Leftist bias vs. reality
I was listening to a tech podcast where a couple of California were making fun of Texas Governor Rick Perry.
Let’s compare Texas under the leadership of Gov. Perry to California under Governor Moonbeam.
Let’s start with unemployment for January 2013
Texas: 6.3%
California: 9.8%
The federal U3 rate for January was 7.9%
So Texas was under the national rate by 1.3% while California was over the national rate by 1.9%
Take a look at job growth in Texas vs. California, and population shifts. The people California needs to pay its criminally high tax rates are leaving California. One of the more popular destinations of those fleeing Governor Moonbeam’s socialist paradise is Texas.
It’s clear that the tech reporters in question were laughing based on their leftist political bias, and not economic reality.
Quote of the Day
“For serious Buddhists, it’s not hard at all to admit the non-attainment of the ultimate metaphysical state of Nirvana — it’s supposed to be hard, and can take a lifetime. (Or, you know, several lifetimes.) But liberals have this notion that believing in liberalism is itself a very efficient shortcut to that exalted state of emptiness of ego. A Kerry-Edwards bumper-sticker gets you pretty much as far as a lifetime of devotion to the teachings of Krishna.”
3D Printer Update
Last time I went on about 3D Printers was back in October 2008. Time for an update.
There are more options out there than the RepRap. Engadet has a “consumers guide” to 3D printers.
What I found interesting is that there are some sub $1,000 models. Granted, most of those are Kickstarter projects, but it shows that these things are getting some traction in the geek hobby market.
That expanding base also means a greater number of programmed designs as people share their experiments.
One that is sure to cause a stir is Defense Distributed’s plan to design a 3D printable firearm. They have designed, and printed an AR-15 lower. They have put over 600 rounds though a firearm using that printed lower in a single day. They claim that it should be able to handle a 1,000 rounds.
The AR-15 was a good choice. It is one of the most popular civilian firearms in the US, and as Gun Geeks will tell you, it’s the general purpose PC of firearms. It is very modular, with the ability to change stocks and uppers easily. It also has a large market of add on accessories, including pink plastic parts for the female (or male who just likes pink) shooters.
The inter-changeable upper (which includes the barrel) is key. You can convert your .223 AR-15 to 5.55mm NATO, .308 Winchester, .22 LR or even .50 Beowulf. All the same firearm by current US regulations.
On the lower end of the 3D printing scale, is the EDoodler. A hand held devices that extrudes a steam of heated material that you can create whole pieces or parts of a larger object. This is another Kickstarter project which blew past its original goal of $30,000 pretty fast. They have pledges of over $2 million and still have three weeks to go for fundraising.
Going even lower end, you have InstaMorph. I know people who swear by this stuff for really Q&D projects. You heat the stuff up and then are able to mold it. When it cools, it hardens. Kinda like a gateway drug for 3D printing.
Originally posted at Urbin Technology
Update: Just how versatile is the AR-15 you ask, here is an upper designed for black powder use! There is even a crossbow upper.
Sometimes the truth will slip out of a leftist’s mouth
Filed under: Barking Moonbats, Culture of Corruption, Our Dear Leader, Politics
Bill Maher, a far left extremist, has a rare moment of honesty:
The Obama administration has been heavily targeting whistleblowers and information activists. What can we do to hold the government accountable for this harsh crackdown?” Yeah, the Democrats, [Laughs], their view on Obama seems to be “God, what he does would be awful if it was a Republican”
Leftist Tina Brown notes in the same program: “…he’d be impeached by now for drones if he was W. Bush.”
Ya, sometimes the truth will slip out of a leftist’s mouth.
The left’s hypocrisy raises its ugly head again
It’s usually pretty easy to know what the left is up to. You just check what they are accusing anybody who dares disagree with them of.
Case in point, the left’s favorite slur for anybody who dares confront them with actual facts, “racist.”
The left will call you a racist if you disagree with any policy of our Dear Leader, point out that it is, in fact, illegal to violate immigration laws, or refute any of their beliefs with actual verifiable facts.
Then the same leftists will insist that they are not racists, since they are so “tolerant” and “open minded.”
However, facts are stubborn things, despite the left’s vigorous attempts to deny them.
Case in point, the left’s attack on the wife of Senate Republican Mitch McConnell. Their objection to his wife is, wait for it…that she is of Chinese ancestry. The fact that Senator McConnell is married to someone who’s family immigrated to America from China is the reason American jobs are going to China.
That’s right, just the fact that she is ethnically Chinese, is the left’s reason for American manufacturing jobs going to China. Oh, and she is married to a Republican.
