October 15 San Francisco Tea Party
San Franciscans speak to Nancy Pelosi (Aug. 14)
The San Francisco Tax Day Tea Party Protest in Pictures (Apr. 15)
Rep. Eshoo's health care town hall (Sep. 2)
Rep. Speier's town hall meeting (Aug. 23)
Million man Tea party

Rahm Emanuel on the Obamacare disaster

After reviewing several methods for lowering health care costs and noting that the White House plans to use none on them, James Capretta writes:

And so what’s the White House response to this alarming state of fiscal affairs? As recounted in the Times piece, Emanuel blames the limits of politics. “Let’s be honest,” Emanuel apparently stated in a recent interview. “The goal isn’t to see whether I can pass this through the executive board of the Brookings Institution. I’m passing it through the United State Congress with people who represent constituents.”

That’s exactly right of course. But it’s also an indictment of the entire Obamacare enterprise. The health-care bills under consideration would hand over to the federal government nearly all power for organizing American health care. And yet there is not a shred of evidence that Congress or the administration can handle these tasks well.

MSNBC reports fake news

From NewsBusters:

On Friday's edition of Morning Meeting, host Dylan Ratigan featured fake photos of Sarah Palin during a mocking segment on why Americans are fascinated with the former vice presidential candidate. While listing the show’s top ten reasons, Ratigan showed a doctored photo of Palin’s head on the bikini-clad body of a woman holding a weapon.

These photos were not new: Snopes labeled them as fakes over a year ago.

RELATED:  The New York Times attacks Sarah Palin's new book as a "payback hit job."   John Hinderaker has more on the Times' snarkiness.

Who is Meg Whitman?

Meg Whitman is running for governor of California as a Republican. Who is she? For one, she is a "huge fan" of Marxist ex-czar Van Jones:
It is also reported that the 53-year old e-Bay billionaire did not register to vote until 2002 and did not register as a Republican until 2007.

UPDATE: Meg Whitman, through her campaign, has responded to the Van Jones video:

“My husband and I met him and many others on a cruise sponsored by National Geographic and The Aspen Institute. He talked about supporting job growth in California, but of course I did not do a background check of his past over dinner. As these reports have surfaced, it’s clear that he holds views that I entirely reject; any suggestion otherwise is ridiculous.”

That may be but I would prefer a Governor who could spot a con-man without needing a full background check.

MORE: Meg Whitman's campaign donations have been overwhelmingly to Republicans, by $212,101 to Republicans against $10,000 to Democrats. Her contributions to Democrats, however, were not to moderates: she gave to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Rep.Gary L. Ackerman (D-NY), and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). These contributions all occurred before her decision to become a Republican in 2007.

Obamanomics fail

According to Bloomberg news, Kevin Griffis, a spokesman for U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, says the Obama administration is working hard to saving US jobs:

“This administration has made a significant commitment to U.S. manufacturing, including reforming the country’s health insurance system to bring down costs and make American companies more competitive globally,” Griffis said. [Emph. added]

What do US manufacturers think of that? Emerson Electric Co. makes electrical equipment, including the well-known InSinkErator
garbage disposals, and has an annual sales of $21 billion.  Emerson Chief Executive Officer David Farr explains the predicament that Pres. Obama has created for him:

“Washington is doing everything in their manpower, capability, to destroy U.S. manufacturing,” Farr said today in Chicago at a Baird Industrial Outlook conference. “Cap and trade, medical reform, labor rules.” ....

"What do you think I am going to do?” Farr asked. “I’m not going to hire anybody in the United States. I’m moving. They are doing everything possible to destroy jobs.” [Emph. added]

Hat tip: Instapundit.

NY23 race grows tighter

Althought polls seemed to show conservative Hoffman leading in the special election for New York's 23rd district, election night results showed a decisive victory for Democrat Owens. Now, as the count continues, the race appears to be tightening. Hoffman has not yet decided to contest the race officially.

That the US cannot count ballots better than this is a real scandal.

UPDATE: Hoffman has un-conceded and would win, according to the Hill, if he receives 65% of the uncounted absentee ballots. (H/T Instapundit.)

Harvard economist explains why Obamacare will raise premiums

The people in Congress seem to know nothing about how insurance actually works. Martin Feldstein, who is a professor of economics at Harvard University and the president emeritus of the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research, explains what should be obvious about the insurance market. In the Washington Post, he writes:

A key feature of the House and Senate health bills would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to anyone with preexisting conditions. The new coverage would start immediately, and the premium could not reflect the individual's health condition.

This well-intentioned feature would provide a strong incentive for someone who is healthy to drop his or her health insurance, saving the substantial premium costs. After all, if serious illness hit this person or a family member, he could immediately obtain coverage. As healthy individuals decline coverage in this way, insurance companies would come to have a sicker population. The higher cost of insuring that group would force insurers to raise their premiums. (Separate accident policies might develop to deal with the risk of high-cost care after accidents when there is insufficient time to buy insurance.)

The higher premium level would cause others who are currently insured to drop coverage, pushing premiums even higher. The result would be a spiral of rising premiums and shrinking numbers of insured.

In an attempt to prevent this, the draft legislation provides penalties for individuals who choose not to buy insurance and for employers that do not offer health insurance. But the levels of these fines are generally too low to cause a rational individual to insure.

