9.29.2012

Ben Kingsley working as a Padres usher





Threat to democracy: the press is an arm of the Obama regime

This is a subject I've been meaning to write about, but have not had the time to give its due.  Fortunately, SLOB friend Leslie Eastman does an excellent job saying what needs to be said.

Democracy cannot survive without an honest and independent press. America has lost that free and independent press as reporters have become, nearly unanimously, Obama sycophants.

We have a record number of Americans on food stamps, a plummeting labor force as the hopeless give up looking for work, skyrocketing gas prices, serial trillion-dollar deficits, and foreign policy disasters in Africa. Under any prior President, or with even the veneer of an honest press, this would all be constant, front-page news and the President would be polling in the 30's.

The press decides elections by deciding what news the people get.

Please click on over to Temple of Mut for the whole story.

Here's Democrat and former Jimmy Carter aide Pat Caddell explaining.


9.28.2012

California FAIL: Campbell's, Comcast flee high cost of business

With California voters threatening to impose even higher taxes this November, more companies are calling it quits:
The Campbell Soup plant in Sacramento is closing as of July 2013 as the company says it is taking steps to “improve supply chain productivity,” according to a company release.

Employees were told of the closure during a 6 a.m. meeting Thursday at the plant.

“We employ about 700 people at the Sacramento plant and unfortunately those jobs will be eliminated,” said Campbell Soup Company spokesperson Anthony Sanzio. “This is a tough day for the company, for the employees. No one likes to do this.”

The company says the Sacramento plant, built in 1947, is the oldest in its network and has the highest production costs on a per-case basis.

[...]

The announcement comes just two days after Comcast announced it will close all three of its call centers in Northern California, including one is Sacramento, because of the high cost of doing business in the Golden State.

9.24.2012

Now that's muscle control!

Newport, Tennessee:
April Dawn Peters, 31, of 2194 Grandview Way, in Cosby, as arrested Sept. 19, at 10:30 p.m., and charged with aggravated assault after she allegedly hit a man on his head at least five times with a hammer that she was having sex with, Sgt. Steve Johnson reported.

9.23.2012

Are We Going To Redo the Flag After The Election?

Idolatry is a pejorative term for the worship of an idol, a physical object such as a cult image, as a god,[1] or practices believed to verge on worship, such as giving undue honour and regard to created forms other than God (from Wiki). What's this?

That is not what democracy is supposed to be about. I am really concerned about the future of our democracy. It appears a large percentage of the population wish to dissolve it.



Related: A short history of the creepy Obama cult.

UPDATE: Obama flag removed from Obama web site after numerous web sites point out the ghoulish similarity to the bloody handprints of Americans being dragged to their deaths in Libya.

Greenspan's Body Count: Suicide now more popular than dying in a car crash

Daily Mail:
Suicide is a bigger killer than car crashes, according to an alarming new study.

The number of people dying from suicide has drastically increased, while car accident deaths haven lessened, making suicide the leading cause of injury death.

Suicides via falls or poisoning have risen significantly and experts fear there could be en more going unrecognised, specifically in cases of overdose.

'Suicides are terribly under-counted,' said Ian Rockett, author of the study, published on Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health.

'I think the problem is much worse than official data would lead us to believe. We have a situation that has gotten out of hand.'

[...]

Researchers noted a 25 per cent decrease in car accident deaths, medicalxpress.com reported, while deaths from falls rose 71 per cent, from poisoning 128 per cent and from suicide 15 per cent.

[...]

Previous research has suggested that suicide rates go up during recessions and times of economic crisis.

'Economic problems can impact how people feel about themselves and their futures as well as their relationships with family and friends,' Feijun Luo of CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention told Bloomberg.
Not to give Alan Greenspan all the credit, though. How's that Hope & Change© working out for ya?


9.22.2012

When central planning fails

Argentina:
According to the official exchange rate, which is subject to capital controls, 4.4 pesos buys you a dollar. But on the street people are happy to pay up to 6.7. Inflation runs at 25%. The purchasing power of an Argentine’s peso savings is going down by one-quarter each year.

The government claims inflation is 9.9% and has outlawed calculating or quoting any other inflation rate. Forty percent of dollar deposits have been withdrawn from Argentina since last October. Now there are capital controls. You need special permission to move your dollars overseas.

To take a foreign vacation, Argentines have to apply to a bureaucrat for permission and explain where they got the money for the trip. And there are rumors that it will be made illegal to talk about the existence of the shadow market exchange rate for dollars.
Don't think it can happen here? How exactly do you think government borrowing 40 cents of every dollar it spends plays out when we get beyond the ability of the current Fed/Treasury jiggery-pokery to conceal it?

And remember, Senator Chuck Schumer has already proposed, and Speaker Boehner has indicated approval, of a Reich Flight Tax to confiscate assets of Americans fleeing the Obama regime.

9.20.2012

Old people are smarter than they look

Jr. Deputy Accountant has a new message on her car.



