Incredibly funny video from the Daily Show.

The Association of Opinion Journalists (the new name of the National Conference of Editorial Writers) has a project to restore civility to public discourse.

Froma Harrop, the group’s president, recently compared the tea party to al-Qaida in a syndicated column, and apparently does not see the irony.

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CBS News has a neat article about how we are still destroying Haiti two years after the terrible earthquake.

But the economy of rice in Haiti says everything about the condition the country is in. The US government subsidizes and “donates” ton after ton of rice in Haiti and in so doing has through the last several decades completely undercut Haitian rice farmers and left them destitute and migrating into cities where they live in hovels that were destroyed by the quake.

As recently as the early 1980s, Haiti was producing just about all of its own rice. Now more than 60 percent is imported from the US, making it the fourth largest recipient of American rice exports in the world. That was before the quake and now with donated rice coming in as well, Haiti is even more awash in rice while American agribusiness makes billions of dollars every year through generous government subsidies.

There is perhaps some bitter irony here that the subsidies were promoted in large part by President Clinton to help his home state of Arkansas, the largest rice producing state in the US, thereby crippling a sector of the economy in Haiti where Clinton has worked so tirelessly to help with the recovery.

There you have it folks. Big government decides to help people, and in doing so, continues to kill them.

Government subsidies turn small issues into insurmountable catastrophes.

Washington, DC – Today, the National Taxpayer Advocate issued its 2011 Annual Report to Congress.  In response to the release of the report, Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany Jr., MD (R-LA) released the following statement:

“Today’s Taxpayer Advocate report provides a glimpse into the challenges facing taxpayers as they struggle with a broken tax code.  Nearly 50 pages of the report outline the different ways that the tax code has grown more complex and confusing over the years, reaffirming the need for comprehensive tax reform.  The Ways and Means Committee has taken an active role in laying the foundation for comprehensive reform, and as Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee, I intend to continue our IRS oversight activities to ensure limited resources are efficiently allocated, taxpayer rights are protected, and opportunities for fraud are reduced.”

The House today will vote on H.R. 3630, The Middle Class Tax Relief & Job Creation Act.  The legislation extends a number of provisions scheduled to expire at the end of the year and includes fully paid-for extensions of the payroll tax holiday and a reformed unemployment insurance program, along with a two-year freeze on cuts to doctors providing care to our nation’s seniors and disabled enrolled in Medicare.  The legislation also extends and expands provisions to encourage employers to invest and hire.  In response to this legislation, many job creators and associations have sent letters on The Middle Class Tax Relief & Job Creation Act, which can be found here.

Americans for Tax Reform
“Unlike the Senate Democrat payroll tax proposal, which offered temporary tax relief in exchange for permanent tax hikes, this bill’s spending is offset solely with spending cuts…Taken in total, this bill cuts taxes and cuts spending.  It should be supported by any Member of Congress fighting for taxpayers.”

American Iron and Steel Institute
“[E]xtension of 100 percent bonus depreciation and the expansion to allow companies that fall under the AMT to take advantage of these business friendly expensing provisions will increase business investment in new facilities and equipment, leading to the creation of American jobs.”

National Federation of Independent Business
“[W]e are pleased to see that H.R. 3630 makes needed reforms to clean up waste and abuse of the UI program and helps unemployment recipients back into the job market.  The bulk of the UI program is financed by taxing small business owners, and we appreciate that this bill makes program integrity a top priority.”

American Employers (Boeing, Lockheed Martin Corporation and others)
“[T]hank you for including in the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2011, the clarification that will allow contractors and manufacturers required to use the Internal Revenue Code Sec. 460 “percentage of completion method” of accounting (PCM) to benefit from bonus depreciation for 2012.”

