Thursday, March 12, 2009

American's didn't vote for a Rush to Failure, but that's what we got with the Pelosi-Obama-Reid Democrats


Can you guess what job one is for the Obama administration? Aggressively shoring up the banks? Reassuring battered investors in order to heal the wounded stock market? Going after the unbelievable levels of corruption in Congress? Addressing the meltdown of Pakistan's nuclear-armed government? Coming to a missile shield compromise with eastern Europe and Russia?

Nope -- none of those. If you had answered "implementing an anti-Rush Limbaugh billboard", you'd have been spot on.

The Democrats held a contest and this was the winning design.


I did a slight touch-up.


Gateway Pundit calls it "lame". I think he's being overly kind.

At first glance, I actually thought it was an anti-Obama billboard. After all, "Americans didn't vote for a Rush to Failure," but that's what we got with President Training Wheels.



Tracking Twitter Twendz


Advertising firm Waggener Edstrom introduced Twendz earlier this week and I'm already a fan. It is a Twitter tracking engine that allows you to follow trends and sentiment in "real-time".


In the screen-cap above, I'm monitoring the trends around the ill-named "Employee Free Choice Act" (also known as Card Check). If you're a real-time news junkie, Twendz can be a valuable asset.


Update: I forgot to mention that, if you truly have no life whatsoever, you can even elect to follow me on Twitter.


Bus ride


Don't blame me, Dave W. sent this one in.

Two bowling teams, one consisting of all Blondes and one with all Brunettes, charter a double-decker bus for a weekend trip to Louisiana. The Brunette team rode on the bottom of the bus, and the Blonde team rode on the top level.

The Brunette team down below really whooped it up, having a great time, when one of them realized she hadn't heard anything from the Blondes upstairs. She decided to go up and investigate.

When the Brunette reached the top, she found all the Blondes in fear, staring straight ahead at the road, clutching the seats in front of them with white knuckles. The brunette asked, 'What the heck's going on up here? We're having a great time downstairs!'

One of the Blondes looked up at her, swallowed hard and whispered... 'YEAH, BUT YOU'VE GOT A DRIVER!?!'

Larwyn's Link Kerplosion: MoveOn's war against healthcare begins

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email!

Who is Thomas Saenz?: IBD
Reset: Surber
LA Times: Rallies? What Rallies?: Patterico

The American Form of Government: YouTube
MoveOn begins the war on private health care: JWF
Does voting matter?: PJM (Pope)

Breaking news for Ayers and Dohrn: NRO (de Russy)
There is nobody there: Surber
Another scandal brewing: LawHawk

Mother of all Conservatives: MoaC
Speaker Pelosi's commute: MoneyRunner
Earmark-zilla: FutureGen boondoggle grows even bigger: Malkin

Media Malpractice: Movie Events: HOGE
Slimes Never Ran A Story on Freeman's Appointment... Until Now: Ace
Record 41% of Americans say global warming is exaggerated!: Gallup

Should you hire that Harvard MBA? Yes or No?

Dan F. emails:

(Captain Queeg removes the steel balls from his pocket and he spins them in his palm insistently as he speaks.)

“Ah, but the strawberries! That's where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes, but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt, and with geometric logic, that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox did exist! And I'd have produced that key if they hadn't pulled Caine out of action!”

-- The Caine Mutiny (fiction)


“I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. ... The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired...”

-- Chas Freeman (no kidding)

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

MSNBC: rate Obama's performance


As of this moment, MSNBC's poll is still live.

The report card thus far ain't good.



Fox debuts interactive Special Report segment


After today's Fox News Special Report, the network debuted an Internet-only feature. The panel stuck around for an extra twenty minutes and answered chat messages and tweets.


Special Report Live will be a Wednesday-only feature. During the segment, the page displayed two panes. The left side represented a live feed of the panel answering questions based upon the chat and the tweets. The right side was a live chat window.


