I’m really tired of having politicians who are complete fucking nerds. American politicians used to be so cool. Andrew Jackson killed at least 13 people in duels and when an attempted assassin walked up to him with a gun in each hand, Jackson nearly beat him to death with a stick. George Washington was a fucking giant, and Indians called him the “Devourer of Villages.” Theodore Roosevelt carried a gun at all times, boxed and practiced jiu jitsu, and by that I mean while he was President, inside the White House. Why jiu jitsu? Well because it’s “meant for practice in killing or disabling our adversary” of course, or at least that’s what the dangerous lunatic wrote in this letter.

Flash forward to today and Al Gore can’t even attempt to get a handjob without fucking it up beyond all comprehension. What are the odds he can even throw a football without looking like a complete queer. God this is so humiliating.

h/t Here

Choked to Death

From the NYP:
America's jobs growth engine is being choked to death.

A record 25 percent increase in the taxes against US small businesses -- from costs associated with new health care law, to an increased Medicare tax, increased capital gains taxes and higher state and city taxes -- is repealing any ability of these entrepreneurs to add jobs to their payroll.

"The impact of these higher taxes and reduced hiring will be a recovery cycle that will be much longer, be slower to take hold and be without much job growth,"

The 26 million small businesses in the US — like Eneslow Shoes, headed by CEO Robert Schwartz— are getting buried under an avalanche of new taxes, which include:

* An increase of 4.6% in federal taxes from 35% to 39.6% (expiration of Bush tax cuts)

* An increase in capital gains taxes from 15% to 20% (expiration of Bush tax cuts)

* A new tax of 3.85% on investment income, dividends, rents, royalties mandated in the new health care bill

* An increase in the Medicare payroll tax to 2.35% as mandated in the new health care bill

* In states like New Jersey and others, state and municipal taxes have been raised by the average of almost 2%

Makes Georgia Proud

90% of GDP

Sure, THAT's fiscally sound.

President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation's economic output by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday.

Hey Liberals, whining about the cost of Iraq! Suck it!

We're All Fascists Now

I'm reprinting this post from zombietime because it perfectly illustrates why universal healthcare is such a bad idea...

Because there’s a much deeper philosophical objection to “socialized medicine” that is so un-PC that it is rarely if ever voiced in public. And for that reason, the opponents of socialized medicine never even mention the real flaw in the concept that nags the unconscious of most Americans:

Not all ailments are equal.

• Blame: the final taboo

A built-in false assumption with the health-care debate is that sickness is always no-fault sickness. It’s never socially acceptable to assign blame for people’s medical problems — especially blame on the patient.

But I’m not afraid to confess that I’m a judgmental person. And I’m pretty confident that most Americans who oppose socialized medicine share this same judgment: that some people are partly or entirely to blame for their unwellness.

I’m perfectly willing to provide subsidized health care to people who are suffering due to no fault of their own. But in those cases — which, unfortunately, constitute perhaps a majority of all cases — where the unwellness is a consequence of the patient’s own misdeeds, bad habits, or stupid choices, I feel a deep-seated resentment that the rest of us should pick up the tab to fix medical problems that never should have happened in the first place.

I’m speaking specifically of medical problems caused by:

• Obesity
• Cigarette smoking
• Alcohol abuse
• Reckless behavior
• Criminal activity
• Unprotected promiscuous sex
• Use of illicit drugs
• Cultural traditions
• Bad diets

Now, I really don’t care if you overeat, smoke like a chimney, hump like a bunny or forget to lock the safety mechanism on your pistol as you jam it in your waistband. Fine by me. And as a laissez-faire social-libertarian live-and-let-live kind of person, I would never under normal circumstances condemn anyone for any of the behaviors listed above. That is: Until the bill for your stupidity shows up in my mailbox. Then suddenly, I’m forced to care about what you do, because I’m being forced to pay for the consequences.

• Reluctant busybodies

What I don’t like about the very concept of universal health care is that it compels me to become my brother’s keeper and insert myself into the moral decisions of his life. I’d rather grant each person maximum freedom. I’d prefer to let people make whatever choices they want, however stupid or dangerous I may deem those choices to be. Just so long as you take responsibility for your actions, and you reap the consequences and pay for them yourself — hey, be as foolish or hedonistic or selfish or thoughtless as you like. Not my business.

