Crazy Dems
Dylan Ratigan (MSNBC) Smokin Crack!?
NewsBusters explains the crazy talk above. Another odd thing they talk about in the video is when Democrats controlled Congress. Dems took over in Nov of 2006. Odd:
In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan.
The U.S. Treasury Department divides the federal debt into two categories. One is “debt held by the public,” which includes U.S. government securities owned by individuals, corporations, state or local governments, foreign governments and other entities outside the federal government itself. The other is “intragovernmental” debt, which includes I.O.U.s the federal government gives to itself when, for example, the Treasury borrows money out of the Social Security “trust fund” to pay for expenses other than Social Security.
At the end of fiscal year 1989, which ended eight months after President Reagan left office, the total federal debt held by the public was $2.1907 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That means all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan had accumulated only that much publicly held debt on behalf of American taxpayers. That is $335.3 billion less than the $2.5260 trillion that was added to the federal debt held by the public just between Jan. 20, 2009, when President Obama was inaugurated, and Aug. 20, 2010, the 19-month anniversary of Obama’s inauguration.
By contrast, President Reagan was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 1981 and left office eight years later on Jan. 20, 1989. At the end of fiscal 1980, four months before Reagan was inaugurated, the federal debt held by the public was $711.9 billion, according to CBO. At the end of fiscal 1989, eight months after Reagan left office, the federal debt held by the public was $2.1907 trillion. That means that in the nine-fiscal-year period of 1980-89–which included all of Reagan’s eight years in office–the federal debt held by the public increased $1.4788 trillion. That is in excess of a trillion dollars less than the $2.5260 increase in the debt held by the public during Obama’s first 19 months.
When President Barack Obama took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, the total federal debt held by the public stood at 6.3073 trillion, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department. As of Aug. 20, 2010, after the first nineteen months of President Obama’s 48-month term, the total federal debt held by the public had grown to a total of $8.8333 trillion, an increase of $2.5260 trillion.
In just the last four months (May through August), according to the CBO, the Obama administration has run cumulative deficits of $464 billion, more than the $458 billion deficit the Bush administration ran through the entirety of fiscal 2008.
True, President Bush and the Republican Congress he had in about six of the eight years of his presidency were not exactly models of fiscal restraint.
That being said, President Obama and the pre-Tea Party Democratic Congress of 2009-2011 ramped up the spending even more, and at an alarming pace compared to President Bush or previous presidents.
Bill Maher Using Heat Index as an Actual Temp (Language Warning)~Biofuels MAY Be Behind Heat Index
NewsBusters has this critique of Bill Maher… good stuff!
….Not so funny was how Maher was doing exactly what Limbaugh spoke about Wednesday: Part of the CauseMeteorologists have determined that large fields of corn raise the dew points in surrounding areas because corn “sweats” on hot days.
RUSH LIMBAUGH: They’re playing games with us on this heat wave again. Even Drudge is getting sucked in here, gonna be 116 in Washington. No, it’s not. It’s gonna be like a hundred. Maybe 99. The heat index, manufactured by the government, to tell you what it feels like when you add the humidity in there, 116. When’s the last time the heat index was reported as an actual temperature? It hasn’t been, but it looks like they’re trying to get away with doing that now. Drudge is just linking to other people reporting it, he’s not saying it, I don’t want you to misunderstand, but he’s linking to stories which say 116 degrees in Washington. No. It’s what, a hundred, 97, 99. It’s gonna top out at 102, 103. It does this every year. There’s a heat dome over half the country, the Midwest, it’s moving east. And it happens every summer.
Indeed. Maher likely got this 123 figure from a CNN.com piece reporting such a heat index in Hutchinson, Minnesota, Tuesday.
If folks like him were honest, they would first make clear that heat index is not temperature. It’s temperature including the impact humidity has on it.
And that’s the real news this week that global warming obsessed media members have downplayed – record humidity.
As Conservation Minnesota reported Wednesday:
Tuesday evening, around the dinner hour, the dew point at Moorhead reached 87.8 F, making this the most humid reporting station on the planet. The heat index peaked at an almost incomprehensible 134 F. at Moorhead.
Yet, as Minnesota Public Radio reported Wednesday, it was only 93 F when that record-breaking heat index was recorded in Moorhead.
What was responsible then? As the Bemidji Pioneer reported Saturday, it was the unprecedented humidity:
Meteorologists have determined that large fields of corn raise the dew points in surrounding areas because corn “sweats” on hot days. When the humid air mass that originated over the Gulf of Mexico passed over the sea of green that is Iowa, sweating corn likely added to the humidity levels.
I found this VERY funny!, WHY? I will tell you why… renewable fuel!
Cause of the Problem
Farmers are replacing wheat fields with corn to meet the demand for alternative fuel
Starvation Station (2-29-08)
“Farmers are replacing wheat fields with corn to meet the demand for alternative fuel, but that means higher flour prices – and in one Pennsylvania pizza shop, more expensive pies,” NBC News correspondent Chris Jansing said on the February 27 “NBC Nightly News.”
