Ready for your Physical Jerks?





Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell











The Won Percent

Kevin wins the internets.


The Won and unemployment.







Quote of the Day – 2011-08-08

WizardPC masterfully sums up the whole debt ceiling fiasco. The best part?

Democrats: Republicans are evil, and these cuts are going to kill Granny.

Republicans: These cuts are awesome. We totally won!

Tea Party: Umm…these cuts don’t amount to much more than a rounding errror. $100b a year? And most of the cuts don’t come until like 8 years from now? If those were binding, wouldn’t the current budget be the one Republicans came up with in 2003?

S&P: Yeah, remember how we said you had to be serious about budget cuts? DOWNGRADE

Democrats: This is the Tea Party’s fault!

Tea Party: WHAT!? HOW!? We didn’t get anything we wanted! [facepalm]

The cuts* are a joke. Actually, they’re not a joke – they’re a scam to trick the general population into voting [$PARTY].

* Which aren’t actually cuts in spending. They are simply a promise** to increase spending less than was projected with current growth rates.

** It’s not really a promise, either, because it doesn’t actually bind future sessions of Congress to actually make those so-called cuts. Just for example, say the deal says “The 2013 budget will increase by $299 billion instead of the expected $300 billion.” When Congress creates the 2013 budget next year, they could actually make it $310 billion.  To put it simply, Congress can simply counter this year’s vote on any subject with another vote next year. This holds true for any bill, including budgets.









(h/t SayUncle)

More debt limit perspective






The debt ceiling debate – Quote of the Day – 2011-07-14

The most concise explanation of the debate over raising the debt ceiling that I have seen so far. From commenter Mike at SayUncle’s.

Obama and the Democrats want to get a new MasterCard to pay the monthly Visa bill – so they can continue to live high on the hog.

The Republicans want to cut down on spending for things like cable TV, fancy dinners, and new cars — use the money thus saved to start paying back the gargantuan Visa charges we’ve accumulated.

I would also add: Obama and the Democrats also want to demand that the boss give them a raise so that they don’t have to put quite as much of the payment for the new 65″ flat screen 3D HDTV on the new MasterCard. But since we have hit the credit limit on the Visa, they can’t pay for that TV  they promised that we don’t want unless they get the MasterCard first. And don’t forget the 3D DVD player that it needs to do what they promised us.

To be fair, though, they are willing to cut down on the fancy dinners.

As Mike concluded:

Now, which option sounds like the responsible thing to do? What’s so hard to understand?

Indeed. What’s so hard to understand?


A good commentary on the current state of our nation

A comment on this Reuters article at Yahoo! News on the debate over whether Congress should raise the debt limit really caught my attention this morning. I don’t see a way to link directly to the comment, or I would do that as well. Commenter Virgin Soldier seems to really get it. I present his insight here without further comment.






You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.






The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Boehner, he is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.






There are no insoluble government problems..


Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.


So lets fire them…


Quote of the Day – 2011-05-08

From Tam:

Mailing a check to the government to help the poor because you’re feeling compassionate is like handing the local crackhead a twenty to fetch you a pizza because you’re feeling hungry.


It’s the economy, stupid!

Amazingly, a Harvard professor who gets it.








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