More Unimpeachable Evidence

This is the Indian economy, folks. For the first 43 years of its existence it was tightly managed by government. You see what happened? And do you see what happened when they finally liberalized the sucker? Yeah, huh?

On the Government Simultaneously Subsidizing Rich Tobacco Farmers and Bankrolling Anti-Smoking Campaigns

Left hand, right hand. Right hand, left hand.

CNN's Don Lemon on MSNBC

 "a bunch of people on the left who all agree with each other, and there's no diversity of opinion. And they're saying mean, smug things about people who may disagree with them." Good for Mr. Lemon, telling it like it is.

If This Was a Fight, They Would Have Stopped it By Now

Hong Kong's unemployment rate - 3% (millions of people having been brought out of poverty via a free market approach), Spain's unemployment rate - 26% (the severance package in that grotesquely mismanaged country rising to as high as three years).

The Great Post War Showdown

While there can never be any true controlled experiments in economics, you do on a rare occasion get an example that is close. I refer you here to the way that the country of India and the jurisdiction of Hong Kong structured their respective economies in the years and decades after WW2. While the former example relied disproportionately upon social planning/interventionism, protectionism, a large public sector, and business regulation, the latter went almost immediately to a free market capitalistic approach. Gee, guess which one did better. Two guesses and the first one doesn't count...................................................................................Yeah, that's right, folks, India remained impoverished for over 40 years and Hong Kong quickly became one of the fastest growing economies in the history of human civilization (it's GNP growing by close 18,000% from 1961 to 1997). Now, to be fair here, India eventually did engage in its own form of economic liberalization in the early '90s and they, too, are finally doing well. But from 1947 to 1991 a better comparison/contrast you will never find and it underscores YET AGAIN the fact that the freer economies do significantly better than those that are structured by bureaucrats and philosopher kings................................................................................P.S. And what makes the Hong Kong situation even more remarkable is the fact that the island has almost zero natural resources and even less in terms of farmland. 

On Hoover and the Great Depression

No, Mr. Hoover didn't cause the Great Depression but his policies, I believe, made it far, FAR worse. a) He instituted voluntary wage controls (which, unfortunately, most U.S. businesses adhered to) which, when combined with strong deflation, seriously distorted the market and made hiring much more difficult.............b) He signed into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which significantly stymied international trade and probably led to early bank failures.............c) He created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation which essentially turned into a bailout entity.............d) He increased federal spending by a whopping 49% in just three years and literally mushroomed the deficit.............e) He signed into law the Davis-Bacon Act which AGAIN made the cost of hiring shoot up astronomically.............f) He raised the top tax rate by a draconian 152% and revenue immediately plummeted....................................................................................P.S. Oh, and if there's anybody out there who still thinks that Hoover WASN'T a progressive; this, from Rexford Tugwell, "We didn’t admit it at the time, but practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs Hoover started." Herbert Hoover, free market capitalist - LOL!!!

On the Low Income Earnings of the Bottom Quintile

The average number of workers per family in the bottom quintile is .5. The average educational attainment of this same grouping is barely a high school diploma (a 27% high school dropout rate). Of course you're not going to have a high level of income with statistics such as this. I mean, my God, this is not frigging rocket science.

On the Appropriateness of Including Transfer Payments When Calculating Income Inequality

As I understand it, the entire point (the hard-left's anyway) of this whole income inequality argument was to underscore just how terribly off those in the bottom income quintile truly are. But how in the hell do you accomplish that if you fail (and/or refuse) to include in the calculations ALL of the disposable income that the groupings under study have at their disposal? The fact of the matter is that if you also include all of the transfer payments (and, no, it isn't just welfare - it also includes such things as Social Security and the Earned Income Tax Credit) that those at the bottom rung of the income ladder have been given, the actual level of income inequality (especially if you gauge it predominantly on consumption - which is now quite close to 200% of income in the bottom quintile) is significantly less than what a lot of these tables have been showing (in fact, according to UCLA economist, Lee Ohanian, the disparity has been SHRINKING!!). I mean, I know that the radicals are desperate to make some sort of political point here and all but at some juncture you have to be fair and include ALL of the statistics (which would also include items such as capital income, under the table income, tips, taxes, etc.).

