Reminder: Emergency Preparation Supplies Sales Tax Holiday Starts Today

April 23rd, 2016

Today starts the Emergency Preparation Supplies Sales Tax Holiday the Texas legislature passed last year.

The following items qualify:

Less than $3000

  • Portable generators

    • Less than $300

  • Hurricane shutters
  • Emergency ladders

    • Less than $75

  • Batteries, single or multipack (AAA cell, AA cell, C cell, D cell, 6 volt or 9 volt)
  • First aid kits
  • Fuel containers
  • Ground anchor systems and tie-down kits
  • Hatchets
  • Axes
  • Mobile telephone batteries and mobile telephone chargers
  • Nonelectric coolers and ice chests for food storage
  • Nonelectric can openers
  • Portable self-powered light sources (hand cranked flashlights)
  • Portable self-powered radios, including two-way and weather band radios
  • Reusable and artificial ice products
  • Smoke detectors, fire extinguishers and carbon monoxide detectors
  • Tarps and other plastic sheeting

    • The sales tax holiday lasts through Monday. At the very least make this your weekend to buy batteries…

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    LinkSwarm for April 22, 2016

    April 22nd, 2016

    As today is a made-up celebration called “Earth Day,” be sure to have beef for dinner…

  • Reminder: “Officials at VA’s Phoenix hospital manipulated wait-time data to make it appear they were connecting doctors and veterans seeking appointments much faster than they actually were. This was done so VA managers at the Arizona facility could keep getting generous performance bonuses. They got their bonuses but dozens of waiting veterans died.” So how did the VA address the problem? They hired someone accused of doing the exact same thing at another hospital.
  • Huge ObamaCare premium hikes are coming down the pike in 2017. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “The largest health insurer in the U.S. has started pulling out of select Obamacare exchanges.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Eight more ObamaCare co-ops are about to bite the dust.
  • Meanwhile, ObamaCare is helping enourage opioid addiction.
  • Thanks to Obama’s supergenius management, the Taliban are now winning in Afghanistan.
  • “The National Labor Relations Board suspended a top-ranking Philadelphia official after receiving complaints that he helped raise money from unions for his pro-union charity.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Following a congressional subpoena over Benghazi, Hillary’s state department staff hid requested files in another department. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Is Rhode Island closing 66% of polling places for next week’s presidential primaries? Something smells.
  • How Ted Cruz could beat Hillary Clinton. “Clin­ton is en­ter­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion with glar­ing vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies of her own. Her im­age is tox­ic to Re­pub­lic­ans and in­de­pend­ents, and her pop­ular­ity among Demo­crats is now at an all-time low as a pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate, ac­cord­ing to Gal­lup’s polling. It won’t take a top-tier Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ate to win.” Also: “Cruz con­sist­ently runs far more com­pet­it­ively against Clin­ton than Trump does.”
  • “It’s not just Wall Street banks. Most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors, an Associated Press review has found. Their interests are sprawling and would follow Clinton to the White House should she win election this fall.”
  • Donald Trump jumps on the social justice warrior tranny bathroom bandwagon.
  • Evidently accused pedophile Terry Bean is the one whose organizations are pushing tranny bathroom bills down America’s throats. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Trump convention manager Paul Manafort engages in the time-honored traditional rhetorical device know as “lying your ass off.”
  • Thomas Sowell on campaign lies and dodgy statistics.
  • “Although our panel’s original estimates had Trump finishing with 1,175 pledged delegates, my revised deterministic projections have him at 1,155, and the probabilistic version has him at 1,159.”
  • Ted Cruz has done heavy organizing in California.
  • Man indicted for selling school supplies to Detroit schools he didn’t actually deliver…with the connivance of several principles receiving kickbacks. Now, remind me: Which party has controlled Detroit for half a century?
  • Venezuela instituting four hours of blackouts a day, in addition to the previously mentioned three day weekends. That socialist paradise just keeps
  • Brazil impeaches their President.
  • Won’t someone please think of poor, penniless Boeing?
  • When low-fat dogma trumped science: hamburger study data showed exact opposite of study’s conclusions.
  • Navy chief starving Marine air corps.
  • “What Women Really Want Is The Patriarchy.”
  • “‘White Privilege’ Is a Racial Slur.”
  • “Walden is less a cornerstone work of environmental literature than the original cabin porn: a fantasy about rustic life divorced from the reality of living in the woods, and, especially, a fantasy about escaping the entanglements and responsibilities of living among other people.”
  • Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano erupts. Popocatepetl is less than 50 miles from Mexico City…
  • Goldman Sachs pays $5 billion fine to “settle claims that it misled mortgage bond investors during the financial crisis.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Pratt & Whitney pushing a B-52 engine upgrade.
  • The woman who can’t remember her own past. (Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
  • Lileks: “Who wouldn’t want to lounge around in a set from a 1970s failed Gene Roddenberry pilot?” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Son, that’s no way to treat steaks. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Military, ObamaCare, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions | No Comments »

