You really aren't that big of a deal

1. The Sun is 864,400 miles (1,391,000 kilometers) across. This is about109 times the diameter of Earth. The Sun weighs about 333,000 times as much as Earth. It is so large that about 1,300,000 planet Earths can fit inside of it.  
2. 
   
   
3. The innermost layer of the sun is the core. With a temperature of 15 million kelvins (27 million degrees Fahrenheit)
4. The outermost layer of the sun is the corona. Only visible during eclipses, it is a low density cloud of plasma with higher transparency than the inner layers. The white corona is a million times less bright than the inner layers of the sun, but is many times larger. The corona is hotter than some of the inner layers. Its average temperature is 1 million K (2 million degrees F) but in some places it can reach 3 million K (5 million degrees F). 
5. 
   Temperatures steadily decrease as we move farther away from the core, but after the photosphere they begin to rise again. There are several theories that explain this, but none have been proven.
   
   
   In the corona, above sunspots and areas of complex magnetic field patterns, are solar flares. These sparks of energy sometimes reach the size of the Earth and can last for up to several hours. Their temperature has been recorded at 11 million K (20 million degrees F). The extreme heat produces x rays that create light when they hit the gases of the corona.
6. 
   
   
7. The sun is the source of virtually all heat for our planet.  The earth is insignificant in comparison.  
8. If you want to feel even more insignificant, this guy ran a program to prove that every human alive would fit into one 900-meter ball.  
9. 
   
   
10. And yet if our politicians are to be believed, our failure to give them more control over the energy economy is boiling the planet.  
11. Seriously, people....  It's time to get over yourselves.  It's the sun, and the occasional lack of it.  You aren't that big of a deal.  Go here for more fun details.  
12. 
    
    

A quick prayer for The Super Bowl

God, I know that I am a sinner, and that I do not live according to your Word, whether it's the Torah, the Old Testament, the I Ching, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, or Dr. Atkins' Weight Loss Revolution. 

But God, I'm just asking for one little thing.....

Obama's will give his State Of The Union Speech on Tuesday night.  His typists are working on it now. 

Please have the Teleprompter Programmers come down hard on Global Warming.  President Obama, much like Ron Burgundy, will read whatever the Teleprompter Programmer puts on the thing. 

Let Obama stand before Congress and the nation and ask for money to fight warming.  Let him denounce the internal combustion engine.  Let him lobby for windmills, recycling, green bullshit, and carbon taxes. 

And then..... let it snow. 

May it snow enough to ground the wheels of D.C. to a halt. 

Let it snow some more. 

There is already a good chance that the Super Bowl will be postponed.  (Here's what the Meadowlands stadium looks like today.) 

 God, I ask this in your son's name, and in the name of Allah and Mohammad and Buddha and Dr. Atkins.  May the rescheduled Super Bowl also be postponed because of snow and cold and freezing and ice. 

May the Gore Effect make itself known throughout our land, and may your people break out in giggles.  Because it'll be so damn funny. 

Amen, Ameen, Shalom, Namaste, and we all bow to the Buddha nature that is within you. 

*******************

Everyone but God,  please go here for a few weather predictions and possibilities. 

A warning about user privacy on ObamaCare

I saw this on Denny's site:

 

Never Let A Non-Crisis Go To Waste

Ok, this is some good stuff.  Please hang with me through the preliminary throat-clearing....

Here's The Economist magazine, formerly a cheerleader for Anthropogenic Global Warming, but now drifting toward well-founded skepticism for the second time in the last few months:

GLOBAL warming has slowed. The rate of warming of over the past 15 years has been lower than that of the preceding 20 years. There is no serious doubt that our planet continues to heat, but it has heated less than most climate scientists had predicted. Nate Cohn of the New Republic reports: "Since 1998, the warmest year of the twentieth century, temperatures have not kept up with computer models that seemed to project steady warming; they’re perilously close to falling beneath even the lowest projections".

Mr Cohn does his best to affirm that the urgent necessity of acting to retard warming has not abated, as does Brad Plumer of the Washington Post, as does this newspaper. But there's no way around the fact that this reprieve for the planet is bad news for proponents of policies, such as carbon taxes and emissions treaties, meant to slow warming by moderating the release of greenhouse gases. The reality is that the already meagre prospects of these policies, in America at least, will be devastated if temperatures do fall outside the lower bound of the projections that environmentalists have used to create a panicked sense of emergency. Whether or not dramatic climate-policy interventions remain advisable, they will become harder, if not impossible, to sell to the public, which will feel, not unreasonably, that the scientific and media establishment has cried wolf.