Blunt Force Dogma

Keynesian analysis is as about as blunt an instrument that exists. a) It only looks at aggregates and b) it essentially treats all forms of spending equally (digging holes and filling them providing the same form of economic stimulus as capital investing, for example)..............................................................................So, with the passing of Smoot-Hawley, for example, they would strictly look at the fact that imports and exports represented only 4.2% and 5% of the U.S. economy and fail to see that there was also a massive difference between the states regarding this (the fact farm and steel states were disproportionately affected by this and that this in fact was where many of the early bank failures happened)....Or even with federal spending in general/wasteful spending - as long as it adds to the overall aggregate demand they like it and it doesn't matter one iota if it distorts the market, blows a hole in the deficit, creates more cronyism, throws more taxpayer money down a rat-hole, etc.. I mean, it's almost as if these people have never actually looked at the real world and seen just how pitiful of an approach that this is; Hoover, FDR, Bush 2, Obama, Japan in the '90s, the fact that socialism practically annihilated the Argentinian and Swedish economies (Sweden to its credit righted the ship in the '90s and instituted much more free market policies) back in the '60s and '70s, etc.. Heaven help us if these folks ever get yet another bite at the apple.

The Long and Lingering Lie

"The American criminal justice system is racist." We hear it so frequently that most people assume the authenticity of it. Hell, I assumed that it was true myself - until, that is, I examined the evidence...................................................................a) "Our overall assessment of the available research suggests that factors other than racial discrimination in the sentencing process account for most of the disproportionate representation of black males in U.S. prisons.......No evidence exists of a widespread systematic pattern of discrimination in sentencing." The National Academy of Sciences 1983.............b) "Black incarceration rates for imprisonable crimes are substantially higher  than those for whites because black crime rates are substantially higher than those for whites." (Liberal researcher) Michael Tonry, "Malign Neglect" 1995.............c) A Sampson/Lauritsen 1997 study likewise found that "large racial differences in criminal offending", not racism, was the major reason why more blacks were imprisoned more than whites and for longer terms.............d) A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases showed that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution (66% versus 69%) following a felony than whites did and that they were also less likely to be found guilty at trial (75% versus 78%).............e) A 1996 analysis (Gerald Reynolds) of 55,000 big city felony cases showed that black defendants were actually convicted at a lower rate than whites in 12 of the 14 federally designated felony categories.............f) In 1993, criminologist Alfred Blumstein found that when comparing black arrests for homicide and the presence of blacks in prison for that offense, African-Americans were significantly underrepresented among incarcerated inmates.............g) A 1991 RAND Corporation study found that a defendant's ethnic and racial background bore little if any relationship to a criminal's conviction rate and that other factors such as evidence and the existence of an eyewitness were significantly more important.............h) As far as the charge that blacks are arrested disproportionately, that, too, has largely been repudiated. According to statistics from the National Crime Victimization Survey, the percentage of blacks that have been accused by the actual victims (a large percentage of who are black themselves!!!!!) of crimes is almost identical to their arrest rate. So, unless these victims are wholesale falsely accusing innocent black folks rather the real perpetrators (which makes absolutely zero sense) you really have to consider it legit. 

On Jerry and Rusty

I actually have a soft spot for both of these fellows (Jerry for his civility and Rusty for his dry humor). Go figure, huh?

The Not So Beneficent Hand(s)

Economist John Taylor did a regression analysis on retail sales throughout the 2007-2009 recession and found that the trend line proceeded accordingly/modestly and that it only bottomed out when Bush, Paulson, and Bernanke a) started talking about another great depression and b) foisted upon the American public and taxpayer the Troubled Asset Relief Program. This stat coupled with the fact that lending in both the individual and business sectors was never in any sort of death spiral has led many of the saner American economists (Lee Ohanian, Edward Prescott, Taylor, etc.) to conclude that this current economic downturn was never in fact a financial crisis but a policy crisis (a crisis that has been made all the more worse by the fact that Obama has pretty much doubled down on Bush's interventionist policies). And I wholeheartedly agree.

wd and the Devil Had a Kid

Named him Moochifer.

Oh, There's a Gap, Alright - It's Between Their Ears!

According to UCLA economist, Lee Ohanian, using the broadest measure of income (i.e., that which also includes things such as transfer payments, capital income, etc) and subtracting taxes, inequality in the United States had actually gone DOWN from 1979 to 2007 by 2%. And even more telling than that is the fact that consumption inequality has gone down by an even larger percentage; 12% since 1990 (the poverty line for a family of 4 is $23,000, the average consumption level being $44,000). Oops goes the weasel yet again, people.

