Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[Dr. Strangelove]

I missed that Derbyshire finally crossed the line at NR. If you haven't read the article that got him fired, here it is, in all its proud racist glory

http://takimag.com/article/the_talk_non ... z1rJPlABLB

Puter- Without giving too much of myself away, I work in the energy business now. The mild winter combined with tons of new exploration in PA and OH = record low natural gas prices.

[10ac]

I don't think selling bottles of Five Hour Energy at the Circle K counts as "working in the energy buisness".

[Jungle Rat]

Be nice! Its not that much of a downgrade from coaching defensive backs under Tressel.

[Professor Tiger]

DSL just got a job at Strickland Propane, under the wise mentorship of Hank Hill.

[Hacksaw]

I don't think selling bottles of Five Hour Energy at the Circle K counts as "working in the energy buisness".

lol

[Toemeesleather]

Good job DSL, I eagerly await the coming epiphanies you'll have about free markets, environuts and big gas.

[bluetick]

Warmest March ever. Warmest first quarter ever.

the heat was on burnin', risin' to the top. Everybody's going strong
That's when my spark got hot. I heard somebody say
Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno!

[Dr. Strangelove]

Well, there's certainly people who will oppose any source of energy other than wind and solar. Happily they haven't had much influence in Ohio to this point. But I remain a believer in regulation when companies get sloppy and screw up

http://www.cantonrep.com/news/x58605639 ... sweet-spot

[Toemeesleather]

....One could cite such quotations forever, given the spread of apocalyptic literature. Authors, journalists, politicians and scientists compete in their portrayal of abomination and claim for themselves a hyperlucidity: They alone see the future clearly while others vegetate in the darkness.

The fear that these intellectuals spread is like a gluttonous enzyme that swallows up an anxiety, feeds on it, and then leaves it behind for new ones. When the Fukushima nuclear plant melted down after the enormous earthquake in Japan in March 2011, it only confirmed an existing anxiety that was looking for some content. In six months, some new concern will grip us: a pandemic, bird flu, the food supply, melting ice caps, cell-phone radiation.

The fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the press reporting, as though it were a surprise, that young people are haunted by the very concerns about global warming that the media continually broadcast. As in an echo chamber, opinion polls reflect the views promulgated by the media.

We are inoculated against anxiety by the repetition of the same themes, which become a narcotic we can't do without.

A time-honored strategy of cataclysmic discourse, whether performed by preachers or by propagandists, is the retroactive correction. This technique consists of accumulating a staggering amount of horrifying news and then—at the end—tempering it with a slim ray of hope.

First you break down all resistance; then you offer an escape route to your stunned audience. Thus the advertising copy for the Al Gore documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" reads: "Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet's climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced—a catastrophe of our own making."

Here are the means that the former vice president, like most environmentalists, proposes to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions: using low-energy light bulbs; driving less; checking your tire pressure; recycling; rejecting unnecessary packaging; adjusting your thermostat; planting a tree; and turning off electrical appliances. Since we find ourselves at a loss before planetary threats, we will convert our powerlessness into propitiatory gestures, which will give us the illusion of action. First the ideology of catastrophe terrorizes us; then it appeases us by proposing the little rituals of a post-technological animism.

But let's be clear: A cosmic calamity is not averted by checking tire pressure or sorting garbage.

Another contradiction in apocalyptic discourse is that, though it tries desperately to awaken us, to convince us of planetary chaos, it eventually deadens us, making our eventual disappearance part of our everyday routine. At first, yes, the kind of doom that we hear about—acidification of the oceans, pollution of the air—charges our calm existence with a strange excitement. But the certainty of the prophecies makes this effect short-lived.

We begin to suspect that the numberless Cassandras who prophesy all around us do not intend to warn us so much as to condemn us.

In classical Judaism, the prophet sought to give new life to God's cause against kings and the powerful. In Christianity, millenarian movements embodied a hope for justice against a church wallowing in luxury and vice. But in a secular society, a prophet has no function other than indignation. So it happens that he becomes intoxicated with his own words and claims a legitimacy with no basis, calling down the destruction that he pretends to warn against.

You'll get what you've got coming! That is the death wish that our misanthropes address to us. These are not great souls who alert us to troubles but tiny minds who wish us suffering if we have the presumption to refuse to listen to them. Catastrophe is not their fear but their joy. It is a short distance from lucidity to bitterness, from prediction to anathema.

Another result of the doomsayers' certainty is that their preaching, by inoculating us against the poison of terror, brings about petrification. The trembling that they want to inculcate falls flat. Anxiety has the last word. We were supposed to be alerted; instead, we are disarmed. This may even be the goal of the noisy panic: to dazzle us in order to make us docile. Instead of encouraging resistance, it propagates discouragement and despair. The ideology of catastrophe becomes an instrument of political and philosophical resignation.

[Toemeesleather]

..there's certainly people who will oppose any source of energy other than wind and solar..


Baby steps.....baby steps, a prodigal son is returning.