Read the whole thing if time permits, and remember the key sentence in that 2nd paragraph.  The reality is that the already meagre prospects of these policies, in America at least, will be devastated if temperatures do fall outside the lower bound of the projections that environmentalists have used to create a panicked sense of emergency.

Now we take you to Barack H. Obama, in full-blown Chicken Little mode. .   

President Obama will announce Tuesday in a speech at Georgetown University that he plans to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants, according to individuals who have been briefed on the plan but asked not to be identified.


In a statement Saturday afternoon sent via the White House Twitter feed, Obama said that he plans to fulfill the pledge he made in his second inaugural address to “respond to the growing threat of climate change for the sake of our children and future generations.”


“This Tuesday, I’ll lay out my vision for where I believe we need to go — a national plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change, and lead global efforts to fight it,” the president said. “This is a serious challenge — but it’s one uniquely suited to America’s strengths.”

Remember this, children.  Please, please, please remember this one thing.  The damn weather isn't cooperating with the models.  Climate isn't changing as predicted.  Obama knows that if he's going to get in another expensive boondoggle for supporters, he has to act fast. 

Here's some more of his statement.  For "economic opportunities", you can safely substitute the word "graft".  Or perhaps "kickbacks". 

In Saturday’s statement, Obama emphasized the economic opportunities that could come from tackling carbon emissions.


“We’ll need scientists to design new fuels, and farmers to grow them,” he said. “We’ll need engineers to devise new sources of energy, and businesses to make and sell them.”

Ok, enough of that damn fool.  Let's move on to another one, a senator from Hawaii. 

Senator Brian Schatz’s (D-HI) filed an amendment for the immigration bill Wednesday that would allow stateless people in the U.S. to seek conditional lawful status if their nations have been made uninhabitable by climate change.

I'll believe that I contribute to Climate Change when senator Brian Schatz’s (D-HI) starts travelling from Hawaii to D.C. in a canoe carved from a coconut tree.  Christ Almighty, do these people have no sense of shame?  At all? 
Here's more.....

Again, let me be clear about what this amendment does. It simply recognizes that climate change, like war, is one of the most significant contributors to homelessness in the world. And like with states torn apart and made uninhabitable by war, we have an obligation not to deport people back to a country made uninhabitable by sea level rise and other extreme environmental changes that render these states desolate.

The sky isn't falling, people.  It simply isn't.  We have weather.  Good, bad, and normal. 

There is no crisis.  But we're not going to let the non-crisis go to waste. 

I need some help finding an Al Gore video

I need some help finding an Al Gore video. 
Back in December of 2008, The Goracle claimed that the polar ice caps will probably be gone in five years.  It was captured on video. 
I had the video posted here. 
Anthony Watts, of Watts Up With That, had the video posted here. 

The Telegraph covered it here.....

Speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, Mr Gore said new computer modelling suggests there is a 75 per cent chance of the entire polar ice cap melting during the summertime by 2014.

Steve Goddard copied it here:

Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.


In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

And you can go to the Center For Environmental Journalism where they call him out on it.  They, too, had the video, but it has since disappeared. 

The only video I've seen was recorded from German television.  We can all have a good time ridiculing this scam artist based on the online accounts of his prediction, but it's better to have video. 
Honest to God, I don't think most of his constitutents can read very well. 
Video is better. 

If you can find it, please email a link to dapfortworth@aol.com  I'll mail you a dachshund in return. 

Joy. Bliss.

I try not to update this website during work hours, but....

Al Gore, The Goracle Of Music City, Tennessee, one of the people who made me so absolutely nuts that I had to start blogging, the best-known Greenie on the planet, and one of the recipients of the Kleiner/Perkins Green Scams....

Al Gore, who won a freakin' Nobel Peace Prize for sounding the alarm about your SUV changing the weather....

Al Gore, who wants to require you to purchase Green Energy Credits (from his companies) to atone for your environmental sins....

Al Gore has sold his "Current TV" network to Al-Jazeera, the broadcasting wing of the nasty, polluting, Arab Oil States. 