On the Kirk Douglas/Stanley Kubrick 1957 Classic Film, "Paths of Glory"

a) The best war movie ever made (the abruptness of the ending, notwithstanding). b) The best anti-war movie ever made.

The Number of Recently Formed Mainland European Companies/Firms that Have Achieved the Dizzying Heights of Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Genentech, Amgen, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Etc.

One, a Norwegian oil company by the name of Statoil and the only reason for that is the fact that the North Sea is loaded to the brim with offshore oil. Pure luck, in other words....The moral of the story? I'm gonna go with, freer markets, lesser regulations, and a higher reward for innovation and risk-taking, thank you very much.

Ya' Want Deaths?

Try THIS system - http://www.fee.org/library/detail/socialized-health-care-the-communist-dream-and-the-soviet-reality/#axzz2oRVI5q6v

On Liberals and Leftists

I make a distinction. Folks like Senators Wyden, Durbin, Chucky Schumer even - while I don't necessarily always agree with them, a) they're sane and b) I feel that I could eventually sit down and hammer out some sort of an agreement with them (Senator Schumer's tax compromise in 2012, for example). Contrast that with the endless parade of freaks/guttersnipes which show their vitriol on a nightly basis over at MSNBC (add also a handful of Congresspersons like Alan Grayson) and it is an entirely different story in my book. I mean, I don't know about you folks but I wouldn't even want to be in the same damn room with people like Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Hayes, never mind having to sit down and cut a deal with them.

On Chris Matthews Recently Doing Yet Another Story on "Birtherism"

They (i.e., hard-core partisan fools) have officially run out of shiny objects...........................................................................P.S And, yes, there certainly is a hard-core cadre of morons on the right who still believe that Obama wasn't born in America (a moot point in that his mother absolutely WAS American). But it's also approximately the same size as the cadre of hard-core leftist morons who still think that President Bush was responsible (as in, he was the damn perpetrator) for 9/11. Fringes, they're fringes, folks.

On Bill O'Reilly's War on Pot

This dude is so full of shit. He actually said on one of his more recent segments that, once a kid starts smoking pot, his entire life is ruined and he can never recover from it. I mean, I don't know about you folks but I grew up in the '70s and a good solid percentage of the kids that I went to high school and college with used to get high and used to do so regularly, and the vast, vast percentage of them turned out OK. Not that I'm advocating, OBVIOUSLY, that students should smoke pot but enough already with these damned scare tactics of his.

I Say, Let 'Em Come

According to economist and immigration expert, Giovanni Peri (UC-Davis), 600 million people on the planet would like to migrate and of them 23% would like to migrate to America. Sounds like a plan (not to mention a possible solution to the demographic/entitlement problem currently bearing down on us) to me.

Depressing Logic

For the first 124 years of America's history, we had NO income tax whatsoever. Using this progressive argument which states that the allowance for private citizens to keep more of their own private property causes not just economic downturns but long and virulent downturns, one would think that this was a period of miserable economic growth. WRONG!! From 1872 to 1913 alone, per capita GDP went from (in 2009 dollars) $4,400 a year to $10,800 a year (a 145% increase). And, while, yes, we did experience economic downturns in the 19th Century (The Panic of 1819 - brilliantly chronicled by Rothbard, the panic of 1837, the Panic of 1873, etc.), they were a) invariably tied to government banking policies, b) not anywhere near as severe as the Great Depression was, and c) apparently unrelated to low taxation. History 101, folks.

On the 45,000 people Who Purportedly Die Every Year From a Lack of Health Insurance

Yes, there is a study which has been touting that statistic. But it's also fair to point here out that two of the authors of this study are hard-core leftists who have been trying for years to get the country to adopt a single-payer system and so, no, they aren't exactly disinterested. That and I would also refer you to two other studies (also by liberals) that have full-throatedly contradicted this one; the one by Richard Kronick of UC-San Diego ("their estimates are almost certainly incorrect") and the one by Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution ("Like Kronick, I am a strong advocate of measures to achieve universal insurance coverage and would rather that Kronick’s study and the Oregon project provided evidence in support of my policy preference. But, as far as mortality is concerned, they just don’t"). Just for a modicum of balance, I'm saying.

On the KGB's Claim that Many of the 40 Million Folks Who Died in the Gulags Perished There Due to "Natural Causes"

Yeah, if you only give them 200 calories a day, make them work barefoot in the dead of winter in Siberia, and restrict their sleep to several hours at a clip, maybe.

