Nancy Pelosi Least Liked Politican

This isn't fair - it's a category error.  Nancy's a Pelosiraptor, not a human.  If she was compared in a poll to other blood thirsty prehistoric predators I'm sure she'd win hands down.

Clown Car of the Police State

 A million people cowering in their homes while a bunch of dudes who are clearly compensating for the trauma of getting pantsed in High School ride around playing Army Man.  All in order to fail to find one wounded teen who was found by a neighbor who went outside for a smoke.

Progressivism = Puritanism?

The Puritans were an English religious sect seeking to 'purify' the Church of England.  Failing in that endeavor, many of them emigrated to New England where they set out to build a "shining city on a hill" - a city so completely in tune with God's will that it would set an example for the world.  Not quite, but almost a 'heaven' on earth.

They set about doing this by enforcing a strict moral code - one that has been artfully documented by Nathaniel Hawthorne among others.  Yet the Puritan shining city was built in part on the slave trade in which they played a profitable role.  While it's not fair to judge Puritans by today's standards, it seems that the Puritan's ferociously enforced moral code had some rather large gaps.

Like the Puritans, the modern Progressive seeks to implement rules, regulations and codes that manipulate human behavior to produce their version of a shining city on the hill.  Like the Puritans the define anyone not living up to their definition of morality as being a 'bigot' or worse, a 'tea partier' (oh the irony).  Yet like their slave trading precursors, their ferocious morality is strangely selective.  Instead of black victims, the modern progressive has young ones, both aborted babies and bankrupted future generation.

One thing is clear:  Progressives are completely convinced of their right, nay their duty to use the guns, shackles and steel boxes of the state to compel others to do what these Modern Puritans say is 'good' for them.

The Christian God says that pride is the greatest sin of all.  And in their absolute certainty that they both know the answers and the methods to those answers Progs demonstrate that they are the true successors to the Puritan impulse in America.

Most Americans just want to be left alone.  Tragically, that is something no Puritan or Prog will ever do.

Proof that nobody knows anything

Admit it:  none of you would have invested in any of these companies.  We don't know anything about the future until we see it working.  Which raises a question:  why do our fearless leaders behave as if they know everything about the future?  One reason we need markets is because the 'experts' are wrong about so much.  The market lets anyone take a shot at doing something worth cash money no matter how stupid it looks up front to the cognoscenti.  This is as true for government policy as much as for internet services.

Break it up, break it all up.

Facebook - the world needs yet another Myspace or Friendster except several years late. We’ll only open it up to a few thousand overworked, anti-social, Ivy Leaguers. Everyone else will then join since Harvard students are so cool.

Dropbox - we are going to build a file sharing and syncing solution when the market has a dozen of them that no one uses, supported by big companies like Microsoft. It will only do one thing well, and you’ll have to move all of your content to use it.

Amazon - we’ll sell books online, even though users are still scared to use credit cards on the web. Their shipping costs will eat up any money they save. They’ll do it for the convenience, even though they have to wait a week for the book.

Virgin Atlantic - airlines are cool. Let’s start one. How hard could it be? We’ll differentiate with a funny safety video and by not being a**holes.

Mint - give us all of your bank, brokerage, and credit card information. We’ll give it back to you with nice fonts. To make you feel richer, we’ll make them green.

Palantir - we’ll build arcane analytics software, put the company in California, hire a bunch of new college grad engineers, many of them immigrants, hire no sales reps, and close giant deals with D.C.-based defense and intelligence agencies!

Craigslist - it will be ugly. It will be free. Except for the hookers.

iOS - a brand new operating system that doesn’t run a single one of the millions of applications that have been developed for Mac OS, Windows, or Linux. Only Apple can build apps for it. It won’t have cut and paste.

Google - we are building the world’s 20th search engine at a time when most of the others have been abandoned as being commoditized money losers. We’ll strip out all of the ad-supported news and portal features so you won’t be distracted from using the free search stuff.

Github - software engineers will pay monthly fees for the rest of their lives in order to create free software out of other free software!

PayPal - people will use their insecure AOL and Yahoo email addresses to pay each other real money, backed by a non-bank with a cute name run by 20-somethings.

Paperless Post - we are like Evite, except you pay us. All of your friends will know that you are an idiot.

Instagram - filters! That’s right, we got filters!

LinkedIn - how about a professional social network, aimed at busy 30- and 40-somethings. They will use it once every 5 years when they go job searching.

Tesla - instead of just building batteries and selling them to Detroit, we are going to build our own cars from scratch plus own the distribution network. During a recession and a cleantech backlash.

SpaceX - if NASA can do it, so can we! It ain’t rocket science.

Firefox - we are going to build a better web browser, even though 90% of the world’s computers already have a free one built in. One guy will do most of the work.

Twitter - it is like email, SMS, or RSS. Except it does a lot less. It will be used mostly by geeks at first, followed by Britney Spears and Charlie Sheen.

Rube Watch

From Instapundit.

CHANGE: Roofers union calls for Obamacare’s repeal.

The United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers is reportedly the first union to officially call for repeal of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. The health care law is prompting some serious buyer’s remorse in Big Labor, which worked hard on behalf of the administration to pass it.

