From TNOYF.com

ABOUT TIME

Criminal charges filed against ACORN.

It's a start.

NARCISSM AND POLITICS

A lot of people talk about Constitutional amendments to get rid of this tax, or that policy. But ultimately, I think that unless you get rid of our dangerous narcissistic political class, any Constitution will be ignored ....

And read the comments.

VOUCHERS

Generally I tend to favor public schools and am agnostic on vouchers. But when a school system is as abysmally poor as the Washington DC public schools, this is simply outrageous.



Political payback, as pure and simple as you'll ever see. Go here for more.

NO TAX INCREASES ...

... on 95% of U.S. taxpayers, so said President Obama. Here’s an interesting little tidbit. An excise tax is a Federal or state tax imposed on the manufacture and distribution of certain non-essential consumer goods such as environmental taxes, communications taxes, fuel taxes – and liquor taxes, and cigarette taxes (which have just gone up 60 cents a pack).

Where does the burden of these taxes fall?



You guessed it – on the lowest two income quintiles, second only to FICA/Medicare taxes.

No new taxes, huh? Nope. Not if you’re an environmentally sensitive, health conscious, non-drinking, non-smoking, non-cell-phone-owning, bicycle-riding-to-work low income taxpayer.

DO YOU HAVE YOUR OBAMACARE CARD?

And you seriously want national health care with Obama in charge? “We’re not producing enough primary-care physicians,”Obama said at one forum. “The costs of medical education are so high that people feel that they’ve got to specialize.”

Don’t you believe it. “A primary discouragement to the pursuit of medical degrees is, in fact, the onerous amount of regulation already foisted on medical practitioners .... Combine the discouraging expansion of bureaucratic paper shuffling requirements with the punitive cost of malpractice insurance and you have the regulatory perfecta, reducing the number of men and women willing to undergo the rigorous demands of preparing for the medical profession.”

Still don’t believe government intrusion is a leading reason for the doctor shortage? Then ask yourself this simple question:

“Am I the only one noticing the dearth of calls in America to fill the shortage of lawyers in our country?”

Of course not. Insufficient regulation and the subsequent massive amount of cash available to those pursuing malpractice suits ensures a huge oversupply of lawyers.

Read the entire article.

AUTHENTICITY CHIC

Get ready for authenticity chic. Peggy Noonan, writing in the WSJ:

In New York some signs of that future are obvious: fewer cars, less traffic, less of the old busy hum of the economic beehive. New York will, literally, get dimmer. Its magical bright-light nighttime skyline will glitter less as fewer companies inhabit the skyscrapers and put on the lights that make the city glow.

....

A prediction: By 2010 the mayor, in a variation on broken-window theory, will quietly enact a bright-light theory, demanding that developers leave the lights on whether there are tenants in the buildings or not, lest the world stand on a rise in New Jersey and get the impression no one's here and nobody cares.

A curious article by Noonan; a blend of amusement at the NYC establishment elite’s faux environmentalism, and realization that no one (outside NYC) cares about their “authenticity.” Read the whole thing.

A DOMESTIC POLITICAL ARMY?

This one bothers me. Thomas Sowell wonders:

The Director of Homeland Security is worried about "right-wing extremists."

According to the same official document, the Department of Homeland Security "has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence."

But somehow they just know that you right-wingers are itching to unleash terror somewhere, somehow.

In one sense, the Department of Homeland Security paper is silly. In another sense, it can be sinister as a revealing and disturbing sign of the preoccupations and priorities of this administration -- and their willingness to witch hunt and demonize those who dare to disagree with them.

Barack Obama during last year's election campaign that got remarkably little attention in the media. He suggested the creation of a federal police force, comparable in size to the military. Why such an organization? For what purpose?

In short, a federal police force could become President Obama's personal domestic political army, his own storm troopers.

Perhaps there will never be such a federal police force. But the targeting of individuals and groups who believe in some of the fundamental values on which this country was founded, and people who have demonstrated their patriotism by volunteering for military service, suggests that this potential for political abuse is worth watching, as Obama tries to remake America to fit his vision.

