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Archive for January, 2014

Monday Book Pick: Sword of Exodus

Monday, January 27th, 2014

The Sword of Exodus by Larry Correia and Mike Kupari

The sequel to Dead Six. Valentine and Lorenso are in even deeper shit than they were before. Plenty of action and raw meat for the firearm enthusists.

Monday Book Pick Archive

The Obama Economy Numbers

Tuesday, January 14th, 2014

It’s been five years since our Dear Leader started his “Occupy the White House Golf Tour” and four and half years since the second worst recession since the great depression ended.  Now history tells us that the deep the recession, the stronger the recovery.

So where the recovery that should have started four and half years ago?  An actual recovery would involve replacing the jobs lost and creating news one.  Instead of that, what we have under the economic guidance of our Dear Leader is over ten million people less in the workforce than we had at the start of the recession.

The U3 unemployment rate fell to 6.7% from 7%, which normally would be a good thing.  In this case, not so much.  Let’s look at the numbers.  The economy only added about 70,000 new jobs in December.  If you have been paying attention over the past four and half years, you would know that the economy needs to add 120,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with population growth.   The drop in the BLS U3 number is explained by the 520,000 people “leaving the workforce.”  A better indicator of the health of the workforce is the BLS U6 rate.  The average U6 rate during our Dear Leader‘s reign has been 13.1%.  To compare, the average U6 rate during President George W. Bush’s two terms was 9.2%.

To further highlight just how much the current administration’s policies are negatively effecting Americans, let us review the progress made on the “War on Poverty” started 50 years ago by LBJ.

[…] Fifty years after President Johnson started a $20 trillion taxpayer-funded war on poverty, the overall percentage of impoverished people in the U.S. has declined only slightly and the poor have lost ground under President Obama.

 […] Although the president often rails against income inequality in America, his policies have had little impact overall on poverty. A record 47 million Americans receive food stamps, about 13 million more than when he took office.

The poverty rate has stood at 15 percent for three consecutive years, the first time that has happened since the mid-1960s. The poverty rate in 1965 was 17.3 percent; it was 12.5 percent in 2007, before the Great Recession.

About 50 million Americans live below the poverty line, which the federal government defined in 2012 as an annual income of $23,492 for a family of four.

President Obama’s anti-poverty efforts “are basically to give more people more free stuff,” said Robert Rector, a specialist on welfare and poverty at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

That’s exactly the opposite of what Johnson said,” Mr. Rector said. “Johnson’s goal was to make people prosperous and self-sufficient.”

 So, as the nice man said, “Obama’s economic program of tax, spend, and regulate has been a dismal failure.”

Here is a graph from the Federalist, which points out that if ten million workers haven’t dropped out the workforce because the lack of economic growth, the U3 unemployment level would be almost 11%.   This is Jimmy Carter recession level territory, in what should be a robust recovery.

labor-force-dropouts-drive-lower-unemployment-rate-1-10-14

Monday Book Pick: The Forever Engine

Monday, January 13th, 2014

The Forever Engine by Frank Chadwick

Crunchy Steampunk goodness from one of the founders of the genre. Yes, it’s that Frank Chadwick, creater of the Space:1889 RPG. Those of you, like me, will find a good deal familiar with tale of adventure and Mad Science. Including Liftwood, stout hearted British Marines, and a five barrel Nordenfelt!

Monday Book Pick Archive

Round Up Post

Thursday, January 9th, 2014

Let’s start with a few firearm/RKBA articles.

James Craig became the Detroit Police Chief last summer.  Before that he spent decades working in the Los Angeles Police Department before becoming the Chief of Police in Portland, Maine.  In LA, pretty much the only people with firearms are cops and violent criminals.  The restrictive, so-called “gun control” laws haven’t really slowed down the rate criminals can obtain firearms.  In Portland, Maine, firearm ownership among the law abiding is pretty common.  Another difference is the violent crime rate.  High in LA, low in Portland.  Chief Craig’s advice for reducing crime in Detroit (which approaches Robocop levels), is more firearms in the hands of law abiding citizens. Here is one of multiple studies that back Chief Craig’s advice.

San Francisco is pretty diverse, it even has pro-Second Amendment liberal democrats.  These folks are pretty far left wackos despite this one gleam of sanity in the world view.  Hell, they don’t like our Dear Leader because he’s “too conservative” in their view.  Probably upset he hasn’t rounded up Republicans and shipped them off to death re-education camps yet.

