Right Mind

Barack Obama Quote of the Day

"I actually would like to see a relatively light touch when it comes to the government."

—US President Barack Obama.

Really! You don’t say!

Sotomayor may sue SCOTUS for overturning New Haven ruling

From the Washington Examiner:

President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, announced today she may sue her potential future colleagues for racial bias over yesterday's 5-4 ruling that overturned her own decision in the New Haven fire fighters discrimination lawsuit.

The Supreme Court ruled in Ricci v. DeStefano Monday that an employer could not throw out the results of a promotion exam simply for fear of a lawsuit from racial minorities who fared poorly on the test.

Sotomayor accused the high court's "Constitutional literalists" of bias and an "abject lack of wisdom" in tossing out the 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' prior ruling in the case which she joined.

"In their majority ruling in Ricci, Justices Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas failed to take into account the cultural forces exerted on a Latina appeals court judge," said Sotomayor. "Historical, entrenched institutional prejudice can cause a person, even a wise Latina, to make emotional decisions which, while consistent with the cultural norms of the aggrieved ethnic group, might not comport entirely with the specific language of the Constitution -- a document of questionable practical value due to the Anglo-Saxon cultural bias of its authors."

Sotomayor said she hopes the threat of a lawsuit will be enough to persuade the Supreme Court to reverse its ruling.

"The court's rejection of my opinion proves, ipso facto, the kind of bias that President Obama will eliminate by placing me on the court," she said. "The all-male, non-Latino court majority lacks the sympathy to set aside the cold rationality of the Constitution for the good of the people." 

Japan's unemployment rate hit a six-year high.

More signs that the recovery is a long-way off.

And trying to spend our way into prosperity is just plain stupid. It will only lengthen the recovery time — and burden our children with taxes for the rest of their lives.

Via Reuters:

Weakness in the U.S. housing sector and consumer sentiment, along with a stall in bank lending in the euro zone, on Tuesday underscored any global economic recovery remained some distance off.

As further evidence of global weakness, Japan's unemployment rate hit a six-year high.

Prices of U.S. single-family homes fell in April from March, but the pace of the decline moderated, according to Standard & Poor's/Case Shiller home price indexes. An index of 20 metropolitan areas dipped 0.6 percent.

"Housing is going to be less of a drag on the economy, but it won't be adding to (growth) as it traditionally does," said John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Securities in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The collapse of the U.S. housing sector was a key contributor to the global economic crisis, now more than 1-1/2 years old. In the past, housing has often helped lead the U.S. economy out of recession, now 18 months old, but that seems unlikely this time.

And in a discouraging signal from the American consumer, U.S. consumer confidence unexpectedly fell in June after two straight months of gains. The Conference Board, an industry group, said its index of consumer attitudes dropped to 49.3 from 54.8 in May. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a reading of 55.0 for June.

Could it be that confidence has fallen because of all the big spending — and looming taxes — coming out of D.C. ?

More Americans See Democratic Party as “Too Liberal”

Recent polls of interest from the Gallup Organization:

More Americans See Democratic Party as “Too Liberal”: Currently, 46% of Americans say the Democratic Party is “too liberal,” up from 39% last year and slightly more than the 43% who say the Republican Party is “too conservative.” Still, more Americans say the Democrats’ views are “about right” (42%) than say this about the Republicans (34%).

Don't Get That College Degree! Intellectually And Financially, Studies Show It's Not Worth It

From the N.Y. Post:

The four-year college degree has come to cost too much and prove too little. It's now a bad deal for the average student, family, employer, professor and taxpayer.

A student who secures a degree is increasingly unlikely to make up its cost, despite higher pay, and the employer who requires a degree puts faith in a system whose standards are slipping. Too many professors who are bound to degree teaching can't truly profess; they don't proclaim loudly the things they know but instead whisper them to a chosen few, whom they must then accommodate with inflated grades. Worst of all, bright citizens spend their lives not knowing the things they ought to know, because they've been granted liberal-arts degrees for something far short of a liberal-arts education.

I'm not arguing against higher learning but for it -- and against the degree system that stands in its way.

…

College degrees bring higher income, but at today's cost they can't make up the savings they consume and the debt they add early in the life of a typical student.

HT: Chris W.

Meaning and Language

Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

'Read My Lips' -- the Redux

Do you recall that while campaigning, Obama made a pledge in no uncertain terms that he wouldn't raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year?

But now with health care on the table, the White House is saying that middle class tax hikes are in order.

