I thought I would take a sec to remind everyone about the server drive and explain a couple of things. Bulk of the post is below the fold to as not to clutter up the front page too much…

First of all, SOOOO MANY THANKS to everyone that has donated so far. You have no idea how much it helps. Lee used to split the cost with me, and when we lost him, it not only took a bite out of my soul, but now it’s eating my wallet. Your help is so frigging amazing and I thank each and every one of you (some I have, and I owe a BUNCH of you some email, I know!)

Secondly,a few folks have offered up cheaper hosting solutions, so I wanted to let you all know why I keep this box at this monthly price:

1. It’s a bit high, but I get almost total freedom from Softlayer. They have only bothered me about content three times, and all three times I was clearly in the wrong (I was violating copyright. Mostly with pics of boobs owned by Playboy). They received DMCA takedown notices and passed them along. Otherwise, they could not care less what I do. That is pretty nice.
2. Really stable datacenter. You’ll notice that some of the big political blogs all disappear together fairly often.  There’s a couple of hosts out there they all use, and they crash with alarming regularity. I get pretty consistent service.
3. Most service tickets are free. Many of the discount hosts charge $5, $10, even $20 PER incident. It’s how they offer such cheap hosting. I only pay if I ask them to do something extra, and then it’s only $3 per ticket. Basic service is free, and OS reloads, upgrades, add-ons etc.? $3. Gotta love that.
4. The hardware is pretty solid. I can’t add any as it is not a co-lo but their box, so donated hardware wouldn’t help much either unfortunately.

So yeah...the monthly rate is higher than I could get elsewhere but I really feel like I get decent service for the cost, and if you’ve been around since the old old days you’ll know how important that is! We were up and down like a yo-yo before I switched to Softlayer.

Also, you may have noticed the $1500 goal. I picked that number because it represents 6 months of server fees. That would take a huge load off my wallet’s shoulders and allow me to breathe a lot easier for at least a year or so. Hopefully we can reach the goal. If you have a blog, please help out by making a post that links back here. Or if you have an in with a much more important blogger out there who could help us publicize the server drive...email them for us? An Insta-lanche wouldn’t go amiss. :)

Obama ain’t payin’ our bills, apparently he knows we didn’t vote for him. So spread the word!

By now you know that Sarah Palin has stepped down as Governor:

Discuss.  I’m still in the mode of “WTF?!” Allahpundit tries a positive spin:

Bill Kristol thinks resigning now could actually be a bold gambit to free herself up for an intense presidential campaign, but I think she’s following more of a Nixonian strategy here. I.e. it could be she’s burned out on politics and dispirited by all the crap she’s put up with it and wants to get away at an opportune moment. If, as is likely, The One wins a second term, the GOP will be so dejected that it’ll happily give her a second look as a potential savior in 2016, much as it did with Nixon after he lost the 1960 presidential election and 1962 California gubernatorial race.

Difference: Nixon didn’t walk out in the middle of the job.  Another difference: Palin sounds ... strange ... like mentally strange.  I’ll have to ask Mrs. 10000 to watch it, since she’s better at reading people.  But watching this press conference, I felt more like I was watching the beginning of a meltdown rather than the beginning of a Presidency.

Update: I think Ed Morrissey just had a Brownie Moment with Palin.  I must say that I think I just did too.

Update: Mrs. 10000 thinks Palin sounds happy, almost giddy.  “She’s got something good lined up.” We’ll see.

Update: Ambinder, usually a good source, takes her at her word:

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that Palin has a grand strategy that relies on subterfuge, prestidigitation or rhetorical concealment. She has few close advisers, and she is prone to ignore their advice. She keeps her own counsel. She believes what she says (and implies): that she is a national political figure, that her destiny (and I think she capitalizes the D) is in the continental 48, that her personal characteristics are mocked by the elite because the elite cannot understand them, that her family and children are subject to relentless, negative and highly damaging personal attacks, and that there is no longer a place for her in the Alaska government.

Read the whole thing. Short version: she wants to give up governing for politics.

What better palate cleanser could you have going into the weekend than P.J. O’Rourke debunking ... the entire Obama Administration?

I haven’t heard an update about how O’Rourke is dealing with his cancer.  But here’s hoping we have him around for a long long time to come.

It’s not often that you see someone put on the clown makeup in real time, but bless his heart, John Cole certainly has the talent to pull it off:

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs and the rest of the Wall Street gangs are posting record profits and handing out record bonuses, all because the American taxpayer spent trillions to shore up their recklessness. And since it cost so much, we are now being told we can’t pass another stimulus or do anything about health care. But hey- Matt Taibbi wrote a tough article and Jake DeSantis was stared at rudely once, so it all evens out.