    Pat Condell: “Feminist Whores for Islam”

    April 21st, 2016

    Once again, Pat Condell brings the wood to the logic-defying spectacle of radical feminist apologists for fundamentalist Islam.

    Some samples:

    If, like me, you want to live in a world where men and women are completely equal, not just in theory but in actual practice, then you’d better get used to being called a racist by women who call themselves feminists. Progressive feminists, to be precise, or third wave feminists, as they’re sometimes known. Personally, I’m happy to be called any number of ugly names if it helps to draw attention in some small way to the glaring fact that progressive feminists are traitors to their gender. It’s entirely thanks to their poisonous influence that when it comes to Islam the words “feminist” and “hypocrite” go together as seamlessly as the words “dickless” and “jihad.”

    Snip.

    The number one rule of progressive feminism is that you never draw any kind of attention to the plight of women in the Muslim world being abused and persecuted every day by Muslim men. Being forcibly married, being punished for being raped. And whatever you do, don’t mention the thousand women a year in Pakistan who are murdered by members of their own family.

    Snip.

    The progressive sell-out to Islamic misogyny has been so total, we’re witnessing the death of feminism. There’s now such a complete lack of credibility, nobody takes it seriously any more. Feminism is now seen as merely a playpen for crybabies and bullies. Censorious small-minded safe-space harpies who hate being women, and who want everyone else to compensate them for it. And they’re such incorrigible whores to Islam, especially to Muslim men. They defer to them so eagerly on women’s rights, as if they have an unhealthy desire to be dominated by Muslim men.

    Watch the whole thing.

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    John Stossel: “I have lung cancer”

    April 20th, 2016

    This is one of those bad new/good news things:

    I write this from the hospital. Seems I have lung cancer.

    My doctors tell me my growth was caught early and I’ll be fine. Soon I will barely notice that a fifth of my lung is gone. I believe them. After all, I’m at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. U.S. News & World Report ranked it No. 1 in New York. I get excellent medical care here.

    Cancer sucks, catching it early doesn’t. But it being Stossel, he has some observations on the process:

    But as a consumer reporter, I have to say, the hospital’s customer service stinks. Doctors keep me waiting for hours, and no one bothers to call or email to say, “I’m running late.” Few doctors give out their email address. Patients can’t communicate using modern technology.

    I get X-rays, EKG tests, echocardiograms, blood tests. Are all needed? I doubt it. But no one discusses that with me or mentions the cost. Why would they? The patient rarely pays directly. Government or insurance companies pay.

    And ObamaCare hasn’t made it any better.

    Customer service is sclerotic because hospitals are largely socialist bureaucracies. Instead of answering to consumers, which forces businesses to be nimble, hospitals report to government, lawyers and insurance companies.

    Whenever there’s a mistake, politicians impose new rules: the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act paperwork, patient rights regulations, new layers of bureaucracy…

    Snip.

    Leftists say the solution to such problems is government health care. But did they not notice what happened at Veterans Affairs? Bureaucrats let veterans die, waiting for care. When the scandal was exposed, they didn’t stop. USA Today reports that the abuse continues. Sometimes the VA’s suicide hotline goes to voicemail.

    Patients will have a better experience only when more of us spend our own money for care. That’s what makes markets work.

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    Something Something Something Danger Zone

    April 19th, 2016

    “Dems fear their primary has reached danger zone”

    That’s the actual headline on this actual story from the Hill.

    This offers me a chance to cram as many Archer memes into one post as possible do an update on the Democratic Presidential race.