This video is well worth watching. The press corps (!) is openly laughing at the president's press secretary when he tries to backtrack on Obama's pledge. 

Even the MSM knows they are being fleeced.

HT: Andy Roth, Club for Growth

Michael Tanner Quote of the Day

Do you remember how, during the debate over proposals to create personal accounts for Social Security, opponents called the $1 trillion transition cost intolerable? Now, a $1 trillion floor for health care reform is seen as a sign of success. Says something about priorities, doesn’t it?

—Michael Tanner, Cato

As I’ve said before: the spending is only unreasonable when it’s coming from the other political party.

Pox on both their houses!

Young Obama

Support for Federal Reserve Audit Increasing

HR 1207 has been gaining considerable momentum in the House. It currently has 244 co-sponsors.

The Senate companion bill was introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders.

With the Fed now $2.3 trillion in the red, it’s about time.

HT: Mark Calabria, Cato

Obama’s Back-Door Tax Hike on American Workers

See if you can follow or even defend the President’s logic on this one.

From the Washington Post:

The average citizen had to conclude that most big U.S. companies are tax cheats. Only a dedicated student of accounting would figure out that the term “tax haven” as defined by the Treasury Department means any country with a lower corporate tax rate than America’s, which is all countries except Japan.

The reality is that the administration is lashing out against perfectly legal behavior. A U.S. company that makes money in Country X pays Country X’s taxes on that money. If the company ever brings the money back to the United States, it must also pay the tax that would be due under America’s higher rate. The administration argues that because the United States has almost the world’s highest corporate tax rate (and even Japan’s is only a fraction of a point higher), current rules create incentives for U.S. companies to operate anywhere but here, at the cost of U.S. jobs. The White House therefore proposes charging all American companies full freight — the whole difference between their overseas taxes and the U.S. corporate rate — on all their profits as soon as they’re earned, no matter where. This measure, in their minds, would bring jobs home.

If the logic eludes you, you’re not alone. The bottom-line effect of the change would be a steep tax hike — more money vacuumed out of corporate coffers. Would that make U.S. companies competing in a global economy more inclined to hire additional workers in the highly expensive United States? The answer is clear. It’s why Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said recently that if the change is enacted, “we’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.”
…
Tax-wise, a company is just a bunch of incorporation papers; all taxes are paid by people — customers, shareholders and employees. And guess who would bear most of the burden of these tax increases? It’s the U.S. employees of the companies being taxed.

Research has shown that when business taxes are raised by a dollar, 70 to 92 cents comes out of employees’ pay. When workers wake up to that fact, they may decide this is one time they don’t want the White House beating up on business.

But fortunately for the administration, the American people are economically illiterate — probably by design of the government schools.

Jefferson Quote of the Day

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

—Thomas Jefferson.

Counting to 60

The Democrats still lack the 60 votes they need to overcome a filibuster in the Senate for the Cap and Tax Trade Bill.

From the New York Times:

To start, there are 45 senators in the “yes” or “probably yes” camp, including Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Maine Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.

There are 23 fence sitters. Alaska’s Mark Begich (D) and Lisa Murkowski (R) need to keep their home state’s oil and gas interests in mind, while Ohio’s Sherrod Brown (D) and Michigan Democrats Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow are pressing for provisions that help agriculture and their state’s ailing manufacturing and auto industries.

There are also 32 Republicans who are unlikely to vote for a climate bill of the shape and size that Obama and congressional Democratic leaders envision, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Missouri Sen. Kit Bond and Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, an outspoken skeptic about the link between man-made greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

 

Conservation Groups Again Petition to List Giant Palouse Earthworm

This is from the “Center for Biological Diversity.”

What does that even mean?

Al Gore sued by over 30,000 Scientists for Global Warming fraud

9,000 PhD’s are included in those suing Al Gore for fraud.

Here’s a video from John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel.

HT: Adam N.

Mark Driscoll on Effeminate Christianity

"60% of Christians [in the U.S.?] are women - 10-13 million more women than men. We need not exclude women, but include men. From prom songs to Jesus as worship to 'preachers' who chat about their golf game and feelings, any guy who is devoted to heterosexuality, competition, and being a dude finds those churches as inviting as a cat does water...."

Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church, Seattle

Neighbors close in after sex charges

The Duke Lacrosse Boys made all the news.

But for predictably politically correct reasons, this Duke scandal won’t make the national news like the lacrosse team “rape” did.