On Fascism, Continued

According to the University of Hawaii's, R.J. Rummel (a political science professor and researcher), a grand total of 262 MILLION citizens have been slaughtered at the hands of their own governments over the past 113 years (more than 6 times the number that have been killed in wars). He refers to this phenomenon as democide and I would hazard a guess here that, yes, it constitutes a form of fascism. 

Cancer Survival Rates - England Versus the United States (Data from Lancet Oncology)

Men, the United States - 66%. Men, England - 45%. Women, the United States - 63%. Women, England - 53%. So, you all still want that kick-ass single-payer healthcare system?

On Fascism

It originates in government, not business. It wasn't a business that perpetrated the Killing Fields. It wasn't a business that perpetrated the Final Solution. It wasn't a business that perpetrated the Armenian genocide. It wasn't a business that perpetrated the gulags in Soviet Russia. It wasn't a business that perpetrated the Rwandan genocide. It wasn't a business that perpetrated the killing of nuns in El Salvador. It wasn't a business that perpetrated the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia. It wasn't a business that perpetrated the gassing of the Kurds in northern Iraq. It wasn't a business that perpetrated a policy in the Congo which essentially turned it into one massive forced labor camp in which millions were killed. It wasn't a business that perpetrated the Chilean torture chambers in which thousands of innocent human beings basically just "disappeared". It wasn't a business that perpetrated the Great Leap Forward in China. It wasn't a business that killed, tortured, and imprisoned over 100,000 folks in Uganda during an 8-year bloody reign in the '70s. And it isn't a business now that is slaughtering people in Darfur, murdering homosexuals in Saudi Arabia, etc.. Business? Oo, I'm scared.

On New York's "Stop and Frisk", Continued

Here are the stats (from the Center for Constitutional Rights and the elite law firm of Covington and Burling), folks; African-Americans - 23% of the population, commit 66% of all violent crime and 73% of all shootings, 53% of all stops; Caucasians - 35% of the population, commit 5.5% of all violent crime and 2.5% of all shootings, 9% of all stops...............................................................................So, there it is for you, all lined up. African-Americans are stopped at a rate that is LESS than the rate of their violent criminal activity while whites are stopped at a rate that is HIGHER than theirs. How, pray tell, does this fit the definition of hard criminal profiling?

On New York's "Stop and Frisk"

91% of the stop subjects (according to the Center for Constitutional Rights) have been male. Does this in any way constitute male profiling?

On Crack Prosecutions of Blacks Being Proof of a Racist Criminal Justice System

Maybe. Maybe not. I cite specifically several critical points. a) It was black leadership (Charlie Rangel immediately comes to mind) that initially sounded this alarm about crack and it was also them who called for these stiffer sentences (a point that obviously makes it much harder for them to scream racism now). b) Only about 5,000 black people a year are prosecuted for crack while the total black population in prisons, jails, etc.is 858,000. OBVIOUSLY, most of the black folks in prison are in there for violent activity. And c) While, yes, most of the people in prison for crack offenses are black, it is also true that most of the people in prison for meth-amphetamine offenses are white. I mean, is it not at least partially feasible that the people in prison are in there for the crimes that THEY do?

On Michele Bachmann's Husband Trying to "Cure" Homosexuals

This is the dude. Ya' thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?

On Sarah Palin's Recent Defense of this "Duck Dynasty" Ignoramus

Yet another example of the woman's total incapacity to keep her yapper fused, pick her battles wisely, etc.. Enough already, Mrs. Palin. It's stale!

The Progressive Solution to the Upcoming Doctor Shortage

Pay them less and give them more paperwork.

Miscellaneous 174

1) "I predict future happiness for the American people if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." Thomas Jefferson.............2) "Medicine is the keystone in the arch of socialism." Vladimir Lenin.............3) "Those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety." Benjamin Franklin.............4) "If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at 40 you have no brain." Winston Churchill.............5) "You will understand the game behind the curtain too well not to perceive the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government." James Madison.............6) "To live in this process (the slow march to fascism) is absolutely not to be able to notice it....one no more saw it developing day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head." Milton Mayer, "They Thought They Were Free".............7) "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibilities and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions." Adolph Hitler.............8) "No matter how trustworthy he may appear, do not give the monkey your pistol." Unknown.................................................................................P.S. And, no, I'm not comparing President Obama to Adolph Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. I'm simply trying to underscore the fact that no matter how benign and beneficent that any government at first glance may appear to be....... 