She reports: "I am not at all surprised that most of the thumbs ups I'm getting on 95 are from old people. They know what's up."

Comic relief

9.19.2012

Happy End of America Day!

Four years ago today was September 19, 2008: the day capitalism died.

Four years later, we've got a record number of Americans on food stamps, plummeting labor force participation, $16 trillion in debt, and four consecutive trillion-dollar deficits. The TSA goons grope women and children for the crime of traveling about the country, and our global military empire terrorizes people in countless foreign lands.

The U.S. has plummeted to #18 among nations in economic freedom.

And we're dangerously close to re-electing a President who believes in central planning rather than free enterprise, and executive orders rather than the Constitution.

Liberty was fun here while it lasted.  See you in the next country.

9.18.2012

Watch Liverpool Pound Young Boys Live!

Thursday on Fox Soccer Channel Liverpool FC will be taking on BSC Young Boys (here or here) in Switzerland. If you are a soccer fan this is a game that you will really enjoy yourself watching.

IT'S OVER. Liverpool licked Young Boys by a score of 3-5. Those Young Boys didn't stand a chance.

9.14.2012

Obama team sees political gain from North Africa unrest and murder of Americans

Never mind that Obama bombed women and children to help install the current chaotic, radical Islamic regimes, or how his administration left Americans with minimal defenses in a country full of crazies, or how he's floundering in his response to the murders. Obama advisors see political gain from the disaster. They may be right. His Intrade odds are up even though he's down three points in Rasmussen.
Apparently, Americans rally around the President when America is attacked overseas.
How did that work for Jimmy Carter, who was also an effete America apologizer who presided over a bad economy and high gas prices. Did voters rally around him when he did that whole crash-the-helicopters-in-the-desert thing?
At least Jimmy Carter didn't do a glitzy campaign party with Jay Z and Beyonce during the Iranian hostage crisis.

9.13.2012

QE 3 : Zimbabwe Ben goes Full Retard

Now he's done it. Not just the QE3 everybody expected, but an open-ended commitment to keep printing money as long as it takes.

Straight from the Dirty Fed:
To support a stronger economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at the rate most consistent with its dual mandate, the Committee agreed today to increase policy accommodation by purchasing additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40 billion per month.
Translation: we will print $40 billion a month out of thin air because, despite the experience of the past three years, we still believe that printing money fixes the economy.
If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability.
Translation: we will keep printing, and maybe even start printing faster, as long as the employment market sucks.

It's going to be a LONG time before the outlook for the labor market improves "substantially." Inflation will be a problem long before that. We'll have $5 gasoline long before we have 5% unemployment and normal labor force participation rates.

Printing money doesn't create jobs. So Bernanke has just committed to giving us stagflation for as long as he can until inflation gets too out of control.

The 1% thank Zimbabwe Ben for jamming their stocks, gold, and silver higher.



The 99% will have to be content with food and energy inflation.



UPDATE: The SLOBs are going off on Zimbabwe Ben and the Damn Dirty Fed:

The Liberator Today: The Most Dangerous Easing Yet
Doo Doo Economics: FED Commits to Devalue the Dollar by $40 Billion Per Month
The Scratching Post: A Trillion Bottles of Beer on the Wall
Left Coast Rebel: Quantitativus Sedatus III

And one of my favorite leftie blogs, Naked Capitalism, has a post on QE∞ that sounds positively like something you'd read at the WCV, The Fed's QE3: No Exit.
The Fed’s launch of QE3 looks more than a tad desperate. If you believe the central premise of the Fed’s action, that propping up asset price gains would have enough effect on consumption to lift the economy out of stall speed, it would seem logical to sit back a bit and let the recent stock market rally and the (supposed) housing market recovery do their trick.

[...]

But another big issue is that the Fed looks to have painted itself in a corner. Is the US going to have 3.5% mortgage interest rates forever? If the central banks does manage to create a bit more inflation, how does it think it will exit? A mere 1% increase in interest rates, from 3.5% to 4.5%, increases mortgage payments on a 30 year fixed rate mortgage payments by 13%. That will translate into a meaningful dent in housing prices. And where does the Fed go if a financial crisis or other shock occurs?

The Fed failed to see the crisis coming, failed to push for restructuring of consumer, particularly mortgage, debt, and is now in full bore “if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” mode.

9.11.2012

September 11

Just as the financial crisis gave central planners an excuse to destroy capitalism and replace it with a Federal Reserve-manipulated farce, September 11 gave them an excuse to gut the Bill of Rights and have TSA goons grope us for the crime of trying to move about the country.

Remember folks, they hate us for our freedoms. That's why we had to get rid of them.

9.10.2012

And breathe

I hate to be the one to keep raining reality on the Romney parade, but if you're still holding out hope for the GOP ticket this fall, I've got some special protective underwear I'd like to sell you.

Anyway, for all the frowny-faced 'publicans out there, here's a video to help get you through the hard times.  You're welcome. (warning: language.)