But if the bill for your foolishness shows up in the form of higher taxes on me, then I unwillingly start to care what you do. And, trust me on this, you don’t want me turning my heartless judgmental eye on your foolish lifestyle. Because I’d have no qualms criticizing half the stuff you do.

Do you want that? No. Do I want that? No. And that’s the point. Instituting a single-payer universal health-care system, or even a watered-down version as the government is now proposing, compels me to become a meddlesome busybody in your personal choices. And it will compel you to become a meddlesome busybody in everyone else’s personal choices. It forever douses the beautiful flame of individualism — freedom to act without interference, just so long as you are ready to accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

• The sickening truth

My list of unhealthy activities above requires a bit of explanation. Let’s briefly look at each “health sin” in turn:

Obesity
Yes, I know that in some cases obesity can have a genetic component — that some people simply have a tendency to get fat. But the majority of obese people are overweight merely because they eat too much and exercise too little. Simple as that. And as a result, they are mostly or entirely to blame to for their own obesity. Now, there are all sorts of excuses offered up in defense of the overweight: They never learned proper nutritional guidelines; their eating is a symptom of underlying psychological problems; they were raised by parents who fed them unhealthy foods; and so on. To which I reply: I don’t care! Grow up already. Get over your immature problems and cut back on the potato chips. Is that so hard? It actually costs less to eat more healthily. And since being overweight is the #1 medical problem in this country, with countless ailments caused or exacerbated by obesity, making people become personally responsible for their physical conditions is the quickest route to solving the issue. If we made all medical treatment completely free, then people would continue to ruin their bodies with food and just let the free doctors deal with the resulting mess. Hey doc — fix me!

Cigarette smoking
Smoking kills you. Slowly. Expensively. Everybody knows that by now. Want to pay for your own medical bills as you lie in the hospital dying of emphysema or lung cancer? Fine. If you’re willing to pony up the cash, then smoke all you want. But if you want me to shell out millions of dollars to pay for the treatments and care you’ll require, then I’m going to come over there and yank that cig out of your mouth right now.

Alcohol abuse
Destroyed livers, car accidents, pancreatic failure, brain problems — the medical effects of alcohol abuse are well-known. The question is: Can we assign “blame” on the long-term alcoholic for his or her behavior? Contemporary psychology tends to give alcoholics and other addicts a free pass on responsibility, but I am less charitable. Every time you pick up that bottle, it is a conscious decision. And once again, under normal circumstances I just wouldn’t care, but if I’m compelled to pay for the expensive reconstructive surgery of a drunk who smashes his car into a tree, then yes, I care, and I blame the drunk.

Reckless behavior
Stupid people do risky things. Teens who imitate pro wrestling or the Jackass movies in backyard stunts. “Extreme sports” fanatics who jump off cliffs wearing flimsy parachutes. Leaning over the rail and taunting the tigers at the zoo. Eating mysterious mushrooms you found while out hiking. Playing “chicken” in drag races. Car surfing. Auto-erotic asphyxiation. Playing Russian Roulette. Using a hairdryer while in the bathtub. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Me? I don’t do stupid things. I spend my whole life trying to minimize risk. But those who consciously take risks often end up with injuries. Hospital emergency rooms are constantly filled with such people. Now, why should people like me who rarely if ever experience preventable “accidents” have to fund the foolishness of those who throw caution to the wind?

Criminal activity
Crime is dangerous. Not just for the victim, but for the criminal too. Gang members are constantly fighting with each other. Criminals often get injured during the commission of a crime, either while fleeing the scene or during apprehension by the police. Every minute of every day somewhere in this country, drug dealers are shooting at each other and stabbing each other in turf wars or deals gone bad. Doctors and hospitals in poor urban areas spend much of their resources treating gunshot wounds on victims who refuse to reveal how they got injured. And once again, the taxpayer is expected to pick up the tab. When was the last time you heard of a drug dealer diligently paying off the $100,000 hospital bill for the reconstructive surgery he received after being injured in a gun battle?