Leftist Revisionism Run Amok

If a Democratic President had instituted policies which immediately coincided with a rapid reduction in the unemployment rate from 12% to 2%, partisan leftists would have demanded that this individual be glorified as a superior President. But because it was a Republican President (Warren Harding, 1921) who did these things, not only is he not being given credit for it by these idiots, he's also being blamed for causing the Great Depression TEN YEARS SUBSEQUENT (private citizens being allowed to keep more of their own private property causes depressions, we're led to believe - watch it, Singapore, you people must be on the verge of a dandy!)...................................................................................And it's all so completely ignorant, too. Anybody who knows anything about economics and history knows that the Great Depression was largely brought about by an absolutely incompetent Federal Reserve policy (both in the years leading up to and also in the aftermath), European countries reneging on their war debt, and a world-wide deflationary policy relative to the gold standard, and so to even attempt to blame it on Harding is full-bore idiocy (yes, the top 5%'s share of the total income rose from 1920 to 1929 but only from 25.47% to 26.09% AND consumption as a percentage of GDP had actually RISEN from 68% to 75% - statistics courtesy of economic historians Burton Folsom, Thomas B. Silver, Peter Temin, and Gene Smiley)...................................................................................P.S. The 1920s was actually a decade of overconsumption rather than underconsumption. To quote specifically Professor Temin here (from MIT), "The concept of underconsumption has been abandoned in modern discussions of macroeconomics....The ratio of consumption to national income was not falling in the 1920s. An underconsumptionist view of the 1920s, therefore, is untenable." Case closed.

The Progressive Pay-Scale

Walmart greeter - $15 an hour. Walmart CEO - $17.50 an hour. MSNBC on air host - the sky's the limit. Pimper of "green" energy - get out the wheelbarrow.

The Main Problems With Obamacare

a) Price controls which will inevitably lead to shortages. b) Central planning which will undoubtedly drive up costs (either through inefficiency, fraud, or crony capitalism). c) Additional reliance on third party payments which will also drive up costs. d) Mandates, ditto. e) A massive number of exemptions which has significantly reduced the risk pool and heightened the cost for others. f) An absurdly perverse incentive and tax structure which has seemingly caused economic harm already (huge layoffs in the medical device industry)...........................................................................Look, I have no problem with giving the President some credit here in terms of getting this issue to the forefront. But the dude has never run anything and it shows. I mean, why in the hell DIDN'T he call John Mackey or the dude who runs Starbuck's? Hubris? Unfettered faith in government?

Bleeding in the Red

If doctors and surgeons had to rely entirely on Medicare and Medicaid, THEY WOULD GO OUT OF BUSINESS. Between the pathetic reimbursement rates and the regulatory idiocy (the average education level of a Medicare auditor is four years of high school) of these two behemoths, it is becoming increasingly harder and harder to make ends meet, meet a payroll, etc., and if it wasn't for private insurance and money payments to subsidize them, few doctors if any would probably take it. And now with this whole frigging Obamacare, watch out! If I had to make a prediction here, I would say that within the next decade or so, most doctors will either a) become employees (of hospitals, clinics, etc.), b) retire, or c) get the hell out of third party payment altogether....Yep, and all because of you collectivist fools trying to reinvent the damn wheel. Gee, thanks!

On the Assertion that Austerity Invariably Leads to a Bad Economy

It is false, demonstrably. Harding cut spending by 50% in 1921 and the unemployment rate dropped from 12% to 2% in less than two years. Truman cut spending by 45% in 1946 and the following several years were amongst the best in U.S. history. The Canadian government (the liberal party, no less) cut spending in real dollars (none of this Washington D.C baseline budgeting bullshit) by 20% in 1993 and the ensuing growth rates over the next few years were in the 5-6% range. The Swedes in 1994 eventually reduced government spending as a percentage of GDP from 66% to 51% and that economy greatly benefited. And Estonia in 2009 was one of the few European countries that actually did institute significant austerity measures and now their economy is growing at a 7.6% rate (4-5 times the growth of the Eurozone which only instituted phony austerity). Yes, folks, it absolutely does appear as if the private sector does things better.

On the Average French Citizen

They simply cannot fathom an existence on this planet without a government to coddle them 24/7.

