Hang on to Your Wallets!

Well, we’re getting into the nitty gritty on health care, and SURPRISE! The Democrats are rubbing their greedy little paws together and deciding which tax increases they like best:

The final price tag for that effort could top $1 trillion, with cuts to Medicare and Medicaid covering the rest of the cost.
The tax options include:

Increasing the price of soda and other sugary drinks by 10 cents a can.

Applying a potential 2 percent income tax increase to single taxpayers earning more than $200,000 a year and households earning more than $250,000.

A new employer payroll tax could target 3 percent of employers' health care expenditures.

Taxing employer-provided health insurance benefits above certain levels.

Don’t you like the way Medicare and Medicaid somehow manage to cover “the rest of the cost?” Never mind that Medicare is already in the hole to the tune of nearly $30 trillion over the next 75 years. To me, the most revealing part of the article is this:

House Democrats planned to unveil a draft of their sweeping health care bill Friday. It would require all individuals to obtain health insurance and force employers to offer health care to their workers.

There you have the two words most beloved by those that want to run your life: “require” and “force.” Once they are in charge of paying for your healthcare, what else do you suppose will be required of you and forced upon you?

PETA is in rare form today. They keep outdoing themselves with silliness. First, they chided Barack Obama for swatting a fly:

Norfolk-based group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants the flyswatter-in-chief to try taking a more humane attitude the next time he's bedeviled by a fly in the White House.

PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.

"We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals," PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. "We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals."

Then, a few hours later, they had this idea for the site of a soon-to-close local dairy plant:

PETA has an idea for the Pet Dairy milk-production plant that’s closing in August: Turn it into a “cow empathy museum.”

The animal rights group sent a letter today to Gregg Engles, the CEO of Dean Foods Co., which owns Pet Dairy, asking to lease the building on Turnpike Road.

“The museum would convert a building built upon cruelty into a tribute to compassion and kindness,” wrote Tracy Reiman, PETA’s executive vice president.

Reiman said in the letter than the Cow Empathy Museum would have educational displays that highlight facts such as that cows “are forcefully impregnated every nine months...in order for humans to constantly milk them.” Interactive displays would include “being crammed into a crate to simulate the life of a calf raised for veal.”

I am sure tourists would stampede from Virginia Beach and Williamsburg to experience a “Cow Empathy Museum.”

I don't usually go in for people's lists of guidelines for living. But this list, by columnist Regina Brett, is better than most.

1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.
8. It’s OK to get angry.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.
12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don’t worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful, or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy (clothes). Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: “In five years, will this matter?”
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time some time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.
35. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative – dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42. The best is yet to come.
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up, and show up.
44. Yield.
45. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.

Car Lust

I'm getting me one of these! Ya gotta love the 2012 Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport Edition:

Here at the Gene Pool, we always like to find a silver lining:

The amount of out-of-state garbage entering Virginia dropped last year by 7.5 percent, one of the sharpest declines since the state became a major trash importer in the 1990s, according to a report released Monday.

But of course, in the media, a silver lining is nothing more than clever camo for the dark cloud:

Officials with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, who compiled the report, attributed the decline to the national economic malaise. They predicted imports would likely rise again when consumers have more money to buy more goods and, subsequently, more stuff to throw away.

You know, there's just no winning. Declining garbage is presumed to be good, except when it means declining economy, in which case it is a bad omen. And increasing garbage is presumed to be bad, even though it is a sign of good economy. What kind of bizarro world do these people inhabit?

My hat is off to the North Carolina State Legislature. This is an amazing piece of legislation:

The change would turn a cap on the gasoline tax at 29.9 cents per gallon into a floor - meaning it could go no lower than 29.9 cents through the middle of 2011.

Presto Chango!

Instantly "we will never charge you more" becomes "we will never charge you less." Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Whoo Hoo! I am not a North Carolina resident, but this sort of lawmaking exemplifies my disdain for all things instituted by governments. What was the validity of a legislated tax cap, if it can be simply renamed a tax floor later on down the road?

What a disgrace.

So Barack Obama is now in charge of Government Motors. They say the mark of leadership is effective delegation. Since King Barack can't run GM day-to-day, who has our Dear Leader appointed to the post? That would be Brian Deese

It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.

But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.

But that's okay, right? Even if he's only 31 a "not-quite graduate" of an Ivy League law school, he's qualified to run a multi-billion, multi-national automobile corporation, and rewriting the rules of capitalism, right? Suuuure he is.

Nor, for that matter, had he given much thought to what ailed an industry that had been in decline ever since he was born. A bit laconic and looking every bit the just-out-of-graduate-school student adjusting to life in the West Wing — “he’s got this beard that appears and disappears,” says Steven Rattner, one of the leaders of President Obama’s automotive task force — Mr. Deese was thrown into the auto industry’s maelstrom as soon the election-night parties ended.

Great! Where I come from, a "not quite graduate" at 31 is a freaking failure. And there's nothing like a come and go beard to justify control an entire industry, is there?

Coming soon, a 31 year old not-quite graduate of Harvard journalism school with a way-cool "soul patch" will be placed in control of the entire health care industry!