I highlighted the sentence in the middle because it shows the attitude of the average Democrat in these times.  They don’t even consider the possibility of NOT spending hundreds of billions upon trillions of dollars that we don’t have, just because it makes them feel like they care so much.  Christ, Obama and his court jester, Joe Biden, have at least paid lip service to “paygo,” even if they are being completely insincere about it.  Most everyone else, though, is on the “spend like it’s 2005!” wagon.  Cole and his comrades aren’t worried about vastly increasing our national debt, when even the President has admitted that we can’t keep borrowing from China and that we are “out of money,” they’re bent out of shape that people don’t want to add even more debt. 

A couple of posts later, the same day, Cole then burps out this gem:

No links. Just guess. Who is a big enough hack that they could write the following:

“Porkulus has utterly failed, as has the Obama administration’s fiscal policies. Businesses have conserved capital in the face of massive new taxes and costs associated with Obama’s stated fiscal policies, such as cap-and-trade, foreign-income taxation, and the higher interest rates that will spring from the massive deficits Obama plans to create. The capital necessary for growth won’t appear in the market under these conditions, as we have clearly seen. When will the media begin to hold this administration responsible for Obama’s economy-killing agenda?”

Place your guesses in the comments.

Uh, John?  You might want to hold off on the gratuitous dog pics and middle-school tween-level posturing and see for yourself:

Cole’s intellectual laziness and economic myopia aside, while amusing to point out here, isn’t ultimately the whole point of this post, however--it has to do with the larger issue of unemployment. (More after the jump)

Commenters in Geoff’s post at Innocent Bystanders that I linked here have pointed out the obvious discrepancy of unemployment only going up only 0.1 percentage points, when more jobs (per raw numbers) were lost last month than in May when it went up another 0.5%.  They point out the issues of people who have been kicked off the unemployment roles, people who have “given up,” and the “underemployed,” which is essentially working part-time.  Throw these numbers in, and the unemployment rate hits double-digits easily, although the “actual” rate seems to run anywhere from 15% to 26% depending upon who is doing the math and the metrics they use.

If I recall, not counting these numbers as part of the unemployment rate was part of the welfare reform bill that the Republicans passed and Billy Jeff signed into law in 1996, although someone can correct me if I’m wrong.  Quite frankly, this is one of the most short-sighted, dishonest ways of fudging economic numbers that exists in our system right now.  Because the public looks at unemployment rates as the primary indicator of economic health or recovery, the government certainly has an interest in keeping the numbers as low as possible, but that doesn’t mean they should lie about it.

Up until about three months ago, the Air Force’s Pacific Command had a PT fail rate of about 2-3% annually, among the lowest in the Air Force.  PACAF commanders finally bit the bullet on suspicions they had that the pass rates weren’t legitimate and started using civilian fitness trainers at the base gyms to actually run the PT tests (run 1.5 miles, waist measurement, push-ups, and sit-ups).  The fail rates jumped to the double digits, but it showed that the PT programs in their units weren’t being adequately monitored, and PACAF commanders have taken steps to fix it.  Those rates are now starting to drop again, even though they are still high.

The same transparency needs to happen with the unemployment rates.  If Obama and Congress are really invested in fixing the unemployment problem, they need to bite the fucking bullet and start including the numbers of people who have been kicked off the unemployment roles or have given up looking for work.  “Underemployed” should be a separate category, since this often includes college kids that are just looking for beer and condom money, but it also includes people who are working at Home Depot or Kroger’s part-time to at least keep food on their table and the wolves at bay.

Only when the government is completely honest about what the unemployment rate is (yeah, I know, stop laughing, you assholes :P) will people be able to start approaching how to solve the problem from a more practical, realistic perspective, rather than this phony-baloney crap about “saving or creating jobs.”

Jesus:

Pakistan’s top Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, is buying children as young as 7 to serve as suicide bombers in the growing spate of attacks against Pakistani, Afghan and U.S. targets, U.S. Defense Department and Pakistani officials say.

A Pakistani official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the topic, said the going price for child bombers was $7,000 to $14,000 - huge sums in Pakistan, where per-capita income is about $2,600 a year.

“[Mehsud] has turned suicide bombing into a production output, not unlike [the way] Toyota outputs cars,” a U.S. Defense Department official told reporters recently. He spoke on the condition that he not be named because of ongoing intelligence efforts to catch Mehsud, a prime target for a U.S. and Pakistani anti-Taliban campaign.

The article goes on to note that the use of boy soldiers is not unusual in the region.  But this is different.  This is kidnapping other people’s children and tying bombs to them—an act of such tremendous encourage, it could only have come from the cowardly Taliban.

Mehsud, in case you don’t know, is the Bhutto-murdering fucker we almost got with a Predator last week.  I was disappointed then but now I’m sort of hoping we’ll catch him alive.  In keeping with our renewed commitments to the Geneva Conventions and the rule of law, I propose we don’t torture him.  I propose we don’t even imprison him.  We’ll just cut him loose on the streets of Karachi with some of the parents whose babies he bought and murdered.