Unprotected promiscuous sex
AIDS. Chlamydia. Syphilis. Gonorrhea. Human papillomavirus. Herpes. Preventable. Preventable. Preventable. Preventable. Preventable. Preventable. Cover your peckers, people! The problem with discussing STDs is that the discussion always gets muddied with moral issues. But let’s try to set that aside for the moment. On a purely cost-analysis level, STDs are a significant unnecessary society-wide medical expense. Luckily, most STDs are now treatable or at least don’t require costly long-term care. With one noteworthy exception: AIDS. I realize full well that it’s totally un-PC to say this, but why should those of us who go to great lengths to ensure that we never get AIDS have to subsidize the astronomically expensive long-term care of those who through their own cavalier voluntary actions contracted AIDS? Once again, the responsible are expected to pay for the costs incurred by the irresponsible. If I stuck my hand in a blender, should I present my hospital bill to a guy with AIDS and expect him to pay it? And this gets to down to the core of why I oppose the notion of socialized medicine: If left to my own devices, I really don’t care about people’s private sexual practices, risky or not; but if compelled to pay for the treatment of people’s STDs, then suddenly I must become a nanny-state moralist, monitoring and criticizing any activities which might lead to an HIV infection. I don’t want to be in that role.

Use of illicit drugs
The social and medical costs of drug abuse are ruinous. Meth, heroin, crack and other drugs cause a plethora of serious medical problems, both short-term (overdoses, risky behavior) and long-term (rotting teeth, heart failure, malnutrition, immune system collapse, etc.). Drug-users fill our emergency rooms and treatment centers, incurring incalculable expenses. Because even under the current system some of these costs are already borne by the taxpayer, I already feel resentful of having to subsidize drug abusers. But under universal health care, my (and most other taxpayers’) resentment would go through the roof. Because I choose to not abuse my body and brain, I incur no costs for others to bear. But addicts give absolutely no thought to the social effects of their actions, and their thoughtlessness has become one of the main reasons to oppose socialized medicine.

Cultural traditions
All sorts of American subcultures have standard behaviors which increase the risk of medical complications. And I’m not talking about primitive tribespeople walking on hot coals. Instead, I’m talking about upper-class socialites who lie on tanning beds and give themselves skin cancer; street kids who engage in late-night “sideshows” of cars spinning and flipping in crowds of drunken teenagers; immigrants who fish in polluted harbors and feed their kids mercury-laden flounder; congregationalists who try to cure a disease by means of an exorcism; and all sorts of unwise activities specific to different cultural enclaves. Normally, including right now, I tend to think of such things as merely part of the rich tapestry of American society; but if compelled by the realities of socialized medicine to consider the long-term medical ramifications of such traditions, suddenly I become judgmental, condemning these practices and their practitioners solely because I have become partly responsible for paying the bill after the party’s over.

Bad diets
Who among us hasn’t looked on in horror at the grotesque dietary intake of the average American? Donuts, white bread, lard, Coca-Cola, pork rinds, preservatives, sugar, grease and artificial coloring. Little toddlers drinking sweet sodas instead of milk. Teenagers eating junk food instead of brain-building food. Nary a fresh vegetable in sight. Health nuts like me spend our lives trying to treat our bodies like temples, and provide good examples for everyone else; but it’s hard to compete with intense cultural pressure to eat the worst imaginable foods. As above, under normal circumstances I would sigh in mystification and let other people go their merry way, killing themselves with bad food. Yet once I start to ponder the overwhelming society-wide medical costs of keeping millions of unhealthy people alive for decades and decades, my anger grows. I want to ban advertisements for unhealthy foods on TV. I want to outlaw donuts. I want to tax McDonald’s to cover the full environmental cost of their products. I want to do all sorts of quasi-fascistic things that normally I would never advocate.

Because that’s what socialized medicine does: it turns each of us into a little fascist. A nagging nanny who tells other people what to do and how to live.

Do we want that kind of society? I don’t. If you look at other countries with socialized medicine, Great Britain being the most glaring example, these invasive and oppressive government dictates have already started to circumscribe people’s freedom, with every kind of potentially dangerous activity or unhealthy comestible being declared forbidden — for the good of society as a whole.

We call it “socialized medicine,” but in the end it pushes us toward fascism.

