The First Wave Of Taxes

A comprehensive list of taxes the Senate plans to impose now that Harry Reid bought Ben Nelson includes this gem:

Tax on Indoor Tanning Services (Page 373 of Manager’s amendment/$2.7 billion/July 1, 2010): New 10% excise tax on indoor tanning salons.

You think this is where they will stop?

Get ready, here it comes.

Each Responsible For Everything

I don’t link George Will often, but this column is devastating:

His Dec. 1 Afghanistan speech to the nation was followed on Dec. 3 by his televised “jobs summit.” His Dec. 8 televised economics speech at the Brookings Institution was followed on Dec. 10 by his televised Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, which was remarkable for 38 uses of the pronoun “I.”

And for disavowing a competence no one suspected him of. (”I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war.” Note the superfluous adjective.) And for an unnecessary notification. (”Evil does exist in the world.”) And for delayed utopianism. (”We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.” But in someone’s.) And for solemnly announcing something undisputed. (There can be a just war.) And for intellectual applesauce that should get speechwriters fired and editors hired. (”We do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.” If the human “condition” can attain perfection anyway, human nature cannot be significantly imperfect.)

All the well-deserved Obama slamming is really an appetizer for Will’s main point: That Democrats are killing themselves for a vainglorious little man with a deeply flawed understanding of how the world and this country really work – and are providing the club which will beat them into obscurity by doing so:

So Republicans can win in 2009 by stopping the bill, or in 2010 by saying: Unpopular health legislation passed because of a 60-40 party-line decision to bring it to a Senate vote. Therefore each incumbent Democrat is responsible for everything in the law.

That is the huge miscalculation the Democrats have made. They think they can weather the storm.

They. Are. Wrong.

There will be no shelter. None. No deflection will work, no lies will work. Each incumbent Democrat will be responsible for every, single thing in the bill. And the revelations of all that is buried in those thousands of pages will be endless.

And each incumbent Democrat will be fully, completely, utterly responsible for everything in the law.

Public anger is seething and growing rapidly. Democrats will be better off – considerably so – in stopping their efforts and starting over.

(Do go over and read the whole piece. The warm-up Obama-bashing is worth reading in and of  itself. Because it is all true.)

A Hollow Victory?

If – and it is a big if, still – the Democrats manage to pass their desperate “Any Bill Will Do” health care reform, they may be committing political suicide in the process:

O, the irony: The Democrats — who run the Congress and the White House — have to pass health care to prove they can govern. If it falls apart, after all this time, they will look weak and ineffectual. Yet while they toil long days and nights trying to put together the votes, the bill itself has morphed into something the public fears. So passage could well become a short-lived political victory.

Some numbers: According to CNN polls, almost 8 in 10 believe it will add to the deficit. When asked whether the Senate bill would help your family a resounding 75 percent said no. And will it increase your taxes? Eighty-five percent said you bet it will.

So why not have a GOP candidate in Kentucky inject health care into a state senate race? “Keep the big hand of government out of our personal health care decisions,” one Higdon ad warned ominously. One Democratic strategist familiar with the race says the ad didn’t matter much since not enough people saw it to have a real impact.

Beyond Kentucky, the Democrats also protest on health care: The issue is misunderstood, they say. We are just losing the spin war and that will change, they say. Even if all of that is true, there’s something else to understand: Once health care passes, it’s still going to be unpopular. At least until the Democrats can prove why it works, and that could take a very long time.

I pointed out another analyst making the same point last night. The American public is not misunderstanding the intent and the impact of this bill, contrary to the Democrat’s assertions. They can see a bad deal and a power grab very clearly. They can see the coming loss in quality and quantity of health care. They can see the tax increases looming. They can see the bureaucratic meddling in their most personal affairs. They can see the severe economic damage. They can see the vast increase to an already unmanageable deficit.

They can see the disaster coming.

And they will know who to blame. They will know who to punish. They will know who to exile to the wilderness.

They will know how to get this monstrosity killed by unelecting the ones who pass it and electing a Congress that listens instead of dictates.