He lobbied hard for the sale, and used all the political muscle at his disposal to make it happen. 

I'm laughing so hard that I'm almost crying.  This is a great day.  LOL. 

One other thing....It looks like he timed the bill to avoid the increased taxes associated with the Fiscal Cliff deal.  It saved him five million. 

New Senator From Hawaii Wants To Change The Weather

The recently deceased senator Daniel Inouye was, by most accounts, a good guy.  But he also brought enough pork from Washington to Hawaii to sink the islands.  Daniel Inouye was serious about bringing home the bacon.  He wasn't ashamed of being knows as "The King Of Pork". 

I predict that Daniel Inouye (and my sympathies go out to all his contractors, bureaucrats, looters, and contributors, BTW) will soon be seen as an amatuer. 

His replacement, Brian Schatz, wants to change the weather.  Go here. 

The replacement for the late Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye (D) said Wednesday that climate change is at the top of his legislative agenda.

"For me, personally, I believe global climate change is real and it is the most urgent challenge of our generation,” Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz (D), whom Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) tapped for the seat, said in brief comments Wednesday.

Let me go waaaaaay out on a limb here, and say that Brian Schatz is full of shit. 
He's going to try to implement some carbon taxes, get some more money for green energy boondoggles, and hire a plague of regulators to pester the productive members of society.  He might try requiring people to purchase "carbon offsets" (LOL) from one of the Al Gore/Kleiner Perkins companies. 
Let's assume that the amount of carbon we put into the air changes the weather. 
Let's assume that the remedies listed above are helpful in some small way. 

You cannot individually undertake any green energy rituals that will offset one trip to Hawaii, unless you're willing to travel by kayak. 

I'll start believing in man-made climate change when Brian Schatz encourages people from the U.S. mainland to stay home instead of travelling to Hawaii.   Until that day, he should be viewed as a con artist.  End of story. 

Update from Friday afternoon:  Cold weather in Europe and Asia is killing hundreds of people. 

Be careful when you start punishing the rich

Go here to see a PDF of a 1913 income tax form. 

I found it on Libertarian Reddit.

Your typical 1913 wage earner didn't have to pay any income taxes.  Adjust for inflation, and the rates look like this:

•1% on $470,000 - $1.17million


•2% on $1.17 - 1.75 million

•3% on $1.75 - 2.34 million

•4% on $2.34 - 5.84 million

•5% on $5.84 to 11.7 million

•6% on all incomes over $11.7 million

Here's the rub...."It's easy to convince people to support this kind of progressive revenue system.  Joe LunchBox never dreams of earning enough money to have to worry about this tax! It's just making those greedy ten-thousandaires pay their fair share. The average annual US income in 1913 was somewhere between $1,300 and $3,000 depending on who you ask."


"Fast forward: The income tax kicks in at $8,700 annual income and tops out at an income of $388,350... in 2012 dollars. Over the last 100 years, the rate brackets have inexorably inched their way down, while salaries, wages, and all prices increase with inflation; slowly pushing everyone into the next tax bracket without any real gain in their purchasing power."

The other moral of this story is fairly simple....  No matter how much money they take in, they're going to spend it.  Usually on very bad things. 

Hurricane Sandy And The Ethanol Trifecta

Ethanol producers already benefit from The Statist Trifecta....

1) They've bribed the government into making their product mandatory.
2) They get massive subsidies.  Massive. 
3) Ethanol produced in other nations is hit with a massive tariff.  This alone is enough to prove that the entire program is horsecrap.  If ethanol were about Saving The Planet, we wouldn't care where it was produced.  But this boondoggle is about funneling tax money to donors. 

I've had a mental countdown going for a while, ever since Hurricane Sandy hit the northeast U.S., just waiting on something like this to appear. 

Go here. 

It's been centuries since we sacrificed virgins to the Corn God.  It's been a long, long time since the Mayans pulled a beating heart out of a sacrificial victim every morning, just to ensure that the sun came up.  I haven't heard anyone pray for rain since I left Drew Baptist Church in Drew, Mississippi.  Very few of us believe that gay marriage or outlawing public prayer in public schools causes hurricanes or earthquakes. 

But buying soybeans and corn from politically connected millionaire farmers to prevent hurricanes?  Yeah, that should work. 