• Freedom vs. empathy: the final dilemma

Which brings us back to Dr. Sunderhaus. On one hand, we’re headed toward a totalitarian nanny state whereby your freedoms are constrained for the good of others. But at the exact same time we’ve entered the Era of Hurt Feelings where it’s taboo to tell anyone they’re doing something wrong. The solution proferred by the universal health-care advocates is to expand the circle of responsibility to include all of us. So, rather than insult an individual by telling him or her to get healthy, we all have to pretend we’re all equally in need of self-improvement, and we all endure the restrictions and hardships and costs which by all rights should be reserved exclusively for those who earned them.

The attitude of people like Dr. Sunderhaus perhaps offers a way out of this dilemma. Drop the pretense of decorum. If someone has grown obese eating chocolate, the do-gooders would respond by banning chocolate entirely for all of us — to avoid offending the sensibilities of the individual who abused it. Dr. Sunderhaus would just tell the abuser, “Lady, put down that Hershey bar — you’re too fat!” Horrors, horrors!

But if we had a nation of Dr. Sunderhauses, we wouldn’t need socialized medicine. Because each person, at last, would assume complete individual responsibility. And I’d rather that the doctors do the bullying in private to the people who deserve bullying than me being forced to intervene in other people’s private business myself.

Since it’s nearly impossible to sort out who is personally responsible for which ailments, the only logical solution is to let each person pay for their own care, because that way there’s nothing left to argue about. But if we share costs, we share blame, and that’s the origin of resentment and anger that the average American feels about socialized medicine.

Instead of bankrupting the country to pay for foolish people’s foolish decisions, I want to take a giant Sunderhaus finger and poke each American in the thigh and shout: “Shape up!”

Mooching Breeders

First of all, let me point out that I don't fault people for taking advantage of tax breaks. My beef is with the government.
Secondly, if you want to have a kid, go for it, with my blessing. But what gives you the right to make me or anyone else pay for your kid?

From investors.com,

A record number of the 142 million tax returns filed in 2008 resulted in no taxes owed, according to the Tax Foundation's analysis of the latest IRS data. About 51.6 million returns, or 36.3%, were filed by those whose deductions, exemptions and tax credits wiped out any federal income-tax obligation.

These aren't people who have overpaid their taxes or had so much withheld from their paychecks that they'll get refunds. Those people owe taxes and merely provided the government with a zero interest loan until accounts are settled. These are people who pay no taxes at all.

There's been a 59% increase in the number of nonpayers since 2000, growing from 32.6 million in 2000 to 51.6 million in 2008. In the same period, the total tax filers grew by only 10%.

Not only are fewer people paying any taxes, but also the income levels for these nonpayers have steadily risen. A family of four earning more than $50,000 can have no income tax liability after taking the standard deduction and the child tax credit.

According to the Tax Foundation, "The major elements of the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 boosted the maximum income for nonpayers to more than $56,700" — the highest ever.

The government has continually expanded the value of benefits such as the earned income tax credit to the point where you get a check from Uncle Sam even if you paid no taxes during the year. That's what made it so laughable when the administration claimed it was cutting taxes for most Americans when nearly 40% pay no taxes to start with. These are in essence welfare checks.

FoodStamps = Welfare

Best Idea I've heard in a while: There should be a seperate line for people using food stamps.

Why should the ones paying the bills have to wait in line behind the takers?

The worst idea ever? Replacing the paper stamps with a debit card.

The NY Times has an article about how the attitude has changed.

1 in 8 Americans are on food stamps.
1 in 4 children are on food stamps.

There's also an interactive map of the country HERE.

The greatest (cost) generation

According to the CBO:

In 2007, a little less than one-half of the federal government’s spending went toward programs and purposes other than Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and net interest on the public debt.

Queen Nancy

Having a tough time finding work? Don't worry. Queen Nancy feels your pain. Fortunately, she's able to quench that pain with Greygoose vodka, at $26.65 per drink.

Over the past two years, her cost for JUST IN-FLIGHT EXPENSES is $101,429. That's just booze and food while on a flight!!!

Here's one bill:


Her travel costs JUST FROM THE MILITARY are $2,100,744. TWO MILLION DOLLARS?!

