Nothing characterizes The Dumbest Generation Of Narcissists In The History Of the World better than using throw away cinema as a template for life. — The Last Psychiatrist
There’s a reason The Last Psychiatrist is one of the best reads on the Internet.
You can thank me later, but I just saved the United State of America at least $278,309,600,000.00 PER YEAR. You read that right. $278 BILLION per year. That’s almost entirely what Medicaid will spend this year for children and the disabled. That’s what our normal deficit looks like without TARP and stimulus.
The crazy thing is how easy it was to do. It took me like three minutes. And since I’m a big open source, creative commons guy I’m even posting my magical formula shown here using 2008’s budget:
(1,391,548 1,000,000)*.2
Somebody start printing bumper stickers baby, so everyone can see how much we save when we cut federal, state, and local public employee pay by 20%.*
Amazing isn’t it? And Obama, Weisberg, and SEIU are out of their friggin minds if they think 20% government pay cuts aren’t on the table come next November.
What are they going to do? Quit? Strike? Bring it on. Newt’s 1994 revolution will look uneventful by comparison. We call them civil “servants,” for a reason.
We don’t need to be politically delicate about this, we aren’t advocating a single program cut, no school closed, no park uncleaned, no fireman not coming to save you. All of that will continue to happen.
But the government employees doing all this marvelous stuff for us are going to earn 20% less…. and from now on their future pay increases will be tied to private wage inflation. Our country is in deep financial straits, and it is time for government workers to share our pain and get their interests aligned with ours. They’ll make more money when we do.
The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.
FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users’ “origin and destination information,” a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.
My, how police state of you Director Mueller.
Greg Motta, the chief of the FBI’s digital evidence section, said that the bureau was trying to preserve its existing ability to conduct criminal investigations. Federal regulations in place since at least 1986 require phone companies that offer toll service to “retain for a period of 18 months” records including “the name, address, and telephone number of the caller, telephone number called, date, time and length of the call.”
Preserving you’re existing ability? Bald face lies anyone? No, you’re ADDING to your “existing ability” not preserving it. What an asshole.
There are a lot of technical issues that make this idea non-trivial, but I’m not going into that because it doesn’t matter. (you can read the linked article if you’re interested.)
The bottom line is, NO! You may not make your job “easier” at the expense of my privacy and civil rights.
I swear, it’s enough to make me want to join the ACLU.
Utah has joined Tennessee and Montana in passing a state’s rights bill.
The Utah Senate tentatively declared its independence from federal firearms laws Tuesday. Whether that defiance withstands a legal challenge remains to be seen.
Legislation sponsored by Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, would exempt firearms manufactured and sold within Utah from any federal regulations, including criminal-background checks and bans on certain types of weapons.
It is not a gun bill, Dayton said, but rather about states’ rights. Montana and Tennessee have enacted nearly identical laws and, she said, 20 other states are considering such legislation.
“This is not a bill about the status quo,” Dayton said. “It is a bill about challenging the status quo, and the states have a duty to enact legislation that challenges the courts when there has been legislation that infringes or hurts the rights of the citizen.”
It’s become obvious that the Federal Government is too big. Unfortunately some STATE governments (California) are just as bloated and useless. I’d be a lot more hopeful if I thought this was anything more than the states trying to reserve a bigger slice of the tax pie for themselves.
Who is going to win? Bet on Bezos. The mainstream publishers can hold on for a while, based on reputation and while e-readers aren’t widely available; there’s still some prestige to being published by a reputable publisher like MacMillan. But eventually, some publisher will realize that a book that would have sold for $29.95 in a physical edition can be sold for the cost of the royalty, plus a small markup for production and administration. Our $29.95 novel would sell instead for $3.95. When that happens, except for coffee table books and an occasional print-on-demand hard copy, the physical book is dead.
The dead tree book business is dead, it just hasn’t realized it yet.
You hear the call all the time from those who would ban guns. “We need to have common sense gun laws!”
Well I agree, we do need common sense gun laws.
For instance, if the barrel on my shotgun is over 18 inches it’s legal. If it’s 17 3/4 inches long I could face 10 years in jail. That makes no sense.
My car is required by law to have a noise suppressor on it so I don’t annoy the neighbors. My gun is forbidden by law from having one. That makes no sense.