[bluetick]

I don't know how toe missed this one. A thorough and thoughtful analysis on how children are being murdered and old people are being frozen like popsicles due to green "idealism." Talk about an inconvenient truth...

http://understandingevil.wordpress.com/ ... ls-people/

[10ac]

Killing children and old people? Now where have I heard that before.......

[Jungle Rat]

Wonder what Jessie & Al will say about this?

[youtube]GlprKFftUe4[/youtube]

[puterbac]

I missed that Derbyshire finally crossed the line at NR. If you haven't read the article that got him fired, here it is, in all its proud racist glory

http://takimag.com/article/the_talk_non ... z1rJPlABLB

Puter- Without giving too much of myself away, I work in the energy business now. The mild winter combined with tons of new exploration in PA and OH = record low natural gas prices.

So my guess is you work for industry on the mineral rights contract side of thing or for a firm who reps landowners for the same thing?

[puterbac]

Sounds like some new money coming to the oh treasury.

[puterbac]

April 10, 2012

Still the Least Racist Country in the World

By Dennis Prager

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... 13784.html

In light of the tragic killing of black teenager Trayvon Martin -- and the manufactured hysteria surrounding it -- one thing needs to be stated as clearly and as often as possible: The United States is the least racist and least xenophobic country in the world. Foreigners of every race, ethnicity, and religion know this. Most Americans suspect this. Most black Americans and the entire left deny this.

Black Africans know this. That is why so many seek to live in the United States. Decades ago, the number of black Africans who had immigrated to the United States had already surpassed the number of black Africans who were forcibly shipped to America as slaves.



And members of other races and nationalities know this. Even Muslim and Arab writers have noted that nowhere in the Arab or larger Muslim world does an Arab or any other Muslim have the individual rights, liberty, and dignity that a Muslim living in America has. As for Latinos and Asians, vast numbers of them from El Salvador to Korea regard America as the land of opportunity.

And when any of these people come here - from anywhere, speaking any language, looking like a member of any race -- they are accepted as Americans the moment they identify as such. He or she will be regarded as fully American. This is not true elsewhere. A third-generation Turkish-German, whose German is indistinguishable from the German spoken by an indigenous German, will still be regarded by most Germans as a Turk. The same holds true elsewhere in Europe.

On the other hand, a first-generation Turkish American, who speaks English with a heavy Turkish accent, but who identifies as American, will be regarded every bit as American as anyone else.

As is often the case, a foreigner pointed this out most clearly. On a visit to America in February, The president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, said:

"The other day, I was in a small company -- and there were Asians, Koreans, Middle Easterners, some other people. And they had been in America for, like, two, three, four years. And they talk American. They look American. Body language is American. I'm sure they already think American. Go to Korea and become Korean in one or two years' time. Good luck with that. That's what's so special about this country."

Xenophobic? It is probably fair to say that most Americans are xenophiles. Last week, in Tampa, I met a 40 year-old man who works at a cigar lounge and bar. I commented on all the good-looking women who entered his establishment, and he told me that despite his low salary, that is precisely the reason he works there. They flock to him, he said.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because of my accent." He was from Russia.

The left-wing drumbeat about America as racist is a combination of politics and black memory.

The political aspect is this: The Democrats and the left recognize that if blacks cease viewing themselves as victims of racism, the Democratic Party can no longer offer itself as black America's savior. And if only one out of three black Americans ceases to regard to himself as a victim of racism, and votes accordingly, it will be very difficult for Democrats to win any national election.

The other issue is black memory. Apparently, most blacks either cannot or refuse to believe that the vast majority of whites are no longer racist. Most Americans were hopeful that the election of a black president -- thereby making America the first white society in history to choose a black leader -- would finally put to rest the myth of a racist America. More than three years later it seems not to have accomplished a thing. I now suspect that if the president, the vice-president, the entire cabinet, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and all nine justices on the Supreme Court were black, it would have no impact on blacks who believe America is a racist society -- or on the left-wing depiction of America as racist.

One can only conclude that the smearing of America's good name is one of the things at which the left has been most proficient.

[bluetick]

Seriously? Unlike America, there were quite a few countries around the globe that didn't have institutional (re:governmental) racism directed at blacks as late as the 1960's. Off the top of my head, I can think of Canada to our north...and Mexico to our south.

No doubt Derbyshire has a better handle on race relations in America than this polyanna.

[puterbac]

Interesting...

April 9, 2012

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... 13768.html

The Origins of Entitlement

By Robert Samuelson
WASHINGTON -- Would Franklin Roosevelt approve of Social Security? The question seems absurd. After all, Social Security is considered the New Deal's signature achievement. It distributes nearly $800 billion a year to 56 million retirees, survivors and disabled beneficiaries. On average, retired workers and spouses receive $1,839 dollars a month -- money vital to the well-being of millions. Roosevelt would surely be proud of this, and yet he might also have reservations. Social Security has evolved into something he never intended and actively opposed.

