XDA

Guess I've gone too many times to the Chive.

Labels: Girl With Pearl Earring Parody

Labels: Post WWII history; Pacific Theater. Marines on Guam

Here is a transcript of the President's most recent Weekly Address. It was about rising gasoline prices and what the 'smartest president ever' wants to do about them.

Money quote:

What’s more, at a time when big oil companies are making more money than ever before, we’re still giving them $4 billion of your tax dollars in subsidies every year. Your member of Congress should be fighting for you. Not for big financial firms. Not for big oil companies.

All successful companies make money. That's what capitalism is all about. The profitable companies which deal in a huge volume of sales will make a huge amount of money, but that's not the best way to look at it--the proper way is to look at profit margins in percentages. What's Big Oil's profit margin? 3%, below sporting goods stores but above electronic stores. In any event it's near the bottom of the list for business profit margins.

What are these subsidies anyway?

They are tax deductions regarding the production of the oil and gas. The President implies that the government is handing money it has from taxing other people and businesses over to the Big Oil companies, like the money it hands out to failed green energy companies, like Solyndra. Not true. The federal government is merely not collecting tax money. These tax breaks are very similar to the tax breaks every company can take off its corporate tax bill for net rather than gross income (but they are not precisely the same as the operable tax codes are in part unique to the exploration and extraction Big Oil does to provide oil and gas.

But let's take the President at his word and think what will happen if the oil and gas businesses are unable to take the deductions every other business can take and have to pay higher taxes. Will Big Oil react by raising prices to cover these new expenses, higher taxes?

Duh.

So this is the brilliant plan to lower gasoline prices, treat these businesses differently to raise their expenses which they will pass on to consumers in higher prices.

Oh, and the President repeated the lie that we only have 2% of World Oil and Gas. Not true. Proven reserves is an economic term of art which only covers a tiny percentage of the oil and gas we can develop. Here's the truth:

Labels: President Obama; No Energy Economy

Many people think Southerners sound kinda dumb. Others pick on people from Brooklyn or Pittsburgh and attribute to them less than stellar intellects. I have my doubts that people in Pittsburgh are any dumber than anywhere else, but, here's something to make me want to rethink that. Here's a particularly stupid editorial from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, based on two less than ground breaking studies (I think this is one of the two mentioned). It takes three paragraphs of setting up a nearly useless metaphor before the editorial gets to the point, such as it is.

Sea levels are rising and a lot of people live on the coast.

Wow. How helpful.

Here's one stunningly stupid sentence:

... the sea itself is rising -- and it has been since the late 19th century.

Well, maybe a little longer than that.



Like about since 20,000 years ago, although the rate has dropped off in the last 8,000 years and is recently at about .118 inch/year (and lately it is not even that). So less than a foot per century. I think the people on the coast might have some time to escape a watery death.

The stubborn fact is that the sea level is rising (generally) all through the interglacial and then it starts falling as the new ice age begins. Then it is somewhat stable until the next interglacial starts 100,000 years later. At least that's how it's worked for the last several million years.

Labels: Global Warming Alarmism; Minor and Natural Sea Level Rise

Labels: Winston Churchill, WWII history; European theater

There's a recent post over at the Daily Kos which praises "Hockey Stick" perpetrator Michael Mann. It's titled:

Michael Mann is a Modern Hero and we need to acknowledge that!

After the hagiography, however, the post allows one to vote on whether Professor Mann is praiseworthy or not. This on line poll is not going too well for Mr. Mann. As I write this, 97% say he's either manipulating data or should be fired from his teaching position. 97%!

Vox populi, baby, she's a b**** sometimes.

Labels: Global Warming Alarmism; Superfail, Michael Mann's Kos Poll

As part of his turncoat campaign, longtime Republican operative Steve Schmidt — who became a “made man” working for former President George W. Bush — told his friends at MSNBC that “the notion of Sarah Palin being president of the United States is something that frightens me.” And then he went on to lump her into the same category with the morally corrupt and pathologically dishonest John Edwards.

For this, Mr. Schmidt is heralded around here like some kind of hero. The media lavishes leg-thrilling praise on him.

But what people like Mr. Schmidt don’t understand is that the reason so many Americans fell in love with Sarah Palin is not because they hate Democrats. It’s because they hate Republicans. Specifically, Republicans like Steve Schmidt.

Charles Hurt, writing about Game Change, the movie

Labels: Charles Hurt quote; Game Change

The Democratic water carriers at the New York Times are featuring this month's meme: The completely apocryphal Republican War on Women. Here's columnist Maureen Dowd adding heat without light.

The attempt by Republican men to wrestle American women back into chastity belts has not only breathed life into President Obama, it has roused and riled Hillary. And that could turn out to be the most dangerous thing the wildly self-destructive G.O.P. leaders have done.