The Gilded Age Returns

Jay Cost:

Amazingly, this bill has produced the broadest political coalition I have seen in my lifetime. Peruse the liberal blogs and you’ll discover widespread disgust at this corporate boon. Cruise over to the conservative sites, and you’ll encounter much the same thing. Then, check out the opinion polls and you’ll find a mass public that is staunchly opposed to this bill.

And yet Democrats in the Senate have decided that all of us – left, right, and center – are wrong. We need this bill.

Welcome to the new gilded age. The original hope behind the 17th Amendment – the direct election of senators – was to get the upper chamber out of the pocket of mega-industries that could buy and sell senators. So much for that, I suppose. This has to be one of the biggest giveaways to corporate interests in the nation’s history.

Andrew Jackson must be spinning in his grave this evening. The Democratic Party was founded in opposition to “corrupt bargains” among entrenched interests that Democrats believed were undermining the will of the people. Today, such interests are called “stakeholders.” They are to be wooed, bought off, and neutralized. Can’t afford a K Street lobbyist? Sorry, you’re not a stakeholder. Don’t like this bill? Eh…you don’t know what’s good for you. You’re either a tea-bagging moron or a gutless liberal who will fold sooner or later.

Like I said, Jackson must be spinning.

I have no idea what RPM Andy is up to at the moment, but Cost is dead right in his assessment: This is going to be politically bloody for the Democrats. If they pass this monstrosity, the payback for them is not going to be manageable and will be quite possibly irrecoverable. As in a permanent damage to the brand.

I’m fully aware that politicians like Pelosi feel invincible in their deep-blue seats, but the rest of the Democrats will be – frankly – in very, very bad shape.

The true cost of this bill will be much, much higher than anything the Democrats have publicly touted. One only has to look at the true costs of every Federal program – and the rapidly rising salaries of Federal officials – to understand that they are lying about the costs.

Spending like this and taxing as they must to try to pay for a sliver of what this is going to cost will inevitably cause long-term damage to the economy of this nation.

Forcing private citizens into purchasing some form of bureaucrat approved insurance from a corporate entity – with the full might and power of the government enforcing the purchase. Didn’t we settle the issue of involuntary servitude a long time ago? We have a constitutional amendment and everything.

The voter backlash will be positively biblical.

Guantanamo North

Illinois draws the short straw:

Officials said the government will buy the Thomson Correctional Centre in northwest Illinois, which was completed in 2001 but has never been used because of a shortage of funds.

The decision has been months in the making, as the president has sought to close the controversial Guantanamo facility in Cuba to fulfill one of his major campaign promises.

“Closing the detention centre at Guantanamo is essential to protecting our national security and helping our troops by removing a deadly recruiting tool from the hands of al-Qaeda,” said a senior administration official.

“Today’s announcement is an important step forward as we work to achieve our national security objectives.”

Sources close to the White House said that between 35 and 90 detainees will be transferred from Gauntanamo, which has been a lightning rod for criticism of America’s conduct in campaign against terrorism. It is believed they will include detainees who are not yet facing trial, due to be transferred to another country, or scheduled to be sent home. They will be housed in a “super-max” security wing, while another 1,600 prisoners will occupy other parts of the complex.

All that this window dressing will accomplish is move these suspects into the United States. They will not be automatically released. This will just be a new Guantanamo in a somewhat colder climate. But this will not end well for America. Remember the names of the politicians who are pushing this. People like Dick Durbin, once my Senator – and a complete waste of oxygen. They have brought this to Northern Illinois. Remember that when it goes bad.

The Reality Show Based Community – Part Two

Gimme the readys
Gimme the cash
Gimme a bullet
Gimme a smash
Gimme a silver gimme a gold
Make it a million for when I get old

Art for arts sake
Money for Gods sake
Art for Arts sake
Money for Gods sake

(Stewart, Gouldman, Art for Art’s Sake)

Fame at whatever cost:

And we can’t begin to list all the pseudo, wannabe and semi-celebrities who shamelessly threw themselves into the limelight, from the Gosselins to the endless stream of Michael Jackson mourners to the gyrating, guy-kissing Adam Lambert, who seems to grow in stature with each show that cancels him.