HT: filmdrunk.com


... but they make it up in volume

Reuters: Government Motors loses $49,000 on every Volt they sell.

If you think central planning and crony capitalism is bad now, just wait until Obama doesn't have to worry about re-election.

9.06.2012

Idiocracy

These are not some drugged-out homeless Occupiers in the street. These are the chosen delegates of the party of the President of the United States, a party that is dangerously close to winning four more years of total control of the Executive Branch unchecked by the cowardly Legislative and Judicial Branches.



I've said it before: this country is teetering on the edge of the abyss. It's time to prepare your escape strategy.

9.05.2012

Maybe it's just me

... but I'm less concerned with the "God" in the DNC platform than with the fascism in the DNC platform.

Anybody else feel the same?

9.04.2012

DNC Day 1 Theme: You will be Assimilated!

I'm not watching the Democratic National Convention.  I know what those people think and I don't want to hear it again.

But reports from those who are watching are frightening.

Fellow SLOB Beers with Demo:
We're proud of the Democratic Party. We really are. Instead of shying away from or backing down from their "You Didn't Build That" rhetoric and underpinning philosophy, they are doubling, nay, tripling down on their full-service, 24/7 statism.

Check out the following ad from the DNC: [link]

"The Government is the only thing we all belong to"

This is news to us. With respect to that quote above, there's wrong and then there is wrong on a scale of enormity that it almost defies description. This fits the latter.

[...]

No. We don’t belong to the government. You don’t belong to the government. We are individual citizens of this country. We belong to this country.

Conflating government with country is precisely in keeping with this dangerous statist philosophy that your individual rights as a citizen flow not from the Creator or natural law as codified by the Constitution rather the government.
Amen. And see Ann Althouse's take:

7:19: The chair of the Congressional Hispanic Congress, Charles Gonzales, uses the motto "e pluribus unum" — out of many, one — to mean that all the people become one, instead of the idea that the states were brought together into one nation. The idea that the people merged into a single entity — that sounds like fascism to me. Oddly, as it repurposes the old motto, it expresses the old fashioned idea of the melting pot.

[...]

7:42: Nancy Pelosi is introduced along with all the Democratic women of the House. There's disco music playing. The hell? Then I detect that it's "I'm Every Woman." Again with this creepy merging of individuals into the whole.
These people are scary. It's not the Muslims who hate us because of our freedom. It's the Democrats.

Those Poor Rich

Christiano Ronaldo is likely to go down as one of the greatest soccer players ever. The guy is a fantastic footballer. He plays for Real Madrid and makes about 30 million a year. Oh and he’s also very good looking and has everything going for him. YET:
"I am sad and the club knows it, that's why I didn't celebrate the goals," said Ronaldo, who also scored two goals during the two-legged Supercopa triumph over Barcelona. "The appropriate people inside the club know why I'm sad. I won't say anything more."
The poor dear apparently isn’t making enough money. The interesting thing about Real Madrid is that it’s a state subsidized team. They get deals from the City of Madrid that shhhhh, don't talk about it in public, or at least until you get to Barcelona. Now Spain is on the verge of collapse and Chrissy here is sad because he isn’t making enough.

It just seems that the 0.1% are clueless about the plight of the dirty masses. Or maybe not; "let them eat cake" as they say.

FailBook is now JailBait

She's under 18.



How's that working out for those geniuses at CalPERS?

9.02.2012

Look who's #Eastwooding now!

Tomorrow is National Empty Chair Day.

Joe Biden couldn't wait.

Convention bounce

Romney up by four nationwide (from tied to down two before the convention) and up by two in battleground states.

Why aren't people as outraged as Old Zeke and Huffington Post by the Great Paul Ryan Marathon Scandal?

Will Obama get a convention bounce? I wonder who would even want to watch the DNC. We've had four years of Obama and Biden in our living rooms. What more can they say? Hillary has urgent business in the Cook Islands. And look at this truly pathetic line-up of party hacks and retreads. Three nights of bitter leftists talking about vaginas and collective bargaining? No thanks, I'll be watching Breaking Bad on Amazon Prime.

9.01.2012

Aaaand we have verification

Zeke here again.  Seeing as I lightly follow the farce that is U.S. political choice, it wasn't til a couple days ago that I paid any attention to dapper young Paul Ryan.  I reported my initial impression in these pages, namely that the guy is a phony.

And what's this now?
Hewitt asked the vice presidential candidate whether he is "still running."

Ryan answered that he "hurt a disc" in his back," so he doesn't "run marathons anymore." Instead, he said. he just runs 10 miles or less.

The conservative radio host then asked him what his personal best time is. For a marathoner this is a badge of honor, but Ryan couldn't recall exactly.

"Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something," Ryan said.

Hewitt was surprised, saying, "Holy smokes."

Ryan replied: "I was fast when I was younger, yeah."

But it turns out, he's only run one and it wasn't under three hours or even under four hours.
You don't say.

Happy Super Tuesday!