The effect was neat, but could definitely use some fine-tuning.

* The rules were unclear. Some of my chat messages were "promoted" to the chat window, others disappeared into the bit bucket forever. There was no explanation for why certain messages (e.g., someone shrieked "Charles for President!!!!!!!") were promoted while others were not.

* Some stats would be nice. How many folks were connected simultaneously?

* Use of crowdsourcing to drive the chat would help. Let the users vote on which chat messages are "promoted" to Brett's chat window.

Bottom line, the segment was entertaining and enlightening. The interactive features appear to be a window into the future: the confluence of IP and television.

It's been a long time coming.


Update: When will Keith Olbermann try his hand at this new medium?



Obama's Utopia


What would constitute a liberal utopia?

Cars would be restricted in size, to meet emissions and fuel consumption regulations.

Fuel prices would be stratospheric due to a combination of drilling prohibitions and oppressive taxation. Oil drilling would be banned in all locations, and rigs would sit idle despite the country's massive energy supplies.

Mass transit will therefore be required of most citizens.

A government lottery, however, will give a lucky few the option to purchase vehicles of their own. All cars are painted white, because mixing other colors of paint can result in the release of excess greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

Tax policy will encourage citizens to live in planned housing units, which consume less of the country's precious energy supplies.

"Smart-grid" technology will meter energy usage, pricing it by time-of-day and number of persons in the household. Power can be cut off to a household if predefined government limits are exceeded.

All lights in housing units will be required to use compact fluorescent lamps. These lamps, although they contain toxic levels of mercury, can help reduce energy consumption and thereby prevent global warming.

And housing units will require special water-saving sink-toilets. These will allow the recapture of sink water waste into the toilet tank, which is further reduced in size because of water shortages.

Because of environmental regulations, access to clean water will be significantly restricted. The possibility of an environmental impact that could affect certain species prevents humans from tapping into a natural water supply without years of review.

All humans are inherently good if they can only be reasoned with. Open borders and streamlined paths to full citizenship are required of us if we are to gain full a measure of respect from Europe.

We know that open borders can inevitably lead to some unfortunate accidents -- an increase in suicide bombings by misguided extremists, for example -- but they must be tolerated to foster a forgiving, modern society.

If you are lucky enough to find a job -- inside the government or out -- you will need to join a union. Unions protect the rights of workers and ensure additional oversight over oppressive businesses.

You could decline to join a union, of course. It's your right as an American. But your choice will be public and the union may send recruiters to your home to encourage you to join up.

Once you join, your union dues will seem like an extra 5% tax on your wages. But they are necessary to preserve your rights in the workplace.

This may seem like a lot of government intrusion in your life. But consider all of the benefits.

Your first year of college: free.

Health care: free.

A basic level of retirement income: free.

All that the government asks is that you vote. For the Democrat Party. For Big Government.

For Barack Obama. And for Change.


Hat tip: Mark Levin.


Behind the Teleprompter, episode 309




Idea ripped from: Parkway Rest Stop.

Larwyn's Link Kerplosion: "Oh, the debts we will see!"

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email!

50 days that changed the world: Gateway
The Saudi-Manchurian Candidate's Parting Shot: Power Line
Your Stimulus Dollars At Work: Corner

Preparing for 'Helathcare Reform' in the U.S.: Shrinkwrapped
Obama seeks to delay Tanker, cancel Bomber: CQP
Top Ten Specious Reasons For ObamaCare: Maggie's

Did Obama cause the stock slide?: Corner
Obama's Energy Secretary hates energy: My Fox 8
Are Tea Parties American's last, best hope?: Riehl

10 most endangered newspapers: Time
A post-modern translation of the Constitution: Dr. Sanity
The Change We Never Asked For: Gateway

Dems sell out African-American school children (again): Power Line
Subsidizing bad decisions: Sowell
Voters' Obama Folly Comes Home To Roost: AT (Shiver)

Could Americans' discontent turn violent?: Krumm
Politicians fiddle while America burns: Flopping Aces
Rationing life and death: AT (Griffing)

Royal Anglian Parade in Luton: YouTube
Fart devastates City Council Meeting: Fox 8
Oh, the Debts We Will See!: Hanson

$3.6 trillion budget. $1.7 trillion annual deficit. $800 billion plus borrowing stimulus. $600 billion plus in outlays for new nationalized health care, and then another $600 billion again for cap-and-trade.