CNS News:

Despite ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ongoing violence in Iran, and an economy that Obama has described as the worst since the Great Depression, the president has golfed multiple times in the past several weeks--on April 26, May 16, May 25, May 31, June 7, June 9, June 14 and June 21.

Obama’s golf outings have generated favorable reports from the media, in contrast to his predecessor, George W. Bush.

You know where this is going.  Bush was criticized in some circles for golfing during a war (a war that is still going).  He then ended up in the catch-22 where he was pilloried for golfing, then pilloried again when he stopped golfing ( “That’s his idea of sacrifice, to give up golf?” said Robert Dallek).  But Obama....

A search of news reports on Nexis revealed that photographers, but not reporters have access to Obama when he is on the links. But his outings have been covered, including by The Washington Post on June 9, 2009, in an article with the headline “Just the Sport for A Leader Most Driven.”

“What’s the deal? Why golf?” Post staff writer Richard Leiby wrote. “The attraction seems to be simple. It’s a great escape; the game demands such attention that nothing else matters. It’s time spent with friends, an unhurried afternoon in loose clothing (shorts seem to be Obama’s preference).”

Leiby continued, “To some, Obama’s frequent outings reflect a cool self-confidence.”

Leiby even quoted a sports psychologist who said Obama seemed able to play golf despite the grim reports by the media about the wars and the economy.

I didn’t have a problem with Bush golfing and I don’t have a problem with Obama doing it either—not in the least because as long as he’s golfing, he can’t be fucking something else up.  The list of soldiers who died while Obama was golfing is needlessly dramatic, although I did find it disrespectful when he observed a moment of silence on memorial day by pausing between holes.  I like Presidents to get out of the White House once in a while because it increases the chance that may actually invest thought into their policies.  So if Obama wants to hit the links a couple of times a month, I’m down with that.

But it would be nice is if we got some ... you know ... consistency on the subject.

Some time ago, I noted that the big driver behind socialized medicine might be big business seeking to cripple competition while currying favor with politicians.

I hate being right all the time.  Walmart has now come out in favor of Obama’s healthcare proposals, allying itself with CAP and SEIU.  This, of course, instantly transforms Walmart in liberal minds from the Embodiment of Corporate Evil to the Best Corporation in America (they also came out in favor of Waxman-Markey).

But this move is completely unsurprising and absolutely consistent with Walmart’s pattern of behavior.

At first glance, the idea of the notoriously cheap chain favoring liberal reforms might seem like a shock. But it really isn’t a huge surprise considering that Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott partnered with the Service Employees International Union’s Andy Stern to push for universal health care more than two years ago.

Why would Wal-Mart do this? In part, because it’s a good PR move. The company has long been the target of complaints that it treats its labor force shabbily. Partnering with a big union like the SEIU and supporting universal coverage allows the company an opportunity to soften its corporate image.

But it’s also a good from a competitive standpoint. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest employer, can afford the costs imposed by an employer mandate. Smaller competitors are likely to find it harder—and they’re not too happy about Wal-Mart’s announcement.

Michael Cannon concurs as does McArdle. Stephen Bainbridge adds:

In fact, however, Wal-Mart has been suckling at the government teat for decades, transferring costs to the tax payer whenever possible.

Indeed, Wal-Mart is heavily dependent on government subsidies. Wal-Mart routinely gets sales and property tax abatements when it opens a new store, to cite but one example. According to a 2004 study (albeit one funded by a union) the subsidies can amount to as much as 12 million dollars per store. Additional de facto subsidies come when uninsured or under-insured Wal-Mart employees get health care at government expense. Supporting government-run health care looks like a sop to the politicians who control the subsidy tap.

Read the whole thing, as he goes into detail about how Walmart has worked the system.

Look, I’m known for being ... well, not exact pro-Walmart, but very anti-anti-Walmart.  It drives me berzerk when liberals scream about how Walmart jobs suck—a job is a job, assholes.  An enormous amount of anti-Walmart sentiment is driven by condescension and arrogance.  And I do think the way it has driven down prices through the economy of scale has been of enormous benefit to the poor and middle class.

But that doesn’t mean I support the way they have frequently milked the political system for lucre.  And this is a perfect example—trying to fob their healthcare costs onto the rest of us.  A big corporation endorsing big government is a bad thing, whether you are a liberal or a conservative.  When the forces of Corporate America and the force of Big Government get together, what the hell do you guys think is going to happen to the little guy?  Stop gibbering dreamy prose about “politicians and business leaders working together for the good of us all” and use your God-damned inbuilt skepticism.  If someone told me, for example, that ACORN was endorsing Republican policy, I’d be suspicious, not giddy.

Millionaires and power-mongers do not do things like this out of the goodness of their heart.  They do it so that they can both get their turn at our asses.

