Two years on 67% of The Astrology Party says the Russkies tampered with 2016 vote totals to elect Trump, just 17% of The Stupid Party, and 41% of the nitwits in between

Well, it was question 26C. Maybe they were tired and confused by that time, or on to their third beer.

The new puritans at CBS News flatly lie about Kavanaugh's testimony

Brett Kavanaugh wrongly claimed he could drink legally in Maryland in high school:

"Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has repeatedly said that he was legally allowed to consume beer as a prep school senior in Maryland."

That's a flat out lie. Kavanaugh never testified that he was "legally allowed".

He copped to drinking beer while under age, that's all, and that seniors were legal . . . at the time about which he testified.

That's how every under age drinker gets it to this day.

Mueller's worthless investigation is costing us millions, masking gargantuan increases for DOJ

Mueller Runs Up $16 Million Tab in Trump-Russia Investigation

"Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election has cost more than $16 million during its first year, according to the Justice Department."

This is small beer compared with what's really going on.

Trump's budget estimate for the entire Dept. of Justice for fiscal 2017 came to just $18 billion, but has swelled to $30 billion for both fiscal years 2018 and 2019, one of the biggest increases for any department. 67%!

What the hell are they spending the money on? 

Grand Rapids, Michigan, climate update for April 2017

Mean average temperature was 51.9 degrees F in April 2017 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The mean for April back to 1896 is 46.5.

The lowest minimum temperature was 27. The mean for April is 22.

The highest maximum temperature was 81. The mean for April is 79.

Precipitation was 6.27 inches. The mean for April is 3.3. Sixth wettest April on record.

April snowfall was 0.4 inches. The mean for April is 2.3.

Heating degree days came to 391. The mean for April is 553. The total through April from July 2016 comes to 5366 vs. mean to date of 6404.

The heating season to date has been about 16% warmer than normal.

Bring back waterboarding, Mad Dog Mattis can go have his beer and a cigarette

James E. Mitchell, here:

It is understandable that Gen. Mattis would say he never found waterboarding useful, because no one in the military has been authorized to waterboard a detainee. Thousands of U.S. military personnel have been waterboarded as part of their training, though the services eventually abandoned the practice after finding it too effective in getting even the most hardened warrior to reveal critical information.

During the war on terror, the CIA alone had been authorized to use the technique. I personally waterboarded the only three terrorists subjected to the tactic by the CIA. I also waterboarded two U.S. government lawyers, at their request, when they were trying to decide for themselves whether the practice was “torture.” They determined it was not.

Hysterical Glenn Beck makes hysterical liberals, well, hysterical

It's hard to keep all the hysteria separate at The Daily Beast, where libertarian hysteria meets liberal hysteria and proves what we knew all along: hysteria is a defining feature of both liberalism and libertarianism.

Glenn Beck:

'“I would open it up to all drugs [potentially being legalized],” and leave it up to the states.'

The Daily Beast:

'In Beck’s telling, the main consequence of this police escalation and the war on drugs was not the mass incarceration of millions . . .."

The one exaggerates what society can stand, the other what it can't.

Beer, wine and liquor have a long record of being more or less controllable while opiates do not. No one with much experience of the latter is clamoring for their wider use.

On the other side 2.3 million adult incarcerates barely qualifies as millions in a society of 321 million people. The only people demanding the release of the duly captive are Democrats and other racists.

Libertarianism in Michigan now means smokers and drinkers pay 111% more in taxes than businesses

A fine how-do-you-do from the ménage à trois between Republican libertarianism, Democrat liberalism and the dry Dutch.

The Detroit News reports here:

Revenue from so-called sin taxes on tobacco, beer, wine and liquor totaled $290.5 million in the 2014 fiscal year, more than twice the $137.6 million net income taxes paid by Michigan businesses after receiving $768.8 million in refunds from tax credits, a Detroit News analysis of tax data shows.

Since Gov. Rick Snyder and lawmakers delivered sweeping tax relief for businesses in 2011, net business income taxes dropped 90 percent, depleting the state's main operating fund of $1.33 billion, according to state revenue data.

The percentage of general fund revenue from business income taxes also has plunged as tax credit payouts to companies have soared. Tax data show business income tax receipts declined from 21 percent of the general fund revenue a decade ago to about 2 percent last year. ... Last year, the balance of business income taxes as a share of general revenue began to turn when companies holding tax credits triggered a surge in refunds, from $75.8 million in 2013 to $723.3 million in 2014. The Democratic administration of former Gov. Jennifer Granholm was responsible for most of the state's surge in handing out tax credits to businesses.

