Stupid Is As Stupid Does

 

My dear fool, I hope that you tattooed that on your forehead in the orgasmic aftermath of Obama electoral sex.  It will be a wonderful reminder to your grandchildren when they are living in cardboard boxes.  

Allah knows, the sex wasn't any good for you.  Certainly, he didn't respect you in the morning.  He wasn't then and isn't now that into you.
  

He used you.  You were nothing more than a $5 hooker, who he took on a 'round-the-world excursion and left with a wicked case of crabs and herpes; yet, you keep making excuses for him.  Soon, you will be blaming Moses or President James Polk for inventing electric stoplights for unemployment.
  

 I bet you are one of the 80% of college graduates, who have had to move back home with Mum & Dad, that is still waiting by the phone.   No money.  No job.  No car.  No future, but Mummy does still tuck you in at night.

So, tonight, when you are laying in your twin bed with the Buzz Lightyear sheets and the Tickle-Me Elmo doll, just keep saying:

"I may be unemployed, but Hopenchange is awesome!

  I may never be able to own my own home, but Obama is the one that we have been waiting for! 

I know that I can't buy a Skinny Caramel Mocha Frappuccino Grande because I'm flat broke, but Socialism is so great!  

I know that most of the Northeast got flooded, but Obama still lowered the sea levels!

  Besides, Mummy makes me Pop-Tarts and gives me a Flintstones vitamin every morning.  Plus, looking forward to premature balding, a paunch, and a full box of condoms with an expiration date of 01.01.10 isn't so bad when, at 25, I am still considered a child on my parents' health insurance policy.

Eventually, if Obama is reelected, I know he will issue an Executive Order that will force my parents to continue to pay me an allowance until I am 50.  I mean, like ya know, it's only fair.  Some of the kids that I graduated with have their own homes and businesses.  It's not like I am demanding a lot and it's not fair that they have more than me.  Anyhoo, it's the law in economically-sound countries like Italy.  Me and my chums are working on a really kewl name to call ourselves...unlike in other countries.

In Italy, people like me, ya know, twenty- and thirty-somethings, who are on an allowance, are called "bamboccioni" - "big babies!"  The utter nerve!

In Japan, grown-ups call us "parasaito shinguru."  Can you believe it?  They think we are parasitic singles.  Unbelievable.  We didn't ask to be born.  If you didn't want to take care of us in the style to which we have become accustomed, then you should have aborted us.  Take that, お爺さん!

Now, in Germany, they call people like us "Nesthockers," but what do you expect from NAZIS?  I mean, HELLOOOOOOO....

And, just who the fuck do those British snobs think they are calling their adult children KIPPERS?  After all, who calls their children fish?  

Everyone should recognise that, whether they are gutted, salted or pickled, Kids In Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings deserve basic marine rights and, if they aren't going to be respected, then these victims need to organise and appeal to the United Nations.

KIPPERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
 

All of those racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, flatearthes, greedy Fascists saw "Change We Can Believe In!" and they thought Obama was talking about the near-term...ya know...like the next Recovery Summer or the 8th one or something.  

Well, like I said, THEY ARE STUPID!  They didn't read the fine print on the back of the signs!   

'Change We Can Believe In' = 'Change We Hope We Can Believe Will Happen Before An Asteroid Hits And Destroys the Earth!'  

Sheesh, 'tupid 'tard!!!

Okay, I have to go to sleep now so that I can get up early and pack my Transformers lunchbox, beg Mummy for some bus money, walk 3 miles to the bus stop, and ride for 45 minutes to my volunteer job at the local Obama 2012 reelection office.

Don't you people be fooled again.  There is only one man in the world...in fact, only one man in the history of mankind...that has cared more about you than himself and that is:

Barack Hussein Obama!

O-BAA-MMM-AAA!  O-BAA-MMM-AAA!  O-BAA-MMM-AAA!"

Sophie:  So, you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove that you weren't a racist and were a hip, kewl kat.  Are you going to vote for him in 2012 to prove that you are a stupid, bloody idiot, who should just be put on the Liverpool Care Pathway a/k/a KervorkianCare? 