Consider: 27 million people are covered by health insurance purchased directly, i.e. outside employer-based plans. The average cost of an insurance policy with family coverage in 2009 is $13,375. A married couple with a median family income of $75,000 who choose not to insure would be subject to a fine of 2.5 percent of that $75,000, or $1,875. So the family would save a net $11,500 by not insuring. If a serious illness occurs -- a chronic condition or a condition that requires surgery -- they could then buy insurance. Since fewer than one family in four has annual health-care costs that exceed $10,000, the decision to drop coverage looks like a good bet. For a lower-income family, the fine is smaller, and the incentive to be uninsured is even greater.

At the San Francisco Obamacare tea party last October 15, I listened to many liberals explain that insurance companies' treatment of pre-existing conditions was evil. Yet, when asked, none appeared to have thought about (a) how consumers would behave if insurance had to be granted regardless of pre-existing conditions, and (b) how that would require insurance rates to change. Pelosi and the House's other 219 supporters of Obamacare seem just as clueless.

More suppression of dissent at EPA

Two lawyers at EPA say that the cap-and-tax bill currently in Congress will work poorly. They produced a video explaining their position. Their video clearly states that they are presenting their personal opinions: "Nothing in this video is intended to represent the views of the EPA or the Obama administration." That, however, wasn't good enough. The EPA is threatening them with disciplinary action. The New York Times reports:

The Environmental Protection Agency has directed two of its lawyers to makes changes to a YouTube video they posted that is critical of the Obama administration’s climate change policy.

The agency, citing federal policies, told the two lawyers, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, who are married and based in San Francisco, that they could mention their E.P.A. affiliation only once; must remove language specifying Mr. Zabel’s expertise and their years of employment with the agency; and must remove an image of the agency’s office in San Francisco.

They have been told that if they do not edit the video to comply with the policy, they could face disciplinary action. [Emph. added]

Under Obama rules, EPA employee Mr. Zabel loses the right to his own resume!

Their video does not dispute anthropogenic global warming. Their argument is merely that cap-and-trade is an ineffective and counter-productive approach for dealing with CO2 emissions. The EPA attack on their video began after the Zabel and Williams published an op-ed on cap-and-tax in the Washington Post.

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin

PREVIOUSLY:
EPA silences economist and CO2 skeptic Dr. Alan Carlin
Environmentalists kill geese to prevent the geese from polluting the environment.

Democrats and Taxes

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that yet another prominent Democrat was caught cheating on this taxes:

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and his wife failed to pay more than $239,000 in taxes over a three-year period and have had a lien slapped on their property by the Internal Revenue Service, public records show.

Dellums, 73, and his wife, Cynthia, 55, who acts as his unpaid adviser, are named in an IRS lien filed with the Alameda County recorder's office Oct. 14. A lien naming Ron Dellums was also filed Oct. 22 in Washington, D.C., where he lived for more than 30 years as a member of Congress and a lobbyist.

The Alameda County lien says the couple failed to pay $124,198 in federal income taxes in 2005, $66,554 in 2006 and $48,246 in 2007, the year Dellums took office as mayor.

Mayor Dellums' city is also financially mis-managed:

A city report projects a deficit of $18.9 million in Oakland's general fund by the end of the 2009-10 fiscal year because of revenue shortfalls and some overspending from July through September.

What it means is more painful budget cuts for a city that faced an $83 million budget deficit going into the fiscal year and had to cut an additional $8.1 million out of the general fund at the end of July.

Prior to being mayor, Ron Dellums served in Congress where he had the distinction of being "the first avowed socialist in Congress since World War Two."

Clearly, Pres. Obama should take notice and appoint Dellums to be one of his czars.

PREVIOUSLY:
Sen. Daschle caught not paying taxes
Rep. Charlie Rangel and unpaid taxes
57% of those who describe themselves as "very liberal" think it OK to cheat on taxes.
Taxes, Sen. Al Franken, Sen. Paul Wellstone, and Clinton's AG nominees
The rules apply only to other people

The incoherence of government health care

As illustrated by Glenn McCoy:

Obama's war on science

A huge number of scientists are on record as being skeptical of global warming hysteria. Pres. Obama does not consider their views to be legitimate, as he explained in a speech last month:

The naysayers, the folks who would pretend that this is not an issue, they are being marginalized.  But I think it's important to understand that the closer we get, the harder the opposition will fight and the more we'll hear from those whose interest or ideology run counter to the much needed action that we're engaged in.  There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy -- when it's the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs.  There are going to be those who cynically claim -- make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary.

So we're going to have to work on those folks.

Stalin declared that the science of genetics was considered 'bourgeois.'  In the USSR, it was replaced by a Marxist theory of biology ('Lysenkoism').  In the US, over 30,000 scientists have publicly signed this petition skeptical of global warming.  Will Obama succeed in "marginalizing" them? Or, will he have to go "to work on" them?

RELATED: Patrick J. Michaels comments on the same speech here.  Separately, the EPA suppressed a report by Dr. Alan Carlin that was skeptical of the Obama administration's global warming claims.  The NY Times' defense of the EPA is here.

PREVIOUSLY:
Scientists failing to back Al Gore
More fraud in Global Warmist research?
Obama and the triumph of ideology over science
Global Warming and Cooling in Review
Global warming and the test of science, III
Global Warming and the test of science II
Global warming and the test of Science
NASA hypes false warming data
Science v. Gore

PBS says its attack on Fox News was wrong

PBS used its Government-subsidized Sesame Street children's show to attack Fox News as "trashy."  PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler says:

Broadcasters can tell parents whatever they think of Fox or any other network, but you shouldn’t do it through the kids.