Q3 2013 GDP Third Estimate At 4.1%, But Inventories Constitute 41% Of That

The BEA reports here:

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 4.1 percent in the third quarter of 2013 (that is, from the second quarter to the third quarter), according to the "third" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  In the second quarter, real GDP increased 2.5 percent. The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "second" estimate issued on December 5, 2103.  In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was 3.6 percent (see "Revisions" on page 3).  With this third estimate for the third quarter, increases in personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and in nonresidential fixed investment were larger than previously estimated. ...  The change in real private inventories added 1.67 percentage points to the third-quarter change in real GDP, after adding 0.41 percentage point to the second-quarter change. Private businesses increased inventories $115.7 billion in the third quarter, following increases of $56.6 billion in the second quarter and $42.2 billion in the first.

---------------------------------------------------

That's a huge inventory number compared to the recent past.

Personal consumption expenditures, which in the second estimate came in at a paltry 1.4%, suddenly are revised up 0.6 to 2.0% in the third estimate, also contributing significantly to the up revision of GDP. In the second estimate it looked like the consumer was pulling back by over 20% from the second quarter. In the third estimate it now appears the consumer ramped it up by over 10% in Q3 compared to Q2, quite the reversal.

Someone wanted to go home early: Both reports in html and pdf say "December 5, 2103".

Hey. They're just numbers. Time for a beer. 

John Tamny's Libertarian Myopia On The Plan B Pill

John Tamny, libertarian ideologue extraordinaire, asks us to join him in complete denial about reality, here:

"[G]overnments don’t nor can they exist as our Nanny."

An awful lot of people chafing under Nanny Bloomberg in NYC would beg to differ with that statement.

Does it really need to be pointed out that the mayor of New York routinely acts like he's everyone's mother? I think Bloomberg would be just as amused as we are to learn that his own perception that he even exists is as mistaken as is our perception that he exists. The man does exist, and gets away with what he does because there are plenty of people in the world who want him to, at least in New York City. The fact of the matter is that there are plenty of people just like Bloomberg who are all too happy to accomodate those who want to be ruled. Lately these characters also want in the worst way to be president of the United States for some reason. Just because we wish these things were not so doesn't mean that they are not so. The assertions of success of five-year-plan after five-year-plan in the Soviet Union eventually bowed to reality, as must we.

This sort of denial of reality is what lies behind Tamny's analogy between teen use of alcohol and teen use of the plan B pill, which he evidently advocates not because it is necessarily good but because it is not preventable for the same reason we cannot prevent teen use of alcohol. But this is not the proper analogy. The proper analogy is between the alcohol and the sex, both of which are desirable for the sensations which they provide, which is why it is difficult to regulate them. The reality is that a profound difference exists between the alcohol and the plan B pill: the pill is designed to kill, while the beer is not.

The plan B pill provides no pleasure analogous to beer which makes us desire it, except of a psychological sort such as any medication or placebo may provide. For that reason alone it should be as easy to regulate as any other medication. It alleviates a condition like an aspirin does after too much beer, but it does so by taking a human life. The utility of it masks its gravity.

Deregulation of the plan B pill for minors stands in stark relief against the FDA's own labeling regulations: Warnings "to keep product out of children's reach" must appear on over-the-counter medications like aspirin bottles, they say. My bottle says,  for example, "Reye's syndrome: Children and teenagers who have or are recovering from chicken pox or flu-like symptoms should not use this product." My aspirin bottle even comes with a child-thwarting cap in compliance with the FDA regulations: "Many OTC medicines are sold in containers with child safety closures. Use them properly.  Remember—keep all medicines out of the sight and reach of children." Contrary to its own stated mission, the FDA will be placing the plan B pill in plain sight of them.

One would think that a libertarian, being consistent, would be calling also for the abolition of all such age restrictions on medications and on alcohol, if the plan B pill is to be allowed to minors. But that, too, is conspicuously missing from Tamny's argument, which is sort of what one would expect of the perpetual childishness of the libertarian. Johnny still can't tell the truth. 