These numbers are so fantastic, so absolutely crazed, that the thought of ever paying them off boggles the mathematical senses. (I have surreal nightmares that as we haggle with the Chinese for another $500 billion dollar note to fund cap-and-trade, or another DMV-like national health care center, the USS Carl Vinson radios that it is broke and has no credit to buy supplies off Dubai, or its F-18s sit in rows on its deck, gathering brine for want of parts to take off).

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Quote o' the day: That Jimmy Hoffa, what a card (check)!


"Since when is the secret ballot a basic tenet of democracy?" -- Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. (via EFCA's Tweets).

What the market tells us about confidence in administrations


September 1980 to March 1981, Dow up 3.43%:


September 1984 to March 1985, Dow up 5.16%:


September 1988 to March 1989, Dow up 9.93%:


September 2000 to March 2001, Dow up 5.01%:


September 2004 to March 2004, Dow down 6.87%:


September 2008 to March 2009, Dow down 40.03%:


Change!

Update: Did Obama cause the stock slide?: Business Week thinks so.



Barack Obama tells a bedtime story to his kids



Today's Washington Times has the back-story. And the liberals progressives said George W. Bush was a puppet!


Idea: Jerry H.

Payback: Democrats poised to ram Card Check through


The Washington Post reports that House and Senate Democrats are preparing bills that would ram the ill-named "Employee Free Choice Act" through Congress.

"Legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize will be introduced on Tuesday in the U.S. Congress, escalating a battle between Democratic lawmakers and corporate America... Known as "card check," the legislation would let employees form a union if a majority of them in a workplace sign authorization cards.

That would change the present practice in which workers usually vote in elections on unionizing, although the bill would leave the election option open for employees to choose."

But do unions help or hurt workers? In 2005, the Montreal Economic Institute published a study that analyzed the macro-effects of unionization in the United States and Canada. Its conclusions were stunning.

The available data show that a strong union presence... is accompanied by lower levels of employment and investment. Any labour market rigidity can have negative effects on employment. In Europe, for example, other types of institutional rigidity besides those connected with union privileges have been identified as causes of an endemic European unemployment rate that is much higher than in North America.

In contrast, more flexible labour relations create an environment better suited to greater economic dynamism. This dynamism results in higher business demand for labour and thus increased value for work and better remuneration. Workers benefit by finding jobs more readily and also by receiving good wages based on their qualifications and productivity rather than on union membership.

It is not unionization as such – nor the right of association – that causes these effects, but rather union privileges and the resulting constraints. To the extent that unions have privileges and use them either to set wages higher than would be the case without them, or to impose constraints that threaten the profitability and viability of businesses, they diminish employment and general prosperity.


The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) -- a Democratic paean to Union bosses who've spent millions electing them -- provides almost unlimited power to unions over businesses. It strips a uniquely American institution -- the secret ballot -- from the playing field and instead publicly lists employees who've voted for and against unionization. It is a transparent and primitive attempt to bully workers.

Study after study after study confirms the fact: high rates of unionization -- facilitated by pro-union labor relations laws -- constrains free enterprise and hampers small business growth.

"...private unions were found to have a detrimental impact on productivity and economic growth in the most recent period without having any beneficial effect on wages..."

Need proof? Analysts are downgrading Wal-Mart as we speak due to concerns that Card Check will "hurt its competitiveness."

Call your Senator and voice your opposition to the ill-named "Employee Free Choice Act." The job at stake may be your own.