    The upshot of the piece is that the Democratic establishment was fine and dandy with Bernie Sanders when he had no chance of winning, but now that he’s kicking Hillary Clinton’s ass and actually threatening to upset her coronation, there’s finger-wagging and pearl-clutching like you wouldn’t believe.

    “Anxiety is rising among Democrats ahead of Tuesday’s primary in New York, with some fearing the battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders has reached a danger zone.”

    Translation: Sanders attacks are hurting Clinton. And we just can’t let that happen!

    “‘While this is the NFL, and everyone understands that it’s a full-contact sport, even in the NFL one gets a yellow flag for a late hit at the knees intended to hurt the other player,’ said Democratic strategist Chris Lehane.”

    I know you’ll be shocked, SHOCKED to learn that Lehane “served as a lawyer, spokesperson and expert in opposition research for the Clinton White House.”

    The Vermont senator has long drawn contrasts between himself and Clinton, but his attacks have grown more caustic of late, particularly with regard to the former first lady’s links to big financial companies.

    At a huge rally in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on Sunday, Sanders said a speech Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs must have been delivered in “Shakespearean prose,” given the $225,000 fee she received.

    He was equally scathing during last week’s debate when Clinton insisted that, during her time as a New York senator, she had “called out” banks for poor mortgage practices.

    “Secretary Clinton called them out. Oh my goodness, they must have been really crushed by this,” Sanders responded. “And was that before or after you received huge sums of money by giving speaking engagements? So they must have been very, very upset by what you did.”

    The left of the Democratic Party has long been uneasy about Clinton’s coziness with the corporate world. But the emphatic, persistent way in which Sanders is attacking her on the topic risks painting her as a cipher of Wall Street — and such a charge could drain liberal grassroots enthusiasm if she locks up the nomination.

    Translation: Queen Hillary owns Democratic voters, and that pipsqueak Sanders has no right to “drain liberal grassroots enthusiasm.”

    “‘I am worried about the increasingly harsh tone and tenor of this campaign [that could] turn off Sanders supporters in the general [election],” said strategist Jim Manley, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who has endorsed Clinton. ‘I’m afraid they’re going to stay home.'”

    Funny how this piece keeps quoting Clinton toadies and Democratic insiders, isn’t it?

    How nice of The Hill to offer Hillary this in-kind donation…

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    Venezuela Returns to the Dark Ages. Literally.

    April 19th, 2016

    Thanks to The Magic Power of Socialism™, Venezuela is getting to experience the joy of living in a postindustrial society.

    Indeed, Venezuela has returned to the dark ages. Literal dark ages, in that this petroleum-exporting country can no longer keep the lights on. That’s why they’re instituting an extra half-hour of daylight savings time to avoid turning on lights.

    A hydroelectric plant at Venezuela’s Guri Dam, which produces two-thirds of the country’s power, is being affected by a severe drought.

    Officials have warned for weeks the water level has fallen to near its minimum operating level and could soon be shut down completely.

    Unlike other countries that use hydropower as a significant energy source, such as the US, Venezuela has no sufficient reserve energy system.

    The South American nation has grappled with blackouts for years. Caracas occasionally shuts down because of citywide losses of power and some rural areas are living mostly in the dark.

    More of that genius socialist foresight at work.

    SuperGenius Socialist President Nicolas Maduro also instituted mandatory three-day weekends to save energy.

    This is what happens when socialists run out of other people’s money. They get power blackouts, yellow water and water truck hijackings, 500% inflation and chronic food shortages.

    One wonders how much longer the populace is willing to take it…

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    Posted in Communism | 1 Comment »

    Texas vs. California Update for April 18, 2016

    April 18th, 2016

    Time for another Texas vs. California roundup, with the top news being California’s hastening their economic demise with a suicidal minimum wage hike:

  • Jerry Brown admits the minimum wage hike doesn’t make economic sense, then signs it anyway. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Who is really behind the minimum wage hike? The SEIU:

    California’s drive to hike the minimum wage has little to do with average workers and everything to do with the Golden State’s all-powerful government employee unions.