American Occupational Therapy Association, Inc.
“Maintaining the historic connection between action on the Medicare fee schedule and the therapy cap is essential to helping ensure continued beneficiary access to medically necessary rehabilitation services.  The two-year extension of the therapy caps will allow Congress the time to work with therapy stakeholders and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to develop and enact meaningful changes to Medicare’s outpatient rehabilitation payment system, enabling the repeal of the arbitrary limits on this Medicare benefit set by the therapy caps.”

Leading Associations (National Association of Manufacturers, American Trucking Associations, leading telecommunications groups and others)
“[A]llowing businesses to continue to expense the full cost of capital equipment in the tax year it is purchased and placed into service, will promote continued investment and domestic job growth.”

American Ambulance Association
“[A]mbulance services are a critical component of our local and national health care and emergency response systems.  They are also overwhelmingly small businesses that provide jobs and investment in local communities.  The relief provided in the Job Creation Act will support these entities as they provide vital emergency health care and first responder services to entire communities.”

American Employers (American Airlines, Goodyear, Xerox and others)
“This bill includes the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) U.S. Jobs provision which will provide our companies with a strong incentive to create American jobs and to make new capital investments.”

National Roofing Contractors Association
“NRCA recognizes the need to provide businesses with the certainty that these tax policies will be available next year as they seek to grow and create jobs…NRCA also applauds the fact H.R. 3630 is fully-offset with spending cuts and programmatic reforms so this tax relief will not add to the deficit…NRCA commends you for your leadership on promoting tax policies that enable employers to grow their businesses and create jobs.”

A Common Sense Response to Left Wing Stupidity: How did America-Hating Left-Wingers Take Over the Internet?

As the title suggests, I am going to use common sense to battle the Left. This is normally pretty simple. I’ll try to be brief in case supporters of the Left manage to accidentally find their way here and spend a moment reading this blog.

I happened across this article: The Rise of the New Confederacy: How America-Hating Right-Wingers Took Over the GOP

The article decided to prove that people such as Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Rick Perry all hate America because they are religious.

Yes, I’m serious.

The article starts out with a quick history of secular higher education after the Civil War. This leads into how more Conservative Christians objected to the more modern education and decided to create things like Bob Jones University. I won’t try to defend Bob Jones at all as it has little to do with the overall objective of the article. I’m not here in defense of religion today. I’m here to defend common sense which is often times under attack.

The author goes on to give a name to a kind of disorder that afflicts people who follow a certain religious philosophy, premillennial dispensationalism (p.d.). Again, not here to give a crap about this guys opinions on religious people or to defend the religious people. But let’s just say that the author has a low opinion of those who have this philosophy. I would suggest going to the article and reading how he defines this philosophy as I won’t be reliving all the details here.

Where this guy goes off the deep end, is when he tries to connect this religious philosophy with Right Wing political beliefs, and does so badly.

Skeptics regarding p.d.’s influence rightly note that a relatively small minority of the population actually adhere to the theology. But unified and highly galvanized groups wield outsized power in American politics. The hard work of actually getting things done, whether for good or ill, depends on the energy and organization of “marginal” groups who represent minority opinions and which, more often than not, are fired by religious faith. That truth has been driven home with frightening clarity by the recent debt-ceiling debate and by the radicalism of the leading Republican presidential candidates–nearly all of whom, not coincidentally, profess faith in some variation of p.d. theology.

Did you catch that? If you are a crazy religious nut, you also believe that the enormous federal debt is a bad thing. Only the crazy, stupid, non-scientific, religious people are of the opinion that we are spending too much in this country.

Pragmatists and progressives defer to experts and professionals. They expect truth claims to be supported by evidence that emerges from research and testing. They put their faith in this process, and in the communities of inquiry–the disciplines–legitimized by secular institutions of higher education.

The new Confederacy rejects that process wholesale. Its leaders and authorities are the spiritual descendants of the conservative Christians and charismatic radio preachers who broke away from religious modernism in the 1920s and 1930s. For these leaders and their followers, faith justifies–and verifies–itself. You don’t believe an idea because it’s true. It’s true because you believe it.