The Pain, The Pain

Televangelist Oral Roberts once told his followers that unless they gave him 4.5 million dollars, the Lord was going to "call him home". He got away with it.


Barack Obama once told his followers that unless they gave him 700 Billion dollars in "stimulus", they were going to suffer an economic disaster. I bet he gets away with it. (The massive spending on the right side of this chart is supposedly a cure for the bad things on the left. LOL.)

BTW, Obama's top economic experts, Peter Orszag, Jared Bernstein, Christina Romer, Larry Summers, and Austan Goolsbee have ALL resigned. They came in, ripped off the Treasury, and got the hell out. There are some stains that they don't want on their resumes.

And yet there are still true believers who can't see it. No matter how likeable Oral Roberts and Barack Obama are, there really is such a thing as a con game. Admitting that you've been taken really does hurt.

Which Green Energy "Company" will go under next?

The Heritage Foundation has compiled a list of the Green Energy Scams that were financially blessed by Barry, Bringer Of Light. 
The ones with asterisks are the ones that have already gone under.  The others are still a few laps from the drain.  Amuse yourself with betting pools, setting the over/under, and guessing how much money each company donated to Barry's election. 

The dollar amounts reflect the amount that was offered to each CEO, not what was actually accepted.  This amount doesn't include any state, county, or city graft.   Don't worry about the CEO's of the bankrupt companies, their children, or their homes.  Seriously.  I have a feeling that they'll get by....  

Why people are still confused about the failure of the $700 billion stimulus remains a mystery.  Barack Obama couldn't pick the winner of The Atlanta Falcons vs. The North Sunflower Academy Rebels. 

I'll give a free dachsund (great as pets or for scientific experiments!) to whoever guesses which of these Green Money-Laundering Shells goes under next:

1.Evergreen Solar ($24 million)*


2.SpectraWatt ($500,000)*

3.Solyndra ($535 million)*

4.Beacon Power ($69 million)*

5.AES’s subsidiary Eastern Energy ($17.1 million)

6.Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)

7.SunPower ($1.5 billion)

8.First Solar ($1.46 billion)

9.Babcock and Brown ($178 million)

10.EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*

11.Amonix ($5.9 million)

12.National Renewable Energy Lab ($200 million)

13.Fisker Automotive ($528 million)

14.Abound Solar ($374 million)*

15.A123 Systems ($279 million)*

16.Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($6 million)

17.Johnson Controls ($299 million)

18.Schneider Electric ($86 million)

19.Brightsource ($1.6 billion)

20.ECOtality ($126.2 million)

21.Raser Technologies ($33 million)*

22.Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*

23.Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*

24.Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*

25.Range Fuels ($80 million)*

26.Thompson River Power ($6.4 million)*

27.Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*

28.LSP Energy ($2.1 billion)*

29.UniSolar ($100 million)*

30.Azure Dynamics ($120 million)*

31.GreenVolts ($500,000)

32.Vestas ($50 million)

33.LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($150 million)

34.Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*

35.Navistar ($10 million)

36.Satcon ($3 million)*

Enjoy !  Unlike the comps you might sometimes get in Vegas, you aren't playing with "house" money.  This time the house is playing with your money.  Might as well have fun watching them blow it. 

Jobs update !!!

It's been a busy weekend, and there's been little or no time to blog. 
So let's update the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on a gullible public !!!

The bottom line reflects what The Teleprompter Jesus promised we'd see if we just gave him 3/4 of a trillion dollars to spend on his buddies. 
The next line from the bottom was his "scary" number - the numbers we'd see if we didn't let him loot The Treasury. 
The next line shows the official government unemployment numbers. 
The little dot closest to the top shows the unemployment number we'd see if so many people weren't saying "screw it, I quit". 

So seriously, what do you think would've happened if The Porkulus Package had been even bigger? 

The next next next next Solyndra

They're all going belly-up. 
If their ideas were good, they would've attracted private capital. 

The donors have been rewarded, the victims (you) have been fleeced, and it was all as predictable as the winner of The Texas Rangers vs the Little Sisters Of The Blind softball match. 

Where are the crowds with pitchforks and torches?  Folks, they stole your money, gave it to their friends, called it "green", and they expect you to act like it's business as usual. 

Go here.  If you have time to read about the most recent scam, go here.