White House war on Fox News continues

As those who watch it know, Fox News attempts to present both sides. This is done in part by having Democrats and Democratic consultants on to discuss issues. The Obama White House objects to this. They want Democratic consultants to stay off Fox, apparently in the hope that that will make Fox appear biased. The LA Times reports:

One Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox, he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.

The message was, " 'We better not see you on again,' " said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that "clients might stop using you if you continue."

In urging Democratic consultants to spurn Fox, White House officials might be trying to isolate the network and make it appear more partisan.

A boycott by Democratic strategists could also help drive the White House narrative that Fox is a fundamentally different creature than the other TV news networks. ....

But Patrick Caddell, a Fox News contributor and a former pollster for President Carter, said he has spoken to Democratic consultants who have been told by the White House to avoid appearances on Fox. He declined to give their names. ....

Caddell added: "I have heard that they've done that to others in not-too-subtle ways. I find it appalling. When the White House gets in the business of suppressing dissent and comment, particularly from its own party, it hurts itself." ....

Fox's viewership is not what worries the White House, though. More troubling to White House aides is that other news organizations may uncritically follow stories that Fox has showcased. [Emph. added]

The White House denies making such threats to consultants.

Hat tip: Anonymous commenter.

PREVIOUSLY on the Democrat's war on Fox News:
Possible WH endgame in war on Fox
Obama's war on Fox, updated
Obama's war on Fox
Fox News and Obama's Nixonesque enemies list
Obama White House has time to demonize Fox but not to work on Afghanistan
Rep. Sanchez (D-CA) proposes making dissent illegal

Obama vs. Fox; Also MediaMatters caught again

In the Wall Street Journal, Glenn Reynolds explains how Pres. Obama may be setting the ground work for prosecuting Fox News under campaign finance laws:

Bert Gall and Robert Frommer of the Institute for Justice have made a compelling case that the Obama administration's word choice is quite significant. They think that by branding Fox as something other than a "legitimate news organization," the White House is actually setting up a more brutal attack using campaign finance laws. News media organizations are exempt from campaign-finance laws' speech regulations. But if Fox is not a "legitimate news organization," then federal election authorities might be able to argue that its political speech can be regulated like that of any other non-news corporation.

Over at MediaMatters, Eric Boehlert concludes that Prof. Reynolds argument is "So dumb it hurts." How does Mr. Boehlert reach that conclusion? He uses dishonest editing.

PREVIOUSLY on Media Matters for America:
MediaMatters caught dishonestly editing Glenn Beck
Unbiased MSM gets its "truth" from Media Matters for America

PREVIOUSLY on the Democrat's war on Fox News:
Obama's war on Fox, updated
Obama's war on Fox
Fox News and Obama's Nixonesque enemies list
Obama White House has time to demonize Fox but not to work on Afghanistan
Rep. Sanchez (D-CA) proposes making dissent illegal

Barack Obama loves you!

At Gotham Avenue School, Fifth graders sing for their class performance:

We believe in Barack Obama
He loves you and he loves your mama
We believe in Barack Obama, yeah
With all the change he’s building
Gonna bring hope to the children
We believe in Barack Obama, yeah

BigHollywood has the video along with 10 other school songs. Among them is Powell Elementary School where the children sing:

Barack Obama there is none higher
Other politicians should call me sire
To burn my kingdom you must use fire
I create change till I retire!

Democratic Party come correct
...

Nothing like non-partisan education!

Why is this creepy?  Those of us who went to school when schools taught history, not Democrat-worship, remember that a turning point in Germany occurred when officials were required to swear an oath not to Germany, not to its government, but to Hitler personally.  Of course, Obama is no Hitler.  But, that, alone, doesn't mean that history lessons should be forgotten.

Hat tip: Ed Driscoll.

Are House Democrats racist?

Consider this:

The House ethics committee is currently investigating seven African-American lawmakers — more than 15 percent of the total in the House. And an eighth black member, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), would be under investigation if the Justice Department hadn’t asked the committee to stand down.

Not a single white lawmaker is currently the subject of a full-scale ethics committee probe

If the people involved were not Democrats, a quota-obsessed liberal would consider that ratio to be proof of racism.  But then quota-obsessed liberals are usually wrong.

Last week, the ethics committee opened full investigations into Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA),  Rep. Rangel (D-NY) is the subject of two investigations.  One of those investigation regards allegations that he accepted corporate money to pay for Carribean travel.  Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI), Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS.), Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ), and Rep. Del. Donna Christensen (D-Virgin Islands) are also being investigated for similar travel issues.

Hat tip: Legal Insurrection

More than half of US HUMINT on al-Queda came from detainee interrogations

Through FOIA, Judicial Watch has obtained more CIA reports confirming the importance of interrogations:

Notably, the June 1, 2005 report concludes that "Detainee reporting accounts for more than half of all HUMINT reporting on al-Qa'ida since the program began..." ....   All three reports conclude: "One of the gains to detaining the additional terrorists has been the thwarting of a number of al-Qa'ida operations in the United States and overseas."

It is no wonder that Pres. Obama did not want us to see these reports.

This new information is consistent with an even more astonishing statement that Vice President Cheney made during an interview on ABC News regarding the success of waterboarding of senior al Qaeda terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM):

“There was a period of time there, three or four years ago, when about half of everything we knew about al Qaeda came from that one source [KSM]. So, it's been a remarkably successful effort. I think the results speak for themselves.”