 

Fancy Nancy, Pants On Fire!

 

The Truth-O-Meter Says:

 

Promotes a chart saying that Barack Obama has "increased the debt" by 16 percent, compared to George W. Bush, who increased it by 115 percent.

Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011 in a chart posted on her Flickr account

Nancy Pelosi posts questionable chart on debt accumulation by Barack Obama, predecessors

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi posted this chart on her Flickr site, where it was later re-posted by a user on MoveOn.org. But we found major problems with its math and methodology.

A reader recently pointed us to a post on the website of MoveOn.org, a liberal group. The post features a bar graph titled, "Who Increased the Debt?" that offers figures for the past five presidents:

Ronald Reagan: Up 189 percent

George H.W. Bush: Up 55 percent

Bill Clinton: Up 37 percent

George W. Bush: Up 115 percent

Barack Obama: Up 16 percent

We can see why a liberal group would tout such numbers, since -- if accurate -- they offer powerful counterevidence to the claims by conservatives that President Barack Obama has been a spendthrift who’s set the nation on an unsustainable fiscal path.

But the reader who sent it to us was surprised to see the debt increase under Obama was so small. So we decided to check the numbers.

The chart actually comes from a Flickr page belonging to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who posted it on May 5, 2011. Specifically, the chart tracks "percent increase in public debt" for the five presidents during the following time periods -- January 1981 to January 1989 (Reagan), January 1989 to January 1993 (George H.W. Bush), January 1993 to January 2001 (Clinton), January 2001 to January 2009 (George W. Bush), and January 2009 to April 2011 (Obama).

We checked with Pelosi’s office to see what data they used to assemble the chart. They referred us to the U.S. Treasury’s "Debt to the Penny Calculator."

First, we should note that we interpreted the caption in Pelosi’s chart that reads "percent increase in public debt" to mean public debt, not gross federal debt. Public debt is debt held by the public, whereas gross federal debt includes both publicly held debt and debt held by the government, such as money in the Social Security trust fund.

Despite what the chart’s label suggested, the data we received from Pelosi’s office made clear that they had been using the gross federal debt number. So we’ll start with that figure.

We can quickly dispense with the figures for Reagan and George H.W. Bush. The "Debt to the Penny" calculator doesn’t go back further than 1993, but we were able to estimate the figures for debt under Reagan and the elder Bush by using data from the Office of Management and Budget. OMB’s numbers are calculated somewhat differently than Treasury’s, but the percentage increases were close enough to what the chart said that we’re not going to quibble over them. OMB has debt under Reagan increasing by 186 percent (the chart had said 189 percent) and by 54 percent under George H.W. Bush (compared to the 55 percent in the chart).

Instead, we’ll focus on the numbers for Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama.

From the online calculator, we requested the daily debt totals since 1993 and picked out the ones closest to the inauguration dates of those three presidents, as well as the end of the month of April 2011. Here’s what we came with for gross federal debt:

January 20, 1993 (end of George H.W. Bush and beginning of Clinton): $4.188 trillion

January 19, 2001 (end of Clinton and beginning of George W. Bush): $5.728 trillion

January 20, 2009 (end of George W. Bush and beginning of Obama): $10.627 trillion

April 29, 2011 (closing date of the chart): $14.288 trillion

This allows us to determine how much the debt rose under each president:

Under Clinton: Increase of $1.54 trillion, or 37 percent

Under George W. Bush: Increase of $4.899 trillion, or 86 percent

Under Obama: Increase of $3.661 trillion, or 34 percent

So we can dispense with Clinton -- in the chart, his figure is correct. But the chart is significantly off for both Bush and Obama. We found Bush to have an 86 percent increase, not 115 percent as the chart said. And we found the debt under Obama to be up by 34 percent, more than double the 16 percent cited in the chart.