 

We're from the IRS and we're here to collect for State Farm

Here's another graphic for you....

Your stimulus dollars at work

I found this link on Instapundit. 
It's from The Charleston Gazette. 

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Nobody told Hurricane librarian Rebecca Elliot that the $22,600 Internet router in the branch library's storage closet was powerful enough to serve an entire college campus.

Nobody told Elliot how much the router cost or who paid for it. Workers just showed up and installed the device. They left behind no instructions, no user manual.

The high-end router serves four public computer terminals at the small library in Putnam County.

"I don't know much about those kinds of things," Elliot said last week, before politely leaving to help an elderly patron select books. "I just work here."

The state of West Virginia is using $24 million in federal economic stimulus money to put high-powered Internet computer routers in small libraries, elementary schools and health clinics, even though the pricey equipment is designed to serve major research universities, medical centers and large corporations, a Gazette-Mail investigation has found.

The state purchased 1,064 routers two years ago, after receiving a $126 million federal stimulus grant to expand high-speed Internet across West Virginia.

The Cisco 3945 series routers, which cost $22,600 each, are built to serve "tens of thousands" of users or device connections, according to a Cisco sales agent. The routers are designed to serve a minimum of 500 users.

Yet state broadband project officials directed the installation of the stimulus-funded Cisco routers in West Virginia schools with fewer than a dozen computers and libraries that have only a single terminal for patrons.

Hit the links to read the whole thing.  I don't know what company made these routers, but I bet I can tell you which presidential candidate they support. 

Ok, see that little button to the right of the page, the one that says "Assorted Deceptions For A Gullible Public"? 
That's a link to the Stimulus Package website.  You can go there to see how the Porkulus dollars have been spent in your neighborhood.  How many jobs were "created".  (Intentional scorn quotes.)  What they cost. 

Guess what I'm doing in my free time?  I'm contacting those organizations and business closest to my home and my warehouses and doing some interviews and having some conversations.  I suggest you do the same. 

Eventually, I'm going to post them.  They're fascinating. 

Joe Biden is in charge of making sure that none of this money is wasted, BTW.  Here's Obama rolling out the Porkulus Plan to Congress and the nation. It's only 37 seconds. Play it. Play it loud. Somebody in West Virginia has been seriously messin' with Joe:



“You compare the nation to a parched piece of land and the tax to a life-giving rain. So be it. But you should also ask yourself where this rain comes from, and whether it is not precisely the tax that draws the moisture from the soil and dries it up. You should also ask yourself further whether the soil receives more of this precious water from the rain than it loses by the evaporation?” - Frederic Bastiat

Charleston West Virginia had some serious losses due to evaporation. 

Why You Shouldn't Hire Anyone In The United States Of America

Barack Obama has has sent Congress a ridiculous "To Do" List, a ragtag collection of feel-good proposals to help the economy, help the unemployed, and mostly to help Washington bureaucrats. 

All of them would be unnecessary if he'd just do the right thing and resign in disgrace. 

Here's #1 on the list:

Reward American Jobs, Eliminate Tax Incentives To Ship Jobs Overseas: Attract and keep good jobs in the United State sby passing legislation that gives companies a new 20 percent tax credit for the cost of moving their operations back to the U.S. Congress should pay for this credit by eliminating tax incentives that allow companies to deduct the costs of moving their business abroad.


If Congress doesn't vote in favor of this stuff, they'll be known as the "do-nothing Congress".  They're already the "do-nothing Congress".  They haven't passed a budget in more than three years, and for two of those years, they were controlled by Democrats.  Since 2010, the House has been Republican, but the Senate has been Democrat.  And it looks like the Dems still run the show. 

Enough about that.  Here's something from the world of reality.  This is what it's like for an employer in Obama's America:

My employer, Jukt Micronics, runs wood, metal and plastic shops in Texas.  I run a warehouse and shipping operation for them where my employees receive, assemble, and transport products made overseas. 

The total product mix is probably 60% manufactured in the U.S., 40% imported from outside of the U.S. 

Before we started outsourcing, we had about 300 employees in the U.S.  

After we started going overseas to purchase the easy stuff, we grew to 600 U.S. employees.  It's funny how that works, isn't it? 

We've now dropped to about 500 U.S. employees, primarily because of the Thief In Chief in the White House. 

