Obama's New Favorite Beer

Gold to oil ratio finishes the week at 19.84

Another week, another deformed metric. Oil remains on sale relative to gold because the money is moving to gold, a broader vote of "No confidence" in the global economy.

Gang Of Sixer, Sen. Chambliss, Proves His Liberalism

Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia always seemed a weak sister.

Now he's proved it once and for all, here, and here, by repudiating his pledge to vote against tax rate increases.

That's an alarming development for Republicans because it indicates that Chambliss is not just threatening to vote for more revenues from deduction limitations, but for more revenues from tax rate increases.

Look at it this way: a vote for tax increases is a vote to maintain the status quo, which can only mean more of the same, including further increased prices for commodities, which is at the center of Sen. Chambliss' unholy alliances.

Follow the money people! This guy doesn't care about the country. He only cares about himself!

"And A Fatherless Child Shall Lead Them"

A fatherless president for a fatherless nation

Americans narrowly re-elected a fatherless child to lead them as "broken families" begin to outnumber intact ones in the voter rolls.

Rebecca Hagelin for USNews.com, here, identifies the broken family trend creating today's voter:

Noted social science researcher Patrick Fagan points out that in 1950, for every 100 babies born in America, 12 were born to a broken family—that is, they were either born out of wedlock or to a family that would suffer divorce. Fast forward to today, and for every 100 babies born in America, over 60 are born to broken families.

The results of the latest census reported by Liz Peek for TheFiscalTimes.com, here, starkly depict the consequent disappearance of traditional America and its replacement by a broken one:

The 2010 Census reported that for the first time in our history, married couples make up less than half of all households. The traditional family with a mom, dad and children now constitute less than 20 percent of American households, down from 43 percent in 1950.

Whatever else may be said about Barack Obama, Americans have re-elected him to a large extent because he resembles them in the most elemental way which people like Mitt Romney and John McCain do not.

Let's Face It, Republicans Helped Create "The Takers"

It's time for a reality check. Republicans bear heavy responsibility for creating "the takers", the infamous 47% of households who pay no taxes.

The real reason Mitt Romney lost the election is because he couldn't get Reagan Democrats to turn out for him enthusiastically, people for whom dissing the whole idea behind the tax credit programs expanded by Reagan and Bush 43 to subsidize working families just like them sounded foreign coming from the mouth of a Republican candidate for president. I refer to the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit.

Reagan had made the former his answer to welfare dependency, and George W. Bush further expanded it and also doubled the latter, to the point that now, as the Tax Policy Center says here:

[T]he Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit . . . are the major reason many low-income working families avoid the income tax. About one-third of those who don’t pay are families with kids.

This New York Times graphic, using Tax Foundation data, shows how the percentage of non-taxpaying filers had grown by over 50% since 1986 through the end of the Bush presidency, and now under Obama has really ramped up another 50% so that since the time of the 1986 tax reform twice as many filers have no federal tax liability as did twenty-five years ago. If Obama has doubled down on anything, they were Republican ideas to begin with. To paraphrase an old saw, We sold them the rope they're hanging us with. 

What once seemed like benign Reagan era social props have grown into major federal welfare transfer payment programs for the lower and middle classes in America, which is why liberals like Tim Noah here deliberately don't focus on them in analyzing the takers, "the 47%". To do so mutes their point that these people still pay the regressive payroll tax, which the EITC offsets. But practiced long enough, these lower wage workers getting EITC payments every year until retirement will collect Social Security without having really contributed to it themselves, transforming it, for them, from a contribution based pension into pure welfare.

Democrats are more than happy to have Republicans do this dirty work for them in expanding the federal welfare state instead of just acting as they do in more somnolent times as mere tax collectors for it. During the next five years, these direct subsidies to families are projected to cost the Treasury over $90 billion each year. In 2011 alone there were over 26 million EITC claims costing the taxpayers nearly $59 billion. 

