Income Inequality

It's enough to make you wonder if the left's current bugaboo, "income inequality", is as made up as their phony "war on women":

The Left is at war with economic reality. The intellectual poverty of the Left — which is also a moral poverty — is evident in the fact that its leaders are much more intensely interested in incomes at the top than those at the bottom. Examples are not difficult to come by: Senator Elizabeth Warren is visibly agitated by Jamie Dimon’s recent raise, the AFL-CIO maintains a website dedicated to executive compensation, Barack Obama avows that “at a certain point, you’ve made enough money,” et cetera ad nauseam. The entire rhetoric of inequality is simply an excuse to rage about incomes at the top, a generation’s worth of progressive shenanigans having failed to do much about those at the bottom.

It is the case that incomes at the top have gone up while those in the middle and at the bottom have stagnated or declined in real terms. It is not the case that incomes at the top have gone up because those in the middle and at the bottom have stagnated or declined, nor is it the case that incomes in the middle and at the bottom have stagnated or declined because incomes at the top have gone up. There is a relationship between the two phenomena, but it is not the relationship that progressives imagine it to be...

The American rich are not getting richer because of the American tax code. Income inequality in the United States is increasing. It is also increasing in Sweden. And Norway. And Finland. And the Netherlands. And Canada. And Germany. Pick your European welfare state and throw in Japan, too, and you’ll find much the same story.

Incomes are up at the top, stagnating or down elsewhere — but there is no “because” between those two facts.  link

The left's only reply to this is, "But, but, the Koch Brothers!  And George Bush!  And racism!"

Wack-A-Mole

Obamacare is such a disaster that, if it weren't so serious, I'd have to laugh at the stupidity of anyone who ever had a positive thing to say about it.  It has so many problems--all Democrat-made, I point out, since not a single Republican in either house of Congress voted for it--that solving them is like playing Wack-a-mole.  You try to fix (wack) one, another one pops right up somewhere else.

It's enough to drive even a good liberal crazy:

It's getting difficult and slinking toward impossible to defend the Affordable Care Act. The latest blow to Democratic candidates, liberal activists, and naïve columnists like me came Monday from the White House, which announced yet another delay in the Obamacare implementation.

For the second time in a year, certain businesses were given more time before being forced to offer health insurance to most of their full-time workers. Employers with 50 to 99 workers were given until 2016 to comply, two years longer than required by law. During a yearlong grace period, larger companies will be required to insure fewer employees than spelled out in the law.

Not coincidentally, the delays punt implementation beyond congressional elections in November, which raises the first problem with defending Obamacare: The White House has politicized its signature policy.

The win-at-all-cost mentality helped create a culture in which a partisan-line vote was deemed sufficient for passing transcendent legislation. It spurred advisers to develop a dishonest talking point—"If you like your health plan, you'll be able to keep your health plan." And political expediency led Obama to repeat the line, over and over and over again, when he knew, or should have known, it was false.

Defending the ACA became painfully harder when online insurance markets were launched from a multi-million-dollar website that didn't work, when autopsies on the administration's actions revealed an epidemic of incompetence that began in the Oval Office and ended with no accountability.
Then officials started fudging numbers and massaging facts to promote implementation, nothing illegal or even extraordinary for this era of spin. But they did more damage to the credibility of ACA advocates.

Finally, there are the ACA rule changes—at least a dozen major adjustments, without congressional approval.

Instapundit posted this picture today:

Sums it up pretty well so far.

Melange Post

Conservatives are good people.

Under Obamacare, less work is actually good!  If having fewer people working is so great, why does the president periodically "pivot" to jobs and the economy?  Newspeak is alive and well amongst our (stingy) friends on the left.

Suspensions at schools in Sacramento County:

Schools in the Sacramento region suspended about 17,000 middle and high school students last year - about one of every 10 pupils, new state data show.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/02/06/6135702/see-suspension-rates-for-every.html#storylink=cpy

Classroom Rules

You know these have to be entertaining if the author felt compelled to add the following caveat at the end of the post:

Addendum, To the Senders of All That Hate Mail About How I’m an Embarrassment to the Profession: If you are so dim and humorless that you are offended by this post, please know that I am a young, vibrant teacher who loves my students. Teaching isn’t just a job for me; it’s my identity, and I will probably teach until I am mentally or physically unable to do so. Teaching has given meaning to my life unlike anything else I’ve ever done, and even on difficult days, I have hope that I have made a positive difference in my students’ lives. When I start to lose hope, I go to a red binder on top of my bookshelf that is filled with notes of thanks. This post could have been written only by someone who knows and loves kids well. If you can’t see that, then congratulations on LACKING A SENSE OF HUMOR and taking yourself RIDICULOUSLY GODDAMN SERIOUSLY. I’m just thankful we don’t know each other in real life.

