There is a place for Norman Gentle in this guy's heart - and there has GOT to be a place for Norman Gentle in America.







I love the mad ones, gotta say.

Extraordinary Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, that I think all of you should read.

The general premise is that it will be impossible to tax the rich high enough in order to pay for Obama's spending concerns. I've been telling you guys this for a while - if taxes are going up for the rich, trust me, your tax hike will soon be following. Not to mention 45-55% of small business revenue. The article also mentions how the cap and trade idea will yield yet another steep de facto tax increase for all energy users.

I'm not giving up squat - in fact I probably need more vices. My friend KC described this period as "the acetic pleasure-lack of lent." Poetic but unconvincing.

White grapefruit and job appropriate utensils. Behold -



My first food entry in my blog... I think I'm tearing up!

EDIT: Food porn for (e:paul) - since he mentioned blood oranges.

Blood oranges and bastardization of awesome luxury tool set. Behold -



LOL!

Nice. :(

Last night on Hannity they played a short excerpt from a recent interview with disgraced former Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. Everybody is tired of the guy and his media campaign, but I've never seen such a hard-hitting interview with a politician. Sean took the wood to him something fierce - so much so that it was a tad uncomfortable watching Blago squirm. He didn't attack him personally - he simply insisted that he answer a few questions, including whether or not he said what he said, what he meant by "I'm not giving this ### thing away for nothing, etc." At times Blago looked like he didn't know what to do.

Most of you wouldn't watch Hannity, but I recommend watching this interview - apparently it got very heated and they only showed a morsel last night. Supposedly it will be on tonight in full.

Health care legislation in the middle of a supposed economic stimulus plan? This will affect all of you, your parents and your grandparents. This is why Barry trying to hurry this bill with no debate is dangerous.

Take a read and think about it. BTW this is yet another problem with the bill - you know, yet another one of those imperfect things in the bill that we're all supposed to ignore? LOL! Perhaps there may be job creation to some degree as a result of the bill, but Congress is being abusive by including things like this under cloak of darkness, and it is 100% right to debate about this garbage. Even worse, it is cynical to stoke fear amongst the people to get support when they know damn well that they are trying to hide the truth from the people about certain contents of the bill. Included is this latest hidden "stimulative" addition I've mentioned above. That $4 billion payback to ACORN (remember them? Federal investigations in 13 states for voter registration fraud?) is still in the bill as well. Characterizing this bill as "imperfect" is sort of like characterizing Liberace as "a smidgen flamboyant."

If you started spending $1 million per day when Jesus was born, today you'd still be short of $820 billion.

Anyway, to continue. One of my favorites in the article: "A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. 'If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,' he said. 'The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.'"

You know - no debate, no democracy, etc. Daschle in body is gone but the spirit remains. Well, comrades, ready for a liberal fiat in this country? We already know that Nancy Pelosi has been acting like an outright monarch, pushing a wholly partisan bill drafted up by essentially one man, Rep. Obey of Wisconsin.

Allow me to explain why the GOP didn't offer alternative ideas in the House, since people seem to be wondering.

They simply weren't allowed. One of the first things Nancy Pelosi did this year was eliminate the House rules established by Newt Gingrich (when the GOP first held the House in the mid-90's) that granted the minority party the ability to amend or push back a bill to committee for more debate, otherwise known as the "motion to recommit."

It was a tool made available to Democrats when the GOP first gained power in the House, and now San Fran Nan eliminated it, thereby removing the GOP's ability to offer amendments or extend debate on bills. The problem? The parliamentary tool allows opposition to effectively "kill" a bill if they invoke this "without instructions." This was a tool regularly used by Rahm Emmanuel and the Demos when the were the minority, but in 2006 they found a sudden distaste for it when they were in power. In 2004 Nancy Pelosi adopted a minority party "Bill of Rights" and surely if these rules were stripped at that point (again, the GOP established these minority party rights when they were in the majority) Nancy would have howled. What happened to minority party "rights" now, Nan?

This economic "stimulus" bill was supposed to be the easiest legislation on the agenda to pass, in comparison to another $1,000,000,000,000 in money to banks (wait until you hear about how gov't isn't going to monitor how the money is spent - AGAIN).

With respect to the healthcare stuff, this is the system used in England that they are now running from, since it is such an abomination. Here is an article that by arguing for rationing accidentally highlights the obvious negatives -
Actually, with respect to socialized economies (and this is a slight aside) in spots, the UK has surpassed the former Soviet Union in terms of government contribution to local economies. Incidentally, this is exactly where we are headed if we stay on our current path.

A government bureaucrat "guiding" healthcare decisions for your doctor, with possible penalties ifor the doctor if he or she is not a "meaningful user" of the system (aka, too often not doing what the bureaucrats are telling them)? Think about it.

Discussion re: my last entry is ongoing but I HAD to share this.

People are asking whether or not this will hurt New York - the answer is yes. Our state taxes these Wall St. bonuses heavily, and knowing the size of these bonuses our state is surely about to lose out on billions in income taxes. It makes you wonder whether or not the state's budget had that "revenue" incorporated into their current and future budget predictions, and how that might affect next year's $12 billion budget deficit.

So - here is where we are. We're happy that these crooks are going to have their income controlled by the government as long as they are borrowing taxpayer money. However, if these fat cats are going to be paying billions less in taxes due to earning less income, who do you think is going to be closing that budget gap? YOU are, one way or another. Isn't that a bitch?

They won't shrink the size of government and spend responsibly. New York State politicians do not have the will to tell people that they've overspent and made obligations they never could have afforded, and now we are about to have to deal with that problem in a harsh way.

Addition of federal tax money to states in this $1T federal orgy will only exacerbate the problem. Politicians who are afraid of possibly having to get a real job would rather sell the state out than tell the people the truth - that the budget has been too big for too long, and that Albany relied on unusually high tax receipts from Wall St. (and now we know why) over the past 5 years to pay for expansion of government programs that wouldn't be sustainable otherwise. Right now, instead of acting responsibly and paring the budget down to match realistic tax receipt projections, they are waiting to make a decision until that $160B for states is released. Cute, huh?

Not to mention that our state (and our county, and our city...) does its budgeting backwards, thinking of what to spend on before understanding how much you actually have to spend.

Told you -



Happy Friday -

Josh


PS - I have a post coming re: the whatever you'd like to call it going on in Washington at the moment.