Two Islamists in the U.K. drove their BMW 3 series onto a sidewalk and hit an off duty, out of uniform soldier. Then they beheaded him and dropped his body in the street while shouting “Allahu Akbar.” To top it off, the police took 20 minutes to respond.
Think any of this will get serious coverage [...]
There are interesting rumblings in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer. You might almost think the left was getting ready to admit there’s a problem….naaah. That’s not going to happen.
States were $1.38 trillion short of having enough to pay their public-employee retirement bills in 2010, the last year for which totals are available for all 50 states, according [...]
DHS has published a video describing what people can do in an active shooter situation. It deserves much ridicule, which it is already receiving.
I’d like to point out one detail that is particularly worthy of contempt. If you are not able to escape or successfully hide, the narrator suggests you should consider using objects to [...]
The left has been arguing for years that the Bush tax cuts went mostly to the wealthy and that the Obama deficits have been caused not by over-spending but by the Bush tax cuts. Those of us who pointed to the actual numbers indicating otherwise were (at best) ignored but usually attacked.
Well we have now [...]
Apparently the Delaware taxpayers are getting hosed because of a deal the state signed with Fisker. That would be the same Fisker the US taxpayers are getting hosed for.
This statement from the governor’s office really ticked me off:
“It has not worked out the way he had envisioned,” [Delaware Gov.] Markell spokeswoman Cathy Rossi acknowledged Monday [...]
A few random pieces of sarcasm in response to calls for gun control after yesterday’s murder spree:
Thank goodness no one at the school had a gun. They might have hurt someone with it.
We wouldn’t want anyone there with a gun when the shooting starts. It’s better to wait for the police to bring their guns.
The [...]
Yesterday’s mass shooting at a Connecticut kindergarten hit awfully close to home. Mrs. Manifesto and I are beginning to look at kindergartens for Little Girl Manifesto. Plus we have friends in Connecticut, having gone to school in New York.
Already the predictable and vague calls for more gun control are beginning. Funny [...]
Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit frequently calls on conservatives to “punch back twice as hard.” He has also embraced the idea of raising certain taxes, specifically ones that will disproportionately hit blue states (such as reducing the deductibility of state income taxes).
Along those lines, I have taken a few of the features and taxes from Obamacare [...]
The top 100 U.S. university endowments have a total value of $310 billion and the top 100 U.S. foundations have assets totaling $244 billion. I am outraged that they exploit tax loopholes and pay no taxes. It’s time for them to pay their fair share. Fix the fiscal cliff - tax the rich!
So, Obama has been reelected. It is going to be a tough few years. Here is what to expect:
Slow economic growth
Sustained high unemployment
Reduced opportunities for the lower middle class
Reduced opportunities for the poor
Upper middle-class people who are go-getters will be okay but upper middle class people used to the idea of just being a “good [...]
The Democrats have kicked off their convention in the otherwise lovely city of Charlotte, NC to defend a failed presidency and try to convince people that more progressive policies are just what we need.
In related news:
The national debt has hit $16 trillion.
A federal judge has ordered tax payers to fund an inmate’s sex change operation.
A [...]
Think your cell phone bill is too expensive? What about your cable bill? Most people do.
That’s because if you are like most people you are paying for things you don’t want or need (an unusably large number of minutes for your phone or hundreds of channels you don’t watch). It’s pretty intuitive that when you [...]
I am not a gossip. So I am not going to repeat the continuing rumor that #HarryReidIsAPederast.
Not surprisingly in the wake of the Aurora movie theater shooting my lefty dominated Facebook wall had many calls for more gun control. One friend posted a particularly bad poster that was filled with basic factual errors.
I posted a response gently correcting the record. Another lefty reacted to my comments with a borderline incoherent, utopian [...]
There is an interesting post at Zero Hedge arguing that the statutory tax rate on the middle class in high tax states (read: blue states) is 75%. This might be slightly high but I think it’s basically accurate.
Above a rather modest $34,600 in taxable income and up to around $106,000, the [statutory] middle class tax [...]
As I previously mentioned, ObamaCare the Obama HealthCare Tax will prove to be temporary. It is not fiscally sustainable. When our inevitable fiscal crisis hits in full, ObamaCare the Obama HealthCare Tax will have to be gutted if it is still around.
The left can blather all it wants about how it’s going to save money, [...]
The left managed to save the ObamaCare Obama HealthCare Tax. But do they even realize what a price they paid to accomplish this?
There’s a new precedent for striking down statutes on federalism grounds. There’s a new precedent expressly limiting the scope of the commerce power. There’s a new precedent limiting the use of the necessary [...]
The left won on the policy issue. ObamaCare still stands (but shall now be rebranded the Obama Healthcare Tax). But I think the left won the battle but lost the war.
There were three arguments for the individual mandate:
commerce power
necessary and proper clause
taxing power
The first two are constitutional issues. But, as argued, the third was not.
On [...]
The Supreme Court held that the individual mandate is valid as a tax. But it also specifically held that the individual mandate would violate the commerce power.
Chin up, libertarians. That’s a huge win. Congress is going to be significantly boxed in.
As one of the live bloggers at SCOTUS Blog put it:
The rejection of the Commerce [...]
Progressives like to think they are kind and humane for wanting to expand the welfare state. I say they are cruel.
Think about the working life of a typical person. When a person first enters the workforce, his experience, skills and not surprisingly his earnings are the lowest they will ever be. But over time, as [...]