In some states if my rifle has some extra plastic on it, it’s illegal. That makes no sense.
In some states if my pistol is a different color, it’s illegal. That makes no sense.
In some states it’s illegal for me to carry a gun. Criminals don’t obey the law, I do and am unarmed when attacked. That makes no sense.
In some states if my magazine holds ten rounds it’s legal. If it holds eleven it’s illegal. That makes no sense.
In some states if a restaurant makes 50% of its revenue from alcohol it’s legal for me to carry there. If it makes 51% revenue from alcohol it’s not legal for me to carry. That makes no sense.
In my home state it’s legal for me to carry a concealed handgun. It’s illegal for me to openly carry one. That makes no sense.
If a machine gun was made in 1985 it is legal for me to own if I pay the tax on it. If it was made in 1987 it is illegal to own. That makes no sense.
If my revolver uses black powder, it is not considered a firearm. If it uses smokeless powder it is a firearm. That makes no sense.
So yes, PLEASE. Let’s have some common sense gun laws. We can start by getting rid of all the ones that make no sense.
Continuing a month of skeptical victories, the UK’s General Medical Council has found that Andrew Wakefield — the founder of the modern antivaccination movement — acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” when doing the research that led him to conclude that vaccinations were linked with autism. This is being reported everywhere, including the BBC, Sky News, the Yorkshire Evening Post, and more.
The GMC (the independent body of medical regulators in the UK, rather like the AMA in the US) didn’t investigate whether his claims were correct or not — and let’s be very clear, his claims have been shown beyond any doubt to be totally wrong — only whether he acted ethically in his research. What they found is that his research (involving spinal taps of children) was against the children’s clinical interest, that Wakefield was unqualified to perform the test, and that he had no ethical approval to do them.
Wow. Again, let’s be clear: that’s a whole lot of ethical damnation from the UK’s leading medical board.
I wonder why a scientist would act unethically and fake results.
… at the time he published his paper slamming vaccines and which started the antivax craze, he was developing an alternative to vaccinations, so he had a very large monetary incentive to make the public distrust vaccines.
I’m quoting the whole thing here because reading on her Facebook page requires a login and everyone needs to read this.
The Credibility Gap
Yesterday at 4:17pm
While I don’t wish to speak too harshly about President Obama’s state of the union address, we live in challenging times that call for candor. I call them as I see them, and I hope my frank assessment will be taken as an honest effort to move this conversation forward.
Last night, the president spoke of the “credibility gap” between the public’s expectations of their leaders and what those leaders actually deliver. “Credibility gap” is a good way to describe the chasm between rhetoric and reality in the president’s address. The contradictions seemed endless.
He called for Democrats and Republicans to “work through our differences,” but last year he dismissed any notion of bipartisanship when he smugly told Republicans, “I won.”
He talked like a Washington “outsider,” but he runs Washington! He’s had everything any president could ask for – an overwhelming majority in Congress and a fawning press corps that feels tingles every time he speaks. There was nothing preventing him from pursuing “common sense” solutions all along. He didn’t pursue them because they weren’t his priorities, and he spent his speech blaming Republicans for the problems caused by his own policies.
He dared us to “let him know” if we have a better health care plan, but he refused to allow Republicans in on the negotiations or consider any ideas for real free market and patient-centered reforms. We’ve been “letting him know” our ideas for months from the town halls to the tea parties, but he isn’t interested in listening. Instead he keeps making the nonsensical claim that his massive trillion-dollar health care bill won’t increase the deficit.
Americans are suffering from job losses and lower wages, yet the president practically demanded applause when he mentioned tax cuts, as if allowing people to keep more of their own hard-earned money is an act of noblesse oblige. He claims that he cut taxes, but I must have missed that. I see his policies as paving the way for massive tax increases and inflation, which is the “hidden tax” that most hurts the poor and the elderly living on fixed incomes.
He condemned lobbyists, but his White House is filled with former lobbyists, and this has been a banner year for K Street with his stimulus bill, aka the Lobbyist’s Full Employment Act. He talked about a “deficit of trust” and the need to “do our work in the open,” but he chased away the C-SPAN cameras and cut deals with insurance industry lobbyists behind closed doors.