The guy who runs our wood operation, who I'll call "Woodchuck", is a great person.  He is a wood god. 

About a week ago, Woodchuck got a complaint about a nighshift employee sleeping on the job.

Woodchuck checked the video cameras, and sure enough, the dude was driving to remote corners of the wood shop on a forklift, kicking back and catching some serious naps. 

Woodchuck fired him. 

The employee, who I'll call "Snoozy", filed for unemployment compensation, saying that he was unjustly terminated. 

The case actually went to a Texas Workforce Commission hearing.  We were armed with the videos, and expected an easy victory. 

The TWC lifer asked Woodchuck if he ever posted signs in the factory about NO SLEEPING ON THE JOB, or NO SLEEPING ON FORKLIFTS. 

Woodchuck replied that he had not.  (He also doesn't have signs about NO SHITTING ON THE BREAKROOM FLOOR, and NO RAPING EMPLOYEES ON THE SLIDING TABLE SAW). 

Because of this glaring oversight we lost the case.  Jukt Micronics will have to pay for Snoozy's unemployment compensation for up to 99 weeks. 

I'll go to my grave believing that the ridiculous number of people collecting unemployment is a campaign strategy.  Increasing the duration of unemployement compensation is a campaign strategy.  (I've lost some compensation claims that I know I'd have won five or six years ago.  One instance involves firing someone for Indecent Exposure.  There were multiple witnesses to the crime.  And Jukt Micronics now has to pay the perverted sonofabitch unemployment for 99 weeks because I supposedly threatened the guy.) 

If Barack Obama wants to bring jobs back to the U.S., there are some simple ways to do it.  He could make the U.S. a less hostile place for employers.  He could stop rigging the tax code in favor of people who do things that he likes.  He could resign. 

When I get to work today, I'm putting signs up about NO SLEEPING ON THE JOB and NO SLEEPING ON FORKLIFTS, just to be safe.  And I'm going to explain why. 

Anyone who hires someone in the United States is taking a huge, huge risk. 

Corrupt Insurance Company DOUBLES Bills After Signing Up Customers !!!

From The Washington Examiner comes an expose of unscrupulous healthcare providers quoting a low price for medical treatment and then DOUBLING the amount charged to the customer. 
I look forward to breathless editorials from the New York Times, the Washington Post and 60 Minutes condemning this practice and those who oversee it. 

President Obama's national health care law will cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, according to a new projection released today by the Congressional Budget Office, rather than the $940 billion forecast when it was signed into law.

Raise your hand if you are shocked.  Anyone?  Anybody?  I didn't think so. 

Democrats employed many accounting tricks when they were pushing through the national health care legislation, the most egregious of which was to delay full implementation of the law until 2014, so it would appear cheaper under the CBO's standard ten-year budget window and, at least on paper, meet Obama's pledge that the legislation would cost "around $900 billion over 10 years." When the final CBO score came out before passage, critics noted that the true 10 year cost would be far higher than advertised once projections accounted for full implementation.

The 2014 date also got Obama past the 2012 elections and also gets some distance between the 2008 Congress and the inevitable consequences of this mess. 
This graph is old and out of date, but it's the most recent one I could find.  Like the Democrats, I like to post eye-popping charts of disastrous consequences.  In this case the chart isn't horrible enough, and I apologize. 

Today, the CBO released new projections from 2013 extending through 2022, and the results are as critics expected: the ten-year cost of the law's core provisions to expand health insurance coverage has now ballooned to $1.76 trillion. That's because we now have estimates for Obamacare's first nine years of full implementation, rather than the mere six when it was signed into law. Only next year will we get a true ten-year cost estimate, if the law isn't overturned by the Supreme Court or repealed by then.

Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn has said that ObamaCare will never be repealed.  That's why you need to start voting for Libertarians. 
Mitt Romney was the John The Baptist for ObamaCare.  He will be the Republican nominee for president.  That's why you need to start voting for Libertarians. 
Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision Authority has had similar cost overruns without accomplishing much of anything but marketing.  They're trying to build a massive lake downtown that will be known to your granchildren debtors as "Lake Granger", after the family of Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger.  That's why you need to start voting for Libertarians. 

Given that in 2022, the last year available, the gross cost of the coverage expansions are $265 billion, we're likely looking at about $2 trillion over the first decade, or more than double what Obama advertised.
UPDATE: I've done another post with additional details from the CBO report.