This issue goes to the heart of Mitt Romney's problem with the Republican Party: He had the temerity to point out the dependency practiced by too many Republicans. Unfortunately for Mitt Romney and the country, he had no constituency for this message, or at least not enough of one to get him over the top.

More than ever I suspect that this way of thinking is what was behind Mitt Romney's interest in "rectitude" in "equalizing" taxes when he was governor of Massachusetts, but also accounts for his statements distancing himself from the Reagan record in the 1990s when he ran against Sen. Ted Kennedy, just when Rep. Newt Gingrich was about to unleash The Contract With America. Reagan might have been an anti-communist conservative, but a fiscal conservative he was not, at least not in practice. That's what was really important to Romney at the time and obviously still animates him. But not his party which has made zero progress toward fiscal conservatism and has gone the other way.

Say what you will about Romney's social liberalism, it was his fiscal conservatism which alienated him not just from Democrats, but also from anyone receiving a big tax refund every spring.

A famous Democrat once said, "I didn't leave the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party left me." But a fiscal conservative can't say the same of the Republican Party . . . in living memory it's never been there.

(graphic here)

Obama 2012 Now Ties Bush 2004 With 50.73% Of Popular Vote

As all votes get tallied since the election two weeks ago on November 6, total votes cast in the presidential are now up to 125.53 million and Barack Obama achieves the dubious distinction of matching George W. Bush exactly in the percentage of the popular vote received.

Way to go, Brownie! 

Reed Galen And His Ilk Confuse Television With Reality

Well why not? His parents probably used television as a baby sitter. The video here shows Reed Galen sporting a ginormous wristwatch and more neurotic hand gestures per second than I can count.

Here are his recent remarks about television:

The ABC sitcom “Modern Family” is an excellent reference point for the problems of today’s Republican Party. One of the most popular shows on television, it features, among other things, a Latina immigrant and her son and a gay couple with an adopted daughter.

Those characters are not merely a paean to political correctness: They are the glue of the show. And for Americans under 45, they are not seen as objects of scorn or derision but a reflection -- albeit through Hollywood’s funhouse mirror -- of what the country looks like today.

Someday someone is going to kick Reed Galen's ass but good, or his kids' ass if he actually has any, or something worse, which they'll deserve but won't assimilate because it's already too late for them.

Obviously his baby boomer parents never taught him anything, which is why the country looks like it does today, and deserves everything it's going to get.

Reed Galen formerly served in the losing John McCain for president campaign.

63% Of Congress Voted For Bailouts, 75% Of Democrats

Here.

I hate to quote myself, but someone's got to do it.

Paul Krugman Really Wants To Increase Taxes On The Middle Class

Fair taxation looks like the rates of the 1950s, says Paul Krugman, here:

"America in the 1950s made the rich pay their fair share."

What he's not telling you, however, is that America made the poor pay their "fair share" too in the 1950s, which today they are not doing. Even liberals agree 47% of the American people today don't pay any income taxes whatsoever. But at the 1950s rates, nearly 60% of today's workers, almost 90 million out of 151 million total American workers, would actually be paying income taxes, and paying income taxes big time, at a marginal rate of 20% instead of the low Bush rates of 10% and 15%, if they pay any income taxes at all.

Can you say, "Big middle class tax increase if Krugman got his way"?

The tax rates Krugman refers to come from the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. If those rates were in effect today, the rich at Obama's beloved $200,000 a year level would be in the 59% bracket instead of in his 39.5% bracket, which makes Obama look like not simply a conservative by comparison with Krugman, but a reactionary by comparison with Bill Clinton.

More to the point, under Truman's rates in 1952 applied to today "the rich" would be in the 66% bracket. So high marginal tax rates on "the rich" actually came down from 66% under Truman to 59% under Eisenhower. Krugman is disingenous in portraying 1950s rates as some draconian trend to punish the rich when in fact Eisenhower was practicing the art of the possible in his time, trying to lower taxation while still trying to pay off the massive debt accumulated during World War II. Compare that to today when the chief liberal sticking point on taxes is the difference between the top marginal rate under Bush of 35% and the top marginal rate under Clinton of 39.5%.