When The Facts Contradict Your Expectations...

...believe the facts:

Close to a billion dollars have been spent to provide relationship counseling to low-income parents writes Tom Bartlett in The Great Mom & Dad Experiment in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The hope is that ”better partners make better parents"...

However, it doesn’t work, according to a three-year study of eight programs in different states.

Family Expectations, which grew out of welfare reform, enjoys broad bipartisan support, writes Bartlett. “Plus it just feels right. Spend time with these couples—the teenage mother with a newborn on her shoulder, the middle-aged dad dangling his keys just beyond his infant’s reach—and you can’t help but root for them and for relationship education.”

Family instability is terrible for kids. But this doesn’t seem to work.

Kinda like Head Start.

Which Group Is The Larger Sex Offender Against Children, Teachers or Catholic Priests?

According to this story posted at CBS News--hardly an anti-teacher, right-wing site--teachers make the priests look like pikers:

Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft looked into the problem, and the first thing that came to her mind when Education Week reported on the study were the daily headlines about the Catholic Church.

"[T]hink the Catholic Church has a problem?" she said. "The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests"...

As the National Catholic Register's reporter Wayne Laugesen points out, the federal report said 422,000 California public-school students would be victims before graduation — a number that dwarfs the state's entire Catholic-school enrollment of 143,000....

Without data, all you have is an opinion.  If someone can find fault with the data, I'll listen to them, but otherwise this report is damning.  (Priests?  Damning?  Get it?  Sometimes I slay myself!)

No, I'm Not Letting Boomer Out

This is the view out my front window a few minutes ago....

click to enlarge

Leno Jabs at President Obama

I like the one suggesting that by referring to it as the Affordable Care Act, now even President Obama is trying to distance himself from Obamacare :-)
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/02/113681-watch-jay-lenos-best-comedic-jabs-president-obama-3-minutes-non-stop-thrashing/

Slapping Both

Sometimes I enjoy reading The Economist just for the entertaining style of some of the writing.  For example, the following comes from page 31 of the February 8th edition at the end of an article on the Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate:

Most Americans reject young-earth creationism.  But the share of Republicans who believe that humans evolved fell from 54% in 2009 to 43% last year.  Democrats, do not look so smug; your lot are likelier to believe in UFOs, ghosts and astrology.  Also, that the moon landings were faked, that the CIA introduced crack to inner cities and that America's government conspired in the September 11th attacks.  It's enough to make an ape weep.

Liar, Hypocrite, or Both?

The biggest problems that we're facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that's what I intend to reverse when I'm president of the United States of America."
— Senator Barack Obama, March 31, 2008

Read more here.

Not Just A Democratic "War On Women"

Earlier today, the NAACP asked lawmakers to sit out the vote on the expulsion of Henriquez, a member of the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus and of the advocacy organization.

“The NAACP, New England Area Conference (NEAC), respectfully requests that the Massachusetts House of Representatives abstain from voting in the matter of the expulsion of Representative Carlos Henriquez, expected to come before the House today,” the organization said in a letter. “In the alternative, Members of the House are asked to vote against the expulsion of their colleague.”

The NAACP notes that Henriquez’s criminal conviction for assaulting a woman is under appeal, and states that the Legislature currently has “no rule for expulsion that applies to misdemeanor convictions.”

“Representative Henriquez was duly elected by the electorate and there is no legal basis upon which the House of Representatives can properly act,” the NAACP said in its statement. “Delaying any decision on the House Ethics Committee’s recommendation at this time would allow for a fair process to take place, as required under the law.”

Why was this man expelled from the Massachusetts legislature?

Henriquez has continued to insist he is innocent of holding down and punching a then-girlfriend after she wouldn’t have sex with him in July of 2012. He was found guilty last month and sentenced to six months in the Middlesex County House of Corrections in Billerica.

Speaker of the House Robert A. DeLeo, speaking in a statement following the expulsion vote, defended the committee's probe into the assault case as an "independent investigation" which included reviewing 11 police reports, 78 exhibits and nearly 1,000 pages of trial testimony...

The House, (Speaker) DeLeo said, "found that a representative could not serve as a member while incarcerated in jail after being convicted of two charges of a serious nature. With that vote completed, the House will now move forward to address the budget, gun safety, domestic violence and other important legislative matters."