These are the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office.  I don't think the Congressional Budget Office could properly predict the winner of a New York Giants vs. Little Sisters Of The Blind wager in the Super Bowl. Their predicted cost is very, very low.  Hide and watch. 

Well done, sir. Well done.

Mission Accomplished, Team Obama !!!


From The Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Obama plans soon to introduce his energy and environment team, which will include Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner as White House energy adviser.

The team's makeup shows that Mr. Obama plans to put a heavy emphasis on combating climate change and promoting technologies to wean the U.S. off imported oil. He is packaging such priorities as a way to boost employment and help the economy by pouring money into efficiency projects.

.But the next administration will face a range of obstacles on the energy front, from plummeting oil prices and a declining economy to potential rifts among Mr. Obama's own advisers.

In a sign of one major internal difference, Mr. Chu has called for gradually ramping up gasoline taxes over 15 years to coax consumers into buying more-efficient cars and living in neighborhoods closer to work.

"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," Mr. Chu, who directs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September.

Well done, Mr. Chu.  Well done ! 

Any time you see an electric car, remember what powers it

Fort Worth might get a Flood Control Drive-In Theatre !!!

I've long thought that the purpose of government projects is to transfer money to donors. 
The project needs to have some feasibility, but not much else.  Just get the taxpayer money into the hands of your friends without causing too much of a fuss. 

It's getting ridiculous. 

Arlington built George W. Bush a stadium to his exact specifications.  He moved his baseball team in, and then sold the team for far more than he paid for it.  (86 million purchase price, 250 selling price.)  The difference?  His almost-free stadium.  (Taxpayer subsidy of 205 million.)

  Well done, thou good and faithful servants. 

Arlington built Jerry Jones a stadium to his exact specifications, and then leased it to him.  I don't remember Jerry saying "Thank You", or mailing me some tickets to games.  Oh well. 

Iron Horse Motorcycles of Fort Worth went bankrupt several years ago.  The city is stuck with their manufacturing facility for reasons that I don't quite understand. 

I think "we" agreed to give them a building if they would bring X number of jobs to Fort Worth.  If you need a free building, forcibly funded by taxpayers, you might not have a good business model.  I looked at leasing the Iron Horse factory for my employer last year, but the dock locations in the building were all wrong for us.  Getting new docks added would require the permission of several layers of city government, so we declined the opportunity.  Whether you know it or not, you own an abandoned motorcycle factory. 

Does anyone out there remember the Fort Worth Rail Market?  It was supposed to be a downtown Farmers' Market, luring downtown shoppers into the rail area to pick up tomatoes and onions before they went back home to Mira Vista. 

Part of it was supposed to get funded through transportation money.  (Yes, Kay Granger was involved.  I think that Railroad Produce Stands were a primitive ancestor of Flood Control BarBQ restaurants.)  The thing is now closed.  Shut down.  Abandoned.  It never made a dime.  Go here for an analysis of the boondoggle. 

How about The Mercado de Fort Worth? 

This was a Northside con job that was supposed to be the crown jewel of Cowtown. 

When the Mercado itself last made news, it had just landed its first tenant after more than five years of sitting empty and neglected.

What was supposed to be the pillar of a $6.5 million Northside redevelopment – an authentic Mexican marketplace – had failed to ignite the expected growth along North Main Street.

....It seemed like a good idea at the time: Bring economic development to Fort Worth’s near Northside by developing an area of shops, restaurants and stalls – a Mercado, reflecting the heritage of the mostly Hispanic residents of the neighborhood – and, in the process tie the touristy Stockyards District to downtown.

It started with a sidewalk, an expensive three-block-long sidewalk, in the alley between the mostly dilapidated buildings in the 1400 block of North Main Street and the houses that backed up to them. The plan was for local merchants to set up stalls to sell their goods to tourists who would make their way from the Stockyards area, several city blocks away. The city spent about $1.5 million to pave the alley and renovate the Rose Marine Theater.

Then came the Mercado de Fort Worth building, the brainstorm of local developer Deyla Guadiana. It was supposed to be a 58,000-square-foot, Mexican-style marketplace three stories high that would be the focal point of the Mercado area. Guadiana got a $3.1 million loan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and construction began in 2003.