Sowell is black, and grew up during the Jim Crow segregation era, so perhaps he is overly sensitive. But still ... he should know. This one bothers me.

UPDATE TO OBAMA PRESS CONFERENCE

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, has told U.S. officials the next two weeks are critical to determining whether the Pakistani government will survive, FOX News has learned.

"The Pakistanis have run out of excuses" and are "finally getting serious" about combating the threat from Taliban and Al Qaeda extremists operating out of Northwest Pakistan, the general added.

But Petraeus also said wearily that "we've heard it all before" from the Pakistanis and he is looking to see concrete action by the government to destroy the Taliban in the next two weeks before determining the United States' next course of action, which is presently set on propping up the Pakistani government and military with counterinsurgency training and foreign aid.

Petraeus made these assessment in talks with lawmakers and Obama administration officials this week, according to individuals familiar with the discussions.

They said Petraeus and senior administration officials believe the Pakistani army, led by Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, is "superior" to the civilian government, led by President Ali Zardari, and could conceivably survive even if Zardari's government falls to the Taliban.

So perhaps the “veiled threat” I alluded to wasn’t so veiled after all. More complete commentary here.

QUESTIONS FROM OCEANIA

Victor Davis Hanson on Obama’s first hundred days.

[W]e are in a race—a race to get the dependent constituents permanently in place and institutionalized before the proverbial (fill in the blanks) hits the fans. If he succeeds, we will end up like a Greece, France, or Belgium— weekly strikes by government workers and unions, rampant cynicism as everyone seeks to land the federal job for base salary and taxes and benefits, and then moonlights to get untaxed cash and barter for necessary goods and services, all coupled with a culture of blame at various foreign and domestic “thems” who make us so unhappy.

I’m afraid he’s right. Read it all.

ABSOLUTELY REPELLENT

Keith Olbermann achieves a new low:



Calling Keith Olbermann and ... uh, whatever that thing he’s conversing with ... “swine” is to insult pigs everywhere.

To quote an old friend, Keith Olbermann is “so low that whale sh*t looks like fleecy white clouds in the sky.”

Disgusting.

THE FIRST 100 DAYS - POLL RESULTS

From a Los Angeles Times poll (unfortunately, no link is available).

Besides the hat, the oath flub, the Cabinet tax problems and cheesy gifts for Britain's leader, how's Barack Obama doing?

7.2% - Really well
1.8% - Good
1.7% - So-so
5.5% - Disappointing
8.2% - Bad
75.7% - Scary bad

2564 total responses

Obama's policies are:

89.4% - Too liberal
2.7% - Insufficiently liberal
6.7% - Just right
1.3% - Too conservative

2549 total responses

Obama's spending plans and deficits:

3.0% - Inspire me
0.5% - Don't matter
4.8% - Are about right
7.2% - Worry me
84.4% - Really scare me

2564 total responses

Slowly withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq for now and sending more to Afghanistan strikes me as:

25.1% - Just the right thing
9.6% - Doesn't matter
20.7% - A betrayal of his anti-war stance
44.6% - Real trouble later

2532 total responses

Talking with Iran and North Korea about their nuclear weapons programs is:

10.1% - Appropriate
10.3% - Naive but necessary
79.7% - Hopeless

2544 total responses

Watching and listening to Obama speak makes me feel:

6.3% - Hopeful
3.3% - Confident
72.2% - Suspicious
18.1% - Sleepy

2548 total responses

What I like most about Obama so far is:

8.3% - His confidence
1.6% - His speeches
0.6% - His spending
0.8% - His Cabinet
5.8% - His family
82.9% - His dog

2479 total responses

What I like least about Obama so far is:

29.8% - His arrogance
2.4% - His speeches
32.3% - His spending
17.4% - His national security plans
18.2% - His other plans like healthcare reform

2477 total responses

As a vice president who was a senator since Obama was in elementary school, Joe Biden has turned out so far to be:

2.1% - An inspiration
3.5% - Better than I expected
5.0% - OK
57.1% - An embarrassment
32.2% - Who cares?