Pres. Obama is still promising to close the military prison in Guantanamo Bay:

"We are going to close Guantanamo. We are serious about this."

Everyone working for bin Laden must be breathing a sigh of relief.

How to buy a vote

If you are in a close race and election day arrives and you still need some more votes, you ask yourself: how much does a vote cost? From Hoboken, New Jersey, we have an answer: $10. John Fund explains the details:

In 2007, a former Hoboken zoning board president noticed a group of men outside a polling place being given index cards by two people. One of the loiterers later tried to vote in the name of a voter who had moved out of the area. When challenged by the former zoning board president, he ran out of the building and was caught. He later admitted to police he was part of a group from a homeless shelter who had been paid $10 each to vote using the names of other people.

Of course, if you want to avoid the risk of the derelicts getting caught like that, absentee ballots seem to be the preferred method for modern vote fraud, as explained below.

UPDATE with new lower price: The Ohio state Democratic party chairman is trying to put a stop to Athens County Democratic Party Chair Susan Gwinn's alleged attempt to pay students $5 to vote. Athens County authorities are investigating while a spokesman for Ohio University College Democrats denies misconduct.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of vote fraud:
NJ Dems demand equal rights for fraudulent voters
Nevada accuses ACORN of 39 felonies
Three Obama supporters plead guilty
Another ex-ACORN worker pleads guilty
An insider's guide to vote fraud

NJ: the fix is in

At the Wall Street Journal, John Fund reports that ACORN and affiliates are active in this year's close NJ governor's race:

Plenty of reasons exist for suspecting absentee fraud may play a significant role in tomorrow's Garden State contests. Groups associated with Acorn in neighboring Pennsylvania and New York appear to have moved into the state. An independent candidate for mayor in Camden has already leveled charges that voter fraud is occurring in his city. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party in New Jersey is taking advantage of a new loosely written vote-by-mail law to pressure county clerks not to vigorously use signature checks to evaluate the authenticity of absentee ballots, the only verification procedure allowed.

The state has received a flood of 180,000 absentee ballot requests. On some 3,000 forms the signature doesn't match the one on file with county clerks. Yet citing concerns that voters would be disenfranchised, Democratic Party lawyer Paul Josephson wrote New Jersey's secretary of state asking her "to instruct County Clerks not to deny applications on the basis of signature comparison alone." Mr. Josephson maintained that county clerks "may be overworked and are likely not trained in handwriting analysis" and insisted that voters with suspect applications should be allowed to cast provisional ballots. Those ballots, of course, would then provide a pool of votes that would be subject to litigation in any recount, with the occupant of New Jersey's highest office determined by Florida 2000-style scrutiny of ballot applications.

Absentee voter fraud is in danger of becoming a hardy perennial in New Jersey. Atlantic City Councilman Marty Small and 13 campaign workers were indicted in September on charges of conspiring to commit election fraud using absentee ballots. One worker pleaded guilty last month. In Newark, five campaign workers were indicted in August on charges involving absentee ballot fraud.

Victor Negron, a campaign adviser for independent mayoral candidate Roberto Feliz, a former director of Camden's public works department, says he's shocked that more than fifteen times the normal number of voters are casting absentee ballots in Camden this year. In the 2005, when the city's voters voted for both governor and mayor on the same day, only 200 absentee ballots were cast. This year, some 3,700 have already been received. At least four voters have approached the Feliz campaign to complain that an absentee ballot was sent to them without their permission or cast for them without their understanding the documents they were signing. .... [Emph. added]

UPDATE: Allegedly, Mark Allen of Galloway Township, NJ, reports that NJ election officials told him that a fraudulent absentee ballot was submitted in his name.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of vote fraud:
NJ Dems demand equal rights for fraudulent voters
Nevada accuses ACORN of 39 felonies
Three Obama supporters plead guilty
Another ex-ACORN worker pleads guilty
An insider's guide to vote fraud

Metallica proud of its music's message to Gitmo terrorists

While other bands are currently in the news opposing Gitmo, remember that Metallica's lead vocalist had a different take on the meaning of the use of their music at Gitmo. From Revolver Magazine:

Metallica frontman James Hetfield recently told German-language TV network 3sat that part of him was proud the U.S. military chose the band’s music to torture prisoners at U.S. detention centers in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay. “It’s strong; it’s music that’s powerful,” Hetfield says. “It represents something that they don’t like—maybe freedom, aggression… I don’t know… Freedom of speech."

It seems that the White House will have to expand its enemies list.

The NY Times as a fever swamp

To see what passes for wisdom at the New York Times, once known as the paper of record, check out this Frank Rich column:So, why does he thinks that the GOP is full of extreme Marxists ("Stalinists")? Well, that never becomes clear. He does claim that the contest between Republican Dede Scazzafava and Conservative Party nominee Hoffman in the special election for New York's 23rd district was "riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war." That might be true except that there were no riots and there was no blood. He continues:

The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. ....

And Scozzafava is a mainstream conservative by New York standards; one statistical measure found her voting record slightly to the right of her fellow Republicans in the Assembly. .... [Emph. added]

So, Frank Rich wants to claim that Scozzafava is a "mainstream conservative" but that "the right," which is a "wacky paranoid cult," is attacking her because they want "to eat their own." However, today, former candidate Dede Scozzafava has endorsed the Democrat in the race. That makes Rich's claim that she is a "mainstream conservative" absurd. Further, it shows that "the right" had correctly figured out that she was a liberal. The only person in the story who appears "wacky" and "paranoid" would be Frank Rich.