Here is a question that many law abiding citizens who have actually read the Constitution ask themselves, “My next AR, build or buy?”

Can’t leave the epic Charlie Fox known as Obamacare off the list.  “Glitches” in the bloody website are still rampant, leaving many without coverage.  Keep in mind, that in the time it took the Obama administration to build a really crappy website, America build almost 100 aircraft carriers during WWII.  Plus the aircraft for the carriers, and the support vessels, and trained the crews.

For your reference when dealing with moonbats and Obama cultists8 Things Liberals Do to Avoid Having an Honest Debate.

Let’s wrap up with a look at how the Obama Economy is working for America.  “34%: The unemployment rate for Americans ages 16-17. The unemployment rate for teenage Hispanic Americans is 48%, and the rate for teenage Black Americans is 60%.”  Ya, just how is that hopey-changey thing workin’ for ya?

The Schadenfreude keeps on rolling in…

Tuesday, January 7th, 2014

By way of the VodkaPundit, comes this tale of progressive Obama-cultist woe.

A self-described Obamacare “cheerleader” is upset that she actually has to pay for health care.

“I’ve been a cheerleader for the Affordable Care Act since I heard about it and I assumed that it was designed for people in my situation,” she told KOIN. “I was planning on using the Affordable Care Act and I had done the online calculator in advance to make sure I was going to be able to afford it.”

Her husband works for a non-profit organization that pays for his health care, but the couple is unable to afford to have her and their son covered under his plan. And she’s been told their combined income is too much to qualify for a subsidized health care plan under Cover Oregon.

“It wasn’t until I started the process and got an agent that I started hearing from them I wasn’t going to qualify for subsidies because I qualify on my husband’s insurance,” she told KOIN.

Mr Green sums up this tale of angst and woe:

In other words, Miss Anonymous supported ObamaCare when she thought you were going to pay for it.

Scratch a prog, find a greedy, grubby thief.

One of the comments to the post gets to the heart of the matter:

…the article says the combined income disqualified them from subsidies (in addition to her being eligible for her husband’s plan, I assume). I believe that’s over $94,200. Cost of living aside, that’s decent money.

Now here’s what happened: Husband previously insured everyone on his plan. Obamacare came along and they decided they would drop the wife and child from his policy during open enrollment. The expectation was that, according to the online calculator, they’d be able to get insured free or close to free. This saving the family ~$125 a month. So he dropped them with the expectation that they would have coverage on January 1. Unfortunately for them, the agent actually appeared to do his job and confirmed that their income was too high and she had qualified for her husband’s plan. Now it’s too late to add them back to his policy.

Basically, it’s not that they CAN’T afford it, it’s that they don’t WANT to pay for it – at our expense. I feel sorry for the child. It has to be raised by a couple on unprincipled degenerates.

 

Straight Up Racism

Tuesday, January 7th, 2014

I’ve often pointed out that a good way to find out what leftist are up to is to listen to what they are accusing those they see as their political enemies of.

Case in point, racism.  The left has been playing the so-called “Race Card” so often since our Dear Leader started his run for his “Occupy the White House” gold tour, that even the self-identified “fake journalists” at Comedy Central have called them on it.  It has been become their default reply to anybody who dares to disagree with their far left extremist ideology.

Now if you were to look for actual examples of racism, you would find the “progressives” who toss out the charge, guilty of what they accuse other of, more often than not.  Case in point, democrat election campaigns pay their white staffers more than black or hispanic staffers.

“African American staffers on Democratic federal-level campaigns are paid 70 cents on the dollar compared to their white counterparts; Hispanics are paid 68 cents on the dollar,”

The study goes on to point out, while Republican campaigns tend to hire more white men than the democrats, they are much better at paying their minority staffers what they pay the white staffers.

Friday B-Movie Pick: The Wolverine

Friday, January 3rd, 2014

The Wolverine

This Marvel Comic based movie didn’t get the best reviews. It worked for me, but then I was really into comics back when Wolverine was first Uber-Popular with the fan base. So I knew all the backstory they tried to cram into this movie. It was a good action movie with nice fight scenes. The “ghost of Jean Grey” that the writers stuck in in order to give Logan more of tortured back story was a trifle over done in my NSHO. Bottom line, this is a Marvel Fan-Person movie. If you aren’t you can give this a pass. If you are, and are willing to put up with the backstory butchering these films are infamous for, fire up the popcorn.

Friday B-Movie Archive