We quickly discovered the source of the discrepancy: Whoever put the chart together used the date for Jan. 20, 2010 -- which is exactly one year to the day after Obama was sworn in -- rather than his actual inauguration date. We know this because Treasury says the debt for Jan. 20, 2010, was $12.327 trillion, which is the exact number cited on the supporting document that Pelosi’s office gave us.

However this error happened, it effectively took one year of rapidly escalating debt out of Obama’s column and put it into Bush’s, significantly skewing the numbers.

Using the corrected figures does mean that, superficially at least, Democrats have a point. The debt did still increase more, on a percentage basis, under Bush than it did under Obama. But other problems with the chart and its methodology undercut even this conclusion.

• Time ranges: Bush served a full eight-year term, while Obama had served just 27 months by the time the chart was compiled. If the Obama figure were to be scaled out to a full eight-year period, he’d have a debt increase of 121 percent rather than 34 percent, making his increase greater than Bush’s. To be fair, that would be a simplistic exercise -- but no less misleading than the chart.

• Public debt vs. gross debt: Not only did the chart say it was using one statistic and then use another, it also cherry-picked the one that showed the comparison in a more favorable light. According to OMB statistics, public debt rose by 70 percent under Bush, 16 percentage points more slowly than gross federal debt did. And according to the Treasury, the public debt rose by 53 percent under Obama, compared with the 34 percent rise in gross federal debt.

Those numbers would have shown the two presidents much closer in their debt creation records -- and that’s without even adjusting for the vastly different lengths of time in office.

• Debt vs. debt as a percentage of GDP: Some economists will tell you that it’s not the size of the debt per se, but rather the size of the debt relative to the nation’s gross domestic product. This helps minimize the complicating effect of economic cycles and inflation. So how do those numbers stack up? Using OMB statistics, here’s what we came up with, using public debt figures not adjusted for the president’s time in office:

Reagan: Up 14.9 percentage points

George H.W. Bush: Up 7.1 percentage points

Clinton: Down 13.4 percentage points

George W. Bush: Up 5.6 percentage points

Obama: Up 21.9 percentage points (through December 2010 only)

So by this measurement -- potentially a more important one -- Obama is the undisputed debt king of the last five presidents, rather than the guy who added a piddling amount to the debt, as Pelosi’s chart suggested. Of course, all this goes to show that statistics can be used -- and misused -- to bolster almost any argument.

After we presented our research to Pelosi's office, a spokesman acknowledged that the office had erred in assembling and posting the chart and that it was in the process of reposting it. The updated version – which corrects the mathematical error but not what we consider to be the three additional design flaws – can be found here.

That's a step in the right direction, but it doesn't change our rating since it only occurred as a result of our fact-checking. We find so much wrong with this chart that we don’t think it contains any significant approximation of the truth. It made a major calculation error that dramatically skewed the debt increase away from Obama and toward George W. Bush. It glossed over significant variations in time served in office. It cherry-picked the measurement that was favorable to its cause. And it is contradicted by statistics for GDP-adjusted debt, which show Obama to be the most, rather than the least, debt-creating president of the last five. None of this suggests that Obama can’t turn things around as the economy improves (and Democrats can also take some solace in the fact that Bill Clinton did remarkably well in all of our measurements). But in communicating which administrations contributed the most to growth of the debt, this chart is a failure. We rate it Pants on Fire.

Oreo/Coconut 2012!

I just read this on a thread about that twit, Janeane Garfalo, who is claiming that libertarians and conservatives are backing Herman Cain because they are racist.  Quite funny:

"See if I have this correct.

If you didn't vote for Obama,you're a racist, but if you vote for Cain, you're a racist.

You can't argue with a Dem's logic because they don't have any.  

Cain/Gingrich 2012. I mean: Uncle Tom/Cracker 2012"




____________________________________________________

Sophie:  Or it could be:

Cain/Rubio - 2012.  I mean:  Oreo/Coconut 2012!
____________________________________________________


I'm not endorsing anyone.  I'm making fun of the racist Progs.

Five Myths About Millionaires

In 2008, for example, Obama won the votes of 60 percent of those with a family income under $50,000 and 52 percent of those earning more than than $200,000. McCain carried the middle class.

