It looks to be a proper board, but the pack of goof on it, headed downhill with no safety gear or reasonable means of managing the thing, bring Nancy, Harry and Barry to mind:
I’m not too sure if ABBA works as a proper soundtrack for the 111th Congress and the Obama Administration. I needed something more; something rife with wretched, nihilistic excess. There was really only one suitable cut: [brief, yet contextually appropriate, blasphemy warning] Jesus Built My Hotrod. Embedding disabled on request, but that likely won’t bother Stacy.
On the face of it, the idea that higher unemployment benefits won’t lead to more unemployment doesn’t make much sense. Imagine what the unemployment rate would look like if unemployment benefits were universally $150,000 per year. My guess is we’d have a heck of a lot more unemployment. Common sense and personal experience indicate higher unemployment benefits will make unemployment less unattractive and thereby increase unemployment even in the Great Recession. . . . [S]ince the 1970s there’s been a close correlation between increased unemployment benefits and an increase in the unemployment rate. . . .
It takes a special kind of chutzpah to encourage people to do things that are not in their best interests. The Lonely Conservative points to the LiarSpeaker of the House, encouraging her doomed troops to go backing into their campaigns at high speed in a Ford Pinto with a full tank, singing the praises of the health care reform.
But at least even a lowly Pinto can have a righteous stereo system. Pondering the appropriate soundtrack for this self-immolation, this blog will suggest sounds of something swirling in the sinus of the Speaker. Feel free to substitute “HealthCare” for “Cocaine” in the following:
Donald Berwick as head of Medicare and Medicaid. Berwick is such an astoundingly bad choice that even the most arrogant president in U.S. history didn’t dare to turn him loose before a Senate confirmation hearing.
In which she explains that unemployment checks create jobs:
“Now, let me say that unemployment insurance, we talk about it as a safety net and the rest — this is one of the biggest stimuluses [sic] to our economy. Economists will tell you, this money is spent quickly. It injects demand into the economy and it’s job-creating. It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name because, again, it is money that is needed for families to survive, and it is spent. So it has a double benefit — it helps those who have lost their jobs, but it also is a job-creator and so, uh, for that reason — for those two reasons at least — it should be passed, and I’m optimistic that it will.” — Nancy Pelosi, July 1, 2010
This sort of gobbledygook is the logical end-point of Keynesian economics, with its obsessive focus on demand-side inputs — including government redistribution programs — whereas a far more effective stimulus to economic growth is capital investment, a/k/a, the supply side.
Also, notice the predictable demagoguery: At the end, she says, “It’s impossible to think of a situation where we would have a country that would say we’re not going to have unemployment benefits.” But nobody is talking about eliminating unemployment benefits. The measure Pelosi is arguing for would extend benefits for those who’ve already maxed-out at 99 weeks:
Democrats have been trying for more than a month to pass a bill extending jobless benefits to more than 1 million people. Currently, jobless benefits last nearly two years — up to 26 weeks paid by state treasuries with federal help for up to an additional 73 weeks.
However sympathetic one may be to such people — hey, it’s tough all over — it is simply absurd to say that giving them another 13 or 26 weeks of unemployment checks is the way to “create jobs.”
The United States added just 83,000 private-sector jobs in June, a dishearteningly low number that could add to the growing number of economists who warn that the economic recovery is stalling. . . .
(That was no “recovery.” That was a dead-cat bounce.)
The economy needs to add about 130,000 to 150,000 jobs a month just to keep pace with new workers entering the market. The labor pool is already packed with 15 million Americans looking for work. . . .
(A solid argument for reducing illegal immigration.)
The week or so leading up to Friday’s report offered a grim rat-a-tat-tat of statistics pointing to a slowing economy. Auto sales were off more than expected, as sales plunged 30 percent in May, a far greater drop than expected. And unemployment claims rose by 13,000 to 472,000, which is far higher than usual if one is looking for signs that private payrolls are growing in a sustained fashion. . . .
(Why would you be “looking for signs”?)
The Obama administration has put much political currency into its effort to grow the economy, and most to the point, jobs. Only a month ago, after an April jobs report that showed employers added 290,000 jobs — a number revised Friday to 313,000 — President Obama declared the numbers “particularly heartening.”
And just two weeks ago, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. christened this “Recovery Summer,” with an emphasis on the jobs created by the administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus measure passed in February 2009.