Update: Sometimes, late at night, I fantasize that I can blog as effectively as Radley Balko:

….if Walmart had given, say, the Cato Institute somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million, after which Cato issued a joint letter with Walmart executives calling for the federal government to pass new policies that would hurt Walmart’s competitors, I’m pretty sure people like Matthew Yglesias would be calling Cato a bunch of corporate whores.

But this isn’t the Cato Institute we’re talking about. It’s Yglesias’ employer, the left-wing Center for the American Progress.

So you see, that means it’s all okay.

Of course it does.  Because it’s good when corporations get involved in politics—so long as it’s liberal politics.

No, this post is not about Al Franken..it’s yet another chance to take a big, fat dump all over the Obama economic policy and the media’s reporting of it.  First, from the magnificent Geoff at Innocent Bystanders:

Over the past 3 months we have found that:

The Obama economic team’s peak unemployment predictions were unrealistically optimistic,
Their estimate of the speed of relief by Stimulus spending was also unrealistically optimistic, and
Their actual “economic modeling” apparently consisted of spreadsheet-level estimates of unemployment

Geoff’s post cites a WaPo article that discusses Mark Zandi, a former McCain advisor (as if that alone wouldn’t make everything he said suspect) who has advocated for more, more, more stimulus spending.  One of the commenters calls Zandi a “Al Goreacle powerpoint ranger,” and with good reason--as Geoff shows, he doesn’t seem to know what the hell he’s talking about when it comes to his chosen subject, either:

Now this fellow also made some economic projections, and I presume that they were based on a more sophisticated analysis than the meager efforts of Obama’s team. So let’s have a look at what he predicted on January 21, 2009, back when the stimulus package was weighing in at $825 billion. And just for fun, let’s compare that to what actually has been happening:

This comes on the heels of an AP article today that reaches new lows in unpaid propoganda for the Obama administration:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US private sector shed 473,000 jobs in June to cope with a prolonged recession, a survey by payrolls firm ADP showed Wednesday with a warning that unemployment will rise for several more months.

The June job cuts were worse than the 395,000 expected by most analysts but lower than 485,000 in May, which was revised from the previous 532,000 figure.

Monthly employment losses in April, May, and June averaged 492,000, a notable improvement over the first three months of the year (!!!!!), when monthly losses averaged 691,000, according to the ADP National Employment Report.

Yeah, that’s right, wingnuts--an average of nearly 500,000 job losses a month over the last quarter is a “notable improvement.” This is like claiming the 150-yard 30-.06 hit to your pelvis isn’t as bad as the point-blank shotgun blast to your chest.

Did I say a couple of days ago that the Obama administration wears clown shoes 24/7?  The media is the whole fucking college where they go to learn.  And yes, it’s no coincidence that David Axelrod is a former journalist.

… To Ask a Question

In a follow up to Obama’s little staged media events, which have been mentioned on this site a few times, it looks as though the media is being a little honest here and calling bs on Obama’s staged question and answer sessions. Two reporters, Chip Reid, and Helen Thomas, who has been a White House correspondent since the Garfield administration, laid into the press secretary for some answers. Of course they didn’t get any.  So again, we see Obama is doing a similar act of what Bush was accused of doing with his town hall meetings. In fact Helen basically stated the Obama administration’s pattern is unprecedented, which would mean being worse than Bush (this current administration’s pathetic benchmark for comparison of all things good and evil) in this instance.

Let’s see now. Things we didn’t like about Republicans that Obama is doing with very little protest from the left. The same left who were so adamant about how wrong things were (and in some cases rightfully so), and their claim about how Obama was the solution to the evil ills of the GOP.

1) Staged questions at media events—Check
2) Hand picking your science in the EPA involving global warming, and silencing those who show information that doesn’t support your political agenda-- Check
3) Firing investigators who might be a risk to your friends, supporters, or don’t toe the line – Check
4) Rampant uncontrolled spending with little oversight – Check
5) Political favoritism – Check
6) Lack of transparency – Check

I would honestly love to be educated by those on the Left. Can anyone explain at all why this behavior is now acceptable? So far, as has been my thought for quite a while, it has nothing to do with making America better. It’s all about partisan hackery. Those on the right can be and have been just as guilty, but let’s cut the bullshit illusions how those on the left really want to clean things up, or bring “change”. In reality it’s more of the same, and growing more corrupt as the power of government continues to increase. The only thing good about Obama is I’m sure the next idiot in office will be even worse.  This will make Obama look good by comparison.

I’m late on this (was sick yesterday), but it is official: Al Franken is now the Senator for SEIU Minnesota.  His first priority?  Supporting unions.  Because they have been getting totally hosed in Washington lately.

Update: More here.  It looks like the Democrats managed to do in Minnesota what they tried to do in Florida back in 2000.