This past week, President Obama tried to sell his new “millionaires’ tax” to the Rust Belt. “What’s great about this country is our belief that anyone can make it,” he said in Cincinnati on Thursday, praising “the idea that any one of us can open a business or have an idea that could make us millionaires.” But who are the millionaires Obama is talking about? And will a tax on them help the economy? Let’s examine a few presumptions about the man with the monocle on the Monopoly board.

Five Myths:  A semi-weekly feature, hosted by The Post’s Outlook section, aiming to dismantle myths, clarify common misconceptions and make you think again about what you thought you already knew.

1. Millionaires are rich.

 

Being rich has gotten more expensive. A $1 million fortune was unusual in the early 19th century. The word “millionaire” wasn’t even coined until 1827 by novelist (and future British prime minister) Benjamin Disraeli. In 1845, Moses Y. Beach, editor of the New York Sun, published a small pamphlet called “Wealth and Biography of the Wealthy Citizens of New York City.” The price of admission to Beach’s list, which was wildly popular, was a mere $100,000.

By the time the first Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America was published in 1982, the smallest fortune featured was $75 million. There has been so much wealth creation in the past 30 years — much of it thanks to the microprocessor behind modern-day fortunes such as Dell, Microsoft and Bloomberg — that only billionaires are on the list. Today, $1 million in the bank generates only about $50,000 per year in interest. That isn’t chump change, but it’s roughly equal to the 2010 median household income.

2. Millionaires think they’re rich.
 

“Rich,” like “poor,” is a relative term. A family living on the American median income of $50,000 a year might think that one living on $500,000 is rich. But that second family, which probably knows families far better off than they are, thinks that you need $5 million a year to be truly rich, and so on.

On Thursday, 44 percent of people voting in an online survey as part of the GOP debate coverage said that a $1 million annual income made a person “rich.” In a 2008 survey of affluent Chicago households, only 22 percent thought a nest egg of $1 million was rich. In March, four out of 10 millionaires surveyed by Fidelity Investments said they do not feel rich. That same month, a majority of investment advisers surveyed in a Scottrade poll said that $1 million isn’t enough for retirement.

Though the average American family is rich beyond the wildest dreams of the average family in Bangladesh, where per capita income recently rose above $700, it’s not much compared with those who summer on beachfront properties in the Hamptons. When John D. Rockefeller learned in 1913 that the late J.P. Morgan had left an estate of $60 million, including a fabulous art collection, he reportedly said: “And to think — he wasn’t even rich.”

 

3. Millionaires pay proportionately less income tax than poorer people.
 

In a speech on Monday, Obama said raising taxes on millionaires isn’t class warfare, but “math.” His math may be off: According to the IRS, those with adjusted gross incomes of more than $1 million paid an average of 23.3 percent in federal income taxes in 2008; those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 paid 12.7 percent; and those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 paid 8.9 percent. Nearly half of American families don’t make enough money to pay federal income taxes at all.

Why do people think millionaires pay less? One cause of confusion is that stock dividends and capital gains are taxed at a maximum of 15 percent, while regular income in their bracket is taxed at a maximum of 35 percent. The rich often earn more dividend and capital gains income than regular income, so it’s tempting to wrongly conclude, as Warren Buffet has, that millionaires “wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes.” But dividends are paid out of corporate profits that have already been taxed. So Buffet’s equity earnings are doubly taxed: He pays 35 percent at the corporate level and 15 percent on his own return.

4. Millionaires share the same political beliefs.
 

That might have been true in pre-revolutionary France, where the nobility was exempt from most taxation (and why so many were subject to a brief meeting with Dr. Guillotin’s lethal invention). But it is certainly not true in 21st-century America, where political opinions among the rich are just as diverse as they are among the less well-off.

Just consider George Soros and the Koch brothers. They are listed high on the Forbes 400 list, but Soros funds Democratic campaigns, while the Koches helped foment the tea party revolution. Income can’t be used to predict political opinion. In 2008, for example, Obama won the votes of 60 percent of those with a family income under $50,000 and 52 percent of those earning more than than $200,000. McCain carried the middle class.