Hat tip: B. Daniel Blatt

An economics lesson

Dr. John B. Taylor, a professor of economics at Stanford asks his economics class to explain why, over the past 50 years, US real wages+fringe benefits have tripled:People who have grown up believing in the propaganda from the "unbiased" media expect the answer to be unions or minimum wage or anything other than productivity. Here is a plot of real non-farm productivity and real compensation (wages and benefits) plotted against year:If you think about it, it is obvious: the annual income per worker is the amount that is produced during a year divided by the number of workers. The only sustainable way that that can increase is by increasing productivity. It follows, for example, that union work rules, which limit productivity, while they may 'benefit' that union's workers, will reduce the average national income.

The real global warming agenda

The New York Times reports:

European Union leaders on Friday offered to contribute money to a global fund to help developing countries tackle global warming hoping kick-start stalled talks on a new agreement on climate change.

The European Commission had called on E.U. leaders to make an offer of up to 15 billion euros annually by 2020.

Mr. Reinfeldt, the Swedish prime minister, said leaders had instead agreed that developing nations needed about 100 billion euros annually by 2020 and that, of that sum, between 22 billion euros and 50 billion euros would have to come from public funds, as opposed to private sources like investments in carbon-reduction projects.

Global Warmism is all about government redistribution of wealth. If global warming didn't exist, the left would have to invent it. (Hat tip: Sweetness & Light)

In addition to global wealth redistribution, global warming also serves a domestic agenda. Last May, in regards to global warming, Speaker Pelosi said "Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory." Democrats generally advocate increased government control of individual lives. Global warming provides the excuse to regulate "every aspect." (Hat tip: Robert L.)

Apple and iPolitics

Reviews say Motorola's new Droid phone will not be competition for the iPhone.  Weisshaupt summarizes why:

Essentially the iPhone is safe from the Droid because most iPhone users are liberals. They are people who WANT a Mommy and Daddy watching over them. iPhone developers  must navigate a Byzantine approval process that is so bad, that some even stoop to using Microsoft's .NET to get things done.  Apple tests and approves every application offered on the iPhone to make sure they all play nice together. This of course ensures the phone will deliver the beautiful and slick  user experience Apple has decided its users will have. The iPhone is a good example of the "one-size-fits all" top-down mentality of liberals.  If you want a different experience from what your masters thinks you SHOULD have and SHOULD want, you are just SOL.  The lowercase "i" in iPhone doesn't occur by accident. The individual just isn't as important, and the "Phone" takes precedence. Many iPhone and Mac  users come near to worshipping Apple and their products,  going so far as to genuflect when they turn on a Apple device, ensure they face San Jose 3 times a day to give thanks for their iLife and to pray for the saving of the pagans who do not yet have one.

Weisskopf's analysis is not completely accurate: I know many Apple fans and they do not face San Jose to give thanks. They face Cupertino.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Rep. Speier rewrites history

Today, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), a member of the House Financial Services committee, wrote a quite jarring sentence to her constituents:

One year after the nearly-catastrophic meltdown of our financial system, Congress is finally addressing the root causes: deregulation, uncontrolled speculation and lack of oversight from the agencies who were supposed to be minding the store.

What were the Financial Services Committee and its current Chairman, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), doing while the crisis brewed? You guessed it: they were advocating lower lending standards, riskier loans, and denying the possibility of financial problems. For example, Rep. Frank and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) sent a letter to the heads of Fannie and Freddie exhorting them to lower lending standards for condo buyers. He claimed that those two agencies "are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' Rep. Frank claimed Fannie Mae and Feddie Mac were "fundamentally sound financially" (see this video starting at 1:37). Rep. Frank consistently advocated "affordable mortgages" which is a code phrase for giving mortgage loans to those who cannot afford them which happens to be exactly what caused the current crisis.

Rep. Speier's statement that the crisis was caused by lack of regulation and oversight appears to be the opposite of the truth: it was regulation ("affordable mortgages") and oversight (like Rep. Frank's letter to Frannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that were direct causes of the financial crisis.

RELATED: Videos of Rep. Frank's faulty memories on the financial crisis are here. A video primer on the Democrat's Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is here. There is more on the history of the crisis is here. More details of the CRA, including how Pres. Bush's reforms made it worse, are here.

MORE: The East Bridgewater Savings Bank, through cautious management, not only survived the mortgage meltdown, but is solvent and even profitable. What did the regulators say about that: the FDIC complained that, under the requirements of the CRA, it is not making enough risky loans.

The vicious cycle of liberalism

Peggy Noonan writes on the liberal tax cycle:

This week the New York Post carried a report that 1.5 million people had left high-tax New York state between 2000 and 2008, more than a million of them from even higher-tax New York City. They took their tax dollars with them—in 2006 alone more than $4 billion.

You know what New York, both state and city, will do to make up for the lost money. They'll raise taxes.

As to why Democrats in Congress seem unconcerned by record-breaking federal deficits, she writes:

They don't feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases—"strongest nation in the world," "indispensable nation," "unipolar power," "highest standard of living"—and are not bright enough, or serious enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally.

We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists—they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on.