    Nationally, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is known for representing lower skilled workers. But, of the SEIU’s 2.1 million dues-paying members, half work for the government. In California, that translates to clout with much of the $50 million SEIU spent in the U.S. on political activities and lobbying spent in California. In fact, out of the 12 “yes” votes for the minimum wage bill in the Assembly Committee on Appropriations on March 30, the SEIU had contributed almost $100,000 out of the three-quarters of a million contributed by public employee unions—yielding a far higher return on investment than anything Wall Street could produce.

    Unions represent about 59 percent of all government workers in California. Many union contracts are tied to the minimum wage — boost the minimum wage and government union workers reap a huge windfall, courtesy of the overworked California taxpayer.

  • “The impacts of the increase in minimum wage on workers at the very bottom of the pay scales might be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the ramifications of the minimum wage increase.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • Indeed, that hike will push government employee wages up all up the ladder.
  • “California minimum wage hike hits L.A. apparel industry: ‘The exodus has begun.'” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Texas’ job creation has helped keep the unemployment rate low at 4.3 percent, which has now been at or below the U.S. average rate for a remarkable 111 straight months.”
  • “Number of Californians Moving to Texas Hits Highest Level in Nearly a Decade”:

    “California’s taxes and regulations are crushing businesses, and there are more opportunities in Texas for people to start new companies, get good jobs, and create better lives for their families,” said Nathan Nascimento, the director of state initiatives at Freedom Partners. “When tax and regulatory climates are bad, people will move to better economic environments—this phenomenon isn’t a mystery, it’s how marketplaces work. Not only should other state governments take note of this, but so should the federal government.”

    According to Tom Gray of the Manhattan Institute, people may be leaving California for the employment opportunities, tax breaks, or less crowded living arrangements that other states offer.

    “States with low unemployment rates, such as Texas, are drawing people from California, whose rate is above the national average,” Gray wrote. “Taxation also appears to be a factor, especially as it contributes to the business climate and, in turn, jobs.”

    “Most of the destination states favored by Californians have lower taxes,” Gray wrote. “States that have gained the most at California’s expense are rated as having better business climates. The data suggest that may cost drivers—taxes, regulations, the high price of housing and commercial real estate, costly electricity, union power, and high labor costs—are prompting businesses to locate outside California, thus helping to drive the exodus.”

    (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)

  • More on the same theme. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • It’s not just pensions: “The state paid $458 million in 2001 (0.6 percent of the general fund) for state worker retiree health care and is expected to pay $2 billion (1.7 percent of the general fund) next fiscal year — up 80 percent in just the last decade.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • Texas border control succeeds where the Obama Administration fails. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • California and New York still lead Texas in billionaires. But for how long?
  • “The housing bubble may have collapsed, but the public-employee pension fund managers are still with us. If anything they’re bigger than ever, still insatiably seeking high returns just over the horizon line of another economic bubble.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • How to fix San Francisco’s dysfunctional housing market. “Failed public policy and political leadership has resulted in a massive imbalance between how much the city’s population has grown this century versus how much housing has been built. The last thirteen years worth of new housing units built is approximately equal to the population growth of the last two years.” Also: “The city is forcing people out. Only the rich can live here because of the policies created by so-called progressives and so-called housing advocates.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • UC Berkley to cut 500 jobs over two years.
  • What does BART do faced with a $400 million projected deficit over the next decade? Dig deeper. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • Stanton, California, is the latest California municipality facing bankruptcy. “One of the main reasons the city can’t pay its bills without the sales tax is that it gives outlandish salaries and benefits to its government workers.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • Yesterday was Tax Freedom Day in Texas.
  • Politically correct investing has already cost CalPERS $3 billion. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • “A federal jury on Wednesday convicted former Los Angeles County Undersheriff Paul Tanaka of deliberately impeding an FBI investigation, capping a jail abuse and obstruction scandal that reached to the top echelons of the Sheriff’s Department.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Top California Democratic assemblyman Roger Hernandez accused of domestic violence.
  • Calls for UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi to resign, she of the supergenius “pay $175,000 to scrub the Internet of negative postings about the pepper-spraying of students in 2011” plan.
  • California beachwear retailer Pacific Sunwear files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
  • California retailer Sport Chalet is also shutting down.
  • 75% of current Toyota employees are willing to move to Texas to work at Toyota’s new U.S. headquarters.
  • California isn’t the only place delusional politicians are pushing a “railroad to nowhere.” The Lone Star Rail District wants to keep getting and spending money despite the fact that Union Pacific said they couldn’t use their freight lines for a commuter train between Austin and San Antonio. The tiny little problem being that the Union Pacific line was the only one under consideration…

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Texas, unions | No Comments »

    North Korean Missile Suffers “Catastrophic” Failure

    April 17th, 2016

    A bit of happy news to brighten your day:

    A North Korea missile launch meant to celebrate the birthday of the country’s founder ended in failure, U.S. defense officials said, an embarrassing setback in what was reportedly the inaugural test of a new, powerful mid-range missile.