2559 total responses

Overall, so far I'd give the Obama administration an:

3.4% - A+
3.7% - A
2.1% - B
1.8% - C
10.8% - D
15.5% - F
62.8% - Whatever comes beneath F

2567 total responses

An F-minus?

What’s striking about the Los Angeles Times poll is not that it’s so negative; it’s that it’s a LA Times poll. Of course, it’s an unscientific internet poll, so it’s possible that it could have been “hijacked” by anti-Obama voters.

But ...

(CNN) — The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday, as the Obama administration marks 100 days in office, asked respondents to use a grading scale of A, B, C, D and F, where A is excellent and F is very poor.

Two percent of those questioned gave a grade of A, 15 percent a B, 25 percent a C, 24percent a D and 34 percent an F.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted April 23-26, with 2,019 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus two percentage points.

Obama gets a “D” ...

In the very same article, CNN wrote “A new national poll suggests that when Americans are asked how well things were going in the country under the administration of President George W. Bush, they respond with a grade of D-plus.”

When I was teaching, a D-plus still beat a D.

PROGRESSIVE TAXATION?

There’s been a great deal of talk from the Obama administration about tax policy, which can be summed up in two sound bites: “Ninety-five percent of American taxpayers will not see an increase in (federal) income taxes” and “Those earning over $250,000 must pay their fair share.”

Here’s some Congressional Budget Office data for the 2006 tax year. The data is for household income, expressed in quintiles (20% of the returns), from lowest to highest. Here are the numbers for each quintile.



This chart is a rough cumulative distribution function of federal income tax paid by each (household) income quintile.



The lowest quintile, households averaging $17,200 in annual income, earned about 3.8%of the total household income. They got back (in refundable credits) something like 4% of the total income taxes paid. The second quintile earned about 8.3% of the total household income and paid a percent or so of the total income taxes paid. The top quintile (the 20% of households averaging $248,400 in annual income) earned about 55.6% of the total household income and paid roughly 75% of the total federal income taxes paid. The top two quintiles (40%) paid almost all of the income taxes collected.

That graph reminds me of the story of Robin Hood, robbing the rich to give to the poor. Our government appears to have “one-upped” poor Robin by eviscerating the rich, giving a pittance to the poor, and keeping the bulk for itself.

But never mind. Here’s what’s important - the bottom 60% of filing households essentially have no investment in America beyond voting themselves ever-increasing handouts. The 40% of taxpayers who fund America have a minority voice in keeping it running.

That’s a prescription for ‘bread & circuses’ – and corruption.

We’re at a tipping point.

EVERYONE SHOULD PAY INCOME TAXES

It's bad for our democracy to exempt half the country.

A very small number of taxpayers -- the 10% of the country that makes more than $92,400 a year -- pay 72.4% of the nation's income taxes.

Given the state of the economy and trillion-dollar deficits projected as far as the eye can see, we need to return to an era of more conservative, fiscal discipline.

Congress should start by refusing to go along with Mr. Obama's promise to cut taxes for 95% of the country. With the government running an almost $2 trillion deficit, no one should have their taxes cut -- no one. Given the size of the deficit, fiscal responsibility demands nothing less.

I agree – taxes should be paid by every citizen. Rates should go up or down, preferably down, for everyone -- no more dividing the country by lowering taxes for some or raising them only for others. A revenue system whose purpose is to pay the government's bills should apply to one and all.

[Update] See the post on Progressive Taxation (above) for why.

REGULATING CO2

Well, now the Environmental “Protection” Agency has decided to regulate carbon dioxide production.

Question: do humans or insects produce more carbon dioxide?

Humans produce, through respiration (breathing) about 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. If you add the production of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other human industry (26 billion metric tons) and the respiration of domesticated animals (6 billion metric tons), the total carbon dioxide production that can be blamed on humans, directly or indirectly, is 34 billion metric tons.