The Progressive "Solution" to a System Hemorrhaging

More (and, yes, I could have said the exact same thing about the neocons for certain; military spending, troop levels, etc.).

It's the Math, Stupid

Medicare and Medicaid are unquestionably the 2 major drivers of all future debt, and if they are not reformed and reformed expeditiously, WE WILL GO BROKE. I mean, just take a look at the numbers over the past 40 years and the projections 10 years onward. According to the CBO, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security represented only 4% of the total GDP in 1970 and by 2020 this is projected to grow all the way to 11%. That is totally unsustainable and for former speaker Pelosi to say that her plan for Medicare is "Medicare" is quite possibly the most idiotic statement ever uttered by an American politician this side of GWB.....................................................................................Oh, and if that stat isn't quite persuasive enough for you, try this one. In 1970, discretionary spending was 62% of the budget and mandatory spending (not including interest on the debt) was 31% of the budget. By 2010, those numbers had essentially flipped to 38% and 57%, respectively. How ANYBODY can say that we don't have major problem here is beyond me...................................................................................Jason Fichtner of the Mercatus Center with the noxious messaging - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSp-grHU3Kc&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PLA6A5D9E793C3B46F Please, don't shoot him.

On This

I'll take, "Three Lukewarm Socialists Having a Whale of a Time and Not Really Harming Anybody (Save for Maybe One Jealous Spouse) in the Process", for a thousand, Alex.

The Eclectic Visions of Frank Ward

P.S. The first two are from Russia.

The Era of Big Goverment Apparently WAS Over

According to the CBO, federal expenditures represented nearly 23% of the country's GDP in 1992. By 2000, that statistic had shrunk all the way to 18% (the end result of Newt Gingrich and Erskine Bowles sitting down and rolling their collective sleeves up). This whole notion that the government was somehow able to balance its budget predominantly via tax increases in the 1990s is nothing but pure partisan revisionism (not to mention the fact that it ignores how capital gains taxes actually went down during that era).

The Greatest Example of Keyenesian Idiocy Ever

"Were the war to end suddenly within the next six months, were we again planning to wind up our war effort in the greatest haste, to demobilize our armed forces, to liquidate price controls, to shift from astronomical deficits to even the large deficits of the thirties - then there would be ushered in the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced."......Keynesian economist, Paul Samuelson, 1943.......Please, tell me again why we continue to listen to these numbnuts. The post war American economy of the was one of the strongest in human history and it happened not because of government spending but because (at least in my estimation) we actually cut government spending DRAMATICALLY (from a high of over 40% of GDP in 1944 to approximately 10% of it in 1946).

The Best and Worst of Fox News

The best; Shepard Smith, Ed Henry, James Rosen, Howard Kurtz, John Roberts, Harris Faulkner.......The worst; Sean Hannity, Eric Bolling, Fox and Friends, John Bolton, Karl Rove, Gretchen Carlson.

On Norway and Their Relatively High Per Capita GDP

There are basically five reasons for it; a) massive reserves of off-shore oil, b) access to some of the better fishing waters on the planet, c) a relatively small population (fewer people you have to share the oil booty with), d) the fact that Norway has scored consistently (and, yes, surprisingly) well on a myriad of economic freedom indices (a respectable 31st and ahead of countries such as Belgium, France, Spain, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal, South Africa, Greece, Brazil, Argentina, China, Italy, Turkey, Slovenia, and even South Korea on both the Heritage Foundation and Fraser Institute rankings), and e) the fact that Norway only spends approximately 1.4% of it's total GDP on national defense. This whole leftist assertion that Norway is wealthy mainly because of its welfare state and high level of taxation (except in the corporate area in which their rates are actually lower than ours) is patently absurd, in my opinion.

Pat Condell on Progressives and Islam

"One of the few certainties in life is that if you criticize the religion of special needs, you will be called a racist by people who know perfectly well that you're not but who don't care. These people are called progressives. A progressive is what happens when a liberal goes bad."

On Bill O'Reilly's Umteenth War on the "War on Christmas"/Oy Vey

What is it with this guy? He's like that hack comic on "Seinfeld" (Kenny Bania) who's seemingly fixated on Nestle's Quick, Bosco, and Ovaltine. It's like, "Yes, Bill-O, there are some crazy people in this country and they do some crazy things, but out of a population of some 300 million plus, we really need to learn to live with it, me-bucko. And, besides, aren't there are many more important things to worry about these days (the war on soft-core lesbian pornography, for example)?"