    “It was a fiery, catastrophic attempt at a launch that was unsuccessful,” Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday. U.S. officials are still assessing, but it was likely a road-mobile missile, given that it was launched from a location not usually used for ballistic missile launches, on the country’s east coast, he said.

    South Korea’s Yonhap news agency carried an unsourced report that a “Musudan” missile, which could one day be capable of reaching far-off U.S. military bases in Asia and the Pacific, exploded in the air a few seconds after liftoff.

    Take it away Archer:

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    Cruz Takes All 14 Delegates in Wyoming

    April 17th, 2016

    “Ted Cruz on Saturday won all 14 delegates in the Wyoming GOP convention — a relatively small number but enough for the Texas senator to declare victory and keep GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump from securing the nomination.”

    You would think that after the first time this happened, Donald Trump would have gotten his ass in gear and hired someone to work on the delegate selection problem for him. The fact he keeps getting pantsed again and again in the delegate fight suggests either an inability to learn from his mistakes, deep organizational dysfunction on behalf of Team Trump, or both.

    And each time it happens, Trump demonstrates, yet again, why he’s not smart and organized enough to be president, while Ted Cruz proves, yet again, that he is…

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans | No Comments »

    Media Watch Roundup

    April 15th, 2016

    A few media tidbits of interest have popped up as of late:

  • I missed this thumbsucker at BillMoyers.com on the decline of journalism from The Nation (no wonder I missed it) in March. It’s full of the usual “great old journalists can’t find jobs” laments, but the words “liberal” and “bias” are conspicuously missing from the piece itself, but not from the comments:

    Newsrooms — where journalists were supposed to have their finger on the pulse of their readership — were always an amazingly insular island where true-believing liberals dismissively looked down upon their readers as dim witted and beneath contempt.

    Today the mainstream legacy media, comprised of Liberal Democrats, continues to slant and suppress news and information to fit their agenda. Tom Blumer at NewsBusters gives the example of The Los Angeles Times that won’t publish any reader comments seen as denying or even expressing doubt about “climate change.”

    Print “news” is now little more than heavily-biased, Leftist agenda reporting designed to advance Liberalism, Leftism, Marxism, Socialism, and all their “ism” offshoots (Feminism, Environmentalism, Globalism, etc.). 50% of your potential readers despise you for your biases and the other 50% agree with you, but still see the bias and thus, don’t trust you.

    A big reason many people have turned away from traditional news sources such as papers, is the palpable hostility that so many journalists have for conservatives. Alienating a large part of your customer base isn’t exactly a winning business decision.

    But the writer does mention the phrase “social justice” in his piece…in the context of an ex-reporter who landed a job running a strip club…

  • No wonder being a newspaper reporter now ranks as the worst job in America. “Most reporters long ago stopped reporting and began advocating, generally for Democrats and left-leaning causes. The pride that journalists once took in being objective and remaining separated from the story practically disappeared. It became a profession almost devoid of ethics and was contributing to a decline in readership even before the Internet made life difficult for them.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Layoffs at Salon. Wherever shall we find such insightful commentary as “Is Donald Trump a new Hitler?” now?
  • Via Moe Lane comes word that “Gabriel Snyder, the editor-in-chief at the New Republic who joined the magazine amid internal turmoil, is leaving his post.” The piece is full of the usual vacuous twaddle about what a great team he had assembled, etc. The piece notes that page hits are up, but fails to list how subscriptions (you know, the thing where readers actually pay to read your magazine; ask your parents if you’re unfamiliar with the term…) have been doing under the new TNR regime. In fact, I have been unable to find the any TNR circulation figure online after about 2010. If you can find them, drop me a line in the comments below.
  • Heh:

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    Posted in Democrats, Media Watch | No Comments »

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