After many years of incremental health insurance cost increases, I was informed by my employer this week that the cost of our health care is going up 50%.
Bend over America.
Browsing Posts in Uncategorized
Sometime back I wrote about an observed lack of “shovel ready projects” being funded by Obama’s stimulus package.
Well, I finally found some. Visitors to Skyline Drive are now being treated to a plethora of “Your Recovery Tax Dollars At Work” signs along the 107 mile roadway. Probably as many signs as there are men actually working. I have to admit, they are damn good looking signs, but I could not help but ask myself, why here, and why now ?
Years ago Andre Agassi reminded us that “image is everything”. Recovery.gov signs all over Skyline Drive, a prime tourist attraction, in an election year. Now I get it, it’s all in the illusion.
Yes, it is summer all right, but certainly not the “Recovery Summer” the White House kept telling us about. What will be the next empty promise to the American people, Recovery Fall ?
Jobless claims rise to highest level in 9 months
WASHINGTON – Employers appear to be laying off workers again as the economic recovery weakens. The number of people applying for unemployment benefits reached the half-million mark last week for the first time since November.
It was the third straight week that first-time jobless claims rose. The upward trend suggests the private sector may report a net loss of jobs in August for the first time this year.
Read Story at Yahoo
I certainly hope we are not entering a double-dip recession, a second recession completely owned by DOTUS and his team of bungling economic advisors. The indicators are certainly trending that way.
Yes the Ninth Circus Court rears its liberal head again. In the latest stupidity coming from the Court, a three-judge panel has ruled that the Stolen Valor Act, which made it illegal to falsely claim to have received a medal from the U.S. military.
For the first time, bald-faced lies constitute speech protected by the government. Well, I guess the politicians are safe once again.
Today’s Washington Post discusses The Birthright Debate — whether the 14th Amendment should be changed so that children born in the United States to illegal immigrant parents are not automatically citizens.
This, to me, is the wrong question. I have no problem with the children’s being citizens. However, the parents should still be deported. After all, criminals do not escape jail time simply because they have children. Still, to avoid breaking up families, we should offer the parents a choice — leave your children here to be US citizens, or take them with you when you are deported and forfeit their US citizenship.
That is the simple solution.
Now, what I really want to talk about is the author’s claim that,
What is needed is… serious legislation that provides a path to citizenship for those who have been in the country illegally but have otherwise been law-abiding, productive members of society.
Of course, he gave no reason why such legislation is needed, because there is no such reason. Reason is foreign to liberals. Hence the idea of the “otherwise law-abiding, productive” illegal immigrant.
Let’s see if we can apply a little reason to see whether that mythical being can exist. How can an illegal immigrant be productive. Well, I assume he would have to be productive. To be productive, would he not need an occupation? You know, a JOB? If he has a job, he is, by definition, not “otherwise law-abiding.”
Well, you say, what about volunteer work — isn’t that productive? It certainly can be, but it also does not pay. So how does this illegal immigrant doing only volunteer work support himself? Off the charity of others, no doubt. But almost invariably the cost of living in the illegal’s home country is lower than it is here, so if he is living off the charity of others, would not that charity go further if he were in his home country? Our poverty level is set at $10,830/yr. for a single person. The World Bank poverty level is $730/yr. So keeping someone out of poverty is almost 15 times more expensive here than in the Third World, whence come most illegal immigrants.
Why do liberals have compassion for the illegal immigrant, and want our government to support him, but not for the 15 others who did not break our laws and whom we could be supporting instead?
In deciding to end the stay of his ruling that California’s constitutional ban on homosexual marriage, Judge Walker reasoned that
[He's] not sure the proponents have the authority to appeal since they would not be affected by or responsible for implementing his ruling.
Furthermore,
Based on his interpretation of [the appellate court] rules, it appears the ban’s sponsors can only appeal his decision with the backing of either Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or Attorney General Jerry Brown, Walker said. But that seems unlikely as both officials refused to defend Proposition 8 in Walker’s court and said last week they see no reason why gay couples should not be able to tie the knot now.