This is why, in the “real America” of Bachmann, Palin and Perry, it is self-evident that cutting taxes increases revenues; the founders were evangelical Christians; evolution is bunk; climate change is a hoax; the United States has the best healthcare system in the world; we can transform the Middle East into a garden of democracy; Kenya native Barack Obama has slashed the military budget; the war on drugs is worth the cost; and so on. These are all leaps of faith. The new Confederates flat-out reject or ignore any counter-evidence, because they have their own fount of truth. FOX News is the obvious example, but decades before the rise of FOX–going back to the early 20th century radio evangelists–conservatives had been quietly building their own media and networks for “truth” telling.

So only the crazy religious people believe that cutting taxes helps to generate higher revenues and they believe this without any actual evidence. The author knows this because he is a progressive, and as he explained, progressives defer to experts and expect claims to be supported by evidence from research and testing.

This of course would be completely relevant, if it were even slightly true.

Most Conservative opinion has little to do with religion. It is an opinion derived from economic theory, and this little thing called empirical evidence. I assume that the author of this article pays no attention to tax revenues generated after the tax reform of the 80s. I also assume that the author has never read the research paper written by Cristine Romer, former economic adviser to President Obama. A research paper written by the Romer family (her husband helped) shows that historically, higher tax rates have a negative impact on Gross Domestic Product.

But pay no mind to all of this. Only pay attention to the simple fact that if you believe in lower tax rates, you are a lunatic religious person who doesn’t believe in evidence. That is the opinion of the author.

Also pay no attention to the thousands of actual scientists who are global warming skeptics.

Pay no attention to the people who come into the US to take advantage of our healthcare system, and pay no attention to the fact that other countries take advantage of scientific research done in the US when they provide healthcare to their citizens, and then pay no attention to the fact that those countries still fail to deliver healthcare.

Pay no attention to the fact that private consumption has a larger multiplier effect than government spending.

Only pay attention to the fact that if you believe in these things, you are a CRAZY PERSON!!!!

The author does what so many on the Left attempt to do every day. He attempts to take a few ideas that are common sense, and tie those ideas to a philosophy that can be rejected in an attempt to derail the common sense ideas.

The first problem is that the philosophies are in fact not tied together. Small government, lower spending, lower taxation, and other Conservative philosophies are in fact not tied to the religious philosophy that the author obviously hates. The Founding Fathers had religious influence when they created this country, but they were also influenced by the evils of a large government and it’s ability to tax it’s citizens and act in a tyrannical fashion. The Declaration mentions that we all have rights because of our Creator, but does not give a name to that Creator. The Constitution then goes on to prevent the government from making any religion the law of the land.

Many economists, libertarians, and people who don’t go to Church every Sunday happen to agree with the Founding Father’s philosophy of small, non-tyrannical government.

The second problem is all of the previously listed flaws in the authors own beliefs. He quickly brushes over lower taxes, the debt ceiling, global warming, etc, etc, etc. He claims that those who disagree with him reject the process of “evidence that emerges from research and testing.”

This of course could not be further from the truth. Scientists cannot agree on global warming, and we now know that those who are studying global warming were fudging the data so that they could continue to get their tax payer funded research grants. Economic research and plenty of evidence demonstrates that our progressive tax policy is a detriment to our economy. Economic research demonstrates that taxing business and investment is driving business and investment to other countries. And if I need to explain the problems created by continuing to increase our debt, please just leave. By the way, why didn’t he mention Obama’s previous objection to raising the debt ceiling? Is Barack Hussein Obama a crazy religious nut too?

The third issue with the article is kind of an extension of the first one, trying to tie things together that don’t actually fit. To help get my point across, I will post the title of the article again, “The Rise of the New Confederacy: How America-Hating Right-Wingers Took Over the GOP.”

