U.S. Unemployment over 10%

I’m kinda of surprised it was finally admitted given the past few days of politicians and pundits claiming unemployment would not pass 10%. Unemployment rate jumps to 10.2 percent — DailyFinance

Anyone still trying to claim the recession is over really now needs to shut the hell up because they obviously don’t know what they’re talking about. Especially with the bogus (tax payer funded pseudo) growth of 3.5% of July-September and the more than $300,000/per job spent on “creating” temporary jobs from the disastrous stimulus bill.

Ft. Hood Shooting

My thoughts go out to the people killed and  injured in today’s shooting at Ft. Hood.

I won’t speculate on the possible motives of the shooter, reportedly a U.S. Army Major. That will likely come out in the days to come. I’m just glad the shooter was stopped and another two suspects caught before even more people died or were injured than already occurred.

FTC To Regulate Bloggers

FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials

Overall, I’m not surprised that the FTC imposed these new rules on the internet given the ever increasing number of dishonest bloggers and companies exploiting blogging and bloggers to hype their shoddy products. So in many ways these new rules were inevitable, especially with the Federal Government’s current dictatorial nanny-state mentality.

I have no problems with the parts requiring full disclosure if a blogger receives some sort of gain from a review or recommendation. I also like that they got rid of the “results not typical” garbage that’s been used in advertising for so long. Unfortunately our government has a history of trying to insert bureaucracy into the internet and suppress individuals in the name of protecting the public which is what I fear is the real intent of the change.

I suspect it will now also hurt professional post-for-pay bloggers, legitimate or otherwise, assuming the FTC can somehow manage to read each and every single blogpost on the web every single day. Yeah, didn’t think so. Which is where my concern comes in that it will be used as a tool by the government to silence the opposition who writes something the FTC or Federal Government (or elements thereof) doesn’t like.

My other concern is the hypocrisy behind the new rule which doesn’t apply to corporations so that consumers learn the truth of which company owns which other companies or have exclusive deals with them. After all, if the FTC (and by extension the entire Federal Government) consumer protection is what they’re after then full disclosure should be disclosed by all from the smallest blooger to political campaigns to multinational corprorations. Ghost bloggers are bad enough, but federal chicanery disguised as protecting the public good is worse.

AK-47 maker to go bankrupt?

Gunmaker to go bankrupt?

A passing thought

Now you see I become extremely cynical when groups like Democracy for America are pushing the so called “nuclear option” (as they did in a recent email) to force passage of ObamaCare in the Senate. Why be afraid of the process instead invoking what many legal experts are saying may well be an illegal process in this instance in order to push through so called reform? If it’s truly reformative then there is no need to force it through. Sounds more like trying to silence open debate and smacks of dictatorship to me.

They might get Obamacare through by such means, but the government would come to a screeching halt for the next three years as all attempts at cooperation would be off the table at that point and would likely spell the demise of a number of political careers, particularly those who go along with the nuclear option. It would also likely lead to ObamaCare being repealed the next time the Republicans or similarly anti-ObamaCare Democrats controlled the House and Senate (likely by 2012 should the nuke option be used) thereby repeating a never ending cycle of grid-locked government and creating a citizenry likely to eliminate both Parties as a result.

President Clueless #2

Unsurprisingly (at least for me) Obama failed to win me over. And I suspect he failed to win over a significant number of Americans. Sadly though he is still clueless at why so many Americans are against Obamacare as it exists right now. And at this point I doubt he will ever get a clue.

I’ll only say that it was disrespectful of whichever Congressmen it was that shouted at Obama. Yes the Democrats have been extremely disrespectful in this debate by impugning all who disagree with them and trying to silence the rest, but being disrespectful in return does nothing to address the real problems of exclusionary elitism prevalent in DNC. Let them hang themselves with their own misguided and unwanted policies.

I’ll leave the rest to the political pundits. I stand by my previous posts on what is acceptable to me for health care reform. Anything else is unacceptable.

Common Sense Wisdom

(At least with respect to governance, if not life.)

From W.J.H. Boetcker’s The 10 Cannots:

• You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
• You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
• You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
• You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
• You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
• You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
• You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
• You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
• You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence.
• And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

Perhaps our so called political leaders should take note.

Goodbye Courage Campaign

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a couple of days now.

It’s unfortunate but the Courage Campaign has now become another pawn of the DNC trying to push their lies and propaganda about health care reform (aka ObamaCare). I backed this group because of the civil right efforts not to be told a bunch of bull about how it’s the insurance companies fault that health care is allegedly bad in this country. That’s what I get for thinking for even a moment that this group might actually be independent of political machinations out of Washington D.C.

So with their bullshit email sent out about health care reform, I tell Courage Campaign to go screw themselves and end support for any of their efforts. Scumbags.

Obama Joker Poster

Meh.

It’s amusing enough for a few seconds but hardly worthy of the fake controversy surrounding it. I looked at it, got a chuckle and thne moved on. Certainly Bush faced worse posters during his years. Bush and Obama are equally imbicilic so it’s only fair both get lampooned. It just find it sad that wing nuts try to demonize their opponents but then cry fould when the same is done to them.

Racist? Hardly, though the wing nuts (this time on the left) would have you think so. But then these were the same wing nuts that say anyone who did not vote for Obama or doesn’t support his statist agenda is a racist, so there you go. Socialist? Obama is obviously of a socialist mindset but The Dark Knight’s Joker isn’t really a socialist, more anarchist than anything else. So not exactly a fit either.

Moving on to real concerns…

40th Anniversary of Apollo 11

As many are aware today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.

Apollo 11 Launch (Image courtesy of NASA)