Lambert, an “American Idol” runner-up, is one of Barbara Walters’ most fascinating people of the year.

Really? For what?

Doesn’t matter. We’ve reached the point where the “what” is superfluous to the “wow.” So people flock to learn more about the cocktail waitress who last week claimed to have had a long affair with Tiger Woods, and while Woods is chided for his alleged infidelity, no one seems to question why this woman chose to get involved with one of the most famous married people on the planet. Does it shock you to learn she’s a minor figure on a reality TV show herself? Why isn’t the lust for a headline as decried as the lust for flesh?

It’s as if fame for fame’s sake is now an accepted motivation.

And this is where the world gets dangerous.

Indeed it does. Gimme a bullet, gimme a smash. Gimme fame over any other thing in the universe. Don’t listen to – or don’t even have – that little bit of a sense of decency that everyone should have.

This will not end well. That script running in your head is not how the real world works.

Cannibal Boomers

A truly disturbing opinion piece by Bill Frezza over at Real Clear Politics. The boomers are eating their young.

My 26 year old son got the most extraordinary letter from the Social Security Administration last week. In plain English it admitted that the system was a Ponzi scheme destined for bankruptcy more than a decade before he reaches retirement age. It warned that if he is to have any hope of retiring he’d better start saving on his own. Anyone who wasn’t personally hypnotized by FDR knows this to be true. Yet I was still surprised that such a frank government confession didn’t make national news.

The two-page pamphlet entitled “What young workers should know about Social Security and saving” reminds us that 50 million, or one in six, Americans will collect more than $614 Billion dollars in Social Security benefits this year. It informs young people that the Security Taxes they now pay go into a “Trust Fund” that is used to pay current beneficiaries. Paying off early investors with funds taken from later investors is precisely how Wikipedia defines a Ponzi scheme. The pamphlet advises that the Social Security Board of Trustees estimates that the “Trust Fund” will be depleted before my son’s 54th birthday. Because people are living longer and the birth rate is low, it goes on, taxes paid by workers in the future will not be enough to pay the benefits promised in his personalized retirement account statement enclosed with the pamphlet. Imagine what hell would break loose if Schwab or Fidelity Investments enclosed a confession like this when they mailed investors their 401(k) statements.

Add on the incredibly generous pension benefits that most government employees get that allow them to retire in their 50s and pretty soon we’re talking serious money.  The younger workers suffer – and will suffer even more under health care “reform” where they will be forced to subsidize the boomer’s fun retirements.

But let’s expand on Frezza’s thoughts and reflect on the devil’s bargain the boomers are making. The younger workers will, inevitably, be the very bureaucrats who decide what health care the older people get.

So the younger ones, enslaved by the older ones, will have little incentive to prolong the happy, well-funded lives of the older cannibal class.

Sleep on that thought. Sweet dreams.

ObamaCare – wrong for everyone.

The Reality Show Based Community

One rather suspects that the Secret Service is collectively very, very upset at the moment. As they should be.

A White House official, informed of Bravo’s statement, said that was not the case. “We’ve already confirmed that they weren’t invited,” he said.

A publicist for the couple, Mahogany Jones, said they would not comment formally for now.

“Their counsel, Paul W. Gardner Esq. states emphatically that the Salahis’ did not ‘crash’ this event,” the statement said. “We look forward to setting the record straight very soon.”

Mr. Gardner, an entertainment lawyer, did not respond to a message left at his Baltimore office, which was closed for the holiday.

The Secret Service — which one Homeland Security official described as “completely embarrassed” by the incident — has begun an investigation into how the pair managed to get through multiple layers of high-level security to crash the affair, where they managed to rub shoulders, literally, with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, among others. Edwin Donovan, a spokesman for the Secret Service who spent his Thanksgiving Day fending off phone calls from reporters, said the investigation was continuing, but would not discuss it in detail.

