"NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed."
SteynOnline - ENTITLEMENT SENSE: "Recently, in the London Telegraph, Liam Halligan bemoaned the way commentators focus on America’s $14 trillion of debt — i.e., the “debt ceiling” debt — without factoring in the entitlement liabilities of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That makes America’s real debt some $75 trillion, or five times GDP. Our own Kevin D. Williamson puts the FDR/LBJ entitlement liabilities a little north of $100 trillion." Once you add in state and municipal debt, you need to add a zero to that reassuringly familiar $14 trillion hole. The real hole goes ten times deeper: $140 trillion — or about twice as much as America’s total “worth.”
John Cogan: The Millionaire Retirees Next Door - WSJ.com: "According to my calculations based on government data, such married couples will begin receiving monthly Social Security checks that will, on average, total about $550,000 after inflation. They will receive health-care services paid for by Medicare that, on average, will total another $450,000 after inflation. The benefactors will be a generation of younger workers who are trying to support themselves and their families while paying taxes to finance the rest of government spending."One of the benefits of our debased educational system is that is has raised multiple generations of suckers to pay for the boomers' retirement. And these patsies vote overwhelmingly for the crooks that are hustling them. I guess if this arrangement were sustainable, you could chock it up to beneficence, but given the totally predictable collapse of this ponzi scheme, you have to conclude they are just "youthful idiots."
Betsy McCaughey: Medicare As We've Known It Isn't an Option - WSJ.com: "The Democratic Party is urging Americans to choose Medicare as we've always known it rather than a new plan by Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) that would enroll seniors in private health insurance beginning in 2022. This choice is a hoax: Medicare as we've always known it is already gone. It was eviscerated by President Obama's health law.
The truth is that the Obama health law reduces future funding for Medicare by $575 billion over the next 10 years and spends the money on other programs, including a vast expansion of Medicaid. In 2019, Medicare spending under the Obama health law is projected to be $14,731 per senior, instead of $16,162 if the law had not passed, according to Medicare actuaries (Health Affairs, October 2010)
Losing the Future - Mark Steyn - National Review Online: "Question: How much do you have to invest in the future before you’ve spent it and no longer have one?"
Losing the Future - Mark Steyn - National Review Online: "How do you “invest in the future”? By borrowing $188 million every hour. That’s what the government of the United States is doing. It’s spending one-fifth of a billion dollars it doesn’t have every hour of every day of every week — all for your future!"
Obama Deficit Plan | White House releases misleading figures for families ahead of Obama's deficit tour | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment: "197 billion was paid out as interest to debt-holders using funds from Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes and income taxes. That’s roughly $656 per person, or $1,971 for a family of three. That total is 103 times the number shown by the White House website.Boy, sure glad the President isn't practicing politics as usual in Washington. In fact, he's unusually dishonest!
The site also shows a family with two children and an income of $80,000 paying $285 on federal interest payments, and a single parent with one child and an income of $35,000 paying $39 on interest payments. In reality, the first family’s share of national interest payments is nine times larger than shown, and the single parent’s share is 33 times larger than the site acknowledges."
50 million climate refugees | United Nations | The UN disappears 50 million climate refugees, then botches the cover-up | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment: "In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010. These people, it was said, would flee a range of disasters including sea level rise, increases in the numbers and severity of hurricanes, and disruption to food production.Hilarious article. Not only points out how wrong the UN climate people were, but how inept they were at trying to cover up their error. This is the UN group whose work the EPA cited in justifying its legal basis for regulating carbon.
The UNEP even provided a handy map. The map shows us the places most at risk including the very sensitive low lying islands of the Pacific and Caribbean."
Review & Outlook: Where the Tax Money Is - WSJ.com: "The rich, in short, aren't nearly rich enough to finance Mr. Obama's entitlement state ambitions—even before his health-care plan kicks in.Hang on to your purses and wallets - the big government crowd are coming to your house next. Trying to balance the budget of an out-of-control federal government on tax increases is ludicrous on its face. Read the article. It takes you thru the thought experiment of confiscating 100% of the income of the "rich," defined in ever broader terms. Obama is not a serious man. He's just a huckster politician working 24/7 to get reelected while the country drives "into the ditch," to use a colorful metaphor. How's that hope and change working out for ya?
So who else is there to tax? Well, in 2008, there was about $5.65 trillion in total taxable income from all individual taxpayers, and most of that came from middle income earners. The nearby chart shows the distribution, and the big hump in the center is where Democrats are inevitably headed for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks."
President Obama's budget kicks the hard choices further down the road: "THE PRESIDENT PUNTED. Having been given the chance, the cover and the push by the fiscal commission he created to take bold steps to raise revenue and curb entitlement spending, President Obama, in his fiscal 2012 budget proposal, chose instead to duck. To duck, and to mask some of the ducking with the sort of budgetary gimmicks he once derided."
Review & Outlook: The Cee Lo Green Budget - WSJ.com: "How unserious is this budget? Although the White House trumpets $2.18 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade, those savings are so far off in the magical 'out years' that you can barely see them from here. More than 95% of the savings would happen after Mr. Obama's first term in the White House is over, and almost two-thirds of the promised deficit reduction would arrive after 2016. Pretending to cut deficits by pushing all real cuts into the future is Budget Flimflam 101."
Chris Tucker: EPA is a no-show in Texas fracking case | Chris Tucker | Op Eds | Washington Examiner: "Your task: Pin the presence of methane on Range Resources by trying to prove its wells in the Barnett represent the source of the natural gas in the water wells.
On Dec. 7, 2010, that’s precisely the argument that EPA put forth in issuing an unprecedented “emergency order” -- demanding, among other things, that Range plug up its wells and go home.
Just one problem: The isotopic analysis EPA used as the basis for its order doesn’t include a word about nitrogen; EPA never ran those tests.
Fortunately, experts from Weatherford Labs in Texas did. And at a hearing of the Texas Railroad Commission in Austin this week, those experts testified that the methane found in those private water wells in question came from the Strawn, not the Barnett.
What that means in practical geological terms is that Range isn’t (and in fact couldn’t be) responsible for the occurrence of methane in those wells – it has no wells in the Strawn."
Good news for panda-lovers (bad news for the rest of us) | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment: "Wow, what a coup. J.P. Freire calls this wonderful feat of diplomacy “Obamagotation,” and adds, “So China gets to continue copyright infringement and manipulating their currency. We get two pandas.” Hey, at least it’s not three."From one of the wittier sites on the web - the Daily Trawler. Check it out.
Posts
All Comments