In some kind of insane bout of mass misogyny, Republicans are hounding out the women voters — including Republicans and independents — who helped them gain control of the House in 2010.

How is a principled stand for freedom of employers, including religious institutions other than the churches themselves, to say what they will or will not provide in benefits, including health care coverage, trying to "wrestle American women back into chastity belts" or "mass misogyny"? This must be some of that fish/bicycle sort of logic. I admit that I can't follow it.

Here's the truth: Wanting to ban contraception is not now (and it has never been for at least 50 years) a plank of the Republican party. It can not be done in light of Griswold v. Connecticut even if the Republicans wanted to, which they don't.

This vapid repetition of charges without basis or evidence is not entertaining. But there's more.

Women have watched a chilling cascade of efforts in Congress and a succession of states to turn women into chattel, to shame them about sex and curb their reproductive rights. They’ve seen the craven response of G.O.P. candidates after Limbaugh branded a law student wanting insurance coverage for birth control pills, commonplace for almost five decades, as a “prostitute” and “slut.”

Who's trying "to turn women into chattel"? What state is? Who or what state is trying to "curb their reproductive rights"? Oh, it's Rush Limbaugh calling Ms. Fluke a slut and the lack of prostrate apologies from the Republican candidates for what someone else said (Was Ms. Dowd this up in arms, hysterically overstating what's happening and calling the President "craven" for refusing to apologize for or denounce the actions of his million dollar doner to his campaign PAC, Bill Maher's calling Sarah Palin a c*** and a tw**? I must have missed that).

American women have suddenly realized that their emancipation in the 21st century is not as secure as they had assumed. On “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, a Republican, had the gall to say this, justifying his support for a bill designed to humiliate women getting abortions by penetrating them with a wand to take a picture: “Every invasive procedure has an informed consent requirement.” What he really meant is that when abortion is an option, informed consent should require an invasive procedure.

Wait, isn't scraping or sucking the fetus out of the womb necessarily an invasive process? I'm hopelessly confused here.

Of course transvaginal ultrasounds are routinely given to almost all of those seeking to have an abortion, and the only thing the Virginia bill did (which bill did not designate what sort of ultrasound procedure was used) was to make the results of the ultrasound be shown to the woman getting the abortion. I guess reality doesn't matter when you're in high dudgeon over an entirely imaginary war being waged against you.

Along with Rick Santorum’s Taliban views, Mitt Romney suggested in an interview on Tuesday with a St. Louis TV station that to help balance the federal budget he would eliminate Planned Parenthood funding: “We’re going to get rid of that.”

Which of Santorum's views are like the Taliban's? I thought he was a Catholic? More confusion on my part.

With at least a 1.3 Trillion dollar deficit per year for the past four years, and for as far into the future as the eye can see, we're obviously going to have to cut something-- do a lot of cutting, in fact. Why is cutting government spending on the primary abortion provider in the country all of a sudden waging war on women? There is nothing sancrosanct about Planned Parenthood. Certainly it's not held in high regard by all women. And wait, isn't it the policy of the United States that the government will not fund abortions based solely on inconvenience? Has that law, the Hyde Amendment, I think it's called, been repealed? (Well, close, but President Obama issued an Executive Order saying it's still good law to make Bart Stupak feel better about his betrayal of his solemnly held, pro-life beliefs).

The thing Ms. Dowd misses here (and the Democrats in general miss) is that just because it's a right, doesn't mean the government, or anyone other than yourself, has to pay for it. And having a difference of visions about rights in that light is not anti-women. It's not anti-any group. It's pro-freedom and responsibility.

Who could be against that?

Labels: Maureen Dowd; Republican War on Women Smear

Let's keep talking about this as if it were an important issue compared to the deficit or Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. Let's keep talking about this as a sure fire winner of an issue for Democrats in general and the President in particular.* Let's keep talking about people demanding others pay for things they want through federal mandates, regulation or law. (I don't want the government to pay for things I want--I want to earn them). Let's keep talking about the Republican's principled opposition to what Ms. Fluke said, on constitutional and ordered liberty grounds, as the Republicans' completely apocraphal War on Women (there's a civil notion for you). Let's keep on talking about this at all costs, because it is just so freakin' interesting.

Labels: Sandra Fluke

Labels: Optical Illusions

I didn't watch the movie and I won't. I really don't like the actress Julianne Moore and could list the movies her presence ruined for me but I don't have the time or space. I do want to talk about Steven Schmidt, the guy played by Woody Harrelson, John McCain's campaign co-ordinator and strategist. So let's recap. Not only did he do such a bang-up job his candidate lost, but he is airing all the confidential linen, dirty and clean, in order to put himself in the best light--'it wasn't me, it was the candidates, they were so bad, no one could have won that thing.' Great. The lowest cricle in Dante's Hell is reserved for traitors, as I recall.

If anyone hires this guy in the future he or she is a fool.

Labels: Game Change