This is very, very bad, That these two managed to get past what should be the tightest security in the world is more than a bit embarrassing for the Secret Service.

Not that the Obama presidency itself does not have the air of a very bad reality show about it.

Well, You Got Your Attention….

…It just wasn’t exactly the attention you wanted. Authorities will be recommending criminal charges against Richard and Mayumi Heene, the parents of the boy thought to have been aboard a homemade balloon launched by the Heenes. (He wasn’t of course, he was hiding.) These are not small charges, either:

Authorities believe the alleged plot was hatched in an attempt by the Heene family “to better market themselves for a reality show at some point in the future,” Alderden said. “They were lying.”

The Larimer County Sheriff’s Office will recommend charges of conspiracy, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, false reporting to authorities, and attempting to influence a public servant against the Heenes.

No charges have been filed yet, and the parents aren’t under arrest. Some of the most serious charges each carry a maximum sentence of six years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

On top of that, the Child Protective Services have been brought into the matter. I happened to catch the very end of the press conference just given by Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden announcing all this. It was a thing of beauty. At the end he announced that while the story had been spectacular and riveting for the media, he was quite sure that they had better things to spend time on. He and his office certainly did. So he was immediately ending all media contact, interviews, press releases or anything else.

Essentially, he told them to go away. He did so with good grace, good manners and humor, but he told them to beat it. I do not think it would be wise for the media to continue the circus, at least not in Alderden’s county.

All this was allegedly about getting publicity for a future reality television show.

One or both of these parents have a screw or two loose, apparently. I think they will both get a hard lesson that reality television has nothing whatsoever to do with reality. The are about to be mugged by reality.

Redecorating With Flare

No, that is not a typo. Japanese researchers have discovered a new, anti-Wi-Fi paint that will keep your neighbors from leeching off your wireless:

Wireless security and encryption systems are fraught with problems and insecurity, and other methods to restrict your signal to a small area are cumbersome at best.

Enter a new solution: Anti-Wi-Fi paint.

The idea is simple: Use a special paint on walls where you don’t want wireless to pass through (say the exterior of your house). The secret is mixing aluminum-iron oxide particles in with the paint. The metal particles resonate at the same frequency as Wi-Fi and other radio waves, so signals can’t pass through the thin layer of pigment. Outsiders would simply be unable to access your wireless network, just as you, inside the house, won’t be able to interlope on anything beamed on the outside.

Developed by the University of Tokyo, the paint is said to be the first that can block radio frequency in higher spectra where Wi-Fi and other higher-bandwidth communications occur rather than just low-frequency wireless like FM radio. Most Wi-Fi technologies operate at 2.4GHz; the Tokyo paint can reportedly block frequencies all the way up to 100GHz, with a 200GHz-blocking paint now in the works. (Emphasis added)

Get the conspiracy theories dusted off, quick! One suspects that the elusive super-thermite may have finally been discovered.

(If you have not figured this out at this point, perhaps you are not aware of what, exactly, is used to make thermite. That would be aluminum and iron oxide. Or the same ingredients as are in the paint.)

One could, of course, put basic security on their wireless router without redecorating with potentially combustive substances. One could even shut off their router’s SSID broadcast so that the neighbors could not easily piggyback on the homeowner’s signals.

Apparently, that escaped the researchers. They would, it seems, rather address the “problem” with flare. Or flares.

“Data? We Don’t Need No Stinking Data!”

Turns out the high priests of the Temple of Anthropogenic Global Warming have lost the original sacred texts which justify their existence, or so they claim.

What you need to read:

The Dog Ate Global Warming

What is fun to read as well:

QandO: Global Warming “Science” v. The Scientific Method
Ace of Spades: As Peter Venkman said, “Back off man, I’m a scientist.”
Yours truly: “Science Is What We Say It Is, Dammit!”

Smooth Move, Harry

Harry Reid picks a fight with his hometown newspaper:

We’re still here doing what we do for the people of Las Vegas and Nevada. So, let me assure you, if we weathered all of that, we can damn sure outlast the bully threats of Sen. Harry Reid.