The city tried to spur interest in both the walkway and the Mercado building by offering low-interest loans and a building site to anyone willing to take a risk. They didn’t find many takers.

Guadiana defaulted on the loan after failing to come up with the private financing to cover the remainder of the construction costs and the city took back the property, taking over the note and spending $1.3 million from a special economic development fund to finish the building.

Finding a buyer took years. 

 And I hope the cashier remembered to give him his change back after the purchase.  The Mercado isn't quite as empty as the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, but it's close. 

If I steal money from your wallet, and use it to buy jewelry and cocaine and cars from my friends, it's going to cause a temporary increase in prosperity for the jewelers, coke, and car dealers.  But it will never last.  It always seems to require an additional theft, doesn't it? 

I could go on and on, but here's the latest....from the Star-Telegram, which reported this with no irony or sarcasm, which might explain why newsstand sales are declining:

FORT WORTH -- The Tarrant Regional Water District next week will consider entering into a lease with Dallas-based Coyote Theaters for a drive-in theater on vacant land near LaGrave Field.
The drive-in would be there for about 10 years, potentially drawing 300,000 patrons a year to Trinity Uptown. It would also net the water district about $1.7 million in rent, according to information filed with the district.

And wild monkeys will fly out my rear end and put on an amateur production of "A Chorus Line".  I'd bet that every Texas drive-in combined doesn't draw 300,000 patrons a year.  For those of you new to the Trinity River development controversy, Congresswoman Kay Granger and her son J.D. are trying to pump a bunch of money into a flood control scam that involves million-dollar BarBQ restaurant giveaways and now, drive-in theatres.   

The drive-in would be called Coyote Theater in Trinity Uptown and would be on part of the 34 acres that the water district bought in 2010 from LaGrave Field owner Carl Bell. The site is near North Calhoun and Northeast Fifth streets, north of downtown Fort Worth.
"Drive-ins are making a comeback with a 20 percent increase in the number of venues since 2007," a district memo says. "The nostalgic outdoor theater is being reintroduced by Coyote as a high-quality, state-of-the-art, family-friendly entertainment option."

Drive-ins couldn't compete with indoor air-conditioned theatres.  Theatres in small towns couldn't compete with television, and almost all of them closed.  Theatres in cities are having a hard time competing with DVD's.  But J.D. Granger is going to reverse the trend, because this drive-in will be for.....flood control. 

The theater would have three or four screens, show first-run films and offer food, the memo says. The movies would be in English and Spanish.
J.D. Granger, Trinity River development director for the water district, could not be reached for comment Friday. The district is scheduled to consider the proposal Tuesday.

I cannot wait to post J.D. Granger's comments, if he ever has the nerve to make any.  I cannot wait.  I have no doubt that this project will be approved, and that it will quickly go broke as the Ten Commandments.  All I ask is an opportunity to post The Granger Gang's comments on building a new drive-in with your money, in the year of our Lord 2012.  Please, please, please Dear God, let me have his comments. 

Drive-ins.com lists 17 drive-in theaters in Texas, including one in Ennis and one in Granbury.
Not much is known about Coyote Theaters, but the Fort Worth site will apparently be its first location. The company does not have a listed phone number.
Coyote Theaters filed incorporation papers with the Texas secretary of state's office Aug. 2 and lists its management as Todd Minnis, Brady Wood, Scott Wilson and Glenn Solomon.

I couldn't find anything on them either.  That is the nature of the coyote.  Go in, feast on the rotting carcass, and get out in a hurry.  We'll see if the name fits, won't we? 

Wood, who was involved in some West Seventh Street corridor projects with the development group Incap Fund, was the only person to attend a tour and pre-proposal conference last month at the project site. Minnis is head of Arrow Retail, a sister company of Dallas-based Cypress Equities, which developed the West 7th office, retail and residential project.
Last month, the water district requested proposals from developers who would want to use the land temporarily. The theater proposal was one of two submitted. The district said it would like to see a project under way by May.
The $909 million Trinity Uptown project will feature a town lake and 12 miles of waterfront development.

See you at the drive-in !   You might as well go, since you're going to pay for it. 

I couldn't find a picture of a Flood Control Drive-In, so I had to make do with a picture of a flooded drive-in.  My apologies.  The picture came from here.  The other pics came from this website, or the official websites most associated with the ripoffs.