It has become what was then called "the dole" and is now known as "welfare." This forgotten history clarifies why America's budget problems are so intractable.



When Roosevelt proposed Social Security in 1935, he envisioned a contributory pension plan. Workers' payroll taxes ("contributions") would be saved and used to pay their retirement benefits. Initially, before workers had time to pay into the system, there would be temporary subsidies. But Roosevelt rejected Social Security as a "pay-as-you-go" system that channeled the taxes of today's workers to pay today's retirees. That, he believed, would saddle future generations with huge debts -- or higher taxes -- as the number of retirees expanded.

Discovering that the original draft proposal wasn't a contributory pension, Roosevelt ordered it rewritten and complained to Frances Perkins, his labor secretary: "This is the same old dole under another name. It is almost dishonest to build up an accumulated deficit for the Congress ... to meet."

But Roosevelt's vision didn't prevail. In the 1940s and early 1950s, Congress gradually switched Social Security to a pay-as-you-go system. Interestingly, a coalition of liberals and conservatives pushed the change. Liberals wanted higher benefits, which -- with few retirees then -- existing taxes could support. Conservatives disliked the huge surpluses the government would accumulate under a contributory plan.

All this is well-told in Sylvester Schieber's "The Predictable Surprise: The Unraveling of the U.S. Retirement System." Schieber probably knows more about American retirement programs than anyone. He has advised the Social Security system, consulted with private firms and written widely on the subject. His book shows how today's "entitlement" psychology dates to Social Security's muddled beginnings.

Millions of Americans believe (falsely) that their payroll taxes have been segregated to pay for their benefits and that, therefore, they "earned" these benefits. To reduce them would be to take something that is rightfully theirs. Indeed, Roosevelt -- believing he had created a contributory program -- said exactly that:

"We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral and political right to collect their pensions. ... No damn politician can ever scrap my Social Security program."

What we have is a vast welfare program grafted onto the rhetoric and psychology of a contributory pension. The result is entitlement. Unsurprisingly, AARP's advertising slogan is "You've earned a say" on Social Security. The trouble is that contributions weren't saved. They went to past beneficiaries. The $2.6 trillion in the Social Security trust fund at year-end 2010 sounds like a lot but equals slightly more than three years of benefits.

With favorable demographics, contradictions were bearable. Early Social Security beneficiaries received huge windfalls. A one-earner couple with average wages retiring at 65 in 1960 received lifetime benefits equal to nearly 14 times their payroll taxes, even if those taxes had been saved and invested (which they weren't), calculate Eugene Steuerle and Stephanie Rennane of the Urban Institute.

But now, demographics are unfriendly. In 1960, there were five workers per recipient; today, there are three, and by 2025 the ratio will approach two. Roosevelt's fear has materialized. Paying all benefits requires higher taxes, cuts in other programs or large deficits. Indeed, the burden has increased, because it now includes Medicare, which is also viewed as an entitlement.

Although new recipients have paid payroll taxes higher and longer than their predecessors, their benefits still exceed taxes paid even assuming (again, fictitiously) that they had been invested. A two-earner couple with average wages retiring in 2010 would receive lifetime Social Security and Medicare benefits worth $906,000 compared with taxes of $704,000, estimate Steuerle and Rennane.

By all rights, we should ask: Who among the elderly need benefits? How much? At what age? If Social Security and Medicare were considered "welfare" -- something the nation does for its collective good -- these questions would be easier. We would tailor programs to meet national needs. But entitlements are viewed as a higher-order moral claim, owed individuals based on past performance. So a huge part of government spending moves off-limits to intelligent discussion.

We can only imagine how Roosevelt would view this. He consistently advocated a fully funded Social Security and used his second veto on a 1942 tax bill that delayed higher payroll taxes. But Congress overrode the veto, and Roosevelt was consumed by World War II.

Copyright 2012, Washington Post Writers Group

[puterbac]

April 9, 2012

The Democrats' Election Forgery Racket

By Michelle Malkin

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... 13722.html

-------------------------

This week, four Democratic officials in Indiana were hit with felony charges related to petition fraud in the state's 2008 primary. The prosecutions are a result of the local South Bend Tribune newspaper's investigation last fall into "hundreds of county residents' signatures" forged on petitions used to put Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the Democratic primary ballot. At least two whistle-blowing government officials came forward to expose the forgery racket, which court documents say was formulated by Democratic Party officials inside local party headquarters.

[puterbac]

Now see I don't have nearly as big a problem with this as most. The conference cost was about $2600 per person (800k/300). This isn't that huge especially if it included the airfare. Now of course the conference should be legit and not just a boondoggle posing as something useful. But if its legit and useful I don't have a problem with a conference in vegas. Its comparable to many other cities especially if people are spread out and have to travel anyway.

And the videos made by the teams of employees isn't a big deal in my mind either. Corporate world always has team building exercises etc and I see this as that. Not sure I would call it lavish. JMO.

GSA nixes Vegas conference in wake of scandal

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/in- ... _blog.html