On Wednesday, before he addressed a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Reid joined the chamber’s board members for a meet-’n'-greet and a photo. One of the last in line was the Review-Journal’s director of advertising, Bob Brown, a hard-working Nevadan who toils every day on behalf of advertisers. He has nothing to do with news coverage or the opinion pages of the Review-Journal.

Yet, as Bob shook hands with our senior U.S. senator in what should have been nothing but a gracious business setting, Reid said: “I hope you go out of business.”

Later, in his public speech, Reid said he wanted to let everyone know that he wants the Review-Journal to continue selling advertising because the Las Vegas Sun is delivered inside the Review-Journal.

Such behavior cannot go unchallenged.

You could call Reid’s remark ugly and be right. It certainly was boorish. Asinine? That goes without saying.

But to fully capture the magnitude of Reid’s remark (and to stop him from doing the same thing to others) it must be called what it was — a full-on threat perpetrated by a bully who has forgotten that he was elected to office to protect Nevadans, not sound like he’s shaking them down.

Of course, I thought of the old saying, “Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel,” variously attributed to Mark Twain, Ben Franklin, John F. Kennedy, a Chinese proverb and Bill Clinton (no, really). I know it is an old saying and it certainly fits the situation.

But it is more than that. This is downright stupid on Reid’s part. This is his hometown paper, whether he likes the coverage they give him or not. He has guaranteed that that paper is now hostile from now until the election. Yes, they may have taken positions he did not like prior to this, but now he is going to have  a really bad time getting any positive – or even neutral – coverage.

I’m not saying the Review-Journal would purposely skew anything against Reid, mind you. Only that anything he says or does will be examined under a microscope. That’s usually a really bad thing for a politician. (It’s particularly bad for Reid who is prone to making rather stupid comments that make even his staff cringe.)

Smooth move, Harry. Now you’ve got yourself a cheerleader for you going out of business politically. It was an unforced error that a good politician would have avoided like the plague.

And they still buy ink by the barrel.

Via Memeorandum

Gee, Thanks America!

Top beneficiary of the Cash for Clunkers program?

Toyota. 19.2 percent of all sales went to that company. And, in fact, the total market share for American car companies dropped from their normal average.

Eight out of ten top selling cars were foreign nameplates.

I haven’t a problem with people buying exactly what they want. I have a major problem with my tax dollars subsidizing foreign manufacturers.

And Bingo

The new highly coordinated smear job from the left will be that if you protest against ObamaCare, you are a LaRouche supporter. This is exactly what I suspected.

No sale, folks. He’s yours.

Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. (born September 8, 1922) is an American self-styled economist,[1] political activist, and the founder of several political organizations, known collectively as the LaRouche movement. He has been a perennial candidate for President of the United States, having run in eight elections since 1976, once as a U.S. Labor Party candidate and seven times as a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination.

He’s all yours. The good people pushing back against ObamaCare are not part of this guy’s team – but a lot of the left’s members advocate for exactly what this guy stands for – socialist medicine.

Don’t try to give him to us, you keep him.

An Unattractive Look For Facebook

Facebook – whether they like it or not – is now the host for a group thuggishly trying to silence Whole Foods CEO John Mackey.

The Facebook group is urging a boycott of Whole Foods stores until Mackey issues a full apology. The group says Mackey’s op-ed is “suggesting that health care is a commodity that only the rich, like him, deserve.”

The group says its mission is to let Whole Foods know that customers’ money will “no longer go to support Whole Foods’ anti-union, anti-health insurance reform, right-wing activities.”

Brown isn’t a good color, at least in shirts. As the previous post noted, attempts at silencing of critics is now a regular activity on the left, both in Washington and outside of it. They can’t argue with Mackey’s points, they have to shut him up.

Mackey is about as far from right wing as can be found in corporate America, yet he is this group’s chosen target. Do you really want people such as these or the policies they back deciding what you may or may not have?

If I had a Whole Foods near me (I do not) I’d go over and buy some things I didn’t really need, just to make a statement.