From the Quad City News & Observer:

Sitting in a Durham County jail cell, Frank M. Lombard, the Duke University researcher accused of offering his adopted 5-year-old son for sex, awaits a trip to Washington, D.C., this week to face federal criminal charges.

After waiving an extradition hearing Friday morning, he was locked in the Durham jail Saturday without bail.

Federal authorities say Lombard, 42, of 24 Indigo Creek Trail, performed sexual acts on his son and invited an undercover investigator online to fly to North Carolina and do the same.

Lombard owns the home with another man, according to Durham County property records. The pair bought the home, which sits at the end of a narrow path lined with trees and multicolored homes, in May 2007, the records show. The co-owner has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

A bag of baseball equipment, a pair of tennis rackets, a skateboard and a child's bike lay on the home's front porch Saturday. No one answered the door as a dog barked inside.

Lombard, associate director of Duke's Center for Health Policy, was arrested Wednesday evening at his home. Investigators seized two webcams, five computers and a sex toy, among other items, after searching his home.

The 5-year-old and another child in the home were placed in protective custody.

 HT: Chris W.

Friedrich August von Hayek Quote of the Day

 I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions.  

—Friedrich August von Hayek

Quote of the Day: Rep. John Boehner

This quote from Rep. John Boehner concerns the climate tax bill.

Via The Hill:

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had a few choice words about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) landmark climate-change bill after its passage Friday.

When asked why he read portions of the cap-and-trade bill on the floor Friday night, Boehner told The Hill, "Hey, people deserve to know what's in this pile of s--t."

Using his privilege as leader to speak for an unlimited time on the House floor, Boehner spent an hour reading from the 1200-plus page bill that was amended 20 hours before the lower chamber voted 219-212 to approve it.

Most States Lose Under Cap-N-Trade

From The Minority Report:

Most States Lose Under H.R. 2454 Consumers in red colored states will pay more for electricity to make up for the shortfall in allowances (dollars in millions).

Based on Energy Information Administration (EIA) and Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data. Dollars in millions. Approximate cost to customers in 2012 (at CBO estimate of $15/ton).

Based on the allowance allocation formula in H.R. 2454 for electricity consumers, the red states will not have enough allowancesto cover their emissions from electricity generation. The shortfall in allowances to the red states will lead to higher electricity costs for consumers, the total of which will roughly correlate with the dollar losses noted on the map. For example, Texas electricity consumers will see electricity costs go up by roughly $1 billion. To make up the shortfall, red states will have to seek high-cost, non-CO2 emitting electricity sources, reduce electricity production and consumption, or purchase allowances from the green states, or purchase domestic and international offsets, likely a combination of the three.

For supporting data, Click Here.

Boehner: Pelosi’s National Energy Tax Will Be the Defining Vote of This Congress

From Rep. John Boehner’s website:

Last Friday, the House narrowly passed Speaker Pelosi’s 1,500 page national energy tax.  At 3:09 am the morning of the vote, House Democrats dropped a 300-page amendment to their massive energy tax legislation.  Clearly, House Democrats didn’t want the American people to understand the true impact of their national energy tax.  So House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) took to the House floor and read portions of it to the American people, explaining how it would raise electricity prices, increase gasoline prices, and ship American jobs overseas to countries like China and India.

You can watch or read John Boehner's "filibuster" from Friday's debate on the climate tax bill over here.

It’s a filibuster. So, by definition it's a long speech. But watching even a portion of it is worth it.

Let’s hope the Senate exhibits some restraint.

Taxpayers Sold a Lemon in Government Motors

No surprise here. But with fascists, money is easy come-easy go.

It’s only money. They can always print more of that.

From the Washington Post:

If a new General Motors emerges from bankruptcy as planned, U.S. financial aid for the company will expand to nearly $50 billion, but neither the government nor the company is forecasting how much of the public money will be repaid.

It’s sure to be a stretch. For the United States to fully recover its investment, the value of General Motors stock will have to reach levels it has never before attained.

“I’m not going to predict it — that’s not my job today,” GM chief executive Fritz Henderson said in a recent interview.

“I don’t know how much we’re going to recover,” a senior Obama administration official said as the company headed into bankruptcy last month.

This uncertainty stems from the difficulty in valuing the 60 percent GM stake that the United States will receive in exchange for the public investment. The government also gets preferred shares and other compensation.