Almost never was so much made of so little.

One critical difference between Obama's stated position and Paul Krugman's, however, is that while the president's marginal rate of 39.5% would remain the last rate on the ladder, Krugman would expand the ladder with additional marginal rates all the way up to 91% as was done in the Revenue Code of 1954.

Only a fanatic would think that that's part of what's possible today. Not even Obama thinks that.

Yet.

That Light At The End Of The Tunnel?

Better run. Here comes the ObamaCare train.

Was Socialist France The Model For ObamaCare's 50 Worker Rule?

Mike Tanner for The New York Post, here:

Under ObamaCare, employers with 50 or more full-time workers must provide health insurance for all their workers, paying at least 65% of the cost of a family policy or 85% of the cost of an individual plan. Moreover, the insurance must meet the federal government’s requirements in terms of what benefits are included, meaning that many businesses that offer insurance to their workers today will have to change to new, more expensive plans. ...

Under the circumstances, how likely is the company to hire that 50th worker? Or, if a company already has 50 workers, isn’t the company likely to lay off one employee? Or cut hours and make some employees part time, thus getting under the 50 employee cap? Indeed, a study by Mercer found that 18% of companies were likely to do exactly that. It’s worth noting that in France, another country where numerous government regulations kick in at 50 workers, there are 1,500 companies with 48 employees and 1,600 with 49 employees, but just 660 with 50 and only 500 with 51.

Tanner might have emphasized that as companies become 49ers because of ObamaCare, the workers will increasingly become 29ers, part-timers who are exempted from coverage under ObamaCare because they are deliberately kept to 29 hours per week.

After being 99ers for so long, that's about as good as it's going to get.

To The Associated Press, Sadomasochism Is Just A "Subculture"

Crown Roast of Wiener

Seen here:

[Castro District] Supervisor Scott Wiener's proposal would make it illegal for a person over the age of 5 to "expose his or her genitals, perineum or anal region on any public street, sidewalk, street median, parklet or plaza" or while using public transit.

A first offense would carry a maximum penalty of a $100 fine, but prosecutors would have authority to charge a third violation as a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $500 fine and a year in jail. Exemptions would be made for participants at permitted street fairs and parades, such as the city's annual gay pride event and the Folsom Street Fair, which celebrates sadomasochism and other sexual subcultures.

Since about 1994 sadomasochism et cetera have not been considered mental illnesses by medical authorities when such deviancies are "consensual". Evidently the public in San Francisco no longer consents to the regular assaults against their eyes from assorted naked exhibitionists of deviancy, which should on that logic make such malefactors henceforth technically mentally ill once again.

Wow, wasn't that easy?

Accordingly we should now be able to say that, since libertarians advocate freedom for such deviancies but habitually fail at the polls, libertarians also are mentally ill because they do not enjoy the consent of the governed. 

The followers of libertarian Jude Wanniski continue to assert that the electorate always gets it right, so since the electorate repudiates libertarianism time and time again libertarians must be mentally ill.

It remains unknown if libertarianism ever was considered a mental disorder by authorities, however.

Needless to say, the date from which civilization may be said to have ended now has been postponed thanks to San Francisco Castro District Supervisor Scott Wiener.

Great name.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Wittiest Line Of The Week Past

"The generals are being led by their privates."

-- Rush Limbaugh

Thousands Of French Protest Genitally Modified Marriage

Story here:

Marc, a 60-year-old Parisian who said he was a fervent Catholic, called the government hypocritical. “They all have wives and children. So they understand perfectly well what kind of deviations would result from the approval of gay marriages.”

He was holding a sign that read “No to genitally modified marriage”.

