Hey kids! Hows about you pony up $800 a year to pay for my health insurance?

Also… GET OFF MY LAWN!

I’m starting to like this whole ObamaCare thing.

I need this.

Try this cool survey on income distribution in the US. I overestimated by quite a bit, I guess I’m an optimist. (My Score was 74.5%).

Random thought: Why are Unions the biggest backers of “Single Payer Healthcare”? Isn’t health insurance one of the things that they want for their members? Don’t they want better healthcare instead of absolutely awful Canadian-style medicare?

Don’t they pride themselves on getting better health insurance benefits for their members than they could get on their own?

I don’t understand, I would think that Unions would hate Government healthcare because it is a major selling point to the “unorganized” groups (like Wal-Mart employees). What they are saying by supporting it is that they want everyone to have Government healthcare, not just Wal-Mart employees.

Genius! Well played Microsoft!

Take a bad “OS” and pound it into the “market” using strong “marketing” tactics… Then release a “new” replacement for the tired old “OS” that is so repugnant that even the most trusting fans of the company are clamoring for the previous “OS” to continue to be supported.

People start waxing nostalgic over how “stable”, “friendly”, “compatible” and how overall wonderful your POS “OS” product was and how they will do just about anything to get it back…

WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!!11!one!!!eleventy!!

“BSOD” is a well known term for a reason!

Windows sucks, always has… always will…

(there … I said it!)

I read this yesterday (It’s been updated since) and sort of agreed with AllahPundit that it wasn’t enough to make a case. Even this seems like it could be explained away rather easily:

During the 2008 Presidential Election, they gave:

* $7,150 to John McCain
* $2,300 to Gov. Mitt Romney
* $500 to Gov. Mike Huckabee
* $1,950 to Sen. Hillary Clinton
* $0 to Pres. Obama

I have changed my mind. There is a smoking (at least smoldering) gun. When a big supporter and a Chief of Staff to a former Democrat President escape the axe AND have every bit of competition eliminated in a 20 mile radius, it’s a eyebrow-raiser.

When it happens 6 times in a row, that’s just plain nuts.

The interesting part is who the three main owners of the company are. The owners are Steve Landers (long-time car dealer, 4th-generation dealer), Thomas “Mack” McLarty (former Chief of Staff for President Clinton), and Robert Johnson (founder of Black Entertainment Television and co-owner of the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats). Landers has given money to Republicans in the past, but McLarty campaigned for Obama in 2008, and Johnson has given countless amounts of money to Democrats over the years.

* Bolding mine

They told me that if I voted for John McCain that the economy would devolve into “crony capitalism” and only the politically connected would be allowed to prosper… AND THEY WERE RIGHT!

(with apologies to Prof. Reynolds)

UPDATE: Major props to the SNL crew for seeing this coming

Here is an eye opener for anyone that dismisses the “Socialized Medicine will require rationing” argument.

All this is merely a preview of the life-and-death decisions that will be determined by politics once government finances substantially more health care than the 46% it already does. Anyone who buys Democratic claims about “choice” and “affordability” will be in for a very rude awakening.

A very rude awakening indeed.

Having epic failed at making a Hackintosh out of existing/available/scrounged hardware I broke down and got a Mac Mini.

This thing is SOOOOO cool…..

Happy song

They disabled embedding just to harsh my happy… didn’t work!

UPDATE: Fixed the link… DOH!

I was in my local Wal-Mart last night, picking up some badly needed “Wals”, and noticed that one specific register was packed with people. It was one of the “Express” lines, but there were regular lines that were completely empty and yet open. Puzzled, I just went to one of the bored checkout persons and left the store with my brand spankin’ new Wals.

I didn’t think about it again until I saw this article, then it all made sense. The line was the one place in the store where you could buy tobacco products and all the smokers were stocking up.

I guess the market works…

Editorials like this one have me reconsidering my previous post.

If conservatives were smart, they would go along with these tax-the-bonuses back plans, even make them more extreme.

No, I’m not crazy…. Really… stop that…

Let’s play around a bit and see why I’m not crazy, at least on this count.

Instead of 90% of bonuses for people in bailed out companies that make over $250k, let’s limit the income of all employees at bailed out institutions to $25k and see what happens. We need to give them a bit of time for my plan to work, so lets say starting July 1st, 2009. These companies would move heaven and earth to repay any bailout funds before the deadline. The TARP fund would be re-payed in full, effectively nullifying the program that caused so much angst. The result would be that the banks that should have failed would fail now. Any still operating bank that kept the TARP funds would quickly lose every employee, right down to the janitors and pages. The best, most valuable employees would quickly replace their lessors in companies that actually, you know, work and make it in the market without bailouts.

After all the TARP funds get back, we can ax the program or, heaven forfend, use the funds to buy toxic assets. You know, something that might actually work? Where have I heard that idea for TARP funds before?

As a special bonus, lets apply all this to GM and see just how much more reasonable the union and management get.

Failed businesses actually fail or get taxed out of business for being dumasses. Wow… such an idea…

I’m a fricken GENIUS!!one1!!onehundredeleventy!1

Would someone please explain to me exactly how this is Constitutional, please?

The bill would levy a 90 percent tax on bonuses paid to employees with family incomes above $250,000 at companies that have received at least $5 billion in government bailout money.

What! They left 10% on the table? Why not got for 100%? Oh… right, Charlie show me the way!

“We figured that the local and state governments would take care of the other 10 percent,” said Rangel.

Now, I know your thinking, geez these bonuses are scummy, let em get taken.

Lets see how you feel in the following (fictional) statement:

The bill would levy a 90 percent tax on all salary paid to employees with family incomes above $50,000 at your company

That’s crazy right? Just how is that different from the above? If the Congress can write a law that says “You, [insert your name here], will be taxed at a 90% rate” the nation is over.

Exactly when was The 14th Amendment repealed? I must have missed the news that day.

The Wall Street Journal has a piece titled The Obama Rosetta Stone which is an interesting read. Find there a graph titled “Top One Percent of Earners Have Been Increasing Their Share” which shows an ever increasing percentage of “total income” greedily stolen by the top 1% from the hides of the downtrodden masses.

The WSJ takes the angle of discrediting the chart with a combination of ad hominem and ridicule. Whatever you think about that chart, as I think little of it, it lays out a marker that the Obama Administration will be using for the next 4 years (gah! maybe 8 [sob]). Lucky for us, there is a very clear rebuttal to this chart.

Mark J Perry’s post has it in an eerily familiar looking shape…

Here is the key data point: While the “share of income” going to the top 1% has risen to around 23%, the share of the tax burden on the top 1% has risen to almost 40%.

This data ends in 2006, I wonder what these lines will look like when President Obama’s “soak the rich” tax plan goes into effect. I’m fairly certain that it will not be pretty.

Stocks shoot higher on Citigroup profit news

Citigroup Inc. said it had operated at a profit during the first two months of the year.

Well…DUH!

Taxpayers just injected over $52 Billion into Citigroup.

Give me $52 Extremely Large and I would show a profit as well.