Perhaps no one drew a stronger correlation between the politics of alternative energy and the rise in inflation than Jim Cramer in a February 27 interview with Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) on his CNBC show “Mad Money.”
Enviro-Nuts! (4-16-08)
Ethanol is killing children around the world… Democrats! It takes 450lbs of Corn to fill one SUV tank… that is a years worth of food for a child.
Ethanol Worse than Gas – Sorry Greenies! (4-24-07)
- Research found that E85 vehicles reduce atmospheric levels of two carcinogens, benzene and butadiene, but increase two others — formaldehyde and acetaldehyde.
- As a result, cancer rates for E85 are likely to be similar to those for gasoline; However, E85 significantly increased ozone, a prime ingredient of smog.
- The simulations revealed that E85 would increase ozone-related mortalities by about 4 percent in the United States and 9 percent in Los Angeles.
- In addition, the deleterious health effects of E85 will be the same, whether the ethanol is made from corn, switchgrass or other plant products.
”Today, there is a lot of investment in ethanol,” Jacobson said. ”But we found that using E85 will cause at least as much health damage as gasoline, which already causes about 10,000 U.S. premature deaths annually from ozone and particulate matter.”
Source: “Ethanol Vehicles A Health Hazard,” Science A Go Go, April 18, 2007.
And finally, an old post at NewsBusters dated 8-20-07. I would be remiss not to mention Walter Williams post on the subject, Big Corn and Ethanol Hoax
New Study Recommends Against Burning Biofuels to Solve Global Warming
By Noel Sheppard | August 20, 2007
A new study published in the journal Science last Friday concluded that the continued burning of oil-related energy products combined with the planting of additional forests is better for the environment than the manufacture and use of biofuels such as ethanol.
In fact, the authors suggested that governments across the globe move away from biofuels as a global warming solution completely, and instead focus moneys and energies on reforestation and increasing the efficiencies involved with the burning of fossil fuels.
Of course you didn’t hear about this because no major American press outlet thought it was newsworthy despite media’s fascination with anthropogenic global warming.
Fortunately, several British outlets covered this interesting study, including the Guardian (emphasis added):
Increasing production of biofuels to combat climate change will release between two and nine times more carbon gases over the next 30 years than fossil fuels, according to the first comprehensive analysis of emissions from biofuels.
Biofuels – petrol and diesel extracted from plants – are presented as an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels because the crops absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow.
The study warns that forests must not be cleared to make way for biofuel crops. Clearing forests produces an immediate release of carbon gases into the atmosphere, accompanied by a loss of habitats, wildlife and livelihoods, the researchers said.
New Scientist elaborated (emphasis added throughout, h/t Glenn Reynolds):
The reason is that producing biofuel is not a “green process”. It requires tractors and fertilisers and land, all of which means burning fossil fuels to make “green” fuel. In the case of bioethanol produced from corn – an alternative to oil – “it’s essentially a zero-sums game,” says Ghislaine Kieffer, programme manager for Latin America at the International Energy Agency in Paris, France (see Complete carbon footprint of biofuel – or is it?).
What is more, environmentalists have expressed concerns that the growing political backing that biofuel is enjoying will mean forests will be chopped down to make room for biofuel crops such as maize and sugarcane. “When you do this, you immediately release between 100 and 200 tonnes of carbon [per hectare],” says Renton Righelato of the World Land Trust, UK, a conservation agency that seeks to preserve rainforests.
Any questions as to why American media will ignore this study? Well, there’s more:
Righelato and Dominick Spracklen of the University of Leeds, UK, calculated how long it would take to compensate for those initial emissions by burning biofuel instead of gasoline. The answer is between 50 and 100 years. “We cannot afford that, in terms of climate change,” says Righelato.
The researchers also compared how much carbon would be stored by replanting forests with how much is saved by burning biofuel grown on the land instead of gasoline.
They found that reforestation would sequester between two and nine times as much carbon over 30 years than would be saved by burning biofuels instead of gasoline (see bar chart, right). “You get far more carbon sequestered by planting forests than you avoid emissions by producing biofuels on the same land,” says Righelato.
How’s that for an inconvenient truth? Or this:
He and Spracklen conclude that if the point of biofuels policies is to limit global warming, “policy makers may be better advised in the short term to focus on increasing the efficiency of fossil fuel use, to conserve existing forests and savannahs, and to restore natural forest and grassland habitats on cropland that is not needed for food.”
Something to bear in mind is that Righelato is not a climate change skeptic. Far from it. He’s the Trustees Chairman of the international conservation charity known as World Land Trust which “has been working to preserve the world’s most biologically important and threatened lands, and has helped purchase and protect over 350,000 acres of habitats rich in wildlife, in Asia, Central and South America and the UK.”
Furthermore, this organization’s chief patron is Sir David Attenborough who is widely considered to be one of the fathers of the television nature documentary.
As such, these are greens through and through who just don’t feel biofuels are the answer to the problem. In fact, the Guardian quotes Righelato:
“Biofuel policy is rushing ahead without understanding the implications…It is a mistake in climate change terms to use biofuels.”