Funny thing about Haiti

Shamelessy plagiarized from someone funnier than me:

I hope Haiti gets back on their feet, but what’s the deal here. Are they trying to fix it like it was before, or does Haiti need a whole new country? Because even before the quake the buildings and roads look like Earth on that ‘Life After People’ show, except Haiti has people. What have they been doing for 300 years? How do we know what buildings to fix? How do we know which ones were broken by the earthquake and what ones were already fucked up? I’m not so sure you should get a new building just because you broke the other one. Are we just taking their word on this? How does that work? If you were an insurance agent, and someone wrecked their 95 Accord, you wouldn’t give them a Maybach would you? This is exactly like that, except in this case the person didn’t have any insurance, and instead of a 95 Accord they had a rusty bike with no seat.

Too soon?

Red Environmentalists

Support the Seals

Go HERE to sign the petition, donate money, get contact information.

We're in Bizarro World

Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terrorist
Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges.
Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

A BLOODY FUCKING LIP? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?

QOTD

"Today of course is Veterans Day in the US, where we honor the awesome killing power of the American military and the god like race of supermen who defend us. Our military is so advanced and our soldiers so superior that if our government wasn’t filled with such panicky little girls they could go to war with any country on Earth and it would be the equivalent of Zeus throwing lightning down on the trembling peasants below."

Afghans

Reading through some of Michael Yon's excellent accounts of being embedded with the troops in Afghanistan, you get a real feeling for what a bunch of unevolved animals they are.

On this day, an Afghan man showed one of these medics a rash on his arms, but the medic carried no such medicines out into the fighting. When medic Evans said she had no medicine, a young man picked up a big stone and was preparing to hit her. Rhian instantly pointed the rifle at the man who put down the rock.

Bless their hearts.

I agree with Paglia?

"Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?"

"But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills."

As a libertarian and refugee from the authoritarian Roman Catholic church of my youth, I simply do not understand the drift of my party toward a soulless collectivism.

Quite frankly, the president gives little sense of direct knowledge of medical protocols; it's as if his views are a tissue of hearsay and scattershot worst-case scenarios.

Read the whole thing.

John Adams

We are watching the first DVD of the series John Adams from HBO. It's excellent. If only they taught history like this in high school; less memorization of dates, and more insight into the people.

Thought for the Day

If Healthcare is a right, then why can't we claim the total cost of it as a deduction on our taxes?



*Currently, you only get a deduction for the cost of healthcare that exceeds 7.5% of you adjusted gross income.

So Good, I'll just reprint it

Thursday, May 28, 2009
On Empathy, Sotomayor, & Consequences
by Eric Von Haessler

If there is a problem with President Obama’s choice of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court, it lay not in Sotomayor herself, but in the President’s criteria leading to her selection. In a recent interview held before announcing his nominee Mr. Obama stated he didn’t just want a jurist plucked from the Ivory Tower. While allowing that intellectual firepower was important he placed special emphasis on finding someone who also had, “a little bit of a common touch” along with, “a practical sense of how the world works.” To boil it down to one word, it was ‘empathy’ the President was most looking for in a potential nominee.

Empathy, the act of intellectually identifying with the experiences of another, is almost always a laudable human trait- almost, but not always. The ability to a walk a mile in another’s shoes bodes one well when cementing friendships and reinforcing alliances but it is always an abomination when applied to the interpretation of law. In fact, the application of empathy can’t help but to serve the corruption of law.

The statues of Lady Justice adorning courtrooms throughout the country most often depict a stern, but blindfolded arbiter. In her raised hand the scales are set evenly in anticipation of the coming weight of facts and evidence. In a lowered hand she brandishes the sword that will eventually cut one way or the other. The essential idea here is that the weight of the arguments made, not the adjudicators vision of the litigants, should be the only consideration before judgment is rendered.

When President Obama says he favors judges that not only stick to the letter of the law but also, “get a sense of how the law might work or not work in practical day-to-day living,” he is attempting to conjoin two principles that are mutually exclusive. It is not possible to both stick to and disregard the letter of the same law. Therefore, the President is explicitly stating that he believes there are times a Justice is morally bound to toss settled law to the wind in order to bring immediate aid and comfort to an individual litigant. This may feel good in law practice but it ain’t the practice of good law.

It is the purpose of legislators, not the bench, to facilitate the urgent redress of individual constituents. Politicians are elected and have to stand for reelection before those same constituents and that is why they are the proper constitutional ‘day to day’ representatives of the people before the powers that be.

Wow

How's that whole "Mouthpiece of the Government" Thing working out for ya, CNN?