He spoke of doing what’s best for the next generation and not leaving our children with a “mountain of debt,” but under his watch this year, government spending is up by 22%, and his budget will triple our national debt.
He spoke of a spending freeze, but doesn’t he realize that each new program he’s proposing comes with a new price tag? A spending freeze is a nice idea, but it doesn’t address the root cause of the problem. We need a comprehensive examination of the role of government spending. The president’s deficit commission is little more than a bipartisan tax hike committee, lending political cover to raise taxes without seriously addressing the problem of spending.
He condemned bailouts, but he voted for them and then expanded and extended them. He praised the House’s financial reform bill, but where was Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in that bill? He still hasn’t told us when we’ll be getting out of the auto and the mortgage industries. He praised small businesses, but he’s spent the past year as a friend to big corporations and their lobbyists, who always find a way to make government regulations work in their favor at the expense of their mom & pop competitors.
He praised the effectiveness of his stimulus bill, but then he called for another one – this time cleverly renamed a “jobs bill.” The first stimulus was sold to us as a jobs bill that would keep unemployment under 8%. We now have double digit unemployment with no end in sight. Why should we trust this new “jobs bill”?
He talked about “making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development,” but apparently it’s still too tough for his Interior Secretary to move ahead with Virginia’s offshore oil and gas leases. If they’re dragging their feet on leases, how long will it take them to build “safe, clean nuclear power plants”? Meanwhile, he continued to emphasize “green jobs,” which require massive government subsidies for inefficient technologies that can’t survive on their own in the real world of the free market.
He spoke of supporting young girls in Afghanistan who want to go to school and young women in Iran who courageously protest in the streets, but where were his words of encouragement to the young girls of Afghanistan in his West Point speech? And where was his support for the young women of Iran when they were being gunned down in the streets of Tehran?
Despite speaking for over an hour, the president only spent 10% of his speech on foreign policy, and he left us with many unanswered questions. Does he still think trying the 9/11 terrorists in New York is a good idea? Does he still think closing Gitmo is a good idea? Does he still believe in Mirandizing terrorists after the Christmas bomber fiasco? Does he believe we’re in a war against terrorists, or does he think this is just a global crime spree? Does he understand that the first priority of our government is to keep our country safe?
In his address last night, the president once again revealed that there’s a fundamental disconnect between what the American people expect from their government, and what he wants to deliver. He’s still proposing failed top-down big government solutions to our problems. Instead of smaller, smarter government, he’s taken a government that was already too big and supersized it.
Real private sector jobs are created when taxes are low, investment is high, and people are free to go about their business without the heavy hand of government. The president thinks innovation comes from government subsidies. Common sense conservatives know innovation comes from unleashing the creative energy of American entrepreneurs.
Everything seems to be “unexpected” to this administration: unexpected job losses; unexpected housing numbers; unexpected political losses in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Jersey. True leaders lead best when confronted with the unexpected. But instead of leading us, the president lectured us. He lectured Wall Street; he lectured Main Street; he lectured Congress; he even lectured our Supreme Court Justices.
He criticized politicians who “wage a perpetual campaign,” but he gave a campaign speech instead of a state of the union address. The campaign is over, and President Obama now has something that candidate Obama never had: an actual track record in office. We now can see the failed policies behind the flowery words. If Americans feel as cynical as the president suggests, perhaps it’s because the audacity of his recycled rhetoric no longer inspires hope.
Real leadership requires results. Real hope lies in the ingenuity, generosity, and boundless courage of the American people whose voices are still not being heard in Washington.
I love my iPhone, Macbook Pro, iMac and Mac Pro so no anti-Apple bias here.
The iPad, I don’t like it.
The bad:
1. That is a horrible name. “iPad” Really, Apple?
2. It’s ugly. That thick border around the screen looks terrible.
3. No Multitasking. (Deal Breaker)
4. No Camera, so no video chat. (Deal Breaker)
5. Book Reader – It looks like a book with pages. Can we stop that please? It’s stupid. Plus I see no way to load books not purchased through the iBook store. I have a LOT of ebooks in other formats. I can load them on my Kindle but not iPad? (Deal Killer)
6. iPhone OS. So I can’t load apps unless they’ve been blessed by Apple and everything is managed through iTunes. (Deal Breaker)
Entries (RSS)
and 