Austin, MN, Hires Part-Timer To Save $18K On "Benefits"

"Benefits", as in health insurance.

The guy will work 30 hours per week and make $60K a year, but will get no benefits.

Story here:

He will not receive fringe benefits of pension, health insurance, life insurance or disability insurance. ... With the hiring of Erichson as a flex-time employee, the HRA [Housing and Redevelopment Authority] will save about a total of $38,000 ($20,000 in salary and $18,000 in benefits). The arrangement is planned to be revisited after one year of employment.

Yeah, at which time he'll be cut to 29 hours per week.

Capisce?

Community College Cuts Part-Timers' Hours To Avoid ObamaCare Costs

The Cheerleaders Against ObamaCare

The Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania will cut 400 part-timers' hours to less than 30 hours per week to save $6 million in costs mandated by ObamaCare.

Story here.

Companies everywhere are in revolt against ObamaCare, which mandates coverage be offered when full-time workers exceed 49 in number, but full-time now "redefined" as 30 hours worked on average per week instead of 34 or 35. Leftism is nothing if not based on constant redefinition of reality.

So the path is clear if you're an employer: reduce full-time positions to 49 and part-time everyone else to no more than 29 hours per week. The result in America will be fewer and fewer full-time jobs and inadequate part-time jobs for more and more people, many of whom will be unable to afford to buy insurance through one-size-fits-all ObamaCare and will be thrown into state Medicaid programs where they will receive healthcare which you wouldn't wish on Fido or Morris.

ObamaCare is an ugly war on jobs, and is reminiscent of nothing so much as Stalin's war on the Kulaks of Ukraine, whom he starved to death when collectivization failed to produce the "mandated" amount of wheat. People will not begin to appreciate the comparison I suppose until our government decides the size threshold of companies must be lowered to, say, 39 full-time employees from 49 to get ObamaCare to "work", and to, say, 20 hours per week from 29 to mandate "more coverage". But by then business will already be flat on its back and the size of the proletariat will have swelled. Single payer can't be far behind.

They are saying out there that Romney lost because he focused on too many numbers, but Obama is using mandated numbers to slowly crucify you.

UGLY.

What A Shock. Senator Elect "Independent" Angus King Of Maine To Caucus With Dems

The Boston Globe has the story here about the two-term former Governor's victory:

Republican-aligned groups spent $3.7 million in a losing attempt to defeat King. The National Republican Senatorial Committee dumped $1.3 million, while Crossroads GPS spent about $1 million.

The Democrat in the race for Senate in Maine, Cynthia Dill, who thought she was running against Todd Akin of Missouri, came in a very distant third with 13% of the vote behind the Republican in distant second with about 31% of the vote to King's 53%.

King's enthusiasms appear to be fingerprinting and windmills.

Your Food Costs More Because Of Obama's Stalinist EPA Ethanol Policy

Feed prices have skyrocketed as a result of drought and dedication of ever larger portions of corn harvests to fuel production instead of for feed, and it will get much much worse according to this in depth story in The Detroit News:

This year, the Renewable Fuel Standard requires the use of 13.2 billion gallons of corn ethanol, the production of which could require using more than half the country's corn crop, up from 5 billion gallons in 2007.

Next year, the standard increases to 13.9 billion gallons. By 2022, the U.S. must use 36 billion gallons of biofuels, though 21 billion gallons are supposed to be from advanced cellulosic ethanol.

This Will Get Your Account At Twitter Deleted

Story here.

Boycott United Parcel Service For Defunding Scouting

UPS is cutting off the Boy Scouts over homosexuality, as noted here:

The UPS Foundation, which gave more than $85,000 to the Boy Scouts in 2011, announced this week that it is cutting off the Scouts because they won’t allow openly homosexual scoutmasters or members. Millions of boys and men who have been involved with the Scouts support their moral stand against normalizing homosexuality.