A few times in the article, the author refers to this make believe enemy as “the Confederacy.” This isn’t done by accident. It is a deliberate attempt at the incredibly tired calls of racism. I know, I know, you guys were thinking that the fraudulent use of the race card was going out of style. But it is still very much in style. It is kind of like the Kardashians. Everyone thinks it’s stupid, but it won’t go away. But the use of the word “Confederacy” actually goes past racism and leaps right into slavery. So if you believe in things like low tax rates, you believe in slavery, according to the author. The best part about this is of course the fact that high taxation is nothing more than slavery.

Another issue with the article. STOP TELLING ME THAT I LOVE FOX NEWS. That is actually worse than the race card in my book. The Left brings up Fox News almost every time they are saying something stupid. Just a fact. When the Left has something stupid to say about the Right, they tell us how much we love Fox News and cling to every word of Glenn Beck. Due to the fact that my IQ is higher than 2, I’m getting fucking sick and tired of this incredible act of stupidity. If you can’t make a point without trying to bringing up Fox News, do everyone on the planet a favor. Go kill yourself. You are too stupid to continue living. Thanks much. That may seem like a bit much to many people, but it’s a pet peeve of mine, probably because I don’t watch Fox News and haven’t seen Glenn Beck in forever. I know Beck isn’t mentioned in the article, but he normally is. OK, got that out of my system now.

To recap, the author tries to tell you that you are stupid if you don’t believe what he believes even though what he believes has been proven to be wrong. He tells you that you don’t believe in research and evidence, while he ignores research and evidence. He tries, very badly, to combine what he contends is a new religious influence to economic policy. And at the same time, not only does he call you stupid if you believe in low tax rates, he also compares you to the Confederacy so that he can attempt to tie you to slavery. And he says something stupid about Fox News because he is fucking stupid.

So I have some advice for Mr. Theo Anderson. If you are going to try and attack religion and political philosophy all at the same time, try to get your facts straight. Get past the incredibly tired race card bullshit. And try to get over Fox News, which is a 24 hour news channel you have never in your life seen.

I just realized that this article is a bit longer than I originally anticipated, so I am guessing that Theo and any other American hating Left-Wingers stopped reading long ago and are enthralled with OWS, Ed Schultz, and the Kardashians.

Finally, in terms even I understand…

THE REAL PROBLEM WITH OUR SOCIETY – - – -

The folks who are GETTING free stuff,
Don’t like the folks who are PAYING for the free stuff,
Because the folks who are PAYING for the free stuff,
Can no longer afford to PAY for both the free stuff and their own stuff.

And, the folks who are PAYING for the free stuff,
Want the free stuff to stop.
And the folks who are GETTING the free stuff,
Want even MORE free stuff,
On top of the free stuff they’re already GETTING!

Now…

The people who are FORCING people to PAY for the free stuff,
Have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff,
That the people who are PAYING for the free stuff,
Are being mean, prejudiced and racist.

So…

The people who are GETTING the free stuff,
Have been convinced they need to HATE the people
who are PAYING for the free stuff,
Because they are selfish.

And…

The people who RECEIVE the free stuff,
Are promised MORE free stuff,
If they will VOTE for the people,
Who FORCE the people who PAY for the free stuff,
To give them even MORE free stuff.

GOT IT??

Obama is giving everyone the chance to say what we are thankful for this holiday season. I just couldn’t pass up the chance to tell him. Here is a screenshot from just before I sent it to him. Click on the picture to zoom in.

Ted Nugent, rock star and avid bow hunter from Michigan, was being interviewed by a liberal journalist, an animal rights activist. The discussion came around to deer hunting. The journalist asked, ‘What do you think is the last thought in the head of a deer before you shoot him? Is it, ‘Are you my friend?’ or is it ‘Are you the one who killed my brother?

Nugent replied, ‘Deer aren’t capable of that kind of thinking. All they care about is, what am I going to eat next, who am I going to screw next, and can I run fast enough to get away. They are very much like the Democrats in Congress.’

The interview ended.