I guess they didn't understand that the only people the One works for are government employees or its subsidized clients.  Roofers are just the dupes.

Some things never change: Progressive racism

A century ago today our first ]"Progressive" President segregated the Federal government, firing blacks by the drove.  Our current Progressives run the most racialist administration since....well since the first Progressive Administration - different winners and losers, the same obscene racist impulse.  When you worship the state you use it to discriminate in ways that are useful to you or please you.  Only a minimalist state can minimize prejudice.  Markets can't afford to be prejudiced.  HT Instapundit.

PROGRESSIVE RACISM: On this day in 1913, Democratic President Woodrow Wilson segregated the Civil Service. “Prior to the segregation of the civil service in 1913, appointments had been made solely on merit as indicated by the candidate’s performance on the civil-service examination. Thereafter, racial discrimination became the norm. Photographs came to be required at the time of application, and African-Americans knew they would not be hired. The existing work force was segregated. Many African-Americans were dismissed.”

He was just modelling the President's fiscal policy

Politician arrested for masturbating while going 90 MPH.

He's what you call a party stalwart.  Or a stalwart partier.

I wonder why they call it the Affordable Care Act?

Here's a great summary from the WSJ of healthcare spending by person by state.  Some of the variation is due to there being more old people in the rust belt than in the sunbelt but that doesn't account for the northeast's higher spending.  No, their world leading status is due to 'progressive' regulation.  In particular, note that MA's are the highest in the nation and therefore the world.  MA has a less deranged version of the "Affordable" Care Act that is in the process of being inflicted on the nation against its oft expressed will.  Experts agree that healthcare spending will explode at the fastest pace in history over the next few years as the ACA makes healthcare - what?  Oh yeah, more affordable.  Orwell's Oceania couldn't have said it any better:  love is hate, war is peace and affordable is much more expensive.  I propose that we rename the ACA the Democrat Party Power Enhancement Act.  Because prog politicos are the only ones who will benefit from it.

And that's precisely what makes it so "progressive".

Who wants to be in a union?

Not most Wisconsin government workers, that's who.  Shorn of the guns, shackles and small steel boxes  of the corporatist state it turns out that even government workers won't stay members of unions.  It makes you wonder what other 'progressive' 'reforms' would evaporate as soon as the brutal hand of state coercion is taken away.  Much of the modern administrative state is nothing but raw brutal power and coercion.

Perhaps that is why unions have been so popular with private sector organized criminals.  Break it up,  break it all up.

Anatomy of a jobs catastrophe or social democracy in action?

Here's US labor force participation by age cohort (HT Marginal Revolution):

Apparently, the older generation, their retirement wealth smashed by falling home prices and CDs paying essentially nothing thanks to Bernanke's bailout of Wall Street plutocrats, are staying in the workforce.  And in a capital strike world where the real cost of employment is soaring (thank you Obamacare and rising minimum wage rates) that means that younger, les experienced employees can't use their only advantage:  cheapness to compete with older, more experienced talent.  That is unless you are the child of the affluent and can take an unpaid 'internship' that daddy got you - somehow the experience builders for the elite's children aren't subject to minimum wage or benefit laws - I wonder why?

But falling labor participation and a shift towards more experienced, productive workers with the least, lightest and brownest sitting on the dole is the essential profile of social 'democracy'.  So maybe all we are doing is becoming fully 'European'.  Pity it's at the time that the Euro model is collapsing.

But I don't think our Lords in Washington and New York think that way - they have more power and wealth at the center than they've ever had before so everything's hunky dory.  Right?

Now all we need to complete the Euro model is viciously regressive tax policies like VAT and country income tax rules.  Because we all know that the proles have to bear the brunt of social 'democracy' - after all, they can't run like our Lords and Saviors can.

Feds with guns: not on your side, on their side

By now it is clear that the Federal government is the greatest criminal enterprise in history.  Looting an amount greater than the total cost  of WWI and WWII combined.  Here they are using our communications system to oppress us more.

When are we going to hold the looters accountable?  If you work for the Feds you're a criminal.  Period.

Lying liars lie

....no matter which side of the lying liars' lies they lie from.  Ex St. Louis Fed President Bill Poole (good guy BTW) on our glorious Federal God's immaculate and perpetual budget fraud.  At least until the monetary apocalypse.

Tar, feathers...no wait, too good for these criminals:  rack, guillotine.

Why pirates wore eypatches

Cool.  HT Instapundit

[W]hen going from bright light to maximum darkness, studies have shown, eye sensitivity continues to change for up to 25 minutes, he says. …

"Ever wonder why a pirate wears patches? It's not because he was wounded in a sword fight," says Dr. Sheedy. Seamen must constantly move between the pitch black of below decks and the bright sunshine above.

Smart pirates "wore a patch over one eye to keep it dark-adapted outside." Should a battle break out and the pirate had to shimmy below, he would simply switch the patch to the outdoor eye and he could see in the dark right away—saving him 25 minutes of flailing his cutlass about in near blindness.

