If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.

–Mark Twain

 

(And that’s why I read National Review!)

Our tax dollars at work...

The Cato Institute's Chris Edwards commenting on the institute's Web site about a new report on federal employee pay levels from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis:

The George W. Bush years were very lucrative for federal workers. In 2000, the average compensation (wages and benefits) of federal workers was 66% higher than the average compensation in the U.S. private sector. The new data show that average federal compensation is now more than double the average in the private sector. . . . It's time to put a stop to this. Federal wages should be frozen for a period of years, at least until the private-sector economy has recovered and average workers start seeing some wage gains of their own. At the same time, gold-plated federal benefit packages should be scaled back as unaffordable given today's massive budget deficits. There are many qualitative benefits of government work—such as extremely high job security—so taxpayers should not have to pay for such lavish government pay packages.

SUPPORT TERM LIMITS!!!

One of my favorite signs from the 9/12 Tea Party in DC:

 

Politicians are like diapers…

…they both need to be changed regularly, and for the same reason!

 

Demeauxcrats

Everyone is always telling Boudreaux and Thibodeaux jokes, implying that Cajun's aren't smart.
But anybody who would build a city 10 feet below sea level, in a hurricane zone, and fill it with Democrats...is a genius!

 

Brain-dead

An elderly man suffered a massive heart attack. The family drove wildly to get him to the hospital emergency room! After what seemed like an eternity, the ER Doctor appeared, wearing his scrubs and a long face. Sadly, he said, "I'm afraid he is brain-dead, but his heart is still beating." "Oh, Dear God," cried his wife, her hands clasped against her cheeks with shock! "We've never had a Democrat in the family before!"

National Review made an interesting point about Obama’s speech last night.

I forget, though…

Did he denounce the use of “scare tactics” before or after he warned that “failure to go along with his plans would cause people to die.”

 

I also noticed a lot of angst over Joe Wilson (R-SC) calling Obama a liar in the middle of the speech.  No one mentions that Obama had several times accused his opponents of not telling the truth.  I believe that’s the same thing, isn’t it?  And while the “lack of decorum” charge is probably reasonable, don’t forget that the Democrats booed Bush during his State of the Union speech in (I think) 2008.  But it’s true, I suppose, that Republicans should have more class than Democrats.

Too bad it's not "just" $9 Trillion.

This is the opening paragraph of a Wall Street Journal interview with David Walker, former head of the Government Accountability Office:

David Walker sounds like a modern-day Paul Revere as he warns about the country's perilous future. "We suffer from a fiscal cancer," he tells a meeting of the National Taxpayers Union, the nation's oldest anti-tax lobby. "Our off balance sheet obligations associated with Social Security and Medicare put us in a $56 trillion financial hole—and that's before the recession was officially declared last year. America now owes more than Americans are worth—and the gap is growing!"

Let’s do the math again, still assuming a million dollar daily pay down of the debt:

$56,000,000,000,000 / $365,000,000

= 153,424 years

Yes, the government can

More proof...

…that the only thing worse than many Republicans is any Democrat.

"I recognize that all of you have an obligation to ask questions knowing that there's none of you smart enough to frame it in such a way that I'm going to respond."

--Charlie Rangel (D-NY) , responding to press queries about his failure to report “over $1 million in outside income and $3 million in business transactions”. [link]