What possible reason could the NAACP have for not wanting this legislator expelled?  They must be misogynists!

Idiots

The following was sent to me in an email today.  I don't know anything about the supposed author, but I agree with the sentiment enough to repost it here:

By Junius P. Long

Food For Thought:



If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for being in the country illegally ...

Then you might live in a country run by idiots.



If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion ...

Then you might live in a country run by idiots.



If you have to show identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a library book, but you don't have to show ID for the right to vote on who runs the government ...

Then you might live in a country run by idiots.



If the government wants to ban stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines with more than ten rounds, but gives 20 F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new leaders in Egypt ...

Then you might live in a country run by idiots.



If, in the largest city of the country, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not a 24-ounce soda because the government says a 24-ounce sugary drink might make you fat ...

Then you might live in a country run by idiots.



If an 80-year-old woman can be stripped searched by the TSA but a woman in a hi-jab is only subject to having her neck and head searched because of her religion ...

Then you might live in a country run by idiots.



If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more ...

Then you might live in a country run by idiots.



If a seven year old boy can be thrown out of school for saying his teacher’s "cute," but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable ...

Then you might live in a country run by idiots.



If hard work and success is rewarded with higher taxes and more government intrusion, while not working is rewarded with EBT cards, WIC checks, Medicaid, subsidized housing, and free cell phones...

Then you might live in a country run by idiots.



If the government's plan for getting people back to work is to reward them with 99 weeks of unemployment checks with no requirement to prove they applied for it ...

Then you might live in a country run by idiots.



If being stripped of the ability to defend yourself makes you more "safe" according to the government ...

Then you might live in a country run by idiots.



If you are offended by this article, then I'll bet you voted for the idiots who are running and "ruining" our great country!

These Are The Values I Learned In The Army

And these words come from a squid!

The oath you took is clear; to support and defend the Constitution, not the institution-- not the Army, not the Corps, not the division, not the brigade, not the battalion, not the company, not the platoon, and not the squad—but the nation.

I learned that leadership is hard.  Karl von Clausewitz once said that “everything in war is easy, but the easy things are difficult.”  Leadership sounds easy in the books, but it is quite difficult in real life.  I learned that leadership is difficult because it is a human interaction and nothing, nothing is more daunting, more frustrating more complex than trying to lead men and women in tough times. Those officers that do it well earn your respect, because doing it poorly is common place.  You will be challenged to do it well.  

I learned that taking care of soldiers is not about coddling them.  It is about challenging them .  Establishing a standard of excellence and holding them accountable for reaching it.  I learned that good officers lead from the front.  I can’t count the times that I saw Petraeus, without body armor, walking the streets of Mosul, Baghdad or Ramadi, to share the dangers with his men and to show the enemy he wasn’t afraid.

Or McChrystal, jocking-up to go on a long patrol with his Rangers or SEALs in Afghanistan; Dempsey on a spur ride in Iraq; Austin at the head of his Division during the invasion of Iraq; Odierno, cigar in mouth, rumbling through the streets of Basrah; Rodriguez and Dailey always center stage during the tough fights in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

I learned that if you are in combat, move to where the action is the hottest .  Spend time with the soldiers being miserable, exhausted and scared.  If you’re a Blackhawk pilot or a tank commander, spend some time on the flight line or in the motor pool with the maintainers and the wrench turners. Whatever position or branch you are in, find the toughest, most dangerous, job in your unit and go do it.

I learned that you won’t get a lot of thanks in return.  I learned that you shouldn’t expect it.  Your soldiers are doing the tough job every day, but I guarantee you, you will learn a lot about your troops and they will learn a lot about you.

I learned that the great leaders know how to fail.  In the course of your Army career you will likely fail and fail often.  Nothing so steels you for battle like failure. No officer I watched got it right, every time.  But the great ones know that when they fail, they must pick themselves up, learn from their mistakes and move on.  

Rudyard Kipling, the great British storyteller, poet and soldier once wrote, in part, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowances for their doubting too. If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same. Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it and which is more-- you’ll be a man my son.”

If you can’t stomach failure, then you will never be a great leader. I learned that great Army officers are risk takers, but the greatest risk is not on the battlefield, but in standing up for what’s right.   

I will be honest here.   The day I raised my right hand and swore the oath, I was in for 20--I was going to be a lifer.  Less than a year later I was counting the days until I could legally resign.  The army didn't live up to West Point's standards of integrity.  Since getting out I've learned that much of the world doesn't, either, but the wise and the lucky will find places where integrity is still valued, and will go there.