“Recovery Summer” is withering on the vine. Instead of seeking advice from Nancy the Job-Creator, how about recalling that I predicted this failure from the outset?
It’s been a very good week for Burns, who was featured Tuesday on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show and got a big push Wednesday from Newt Gingrich. Polls have shown the PA-12 contest “neck-and-neck,” as Burns campaign manager Tadd Rupp said, but Palin’s online endorsement Monday turned up the energy and focused national attention on the western Pennsylvania district. USA Today and the L.A. Times have both featured the race in the past 24 hours.
Burns’ staffers were in a celebratory mood after a candidate forum last night at Westmont Hilltop High School, where Democrat Mark Critz — a former Murtha staffer — apologized for a misleading TV ad run by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. FactCheck.org labeled that ad false last week, saying, “For Democrats, misrepresenting an opponent’s anti-tax position as an anti-jobs position is getting to be a bad habit.” . . .
You can read the whole thing. Unfortunately, local news reporters didn’t seem immediately to catch the significance of the Critz apology, but I just got off the phone with the Burns campaign, which expects to have video online this afternoon highlighting what one source called a “huge blunder” by Nancy Pelosi’s handpicked candidate.
When the question was put to them, would [you] like to vote for someone like John Murtha or would you like a fresh start, the fresh start won 63-34, not a good sign for the Democratic contender who used to work for Murtha.
But it’s still neck-and-neck going into the home stretch, and it will take an all-out-effort for Republicans to beat the Pelosi machine in this Democratic stronghold. Learn more at TimBurnsForCongress.com.
UPDATE II: Here’s the clip of Mark Kritz apologizing:
Note the weasel-word method here:
So I want to take this opportunity, that if I’ve misstated Mr. Burns’s position on something, that I apologize. I didn’t mean to do that. It was my understanding that he did support the Fair Tax, and if that’s wrong, I apologize.
Beyond the two “ifs” which render the whole thing conditional, what Critz is apologizing for is not what he actually said previously during the debate, nor does it cover the distortions of his attack ads. It makes no difference whether or not Burns supports the Fair Tax. In his own ad, Critz portrays Burns’s signature on an Americans for Tax Reform no-tax-increase pledge as a job-killer (????), and the DCCC ad — called “quite misleading” by FactCheck.org — presents Burns as supporting a “23% national sales tax on just about everything” without mentioning that the proposed Fair Tax would eliminate all federal income taxes and abolish the IRS.
A cynic might suspect that Critz’s hypothetical “apology” is a clever attempt to prod Burns into denouncing the Fair Tax.
Bluegrass Pundit wants to know if Senator Coburn is drinking the Kool-Aid, just because he’s attempting to neutralize some of the bile aimed at the Speaker of the House.
Pay attention, people: it is never wrong to be gracious to the foe:
If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink: For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the LORD shall reward thee. Pro 25:21,22
Furthermore, as a doctor, Senator Coburn knows that there is a vas deferens between being gracious towards the foe personally, and agreeing with the economically infeasible, un-Constitutional insults to the American people they are peddling.
Pelosi: Launch it now! Sestak: I really wasn’t a blackshoe, but she doesn’t look seaworthy to me. P:Once we kick her down the ways, more construction will follow. S: No, really, that’s how the rules of the game work. Sure, there’s always a little fit and finish once she’s launched, but responsible engineers don’t just throw out a partial product. Hastings: S: This is madder than an Eric Massa snorkeling expedition. P: Shut up, Sestak. We have to get this thing launched before the customer remembers that the original order was for an aircraft!
Americans will gather in Washington, D.C., today to speak out in opposition to the $2.5 trillion government takeover of health care.
WHEN: Saturday, March 20, 2010 at 12:00 Noon ET WHERE: West Lawn of the Capitol
SPEAKERS: Rep. Michelle Bachmann, Rep. Tom Price, Rep. Joe Wilson, actor John Voight, Dr. Milton Wolf, Colin Hanna of Let Freedom Ring, Tim Phillips and Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity, Jim Martin of 60 Plus, Andrew Larger of Institute for Liberty, Kathryn Serkes of the Doctor Patient Medical Association, Mark Skoda of the Memphis Tea Party, Amy Kremer of Tea Party Express, Jennifer Hulsey of American Grassroots Coalition, and Ben Cunningham of the Tennessee Tax Revolt.Continue reading CODE RED! D.C. Rally NOON TODAY →