The stake will be worth enough to fully cover the government’s direct investment only if GM’s stock rises above $68 billion. Even at its recent 2000 peak, GM’s stock was worth only $56 billion.

“I don’t see GM hitting those benchmarks in a very long time,” said Maryann Keller, a veteran automotive analyst and author of “Rude Awakening: The Rise, Fall, and Struggle for Recovery of General Motors,” which was published in 1989.

She noted that global competition will continue to squeeze American automakers. Though the world’s factories can produce about 100 million vehicles a year, demand for them only stands at about 55 million, and the gap will push prices and profits down, she said.

“It’s very unlikely” that the government will recover its money, said David Whiston, auto equities analyst at Morningstar. “GM will be a smaller company after the bankruptcy and there are going to be more foreign automakers entering the market that will make GM’s efforts more difficult.”

Police continue 'deliberate' investigation of Moscow duplex fire: Police, fire crews sifting through fire scene in search of clues

As reported in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Moscow police continued combing the scene Monday of a duplex fire that turned into a homicide investigation and are awaiting results from various assisting agencies.

Moscow Lt. Paul Kwiatkowski said investigators are waiting on official reports from the Idaho State Fire Marshal's Office, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the Yakima (Wash.) Fire Department in hopes of learning the cause and source of a duplex fire at 904 Vandal Drive on Wednesday. A pregnant Moscow woman was found dead in the residence.

Police also are awaiting the final report from the Latah County Medical Examiner's office to learn the cause of Sarah Parks' death.

Parks, 28, was found dead in the lower unit of the duplex after the fire was extinguished. Investigators have determined she was dead before the fire began and are treating her death and that of her unborn child as homicides.

Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson said Idaho law includes the "unlawful killing of a human embryo or fetus" in the definition of homicide.

Here’s an interesting data point from KLEW:

Parks' husband, Silas Parks, told police he was at a gym at the time of the fire.

According to court documents, Silas Parks admitted to throwing Sarah Parks to the ground during an incident in 2006. He was cited for domestic battery, but signed a plea agreement to a misdemeanor disturbing the peace charge. He was fined and received counseling. 

British jurisprudence

Revving the engine of your car is racist, pure and simple.

From the U.K. Sunday Mail:

A driver spent two nights in jail after being accused of "revving his car in a racist manner".

Mechanic Ronnie Hutton, 49, yesterday described his court ordeal which finally ended when prosecutors dropped the allegation of racism.

But he was still convicted of a breach of the peace for revving the engine of his £25,000 Lotus.

Witnesses claimed he had been trying to intimidate a Libyan couple on the pavement. Ronnie, of Stirling, claims he was only revving the powerful V8 engine to avoid another £15,000 repair bill.

But off-duty Chief Inspector Eoin Jenkins thought he was targeting Muslim Isam Maigel and his wife Hana Saad.

And when Jenkins, now retired, confronted Ronnie he was told to "f*** off".

On Thursday, at Stirling Sheriff court, the Crown ditched the racist part of the charge but Sheriff Andrew Cubie convicted Ronnie of breach of the peace and fined him £150.

Last night, he said: "To be convicted for revving my car in a busy street is hard to take. Does this mean anyone driving a noisy car in Scotland is now a criminal?"

Following the row last September, police officers arrived at Ronnie's home and asked him to come with them to talk about the incident. He ended up being kept in a cell for two nights before being taken to court where he was released without charge.

He complained to the fiscal and the new charges surfaced months later. He said: "The police kept me in custody over the weekend because I made the mistake of swearing at a senior officer."

In court, Mr Maigel, 28, then a student at Stirling Uni, said: "The driver came alongside and was trying to annoy us by revving his engine very, very loudly."

Using an interpreter, Hana Saad, 23, said he had degraded them "maybe because we are Muslim". 

Huh?

HT: Chris W., Dave G.

Tit for Tat

You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Even the LA Times sees this one.

From the L.A. Times:

Obama's FCC pick happens to be daughter of key House Democrat Clyburn

Ah, the rewards of picking a winner.

Last year South Carolina Rep. James E. Clyburn was expected to stay neutral in the long, bitter Democratic presidential primary struggle between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

An influential endorsement from Clyburn, a civil rights hero and top member of the House Democratic leadership, would have been welcomed by former President Clinton, who worked closely with him in the 1990s and thought they were close friends.

But the down-South campaigning got a little rough and, as The Ticket noted here, Clyburn didn't help his old ally. In fact, he started to quietly tilt toward Obama, whom he eventually endorsed after the primary. And Clyburn and the ex-president are not talking much anymore.