In America, millionaires have always had the freedom to disagree — even in the White House. Franklin Roosevelt, called one of the 10 richest presidents by Forbes in 2010, was denounced as a traitor to his class for instituting the New Deal. Also on Forbes’s list: famous trust-buster Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, who proposed a “War on Poverty” days before he was assassinated.

 
5. Obama’s “millionaires’ tax” won’t seriously limit investment.
 

That’s the line of reasoning that the administration is using. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told reporters that the president’s plan wouldn’t hurt growth. “I am very confident that the modest changes we’re suggesting in terms of revenues . . . would make the economy stronger in the long term, not weaker in the long term,” he said.

Geithner’s confidence is somewhat misplaced. According to a 2001 congressional study that confirmed a basic tenet of macroeconomics, “each $1 of marginal tax rate cuts would save the private economy at least $1.25 as deadweight losses fall and economic efficiency increases.” Taxes distort investment decisions. Why throw money into productive assets — corporate securities, a rental property or new employees for a small business — if the income they generate will be taxed away?

Taxes on the rich are taxes on people who create jobs. And jobs are an unalloyed good thing for an economy.

Excessively taxing the capital that makes the economy go is poor public policy. And we have a recent example of how the opposite works well: Unemployment declined by a third in the four years after the Bush tax cuts were fully implemented in 2003, dropping to 4.2 percent from 6.2 percent. Meanwhile, federal revenue increased 44 percent in those years. If these tax cuts put people to work and generated money for the government, shouldn’t Obama consider the possibility that tax increases should be avoided?

jsg@johnsteelegordon.com

 

John Steele Gordon is the author of “An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power.”

 

Want to challenge everything you know? Read more from our “Five myths” archive.

The Dangerous Subversion of Germany's Democracy

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has covered world politics and economics for 30 years, based in Europe, the US, and Latin America. He joined the Telegraph in 1991, serving as Washington correspondent and later Europe correspondent in Brussels. He is now International Business Editor in London. Subscribe to the City Briefing e-mail.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Economics Last updated: September 28th, 2011
399 Comments Comment on this article
 

The Bundestag and the German people are being undermined (Photo: Alamy)

Optimism over Europe’s "grand plan" to shore up EMU was widely said to be the cause of yesterday’s torrid rally on global markets, lifting the CAC, DAX, Dow, crude and copper altogether.

This is interesting, since Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has given an iron-clad assurance to the Bundestag that no such plan exists and that Germany will not support any attempt to "leverage" the EU’s €440bn bail-out plan to €2 trillion, or any other sum.

"I don’t understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense."

All of this was out in the open and widely reported. Markets appear to be acting on the firm belief that he is lying to lawmakers, that there is indeed a secret plan, that it will be implemented once the inconvenience of the Bundestag’s vote on the EFSF tomorrow is safely out of the way, and that German democracy is being cynically subverted.

The markets may or may not right about this. Mr Schäuble has a habit of promising one thing in Brussels and stating another in Berlin.

But it is surely an unhealthy state of affairs. One of the happiest achievements of the post-War era is the emergence of a free, flourishing, and democratic Germany under the rule of law.

Carsten Schneider, finance spokesman for the Social Democrats, spoke for many last week, denouncing the shabby back-room dealings as a scandal. "A new multi-trillion programme is being cooked up in Washington and Brussels, while the wool is being pulled over the eyes of Bundestag and German public. This is unacceptable."

Indeed it is.

Mr Schäuble has now been forced to give a categorical assurance that the EFSF will not be expanded. He cannot break his word without very serious consequences, or before the financial crisis turns deadly.

We have reached the point where the unseemly scramble to find ever more inventive and extreme ways to save monetary union – yet without coming clean, and invariably by trying to deceive German citizens about the real implications of each deal – is clashing directly with the integrity of German democracy.

Andreas Vosskuhle, head of the constitutional court or Verfassungsgericht, specifically warned this week that Germany is entering treacherous waters.