Commander-in-chief Obama

James Lavery illustrates our current military strategy:Pres. Obama is normally a shoot-from-the-hip want-immediate-action kind of a guy (Examples: stimulus, nationalized health care, cap-and-tax). Why does he appear to be vacillating on Afghanistan? In my opinion, his delay deciding is because of important national considerations: he does not want to announce an unpopular decision until after the special elections.

NJ Dems demand equal rights for fraudulent voters

"Paul P. Josephson, a lawyer representing the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, wrote to Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells, asking her to 'instruct County Clerks not to deny (vote by mail) applications on the basis of signature comparison alone.' "

Socialism isn't cheap!

According to the Economist, as reprinted by Wikipedia, the five countries with the highest prices for a Big Mac (as of 4 February 2009) are:

1. Norway - USD 5.79
2. Switzerland - USD 5.60
3. Denmark - USD 5.07
4. Sweden - USD 4.58
5. Eurozone - USD 4.38

Krauthammer on a roll

Spiegel interviews a feisty Charles Krauthammer. First, Speigel talks of admiring Pres. Obama:

SPIEGEL: Maybe Europeans want to just see a different America, one they can admire again.

Krauthammer: Admire? Look at Obama's speech at the UN General Assembly: "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation." Take the first half of that sentence: No nation can dominate another. There is no eight year old who would say that -- it's so absurd. And the second half? That is adolescent utopianism.

After Krauthammer suggested that international institutuions are "90 percent worthless and 10 percent harmful", Der Speigel asked:

SPIEGEL: And there is not even 1 percent that is constructive?

Krauthammer: No. The UN is worse than disaster. The UN creates conflicts. Look at the disgraceful UN Human Rights Council: It transmits norms which are harmful, anti-liberty, and anti-Semitic among other things. The world would be better off in its absence.

On Obama's foreign policy:

SPIEGEL: You famously coined the term "Reagan Doctrine" to describe Ronald Reagan's foreign policy. What is the "Obama Doctrine?"

Krauthammer: I would say his vision of the world appears to me to be so naïve that I am not even sure he's able to develop a doctrine. He has a view of the world as regulated by self-enforcing international norms, where the peace is kept by some kind of vague international consensus, something called the international community, which to me is a fiction, acting through obviously inadequate and worthless international agencies. I wouldn't elevate that kind of thinking to a doctrine because I have too much respect for the word doctrine.

SPIEGEL: Are you saying that diplomacy always fails?

Krauthammer: No, foolishness does. Perhaps when he gets nowhere on Iran, nowhere with North Korea, when he gets nothing from the Russians in return for what he did to the Poles and the Czechs, gets nowhere in the Middle East peace talks -- maybe at that point he'll begin to rethink whether the world really runs by international norms, consensus, and sweetness and light, or whether it rests on the foundation of American and Western power that, in the final analysis, guarantees peace.

SPIEGEL: That is the cynical approach.

Krauthammer: The realist approach. Henry Kissinger once said that peace can be achieved only one of two ways: hegemony or balance of power. Now that is real realism. What the Obama administration pretends is realism is naïve nonsense.

On healthcare reform:

SPIEGEL: How could Obama still win Republican support for healthcare reform?

Krauthammer: He should finally realize that we need to reform our insane malpractice system. The US is spending between $60 and $200 billion a year on protection against lawsuits. I used to be a doctor, I know how much is wasted on defensive medicine. Everybody I practiced with spends hours and enormous amounts of money on wasted tests, diagnostic and procedures -- all to avoid lawsuits. The Democrats will not touch it. When Howard Dean was asked why, he said honestly and explicitly that Democrats don't want to antagonize the trial lawyers who donate huge amounts of money to the Democrats.

Read the whole thing.

Racism in E. St. Louis?

Explaining his preference for a black candidate, Mayor Alvin Parks allegedly said "the city wasn't ready to hire a white police chief."

Separately, Mayor Parks explains how FBI's searches of his offices were a "good thing."

PREVIOUSLY on racism:

Overt Racism in Tennessee
San Franciscans discriminate against blacks
"He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line"
"NAACP defends racism."
Stanford finds Democrats are racist
Obama nominates a racist
Leaders acknowledge Democrat base is racist
"That's just how white folks will do you." ---Barack Obama
Dem says Dem primary voters are racist
Dems accuse Bill and Hillary of racism

Obama's war on Fox, updated

Fox's ratings are up and Pres. Obama's are down. Glenn McCoy cleverly illustrates the results of the White House's war on Fox News:
PREVIOUSLY:
War on Fox shows White House's frustrations and amateurishness.
Obama's Nixonesque attempt to isolate Fox fails
What the war on Fox shows about Obama's priorities

The public option refuses to die

Sen. Reid tried to revivify the public option. Nate Beeler illustrates:The attempt does not appear to have succeeded. Reid's claim to allow states to "opt-out" seems likely to be a fraud, and lacks critical support. After reviewing the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters, John Hinderaker writes:

[B]y a margin of 3-1, voters think Obamacare will raise the cost of health care, and by more than two to one, voters believe it will make the quality of health care worse. Isn't that the death knell for government medicine? If not, why not?

When HillaryCare proved unpopular, Bill Clinton and the Democratic Congress dropped it. None of our current leaders appear to be as sensible.

Does your workplace smell ethical?

According to a Brigham Young University study, people's ethics improve when they are in a clean-smelling environment.