…(read more)…
The Party of Peace Peaceably ATTACKS!
The Lefts Wrong View of Energy
h/t: Damon
Our Home Not Too Secure With the Obama Admin in Office
Instead of stopping the statistical likely match, they will confiscate toys from mentally ill children (video below):
TSA Confiscates Mentally Challenged Man’s Toy
…Drew’s parents were told they could make arrangements to ship the toy to their destination. Since that would result in their missing their flight, however, David Mandy reluctantly tossed the toy instead, remarking, “It just killed me to have to throw it away because he’s been carrying this like for 20 years.”
While the TSA is busy harassing passengers who pose no legitimate threat, those who do meantime are boarding planes with increasing frequency. In March, a man with a history of psychiatric problems sneaked past security and onto a plane at JFK airport in New York. A week earlier, another passenger boarded a plane at the same airport carrying box cutters—the very “weapon” used by the 9/11 hijackers to commandeer four planes.
Understandably upset, Drew Mandy’s father wrote to the TSA and received a conciliatory response that noted among other things that the 800 TSA agents at Detroit Metro Airport would be retrained as a result of their mishandling of Drew’s case. Retrained? How about training them to do their job correctly in the first place?
Democrat vs. Republican Shame Levels
Bush & Cheney Make Top 5 Worse People In History in Arkansas High School Yearbook
A Real-Time Example of How the Left Ruins What It Involves Itself In
Welcome to Los Angeles
- All pictures are from RINGO’S Pictures. Take note Ringo takes videos as well, a must see site. Also note that ZombieTime comments on them.
(Brought to my attention by a reader, Tommy Boy.) I think this first picture (above) is a great contrast between what most would consider two extreme positions. On the right — can you see the irony? — a “revolutionary” socialist/Marxist. On the left a Bible thumper who is holding a cross intimating salvation either before Christ’s Second Coming or before one dies [or you will be forever damned]. The difference is that the Bible thumper wants stability and economic justice (as the Constitution provides). She would believe that her actions can neither speed up or slow Christ’s coming. She would also believe that nothing but a free choice would be involved in the accepting or rejecting the gift of salvation by said sinner. The “revolutionary” believes that those who do not want this change should be forced to make up their mind. Read here Pol-Pot, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and the myriad of revolutionaries in the 20th century. In other words, any person — believer or skeptic — would want that Bible thumper verses what you see below. (All pictures enlargeable upon clicking):
Unions and Communists March Side By Side at May Day Rally – Los Angeles, Ca 5/1/2011
Democrats Bringing Us to the brink of Carter Tax days?
From the Wall Street Journal:
Media reports in recent weeks say that Senate Democrats are considering a 3% surtax on income over $1 million to raise federal revenues. This would come on top of the higher income tax rates that President Obama has already proposed through the cancellation of the Bush era tax-rate reductions.
If the Democrats’ millionaire surtax were to happen—and were added to other tax increases already enacted last year and other leading tax hike ideas on the table this year—this could leave the U.S. with a combined federal and state top tax rate on earnings of 62%. That’s more than double the highest federal marginal rate of 28% when President Reagan left office in 1989. Welcome back to the 1970s.
Here’s the math behind that depressing calculation. Today’s top federal income tax rate is 35%. Almost all Democrats in Washington want to repeal the Bush tax cuts on those who make more than $250,000 and phase out certain deductions, so the effective income tax rate would rise to about 41.5%. The 3% millionaire surtax raises that rate to 44.5%.
But payroll taxes, which are income taxes on wages and salaries, must also be included in the equation. So we have to add about 2.5 percentage points for the payroll tax for Medicare (employee and employer share after business deductions), which was applied to all income without a ceiling in 1993 as part of the Clinton tax hike. I am including in this analysis the employer share of all payroll taxes because it is a direct tax on a worker’s salary and most economists agree that though employers are responsible for collecting this tax, it is ultimately borne by the employee. That brings the tax rate to 47%.
Then last year, as part of the down payment for ObamaCare, Congress snuck in an extra 0.9% Medicare surtax on “high-income earners,” meaning any individual earning more than $200,000 or couples earning more than $250,000. This brings the total tax rate to 47.9%.
But that’s not all. Several weeks ago, Mr. Obama raised the possibility of eliminating the income ceiling on the Social Security tax, now capped at $106,800 of earnings a year. (Never mind that the program was designed to operate as an insurance system, with each individual’s payment tied to the benefits paid out at retirement.) Subjecting all wage and salary income to Social Security taxes would add roughly 10.1 percentage points to the top tax rate. This takes the grand total tax rate on each additional dollar earned in America to about 58%.
Then we have to factor in state income taxes, which on average add after the deductions from the federal income tax roughly another four percentage points to the tax burden. So now on average we are at a tax rate of close to 62%.
Democrats have repeatedly stated they only intend to restore the tax rates that existed during the Clinton years. But after all these taxes on the “rich,” we’re headed back to the taxes that prevailed under Jimmy Carter, when the highest tax rate was 70%.