He said that the improvisation of far-reaching policies to shore up EMU had become "dangerous", and warned against schemes to circumvent the rule of law with backroom deals. "Germany has a great affinity for the rule of law. People expect the political class to obey the rules."

"There is little leeway left for giving up core powers to the EU. If one wants to go beyond this limit – which might be politically legitimate and desirable – then Germany must give itself a new constitution. A referendum would be necessary. This cannot be done without the people," he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Dr Vosskuhle reminded politicians that they do not have the legal authority to sign away German constitutional prerogatives.

"The sovereignty of the German state is inviolate and anchored in perpetuity by basic law. It may not be abandoned by the legislature (even with its powers to amend the constitution)," he said.

He repeated that the Court had set clear boundaries to EU bail-outs in a ruling earlier this month. "Our judgment makes clear that the Bundestag cannot abdicate its fiscal responsibilities to other actors. And no permanent mechanism may be created that entails taking over the liabilities of other states," he said.

Otmar Issing, the ECB’s founding guru, has gone even further in recent weeks, warning that the current course must ultimately provoke the "resistance of the people" and perhaps civil wars.

Dr Issing is not a German nationalist. He is open to the idea of an authentic union with a "European government controlled by a European Parliament" on democratic principles.

What he opposes is the deformed halfway house that is now Europe, where supra-national bodies – accountable to no elected body and taking decisions behind closed doors – are usurping legislative primacy over tax and spending. As he reminds us, it was monarchical assault on the power of the purse that led to England’s Civil War, and America’s Revolution.

Large matters.

As for the assurances of Mr Schauble, either he really is lying, in which case there will be all Hell to pay in the Bundestag, and most likely a massive political backlash that will change German politics profoundly.

Or he is not lying, in which case there is no plan to save the eurozone, and we therefore face the mounting risk of a spiral into a banking crash, serial sovereign defaults, and a disorderly break-up of EMU.

Not pretty.

__________________________________________________

I think that we can safely say that the Totalitarian Temptation and Attack of Anti-Democraticitis is raging amongst the ruling elite on both sides of The Pond.  One would think that these Kommissars would realise that this isn't going to end well for them.


I'll tell you two other things:


1)  There is only one thing that Europe hates more that a strong America and that is a weak America.


2)  A couple of months ago, after Louisville Sluggers were banned in the UK following the riots, I heard so many people say, "I sure wish we had a Second Amendment here."  About right now, I am beginning to think that the same thought is going through the minds of all of the industrious Europeans, who are going to be forced against their will by their "leaders" and the unelected Politburo in Brussels to bailout middle-aged Greek retirees in their hideous Speedos.  No offence, my friends in Greece, but, c'mon dude, being a hairdresser or a television presenter is NOT job that is hazardous to your health so much so that you should be able to retire with a full pension at 47 or 48.  

Oh, and yes, your ass does look gigantic...and saggy...and wrinkly...and  old... in those Speedos!

Graph of the Day

"We have an emergency, a fiscal emergency... Our state was careening toward bankruptcy, fiscal insolvency. Even in the last couple of months, the situation got seriously more dire. So the governor has to act at the moment. And that's what I did." 

- Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, upon passage of a 67% tax increase at end of lame duck session, 12 January 2011

"Democrats argued the tax increase was needed to rehabilitate the state's deadbeat image, but Republicans predicted it would drive businesses out of state." 

 

- The Chicago Tribune, 12 January 2011

Data released 08.19.11 by the bureau confirms this downward trajectory. When it comes to putting people back to work, Illinois is going backwards. Since January, Illinois has dropped 89,000 people from its employment rolls.

It’s too early to know conclusively the full impact of the tax hikes on the Illinois economy. Nevertheless, Illinois’s employment numbers serve as a good reminder that public policies have dramatic consequences for the daily lives of Illinoisans. A combination of high taxes, overspending and red tape do nothing but chase away job creators and leave too many citizens without jobs. Springfield needs to act now and reverse course.