Barack Milhous Obama

Michael Ramirez illustrates:
PREVIOUSLY on the Obama-Nixon connection:
Obama goes back to the future
Geo. Will on Obama learning from Nixon
"I'm not naive."
Pew says Obama more polarizing than Nixon
Do all Dems maintain an enemies list?

RELATED: Pres. Obama jokes about having the IRS audit his enemies. TheNewNixon has a collection of similar rhetoric from Nixon and Obama.

Obama steals your tax refund

As the Philadelphia Inquirer reports today, Pres. Obama's "stimulus" plan lowered the amounts for IRS withholding for many. This means you may have had an increase in your take-home pay. The catch is that Obama didn't actually lower tax rates, just the withholding: So, in April, many people will find their refund check surprisingly small. The Inquirer writes:

That little extra bit of money in the form of a larger paycheck tied to the Obama stimulus plan could end up taking a bite out of your federal income tax refund or even leave you owing taxes, say observers.

The stimulus plan lowered federal income tax withholding rates, which results in more take-home pay but less money going toward taxes. The downside is some taxpayers may end up with not enough taxes being withheld to cover what they owe in 2009. ....

Single taxpayers who are working at more than one job and married couples filing jointly in a situation where both spouses work are the most likely groups of taxpayers to be caught short.

"They are probably going to find out they are either getting a lot less back or they might owe," said Mark Steber, chief tax officer at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service, a tax preparation firm.

Others that could face this scenario are those who can be claimed as a dependent on someone else's tax return (for example, a working student claimed as a dependent on a parent's tax return) and some Social Security recipients who work.

HHS says Obamacare will cause costs to go up and 12 million will lose their employer-coverage

From BigGovernment:

Richard Foster, Chief Actuary for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, released this week to several Congressional offices a financial analysis of HR 3200, the House version of ObamaCare. He reached some inconvenient conclusions for President Obama and Congressional Leadership:

-“Total national health expenditures under this bill would increase by an estimated 2.7 percent in 2019…”

-“The additional demand for health services could be difficult to meet initially with existing health provider resources and could lead to price increases, cost-shifting, and/or changes in providers’ willingness to treat patients with low-reimbursement health coverage.”

-More than half of the expansion in coverage (18 million out of 34 million) would be from increased Medicaid coverage.

-12 million people would lose employer-sponsored coverage.

-The productivity adjustments to Medicare are “unrealistic” and providers “might end their participation” because the cuts would make serving Medicare beneficiaries unprofitable.

-Medicare Advantage enrollment would decrease by 64 percent (from a projected level of 13.2 million to 4.7 million under the proposal).

As of today, HHS still hadn’t published the analysis on their website, even though it was written by its own staff.

One reason for the 2nd Amendment

The sign reads:

My next door neighbor
wants to BAN all guns!

Their house is
NOT ARMED!

Out of respect for their opinions
I promise NOT to use MY GUNS
to PROTECT THEM

Because there is no law that liberals can pass that would prevent criminals from getting guns, gun control laws are all about assuring criminals that they can commit crimes against innocent civilians without fear.

Hat tip: Gunslinger's Journal

Job opening at ABC's Good Morning America

Only liberals need apply?

Republican self-destruction

Matt Latimer, a former speechwriter for Pres. Geo. W. Bush, writes:

People forget these days that Cheney and Rumsfeld, though traditional conservatives, were once widely-admired senior statesmen who received bipartisan acclaim. That was before BushWorld got hold of them.

By BushWorld, he is referring to those in the Republican party who have engaged in a war of leaks against conservatives. This is consistent with Republican attacks on Gov. Palin and the choosing of the wrong side in NY23 race. Latimer's new book is Speech*Less.

Obama's war on Fox

On ABC's This Week (video below), Laura Ingraham explains why the Obama administration likes ABC but not Fox:

[W]hen [ABC anchor] Charlie Gibson didn't know what the ACORN story was all about, that was a collective gasp you heard across the United States. Charlie Gibson is an esteemed journalist. How do you not know about a story about a group where President Obama cut his political teeth that had been exposed to the extent that Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill were ready to pull the rug out from under them and their funding? That's the kind of story that the White House doesn't want to have reported and repeated on other networks. That's why they don't like Fox News.

Cynthia Tucker points out that it is amateur-hour at the White House: "The scandal for the Obama administration is not that they are trying to manipulate the news media but that they seem to be so clumsy at it."

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of Obama and Fox:
Obama goes back to the future!
Obama's priorities, updated

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of amateur-hour in the Obama administration:
Amateur Hour at the State Dept.
Amateur Hour, continued
Amateur hour at the White House
EU finds Obama debt plan too extreme

Rep. Rogers tells it like it is

Rep. Mike Rogers' (R-MI) opening statement from July 16, 2009 on the lost opportunity of the Democrat health care reform plan remains fresh and relevant:

"I can't tell you how much I'm disappointed at what a lost opportunity we have, I think, to solve a huge problem in health care in access and quality"

Hat tip: Peninsula 9-12

Cell phones, cancer, and press release abuse

The Daily Express reports

MOBILE USE IS LINKED TO BRAIN TUMOURS

LONG-term mobile phone users could face a higher risk of developing cancer in later life, according to a decade-long study.

The report, to be published later this year, has reportedly found that heavy mobile use is linked to brain tumours.

The survey of 12,800 people in 13 countries has been overseen by the World Health Organisation.