When the state takes over a sector, it turns everyone into greedy scammers

Read this account from the WSJ on how physicians treated patient needs and economics before the intervention of third parties:

A major cause of financial stringency was that there was almost no insurance that covered pediatric care in the office setting. Many pediatricians felt denigrated because the care that they were providing was not regarded as sufficiently consequential to be covered by third parties, as was that of their brethren in internal medicine. Surveys always showed pediatricians to be the poorest-paid of all the specialties.

By current standards, the lack of third-party coverage would be impermissible. But treating patients without insurance meant that I had to give my acute attention to the price of every medical intervention. The costs could have a direct and painful impact on a family's budget. So I had to know the prices for most of the medications I prescribed and of most of the tests I might order. I learned to play for time by waiting, when it was safe to, before ordering an X-ray or a test—and to substitute less-expensive medications for more costly ones wherever possible.

Now compare this to how Oncology clinics are behaving in response to 2% sequester cuts:

By the way, here's one of the big stories in the Washington Post's sequester coverage last week . . .

Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts.

Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer expensive chemotherapy drugs while staying afloat financially . . .

Doctors at the Charleston Cancer Center in South Carolina began informing patients weeks ago that, due to the sequester cuts, they would soon need to seek treatment elsewhere.

Now, check out this account of the same issue from CBS News. (Jeff Vacirca, chief executive of North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates in New York, is quoted in both stories. )

"We couldn't last for more than three to six months if we were to be in the red on all those drugs that now the reimbursement has gone down on," said Dr. Jeff Vacirca, CEO of Northshore Hematology Oncology.

A one-month course of chemo for one patient could cost $10,000. Medicare reimbursement will now fall about $200 short.

"It's going to be a hardship to patients, their caregivers and really such an increased cost to society and to Medicare in the long run that it makes no sense to me," Vacirca said.

Wait, Medicare is now $200 short in covering a $10,000 treatment, and there's no solution that can be found? There's no way the patients can cover that amount, or the provider can't delay a portion of the billing, or some charitable foundation can make up the difference? The only solution is to stop treatment? Doesn't make any sense, does it?

Kind of fascinating that when Medicare implements a 2 percent reduction, the very first place these Cancer Centers implement cuts is in treatment for the most vulnerable.

The state and its magic money machine literally de-moralizes everything it touches: turning once honorable professionals into manipulative, money grubbing scammers. And with PPACA the politicization and moral infantilization of medicine will be complete.

Turning independent adults into squalling toddlers. It's all so progressive.

Obamacare is Vandalism

I usually don't read or quote physicians on health care reform because they are usually just well paid special pleaders.  However, Ed Marsh has the clarity of retirement and in the WSJ hits the nail on the head:

There is no shortage of evidence. ObamaCare will, deliberately and by design, destroy what—while imperfect—has served very well. We have gotten to this point after years of good intentions making bad problems worse. To double down on the very therapy that has brought the system to its present sorry pass is a toe-ticket to the morgue.

The bottom line is that O'care is an immense and deliberate act of vandalism, designed to destroy the final vestiges of a functioning health care system so that it can be replaced by a state run and state aggrandizing behemoth.  

The chaos we are and will experience is deliberate:  it's a feature of 'reform' not a bug.  And destruction is so very, very progressive.

The NYT trips over Texas

Even the true believers are having a hard time not committing heresy:  the NYT notices that TX is different and it causes them to recoil like vampires confronting a crucifix:

AS a Texas-raised journalist, I can tell you two things with confidence about my native state. One, its economy has been humming nicely for years. Two, this appears to greatly offend a certain breed of Northern writer, several of whom have descended on the state in an attempt to rebut stories of a “Texas miracle.” Their reports, Erica Grieder writes, have contributed to “a widespread impression that Texas is corrupt, callous, racist, theocratic, stupid, belligerent, and most of all, dangerous.”

That is, dangerous to the worship of FDWH, the Federal God above all Gods from whom all blessings flow.  But even progressive demons must eventually acknowledge the Truth:  markets work and state corporatism doesn't.  

It turns out that reality is a cowboy booted, six shooter totin' bitch that scatters horrified metrosexual bien pensants before her.

Yee.  Haw.

So is it Barry's economy now?

The economy continues to stumble forward at a slow zombie pace.  Zero Hedge calls the tape:

Things just keep getting worse for the American worker, and by implication US economy, where as we have shown many times before, it pays just as well to sit back and collect disability and various welfare and entitlement checks, than to work. The best manifestation of this: the number of people not in the labor force which in March soared by a massive 663,000 to a record 90 million Americans who are no longer even looking for work. This was the biggest monthly increase in people dropping out of the labor force since January 2012, when the BLS did its census recast of the labor numbers. And even worse, the labor force participation rate plunged from an already abysmal 63.5% to 63.3% -- the lowest since 1979! But at least it helped with the now painfully grotesque propaganda that the US unemployment rate is "improving."

It's been more than four year's since The One took over the controls:  is it time for our multicultural Lord and Savior to take responsibility?  Naw, he's saving us for gay marriage and turning undocumented Democrat water into voting wine.

Yes He can!  And the more He can, the less of us who do.

It's all so progressive.