Insects, through respiration, produce 48 billion metric tons.

Hmm. The logical conclusion is that insects must be regulated. I wonder what the environmentalists will have to say.

TAKEDOWN

Jon Stewart of the "Daily Show", erstwhile pundit and historical illiterate, argues that Harry Truman should be considered a war criminal for authorizing the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II.

Bill Whittle takes him down - hard. Watch the video.

Then come back and comment.

Via Instapundit.

THE UNION SECEDES FROM TEXAS

Were it only true ...

In their press release (scroll down) celebrating 100 days of the Obama administration, State includes travel to Texas as one of their major foreign accomplishments:



Via Hot Air:

Secretary Clinton is already the most traveled Secretary of State in a new Administration. The Secretary’s trips have included her inaugural trip to Asia, the Middle East and Europe, Mexico and across the border to Texas, the Hague in the Netherlands, Europe with President Obama, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago with President Obama, and to Iraq and Kuwait.

State has apparently decided to give full diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Texas, helping Governor Rick Perry by mooting a need to secede.

To borrow a phrase from Instapundit, this country’s in the best of hands.

FIRST U.S. SWINE FLU DEATH

"I fully expect we will see deaths from this infection," Richard E. Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "As we continue to investigate cases here, I expect that we will see deaths in this country."

I heard Dr. Besser’s statement on the radio earlier this week ... he sounded almost gleeful.

Now it has happened. “The first U.S. death from the outbreak was a Mexico City toddler who traveled to Texas with family and died Monday night at a Houston hospital. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius predicted the child would not be the last U.S. death from swine flu.”

Do I detect a “See? See? We told you so!” attitude on the part of our government panjandrums?

OBAMA'S 100-DAY PRESS CONFERENCE

President Obama held his 100-day presser last night. My thoughts from notes taken during the press conference.

Initial remarks:

PC enforcement - swine flu is now the H1N1 virus.

I thought we elected a President, not a Nanny-in-Chief.

He wants credit card companies to reduce fees and interest rates. Is this something really worthy of presidental interest?

Now to the questions:

(1) HEALTH CARE & (2) AUTO INDUSTRY - The government has a responsibility to the American people. My goal is to ... (stay in control).

(3) TORTURE & (4) TORTURE FOLLOW-UP - did the previous Administration sanction torture? Obama waffled; didn’t answer directly. His take - we could have gotten the information other ways. England didn’t torture the Germans during WWII (but neither did Germany torture the English - however imperfectly, both followed the Geneva Convention for POWs).

(5) SECURITY OF PAKISTANI NUKES - Asked if he would guarantee the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, he turned the question to non-military aid. Did make a veiled threat about U.S. military action within Pakistani borders.

(6) IRAQ TIMETABLE - nothing new.

(7) ARLEN SPECTER - nothing of interest.

(8) FREEDOM OF CHOICE ACT - Clinton-esque waffle; the usual safe, legal, and rare.

(9) SURPRISED/TROUBLED/ENCHANTED/HUMBLED - Obama used “humbled” to laud the military (they obey orders from their CinC).

(10) IMMIGRATION REFORM - A complete waffle; nothing useful said.

(11) HELP FOR AFRICAN-AMERICANS - a bit of a surprise at the lack of direct pandering, but his answer could be read as “I’m helping the poor; all blacks are poor; so what are you complaining about?”

(12) STATE SECRETS - no surprise; state secrets are important when you are the state.

(13) SHAREHOLDER OF LARGE CORPORATIONS - soft fascism again; governtment control without ownership.

END NOTE: Again there were exactly 13 questions; and again the questioners were pre-selected from a list on the podium. Why did the other correspondents bother to attend?

TRUTH IN LABELING

“[Sen. Arlen] Specter switches to Democrat. Given how miserably he was doing in primary-polling against Pat Toomey, this is no surprise. Of course, this gives Obama a filibuster-proof majority.”

Only until the 2010 elections. But by then it may be too late.