Preliminary results of the inquiry, which is looking at whether mobile phone exposure is linked to three types of brain tumour and a tumour of the salivary gland, have been sent to a scientific journal.

As I write, a google search could locate no news or science source more detailed than this Daily Express article. Note that:

1. This is not peer-reviewed study. The results are only "preliminary" and have merely been "sent to a [unspecified] scientific journal."
   
2. It is said that the study was done for the World Health Organization but no specific authors/scientists are mentioned.
3. It is not specified what statistical standards were used or which cancers they claim correlations for.
   

In sum, this is not even information to begin to evaluate the results. News reports like this should never be published.

It is normal for statistical-medical studies to produce the occasional false result. So, statistical studies generally should not be believed until they are confirmed by independent studies. For such cell-phones-cause-cancer claims, despite all the scare headlines in newspapers, there has been no confirmation.

The UN uses a similar press-release technique for hyping global warming. First, they release a press summary with no supporting data. The press accepts the frightening conclusions uncritically. The full report is not released until many months later and, by the time it can be evaluated, the press has moved on to the next scare story.

Obama goes back to the future!

James Lavery illustrates:
This refers to Obama's various attempts to marginalize Fox News. One attempt to exclude Fox from the normal five channel rotation failed when ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN refused to participate without Fox:

Some people credit ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN with high-minded freedom-of-the-press motives. I don't. I suspect someone just explained to them what accepting this precedent would mean the next time that a Republican was president.

What is Obama's real problem with Fox? Likely, it is that Fox reports stories the other media ignore, such as the ACORN and Van Jones videos. Rich Lowery comments (hat tip Instapundit):

This New York Times account today confirms that what most bothered the White House about Fox is that it caused inconvenient reporting by other news organizations. Can't have that! .... In other words, their problem is not that Fox isn't a real news organization, their problem is that it is.

Is Mona Lisa smiling?

Is she or isn't she? Scientists say the ambiguity is a carefully crafted optical illusion:

Those fake Rush quotes

The racists have won a round, as James Lavery illustrates:It has been known since last March that the quotes were fake but the fringe media repeated them anyway. Rush Limbaugh credits Smash Mouth Politics with documenting the quotes as lies. Smash Mouth was kind enough to credit me (John) with a role in finding the internet address (IP) of the source.

Since then, others claim to have matched that IP with politically-connected law firm, Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP. I find the match, so far, to be less than definitive: the cited source matches the IP to the law firm but only for the period from 14-March-2006 to 10-April-2006. That, however, does not cover the critical date of 20-July-2005, and it is not unusual for IP addresses to change with time. We need better documentation of PBWT's internet plan (did Electric Fiber give PBWT a static IP?) or other spy data that covers the critical date.

Our Commander-in-chief is missing in action

It have been seven weeks since General McChrystal delivered his urgent recommendations on the fight in Afghanistan and Pres. Obama is still "non-committal." Michael Ramirez illustrates who pay the price for this indecision:

Videos of San Francisco Tea Party

When Pres. Obama came to San Francisco last Thursday night, he was greeted by protesters from the left and right. Here is a scan of the crowd gathered at Union Square showing single-payer enthusiasts mixed with Tea Partiers and even a 9-11 truther. Signs include "don't share my wealth; share my work ethic" and "instead of apologizing for America, apologize to America":Here is another scan as the Tea Party crowd chants "U S A." You can see signs ranging from"which beverage were you drinking? (tea or kool-aid)" and "[House Obamacare bill] HR3200 is to die for!"
My photos from this Tea Party are here.

UPDATE: Linked by Get Out of Our House

The fringe media have no fact checkers

Reuters, CNBC, the NY Times, and Washington Post all fell for a left-wing hoax: the left-wing group, the Yes Men, issued a fake press release that pretended to be from the US Chamber of Commerce announcing an unlikely reversal of the Chamber's policy on cap and tax. No one at any of those "prestigious" news organizations thought to check the facts before running the story. The hoax was exposed when a real Chamber of Commerce official disrupted the fakers at a pretend "press conference."

In related news, drops in circulation are forcing the New York Times to lay off 8% of its newsroom staff. (The Wall Street Journal is now the largest newspaper by circulation, indicating that there are some benefits to being a paper with some measure of editorial balance.)

Obamacare still unpopular

Despite the speeches and talk show appearances, Rasmussen reports that likely voters oppose Obamacare by 54% to 42%, numbers that, given the margins of error, are little changed since August. Pres. Obama's presidential approval index is also stuck at a low level with 40% who strongly disapprove vs. only 30% who strongly approve:
Looking carefully at the plot, you can see that he received a bump up in approval after his prime-time health care speech and another bump after his Olympics trip. Neither bump lasted. He might do better if he learn to stop being so bitterly partisan and divisive.

UPDATE (21-Oct-2009): The strongly-approve number has dropped to 27% and, with the other numbers remaining unchanged, this lowers the Rasmussen's "approval index" to -13. This change is within the 3% margin of error for the poll.

Obama's priorities, updated

Chip Bok illustrates Pres. Obama's sense of priorities:Despite not having time for the Dalai Lama or to decide what to do about Afghanistan, the administration has found time to quasi-legalize pot.

You can read more about the Nobel Laureate's bizarre war-on-Fox-News here, here, here, and here.

PREVIOUSLY on similar subjects:
A further clarification of Obama's priorities
Obama's sense of priorities