Couldn’t have anything to do with the rising cost of American manufacturing, primarily driven by labor unions that act more like Political Action Committees distorting the actual value of manual manufacturing labor. Couldn’t have anything to do with burdensome regulations, mainly enacted by left leaning politicians. Nope, because, as we discussed previously, one of the primary commandants of the left is that nothing is ever their fault.
So, they fall back on their Alinsky tactics, pick an individual person, and attack them. Not the problem, but the person. The left is making a purely racist attack against the very people they accuse of being racists for disagreeing with the left.
Lefties are all worked up over the strangest things…
Ya, I know, not much a surprise. Reality really isn’t one of their strong points, so they don’t respond to the same stimuli as sane people.
One common trait amount so called “progressives” is that nothing is ever their fault. For example, I saw a moonbat on Facebook arguing that it was the Republicans who were trying to kill the US Post Service. The USPS is in dire financial straits because the majority of their employees are members of a public service union and they are supposed to operate as a P&L. Those two are mutually exclusive! Here is a news flash, it wasn’t the Republicans, or even moderate democrats who inflicted public service unions on the American tax payer. Hell, even FDR, the uber-progressive, said they were a bad idea. Will any leftist admit that the USPS is royally screwed because their policies have inflicted ruin? Of course not! They can never admit fault! So it must be the fault of the “evil Republicans” for not wanting to flush more tax payer dollars down the toilet created by leftist “progressive” policies.
Yet another example of the “tolerant and opened minded liberal” going hyper-partisan at Warp Speed. The only thing going for the Republicans in these attack is that there isn’t a clear Republican leader they can go all Alinsky on. Nobody to destroy personally in order to get their base of low information voters all lathered up in a series of two minute hates. They need their Emmanuel Goldstein. They have tried their racist attacks on Rubio and Cruz because they fear popular conservatives with a minority background. So they want to punish them for straying off the plantation. So far, the left’s pathetic attempts have resulted in a major fund raiser for Rubio.
Quote of the Day
“In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is…in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
— Theodore Dalrymple
Quote of the Day
“Haven’t you noticed this? The American left is always waxing hysterical about right-wing violence and the true violence always comes from the American left. The American news media cry out in horror at peaceful Tea Party demonstrations and look the other way when Occupy Wall Streeters commit vandalism, rape, and even murder. The media try to pin any political assassination attempt on conservatives; yet almost all American political assassinations are committed by the left… . Leftism requires this illegitimate use of force — this use of violence — because free individuals simply will not do what leftists, in their wisdom, have decided is right and good.”
Andrew Klavan: The Truth About Dorner: Leftism Is Violence
Reality vs Obama: The Economy
Filed under: economy, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
Let us once again refer the the chart our Dear Leader‘s economic team used to scare people into buying into the miserable failure of a porkulus package the democrats rammed down the throat of America back in 2009. Oh, but with reality also displayed.
So, using the Obama regime’s own metrics, the so-called “economic policy” has made things worse for average Americans than doing nothing would have done! They predicted an unemployment rate of 5.5% by now if nothing was done and 5.1% if the administration got to print more money and give it to democrat campaign donors.
The only reason the current U3 unemployment rate is is as low as 7.9% is that over eight million people have been removed from the labor pool that the feds use to calculate the employment rate. That includes everyone in the obscenely high long term unemployment pool that have run out of the extended unemployment benefits. The U6 rate, which includes the underemployed is still at 14.4%, which appears to be the “new normal” in Obama’s progressive dream of America.
James Pethokoukis points out that our Dear Leader‘s economic team made other really bad predictions.
…recall that back in January 2009 Team Obama economists Jared Bernstein and Christina Romer predicted the unemployment rate by 2013 would be closing in on 5%. (Of course, Obama’s economists also thought we’d be in a mini-boom of 4%-plus economic growth. That hasn’t happened either.)
In case you haven’t heard, GDP for the fourth quarter of 2012 came in at -0.1. That’s right, after three and half years of the worst recovery since the Great Depression, the US has slipped back into negative GDP growth under the stewardship of our Dear Leader. We actually could be in another recession, but we won’t know for another three months. Until then, we’re in a Schrödinger’s cat situation of recovery/recession.
Given that our Dear Leader and his democrat minions are calling for more taxes, more government spending (with $0.46 on the dollar borrowed) and more business hindering regulations, it’s looking more like that cat is a recession.
Quote of the Day
“Assault weapons… are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully-automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons — anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun — can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”
– “Assault Weapons: Analysis, New Research and Legislation” Josh Sugarmann, March 1989