Schwarzenegger and Brown’s refusal to defend the Constitutional Amendment passed by the California voters is nothing less than dereliction of duty. The Attorney General, particularly, has a duty to defend his State’s Constitution in court, whether he personally agrees with it or not.
Should our police only enforce the laws they agree with? Should our States prosecutors only prosecute violations of laws they personally like?
If you cannot do your job, Mr. Brown, resign.
Hat-tip to JLP at All Financial Matters.
So aside from these idiots calling the rest of us racists, what is the Democrat strategy to get anyone to vote for them? Conway is obviously desperate. What is really pathetic is how bankrupt the Democrats are when it comes to ideas. Stimulus anyone?
Is anyone surprised? Is anyone surprised that he did not recuse himself?
Has this clown even read the document he is sworn to uphold?
It has always been, and will always be, my policy not to use politician’s children, especially the President’s children, as political ammunition or political targets. Children are not responsible for the actions of their parents, and do not ask for the spotlight to be upon them. I ask that you do not use the comments to bash Chelsea.
Now that the spotlight is again on Chelsea Clinton, now Chelsea Mezvinsky, I must say she did indeed shine. May God bless her and Marc and pour His love on their life together.
Well, thanks to the Drudge Report, everyone now knows that 0bama’s example of why we need to extend unemployment benefits yet again was convicted of prescription drug fraud one month before she was fired. She probably cannot get a job because of her conviction (and was probably fired because of it), which any potential employer can find out by running a simple background check — something Commander inCompetent’s staff failed to do.
But I don’t want to talk about that part of the story. What I want to talk about is her lament she might have to “[turn] to her father for financial support.”
Holy Leeches, Batman! This woman has been sponging off me (and everyone else who works for a living) for over a year, and is now in the Rose Garden begging for more of my money, but hasn’t asked her own freakin’ FATHER!!
What the hell is this country coming to? People are too damned proud to ask their family for money, but they’ll DEMAND it from people they have never met?
Sen. Webb (D-VA) has a rather interesting op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. In it, he echos Shirley Sherrod’s sentiment that “it’s about poor versus those who have, and not so much about White… and Black.” (I strongly recommend you listen to her entire speech — it’s quite good.)
Now, I don’t agree that it is even about the haves versus the have-nots. In the case of the farmer that has now made Shirley Sherrod famous, it was not haves vs. have-nots. In fact, it was the farmer who had, and the depositors who had not. The farmer had the depositors’ money, and could not pay it back. Now, I have to ask, if a cobbler had borrowed money to open a shop and could not repay the loan because he could not compete with Nike and Reebok, would we be putting the force of the feral government behind the cobbler or the bank (and its depositors)? Why are farms different than any other family business?
Anyway, back to Sen. Webb. His main point is that we have laws that favor minorities over whites, while the original intent was to repair some of the damage done by slavery and Jim Crow laws. Recent immigrants are included with Blacks in those policies.
Having gone “off the farm,” Sen. Webb has inspired some flaming over at NLS. If you question affirmative action and racial quotas, you are a racist.
So here is a question for Sen. Webb: After the Republicans take the House and Senate, would you like to come back to the right party?
Chavez will be “nationalizing” (civilized people call it “stealing”) eleven oil rigs owned by US companies. The companies should cap the wells and move the rigs, or destroy them if they cannot be moved.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment does constrain the State and local governments as it does the government of the United States. Naturally, the liberals disagree. The 5-4 decision is here.
The dissent, concocted by Justice Stevens, is the usual bunch of liberal nonsense:
When a federal court insists that state and local authorities follow its dictates on a matter not critical to personal liberty or procedural justice, the latter may be prevented from engaging in the kind of beneficent “experimentation in things social and economic” that ultimately redounds to the benefit of all Americans. New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U. S. 262, 311 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting). The costs of federal courts’ imposing a uniform national standard may be especially high when the relevant regulatory interests vary significantly across localities, and when the ruling implicates the States’ core police powers.
Of course, he did not feel that way in Laurence v. Texas, nor does he feel that way about Roe v. Wade.