On the President's Decision to Unilaterally Delay the Employer Mandate

It's exactly the same type of thing that kings and queens in England, France, Spain, and Sweden used to do in the 15th and 16th Centuries....Gotta love him, huh?

Multiplication Fable

The performance of the American economy during World War 2 is proof-positive that the Keynesian multiplier effect is absolute rubbish. The U.S government spent massive amounts of money and, while, yes, the total GDP of the country did go up, the private sector component of it actually WENT DOWN................................................................................And this whole notion that it was the war that got us out of the Depression is also a load of bullshit. The American economy was a veritable mess during the war (lots of guns and very little butter) and all of the available data substantiates this fact; production of durable goods - DOWN, consumption - DOWN, investment spending - DOWN, rationing - UP....And it isn't even as if those Keynesians of that day had ever once predicted such a thing in the first place, most of them in fact actually saying that the opposite would happen and that we would probably need yet another massive infusion of spending in order to prevent yet ANOTHER depression. It was only many decades after the fact that these fools concocted this whole "war and other disasters are good for the economy" bullshit..................................................................................P.S. And for those of you who would counter this by pointing to the 16 million citizens serving in the military as a reason for the lowered GDP, I would respond by saying, yes, but only to a degree. a) Not all 16 million of these people were serving simultaneously. b) Close to 30% of these individuals never even left the mainland. c) A lot of the money that was paid to these soldiers eventually found it's way back to America. And d) even in 1945, 16 million people was only about 11% of the total population anyway and so it couldn't have been a major factor period.

So, Will Young Voters Turn to the Republicans in 2014-2016?

My first inclination is of course to answer, no (especially if the Republicans continue to hold hard-line positions on issues such as abortion, gay-rights, gun-control, etc.) but, now, I'm not so certain. I guess that it all depends on whether or not any of those dire predictions (50-100 million people getting bounced off of their employee health plans and into either Medicaid or possibly one of those equally crappy "bronze" plans) come true. I mean, yeah, I could potentially see the young folks of American revolting if Obamacare ends up screwing them. Now, whether they vote for the Republicans or simply stay home is obviously another story.

On Kennedy Conspiracy Theories

The irony about these suckers is that they do have a certain logic to them. Kennedy and Castro in fact DID despise each other. RFK in fact DID put a fair number of gangsters away. But at some juncture you eventually have to put some HARD evidence on the table. Something. Anything.

On the Chris Matthews Interview with President Obama

Didn't suck his wiener long enough.

He's Still My Guy

Teddy Bridgewater isn't going to win the Heisman. But after the year that this fellow just had (not a single bad game, 4 interceptions in 382 throws, leading his team to an 11-1 record, etc.), and the way that he performed in the second half tonight on the road against Cincinnati (scraping himself off the grass after literally every throw), he had better at least get an invitation to New York. Teddy Ballgame!

"Fuck Moeee"

What would be my answer to the question, "So, what's your all-time favorite Dwight Yoakam thespian moment?"

The Truth Taking a Beating

The amount of misinformation that gets sullied around at major colleges and universities is quite alarming. One of the more persistently bogus claims is the one that's constantly made by feminist and women's studies professors in which it is alleged that 30% of all women's visits to emergency rooms is due to domestic abuse. To say that this statistic is off is the understatement of the millennium. Knowing fully well that it was patently absurd from the get-go, Christina Hoff Sommers from the AEI contacted the Centers for Disease Control and got a letter back saying that the actual number was .02%, a 150,000% discrepancy. Please, try and find me a larger factual error than that one, I beg you.

Doing My Part

I enrolled in Obamacare today...under the name of Kyle Broflovsky. I probably shouldn't have done that, huh?

George Washington University Law Professor, Jonathan Turley, On the Recent Antics of the Obama Administration

"The rise of an uber Presidency."

On the Evidence that Fidel Castro, The Mob, LBJ, The KGB, Etc. Somehow Conspired to Kill JFK

Where in the hell is it; this evidence? The FBI has done tens of thousands (this, according to Vincent Bugliosi) interviews and they have yet to uncover one scintilla of evidence that any of these individuals had any contact whatsoever with Lee Harvey Oswald. And why in the hell would anybody even think to go to such an amateur and loser in the first place if they wanted to assassinate ANYBODY? It makes absolutely no sense AT ALL. That, and the fact that the route of the motorcade had only been determined three days prior to the damned event. Hello!