I never served in combat; I signed out of the army the day before Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.  However, in garrison as in combat, the good leader will go to where the "suck" is in order to earn the respect of his/her troops.  I didn't do it every time, but I did it often.  I wasn't the perfect leader, but I have no reason to feel ashamed of my overall performance; given the opportunity, though, there are a few of specific instances where, if I could do it over, I'd act differently.

No Jobs, No Fresh Vegetables, Just A Vacant Lot

Trader Joe's was chased out of a Portland neighborhood, why--because it wasn't black enough, or something?

Trader Joe’s wanted to build a new store in Portland, Oregon. Instead of heading to a tony neighborhood downtown or towards the suburbs, the popular West Coast grocer chose a struggling area of Northeast Portland.

The company selected two acres along Martin Luther King Blvd. that had been vacant for decades. It seemed like the perfect place to create jobs, improve customer options and beautify the neighborhood. City officials, the business community, and residents all seemed thrilled with the plan. Then some community organizers caught wind of it.

The fact that most members of the Portland African-American Leadership Forum didn’t live in the neighborhood was beside the point. “This is a people’s movement for African-Americans and other communities, for self-determination,” member Avel Gordly said in a press conference. Even the NAACP piled on, railing against the project as a “case study in gentrification.” (The area is about 25 percent African-American.)

After a few months of racially tinged accusations and angry demands, Trader Joe’s decided it wasn’t worth the hassle...

Hours after Trader Joe’s pulled out, PAALF leaders arrived at a previously scheduled press conference trying to process what just happened. The group re-issued demands that the now-cancelled development include affordable housing, mandated jobs based on race, and a small-business slush fund. Instead, the only demand being met is two fallow acres and a lot of anger from the people who actually live nearby.

I'm reminded of a quote on my Favorite Quotes list, and it applies to PAALF and their ilk:

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule it.”
--H. L. Mencken

I'm sure the PAALF folks will tell you they've done a great, selfless service for the community in question.

This Can't Be. Obamacare Runs Perfectly Here In Utopian California.

The Los Angeles Times is hardly a conservative newspaper:

After overcoming website glitches and long waits to get Obamacare, some patients are now running into frustrating new roadblocks at the doctor's office.

A month into the most sweeping changes to healthcare in half a century, people are having trouble finding doctors at all, getting faulty information on which ones are covered and receiving little help from insurers swamped by new business.

Experts have warned for months that the logjam was inevitable. But the extent of the problems is taking by surprise many patients — and even doctors — as frustrations mount.

Aliso Viejo resident Danielle Nelson said Anthem Blue Cross promised half a dozen times that her oncologists would be covered under her new policy. She was diagnosed last year with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and discovered a suspicious lump near her jaw in early January.

But when she went to her oncologist's office, she promptly encountered a bright orange sign saying that Covered California plans are not accepted.

"I'm a complete fan of the Affordable Care Act, but now I can't sleep at night," Nelson said. "I can't imagine this is how President Obama wanted it to happen."

Maybe someone should have read the bill before it was passed so we'd have known what was in it.  I can recall Candidate Obama promising that all bills would be posted online before--well, we know what his promises are worth.

On the upside, this vignette turns a popular saying about socialism on its head.  "Socialism means standing in line" isn't true here, because these people can't even find a line to wait in.

So What If Others Feel Bad?

Where/how did this view ever come into being, that we can't reward the good because it makes the bad feeeeeeeel bad about themselves?  What kind of warped view is that?

Students who earned straight A’s at Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring have been invited to a school dance Tuesday, a celebration that starts during the final period of the school day and includes a DJ, free pizza and a game room.

Students with B’s and C’s may join in later, when classes are over and pizza is no longer served. Students with lower grades are not invited at all.

Eastern’s “Academic Achieve­ment Celebration” is not an entirely new idea in education: Schools commonly reward student success. But the idea of a middle-school party that sets students apart by letter grades — leaving out 306 of the school’s 865 students, or 35 percent of the student body — has raised questions at Eastern and beyond.

Try that belief on the athletes some time, see how much sense it makes.  You know why we don't do stupid things like this, or like affirmative action, in athletics?  Because athletics is important, which goes to show you how highly some people place the education of children against the backdrop of their own prejudices and ideologies.

Global Warming Oversold?

Ya think?

Will the overselling of climate change lead to a new scientific dark age? That’s the question being posed in the latest issue of an Australian literary journal, Quadrant, by Garth Paltridge, one of the world’s most respected atmospheric scientists.

