Best post I've read today--Cartoons

Rod Williams has a great collection of Christmas cartoons on his blog. Here is one of them.

John Mackey on health care reform

Best post I've read today

Jeff Perren on the morality of Progressive thought:

Selling your power for a buck (or more power) is immoral, to be sure. Enslaving 95% of the country in perpetuity while pretending it's for the benefit of the other 5% is far worse. But corrupting your soul and demanding that others corrupt theirs - and calling it the height of virtue - is pure evil.

GMAC will get more tax dollars

Congratulations, dear sucker...er, citizen. Can you hear the toilet flushing? According to the political elites that have decided to "save" society for us, returning GMAC back to profitability using tax funds is the right thing to do to avert disaster. But, isn't the red alert over already? Corporatism remains as strong as ever in Washington.

A 14 Trillion dollar economy

I find that many people really do underestimate how large the U.S. economy is compared to other countries. The chart below, provided by Mark Perry at Carpe Diem, replaces the names of states with the name of a country that has a similiar GDP.

You can look up the data for U.S. states here
and for foriegn countries here.

Wow! What a surprise!!

A new study found that banks that received bail out funds had strong political ties and great lobbyists. I'm shocked.

"Profits are evil!"

One of the best rants against the anti-profit crowd I have read in a long time. Here's a quote:

Greed is a vice that only affects other people; the beneficiary of a rent-controlled apartment is not being greedy in expecting to pay a below market rent, but merely collecting her due. It’s her landlord who’s avaricious in thinking he might make a market return on his investment.

The perversion of the interstate commerce clause

Interesting video on the interstate commerce clause and the decision by the Supreme Court to weaken it; this affects more than just wine sales to other states, it also negatively impacts the sale of health insurance policies across state borders. Since some states have imposed community rating and community issue mandates on the health insurance sold in their states, this has exacerbated the fiefdom and oligarchy of insurance companies that never have to worry about competition from other companies in other states.

Manufacturing Productivity

This post by Mark Perry is an important one; It needs to be repeated over and over again so that the myth that claims manufacturing in the U.S. has been waning or destroyed completely is finally debunked:

Workers today produce twice as much manufacturing output as their counterparts did in the early 1990s, and three times as much as in the early 1980s, thanks to innovation and advances in technology that have made today’s workers the most productive in history.

And that's American workers. Manufacturing employment is down but manufacturing productivity is at all time highs, folks. Let's keep it real.

More guns, fewer crimes?

Harrison Price on why more guns mean fewer murders and why gun control gives the advantage to criminals:

Gun control doesn’t affect criminals because they are… criminals… it only affect law abiding citizens (because they follow the law).

Criminals are not really afraid of police nor are they afraid of going to jail… what they are afraid of is a law abiding citizen using their firearm to kill them.

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas, dear friends and readers!

Jack Bauer Interrogates Santa Claus

LOL! A little humor before Christmas day.

The Hockey Stick Master

Here is a great article and profile of Steve McIntyre, the man who single handedly debunked Michael Mann's "Hockey Stick" theory seen in Al Gore's horrible film. An excerpt:

The hockey stick, featured in the 2001 report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, had a profound influence on policy worldwide, and played a starring role in presentations like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. The McIntyre-McKitrick critique called attention to uncertainties in its temperature reconstructions dating back before 1600, to certain problems with dendrochronology (the use of tree rings to estimate past temperatures), and to issues with the statistical calculations underlying the hockey stick. Some climatologists insist that the graph tells the same story when you correct for all this, but much of the critique is now accepted, and the hockey stick, whose weaknesses are better understood, has itself become a somewhat inconvenient distraction for climatologists and environmentalists.

Boy, has the dating scene changed

An application to be someone's boyfriend. I hope she finds what she is looking for.

Markets in all things: Tattoo your eyeballs!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Wanna tattoo your eyeballs? Come on, I know that you want to! It's probably coming to a mall near you.

HT: Carpe Diem

Ready to go POP!

As the Federal Reserve continues to keep interest rates low in an attempt to inflate the economy out of the doldrums, some economists warn that this will lead to another asset price bubble. No surprise there and when it happens it will be ugly. It seems that the people in power can not avoid making the same mistakes over and over again while the average citizen is eventually caught in an economic storm that they did not create.

Greenpeace gets its comeuppance

You know how Greenpeace just loves to hang it’s banners everywhere, even on national monuments, in order to drive home their message. Well, one group gave them a little taste of their own medicine.

Limos For AGW Hypocrites

"Baby, you can drive my car...."

Hot Air From Al Gore

Mr. Scaremonger is at it again. This time he's spewing more of his usual apocalyptic diatribe in Copenhagen. Mr. Gore outrageously claimed that a recent study predicted that the North Pole could be completely free of ice by sometime in the next decade. Unfortunately for Mr. Gore, the author of the study rejected Mr. Gore's wild conclusion.

No Consequences

Since it was our government working through an aggressive "affordable housing" campaign that was mainly responsible for the housing bubble and it’s subsequent collapse, and which then led to the financial storm that followed, why does anyone really believe that any legislation that comes out of Congress will address any "lack" of oversight of the financial sector? This legislation is obviously “red meat” for citizens fed the liberal narrative (Thank you, MSM!) that the entire collapse was due to "greed" and "lack of regulation." Where is the movement to remove Barney Frank and Chris Dodd from their powerful committee posts? Afterall, those two were right in the thicket of this whole national nightmare.

Higher Taxes here we come!

Great segment on The Kudlow Report should prepare us for the coming tax storm; it looms ominously before us. It looks like Democrats will start with the "evil" hedge funds and capital investment firms. With the massive health care bill they will slice and dice the rest of the 95% that Obama said he wasn't going to tax.

The Economics of Recycling

I came across this video today by the Mises Institute. It is an excellent presentation of the folly of recycling which has become a powerful and pervasive myth in our "green" mad society.

Pearl Harbor

Harrison Price reminds us that today is the 68th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Hide The Decline--ClimateGate

LOL!!!!

Jon Stewart on ClimateGate

Stewart is usually such a lefty but he hits this issue right on the button on this clip.

The Heat Is On!

Phil Jones, one of the scientists behind ClimateGate, temporarily steps down from his post. The ball is rolling, folks.