Last week, tucked inside a short announcement of White House nominations being sent to the Senate for confirmation was a little-noticed line: "Mignon L. Clyburn, of South Carolina, to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission for a term of five years."

Clyburn is the eldest daughter of James Clyburn and a member of South Carolina's Public Service Commission. She's also a former weekly newspaper publisher. Now, the nation's first African American president has nominated someone who would become the nation's first African American female member of the FCC.

But there's probably no connection with last year's maneuvering.

HT: Dave G.

EPA to monitor eBay sales of personal carbon emissions

Oh, that pesky old CO₂ makes human beings exhaling a cause of concern for global warming.

Perhaps if all of the priests of global warming would stop exhaling their CO₂ for about 15 minutes, this entire global warming problem would blow over.

From the Washington Examiner:

A little-noticed provision of President Obama's cap-and-trade plan to regulate greenhouse gases authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to monitor the sale of personal carbon dioxide offsets on eBay and Craigslist.

Carbon dioxide, a toxic gas exhaled by every American citizen as well as by domesticated and wild animals, recently came under the regulatory umbrella of the EPA, then moved to the head of the list of clear and present dangers to life on earth.

"Just as corporate carbon offsets penalize companies that manufacture things that experts say most Americans could live without," an unnamed EPA source said, "personal carbon offsets help people to make more planet-friendly lifestyle choices."

"Once the carbon dioxide emissions cap is in place," said the EPA official, "then those citizens whose exertions, or sheer immensity, generate outputs above federally-permitted levels, must purchase offsets from less hazardous citizens. Craigslist and eBay provide the ideal platform for this exchange, since most carbon-offset sellers already spend most of their time online."

"This could be a real goldmine for shallow breathers, you know, couch potatoes," the EPA source said. "And for those who over-exert, spewing out earth-threatening gas at an alarming rate, the penalty of paying for these offsets may induce them to reconsider the cost to humanity of all of that breathing."

Obama, who has had his own "lifelong struggle with excessive exhalation" due to frequent speeches and pickup basketball games, said he plans to purchase his personal offsets on eBay.

"My eBay watch list right now includes a lethargic 17-year-old gamer, and a middle-aged woman who just loves HGTV but never works in her home or garden," the president said. "I'm the leading bidder on both, and I'm hoping to get one of them for something less than the 'Buy it Now' price." 

Words

Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

Concerning Michael Jackson

A letter to the editor from Donald J. Boudreaux, Chair of the Department of Economics, George Mason University:

"I am no more touched by Mr. Jackson's death than I am by the death of any of the thousands of other Americans who died last week, all of whom - like Mr. Jackson - are strangers to me and to the vast majority people now so self-indulgently and flamboyantly grieving for a man they never met.

Americans' proclivity to mass hysteria causes me to want government to have as little power as possible.  I neither can nor wish to stop other persons from doing with their lives as they wish.  But I also damn sure despise the fact that, through their votes, so many persons prone to such childish sentiments and displays have a say in how I lead my life.”

Gallup: Americans on Booze

Recent polls of interest from the Gallup Organization:

• Drinking Habits Steady Amid Recession: Despite some talk that the recession could be changing Americans’ drinking patterns, Gallup finds no real shift in the prevalence of drinking alcohol among U.S. adults (now 64%) or in how much Americans say they drink. Beer beats out wine, 40% to 34%, as drinkers’ preferred beverage.
• Beer Edges Out Wine, Liquor as Drink of Choice in U.S.: Among the nearly two-thirds of Americans who say they drink alcoholic beverages, 40% say they most often drink beer, 34% say wine, and 21% choose liquor.

Gallup: Economic Issues

Recent polls of interest from the Gallup Organization:

• Spending Cutbacks Common; Daily Money Worries Less So: While 71% of Americans say they are cutting back on their spending, only 21% say they worried “yesterday” about their spending, and 78% say they have enough money to buy the things they need.
• Unemployment Tops List of Americans' Economic Concerns: Topping a list of 12 economic issues, Americans say they are the most worried about the rising unemployment rate and the increasing cost of healthcare, at 87% and 85%, respectively.
• In U.S., Most Are Scrutinizing Their Spending: A Gallup Poll Daily tracking aggregate from June finds 88% of Americans agreeing with the statement that "You are watching your spending very closely” and 71% saying that they are cutting back on how much money they spend each week.