Paltridge was a Chief Research Scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).  The latter is Australia’s equivalent of the National Science Foundation, our massive Federal Laboratory network, and all the governmental agency science branches rolled into one.

Paltridge lays out the well-known uncertainties in climate forecasting. These include our inability to properly simulate clouds that are anything like what we see in the real world, the embarrassing lack of average surface warming now in its 17th year, and the fumbling (and contradictory) attempts to explain it away.

While the politically correct name for the last 17 years is “the pause,” it’s much more like the P-wave, which reflects the crustal slippage that occurs before the shaking (and tsunami, if beneath the sea) of a catastrophic earthquake. Humans can’t feel them, but many animals can, which is why birds alight shortly before all hell breaks loose.

Climate scientists have been profoundly defensive about the known problems. Paltridge elegantly explains that this has to be the case, and describes the likely horrific consequences when the day of reckoning finally arrives.

That day is coming closer, because, as Paltridge notes, people are catching on:

“…the average man in the street, a sensible chap who by now can smell the signs of an oversold environmental campaign from miles away, is beginning to suspect that it is politics rather than science which is driving the issue.”

The scientific establishment has painted itself into a corner over global warming. Paltridge’s explanations for this are depressingly familiar to those who read these columns.

Science changed dramatically in the 1970s, when the reward structure in the profession began to revolve around the acquisition of massive amounts of taxpayer funding that was external to the normal budgets of the universities and federal laboratories. In climate science, this meant portraying the issue in dire terms, often in alliance with environmental advocacy organizations. Predictably, scientists (and their institutions) became addicted to the wealth, fame, and travel in the front of the airplane....

I know this bothers some lefties, but scientists are people too--with all the foibles we mere mortals have.  

Some People Just Hate America

Those "international students"--do you think they came here because this country sucks?  I'll bet their countrymen back home laugh at the idea presented by the school administration:

Parents and students expressed outrage on Facebook on Monday after administrators at Fort Collins High School nixed a student idea to host an upcoming spirit day called “’Merica Day.”

The situation caught the attention of Fox News and has some community members saying the school should be “ashamed of their un-American PC censorship” of a day students intended to celebrate a country that’s home to people of diverse backgrounds and origins.



“I can see both sides, but I think it’s kind of absurd that we can’t celebrate the country we’re in — whether you’re from it or just visiting. It’s a country,” said Ellie Goodspeed, a senior and treasurer of the school’s student council.


Goodspeed said the juniors are in charge of planning themes for each day of spirit week, celebrated during the week of Valentine’s Day. They suggested “’Merica Day,” but administrators, she said, thought it could be offensive to the school’s international students.


According to a statement sent Monday night to the Coloradoan by Poudre School District spokeswoman Danielle Clark: “Building administrators met with the students to discuss the inconsistency of this day versus the other planned theme days, including PJ day and Twin day. ”

As I've said so many times, some people's minds are so open that their brain falls out.

Math In The Real World

What would Watson say about this?

A talented “Jeopardy!” contestant has found a new strategy for winning the game, but his unique playing style has die-hard fans of the quiz show up in arms.

Arthur Chu is a three-time "Jeopardy!" champ who has won the competition using game theory. Instead of going for the easy questions first, he plays by jumping around the board in search of the coveted Daily Doubles. He also works to keep points away from his opponents.

“I don’t think I’m particularly smart,” Chu told The New York Post. “It was all about looking for the right strategy for studying and the right strategy for playing the game and drilling myself on it until it became second nature."

Boldface happily added by your RotLC host :)

"If You Think Health Care Is Expensive Now..."

...wait till you see how much it costs when it's "free":

THE HILL: CBO: ObamaCare Slowing Growth, Contributing To Job Losses. “The non-partisan group’s report found that the healthcare law’s negative effects on the economy will be ‘substantially larger’ than what it had previously anticipated. The CBO is now estimating that the law will reduce labor force compensation by 1 percent from 2017 to 2024, twice the reduction it previously had projected.”

UPDATE: This must have been painful for Chuck Todd to write: “CBO essentially reaffirms GOP talking points on health care. Says it will cost jobs, feel as if it raises taxes and contributes to deficit.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Flashback: FactCheck.Org: A ‘Job-Killing’ Law? House Republicans misrepresent the facts. Experts predict the health care law will have little effect on employment. So were these “fact-checkers” right about anything? Or were they just engaged to defend the Obama narrative until after the election?

Lefties must hate it when those heartless conservatives, using all their hard science and difficult math, as opposed to rainbows and unicorn farts, are right.