If government really no longer has any interest in preventing young girls from murdering their unborn children, which is what the plan B pill debate is really all about, then we might as well disband police departments everywhere.

No wonder gun stores are running empty. The people know too many of us have given up just like Tamny.

Warren Buffett, Amoral Crony Capitalist, Bought An Indulgence From The Left

So says Daniel Mitchell of The Cato Institute, here:

"If you’re an amoral person with political connections, it’s possible to make a lot of money.

"Warren Buffett lined his pockets by making a government-subsidized investment in Goldman Sachs during the financial crisis.

"The rest of us suffered and he got richer, but the left seems to be okay with that perverse form of redistribution because he supports class-warfare tax hikes. Sort of like buying an indulgence in the Middle Ages."

I really like that analogy with the church because it speaks to the failure of all idealist conceptions to deliver on what they promise. This is as true of socialism as it is of capitalism, of fascism as it is of Christianity. All offer a promised land which never seems to arrive, but you have to ask yourself who thought this stuff up.

Like beer to Homer Simpson, it is we who are the cause of and the solution to all of life's problems.

Obama's New Favorite Beer

Wow. Now The Obama "Cool" Is Racist, Too.

What isn't?

Story here:

"There's an ad, talking about [how] the president is too cool, [asking] is he too cool? And there's this music that reminds me of, you know, some of the blaxploitation films from the 70s playing in the background, him with his sunglasses," Rye said. "And to me it was just very racially-charged. They weren't asking if Bush was too cool, but, yet, people say that that's the number one person they'd love to have a beer with. So, if that's not cool I dont know what is.

She added that "even 'cool,' the term 'cool,' could in some ways be deemed racial [in this instance]."

The Percentage of People Working Hasn't Been This Bad Since November 1983

Get a grip, people. Obama is a fisherman, trolling along the bottom, catching nothing for three years except a good buzz from a boat-full of beer.

Explaining Property Taxes Then and Now

Critical listeners to recent remarks I made here on The Newsmaker Show with Kevin Doran will have wished that I had done a better job of explaining property taxes in the late 19th century and how their burden on property owners helped create the conditions which led to the tax reform which gave us the Income Tax in 1913.

So do I. Regrettably one can't say everything one needs to when trying to explain something else, especially like Herman Cain's 999 Plan.

If anyone gets the impression that I intended to say that the federal government routinely and directly taxed homeowners then, for example, in the same way homeowners are so taxed today on their property, that would be a mistake, but one which could easily be inferred. The federal government did do that sort of thing three times in the 19th century, but only for very brief periods and only to fund wars: in 1798, 1812 and 1861. Which is not to say there weren't other attempts, notable in the Pollock decision in 1895.

To a considerable extent, however, I have found that the terms "property tax," "excise," "tariff," "ad valorem" and the like get used interchangeably, and confusingly, in discussions about taxes both then and now. We would be better served if we were all more precise in these matters, but even supposed experts talk about this period with such imprecision sometimes that it is difficult to know exactly what people really do mean.

For example, "ad valorem" today gets used, as at usgovernmentrevenue.com, as a category under which to list excise taxes, tariffs, property taxes, etc., as opposed to income taxes, corporate taxes and social insurance taxes. In truth, however, its specific meaning has been more complicated than that.

From that characterization would not know that tax historians often distinguish personal property taxes in the first half of the 19th century as "in rem" from real property taxes in the second half as "ad valorem."

In the case of the former, as in 1798, slaves, for example, were taxed for war preparations with France as personal property. It didn't matter, however, how much one had invested to purchase the slave. Each one was simply taxed at 50 cents. Similarly a tax assessor would count the windows on your house, your horses, your cows, chickens etc. (unless you hid them well) and total them up by kind and assess the appropriate tax, which inhered in the thing, "in rem," not in the value, "ad valorem."

The latter is how the federal government in the 19th century was able to get around the onerous requirements of apportioning direct taxation of property equally according to state population. Instead of the arduous task of trying to tax the whole general sum of an individual's wealth in every state on an equal basis, the value of beer, wine and liquor, for example, produced anywhere could thereby be taxed everywhere the same, proportionally according to its value. In this way there was no need to divide the necessary revenue to be raised according to the population of the individual state, since the basis was the same everywhere beer was sold.

Such taxation is often called an excise, generally understood to fall on domestic produce. We still pay excises to this day, for example everytime we fill up the gas tank, 18 cents on the gallon to the feds. In truth excises are just a special kind of sales tax. A tariff is similar, but taxes foreign imports.

When it comes to the problems of farmers in the late 19th century, who eventually made league with Prohibitionists to install the Income Tax in 1913, theirs was a two-fold problem. Not only did the cost of financing state government fall heavily on them because of property taxation in the state in which they lived, federal excises on their produce represented a double "property tax" whammy. Think tobacco excises.

Viewed from this perspective, government at all levels, it seemed, got them coming and going.

To his credit, Herman Cain is trying to imagine a world in which government gets it for a change, instead of the taxpayer. His way of trying to make that happen is to play human desire to consume off of human desire to avoid paying taxes, by making what we consume each and every day the scene of a skirmish in the battle for limited government, which cannot exist without self-restraint.

Flaky, as in 'Obama' (not as in 'Bachmann')

Michele Bachmann may be many things, but flaky is not one of them.

For flaky, we must throw out the much too tame traditional dictionary, and go to the Urban Dictionary, which nails it many times over:

An unreliable person. [See 'Obama' who hasn't improved one economic measure for black people, let alone anyone else, except for their government dependency]

A procrastinator. [See 'Obama' who dithered and dithered for three days after the Fruit of Kaboom bomber incident in route to Detroit because he and his administration were all on vacation, again. And how many months did it take him to decide to surge in Afghanistan?]

A careless or lazy person. [See 'Obama' who was content to let the House and the Senate duke it out over their versions of healthcare reform and provided no legislation of his own, or who let BP clean up the spill in the Gulf despite a long-standing contingency plan put in place by the government in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska]

Dishonest and doesn't keep to their word. [As in 'Obama' who didn't close Gitmo and didn't try the terrorists in civil court]

They'll tell you they're going to do one thing, and never do it. [See 'Obama' who promised to end the war in Iraq but our soldiers continue to die there]

They'll tell you that they'll meet you somewhere, and show up an hour late or don't show up at all. [As in 'Obama' who, the president of all the people, deliberately misses church, and patriotic or Christian holidays but never seems to miss a Muslim one]

Also spelled "flakey", or "flake" in the noun form. [Also spelled 'baked' in the adjectival form, as in the noun 'head']

She told me she would send me her pictures, but it's been 3 months and she hasn't sent me shit. She's flaky as hell.

I think Sean Hannity is still waiting for an RSVP for that beer.

Banks are Overwhelmed with Real Estate Owned

More than 872,000 properties, almost double the number from before the housing catastrophe began in 2007, are owned by big banks and lenders, according to a story from The New York Times reproduced by CNBC here.

Another million foreclosures are expected this year, and millions more in years to come.

It not being their stock-in-trade, they say, the banks are finding it difficult to process them all in through foreclosure, as we're all too familiar, and processing them out through sales. Something about not having adequate staffing.

Gee, where would you think they could find people ready to work those jobs?

Meanwhile, Obama is enjoying being president. That's the important thing. He's drinking beer in Ireland today, reconnecting with his roots. Isn't that nice?

Obama is a leech . . .

. . . and the IRS can go audit itself.

Oh the delights we enjoy from PJ O'Rourke, here, who proposes a 35 percent tax on the federal budget, which will eliminate its current deficit. Problem solved!

Have another beer!

Sage Advice

Hermit hoar, in solemn cell,
Wearing out life's evening gray,
Smite thy bosom, sage, and tell,
Where is bliss? and which the way?

Thus I spoke, and speaking sighed--
Scarce repressed the starting tear--
When the smiling sage replied,
'Come, my lad, and drink some beer'.

-- Samuel Johnson --

Don't Drive . . . Drink!

h/t Theo

Security Theatre with Jeffrey Goldberg

If you haven't read "The Things He Carried" by Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic, November 2008, here, you should. 

He successfully sneaked the following past security and onto aircraft at major airports all across America:

pocketknives, matches from hotels in Muslim countries, dust masks, rope, cigarette lighters, an 8 oz. tube of toothpaste in a front pants pocket, box cutters, a Beerbelly wrapped around his stomach containing two cans of beer, and a variety of terrorist-themed souvenirs.

Oh yeah. He also tore up fake boarding passes in full view in a bathroom and no one reported him. And he used one to get on a plane with a 12 oz. bottle of saline no one verified was saline.