Russian Barcode Posters

Art Lebedev design studio has been issuing wildly creative posters (featuring barcode symbolics) for years. View the whole creative gallery of them here and download some for your desktops. Some examples at link:
http://www.artlebedev.com/posters/
Sources via Katize, izreloaded, BarcodeNerds

I suspect that most Americans, if asked whether these numbers trouble the Democratic leadership and President Obama, would answer in the affirmative.

They would be wrong.

They would be wrong not because the Democratic Party or the president are economically illiterate or bad individuals, but because the Democratic Party and the president are leftists…. President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and most Democratic representatives and senators are not liberals; they are leftists. And most Americans do not understand the difference between liberal and left. They do not realize, for example, that there is no major difference between the American Democratic Party and the leftist social democratic parties of Western Europe. They do not know that from Karl Marx to Obama, the left (as opposed to liberals) has never created wealth because it has never been interested in creating wealth; it is interested in redistributing wealth.

Therefore, unprecedented and unsustainable debt, a debt that will negatively affect most Americans’ quality of life, renders the dollar increasingly undesirable, and undermines America’s prestige and power in the world —
They may trouble the president, the Democratic Party, and others on the left on some political level, but that pales in comparison to what the left really wants: a huge government overseeing a giant welfare state and a country with far fewer rich Americans.

Achieving those goals is far more important than preventing a decline in the American quality of life. The further left one goes, the more contempt one has for the present quality of American life in any event. The left regularly mocks many of the symbols of that life — from the three-bedroom suburban house surrounded by a white picket fence to owning an SUV (or almost any car) because Americans should be traveling on public buses, trains and bicycles.

[...] I used to believe that left and right have similar goals for America, that they just differed in the means they wanted used to get there. I was mistaken. The left has a very different vision of America than those who hold the founding values of America, most especially individualism and small government. And if the price of a once in a lifetime possibility of getting to a giant welfare state dominated by the left is America’s steep financial decline, that is a price fully worth paying.

Why Democrats Don’t Care about $9.7 Trillion Debt
by Dennis Prager
http://bit.ly/9rBFI8
http://townhall.com

…. which is on display by Democrats who voted yes in November. “No, I don’t trust the U.S. Senate,” Wisconsin’s Steve Kagen told WLUK-TV in Green Bay, this week. New York’s Dan Maffei was quoted in the Syracuse Post-Standard on Monday that “I will trust the president, but I will not trust the Senate.”

“I am not inclined to support the Senate version,” Nevada’s Shelley Berkley told the New York Times last week. “I would like something more than a promise. The Senate cannot promise its way out of a paper bag.” Her district voted 64% for Barack Obama.

Other Democrats who voted yes seem to be wavering. “I don’t think reconciliation is a good idea,” Indiana’s Baron Hill was quoted recently in Bloomberg News. New York’s Michael Arcuri says he’s a no for now. “There would have to be some dramatic changes in it for me to change my position,” he recently told the Utica Observer-Dispatch.

“I think we can do better,” California’s Dennis Cardoza told the New York Times last week. “If the Senate bill is not fixed, that”—voting no—”is not a flip-flop,” Nevada’s Dina Titus told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last week. “I see that as standing by your convictions.” Most of these members represent districts which went Republican some time in the past decade—and could easily do so again if national polls are an indicator.

There’s a more fundamental problem for the Democratic leadership: Their majority is not as strong as their 253-178 margin suggests.

Full article

Can Nancy Pelosi Get the Votes?
by Michael Barone
http://bit.ly/9cuGmG
http://online.wsj.com

Democrats had a 257-178 majority in the House after the 2008 election….

Democrats came out of the 2008 election with 58 senators, got a 59th when Arlen Specter switched parties in April 2009 and got the 60th when Al Franken was sworn in in July. A filibuster-proof majority at last!

But just after Franken was sworn in, polls started showing pluralities or majorities against the Democrats’ health care proposals. Town hall meetings in August showed that opponents were far more enthusiastic than supporters. Opinion has only grown more negative as Obama has made one speech after another in support of (usually unspecified) Democratic proposals.

This made passing legislation very much harder. The decisions Democrats made on health care policy in early 2009 ruled out the possibility of significant Republican support. You can pass popular legislation on party-line votes, and you usually get some support from the other side, even if unsolicited. This was the case on Medicare in 1965, for example.

But it’s hard to pass unpopular legislation on party-line votes. Take the example of the Troubled Asset Relief Program in fall 2008. Bailing out banks was obviously not going to be popular (the 2008 exit poll shows voters opposed by 56 to 39 percent). It was easy to imagine opponents running negative ads in the next campaign. TARP was passed, after one misfire in the House, by bipartisan coalitions of members of both parties with safe seats. Members of both parties with vulnerable seats, with only a few exceptions, were left to protect themselves by voting against it.

In fall 2009 Democrats could have pivoted on health care to craft a popular bill or a watered-down unpopular bill to be passed by a bipartisan safe-seat coalition. Instead they plunged ahead and rammed through unpopular bills on party-line votes.

Pelosi got a 220-215 margin in the House in November after accepting an amendment by Bart Stupak that banned funding of abortions.

In the Senate in December, Majority Leader Harry Reid predictably had to pay a high price — the Cornhusker kickback and the Louisiana purchase — for the 59th and 60th votes. That’s always the case when you need 60 out of 60.

Scott Brown’s election in January in Massachusetts deprived Reid of his 60th vote. The only way forward for the Democrats is for the House to pass the Senate bill and then trust the Senate to fix it through the reconciliation process. Pelosi has had six weeks to get the votes for that and hasn’t done so yet.

It’s beginning to look like the goal of health care legislation was a bridge too far. There’s a reason it’s hard to pass unpopular legislation on party-line votes. It’s not the Senate rules. It’s called democracy.

Michael Barone
The Examiner’s senior political analyst
washingtonexaminer.com

Colleges will pocket the money by raising tuition, so we have yet another federal program ensuring that higher education costs continue to rise even faster than health-care spending.

Mr. Obama’s budget also calls for making Pell Grants a mandatory entitlement. At least now they are subject to annual appropriation and their growth can be slowed when tax revenues fall or other priorities rate higher. Mr. Obama would prefer spending that is quite literally out of control.

“Various changes that the President proposes to the Pell Grant program would add another $0.2 trillion to the deficit between 2011 and 2020,” CBO said Friday. That could turn out to be a very optimistic estimate if unemployment remains high and more people seize the educational opportunity to which they have just become entitled. Still another taxpayer trap will be sprung if the President’s proposal to forgive some debt incurred by “overburdened” borrowers is included in the bill.

The federal education takeover is another example of the Democrats’ willingness to use whatever tactics are necessary to advance their agenda to concentrate power in Washington—while they still can.


Less well known is that Democrats are plotting add-ons to that bill to get other liberal priorities enacted—programs that could never attract 60 votes.

One of these controversial measures rewrites the Higher Education Act

Could it be that dead horse of a horrible health care bill that Dear Leader keeps beating to cross some fictional finish line that is making his approval index among American voters drop more than it has ever dropped?

Or is it his ineptitude on understanding how the free market works? Or is it his coddling of Islamic jihadists?

Or is it the denial of AGW data corruption and compromised results on that despicable global warming sham (plus record snow and cold throughout most of the world)?

Or is it his obsession with golfing and holding rallies at liberal colleges (love that applause!) and jetting around every week on Air Force One instead of actually leading?

Rhetorical questions…
Obama’s worst day ever on Rasmussen:
From American Thinker:
http://bit.ly/aO0iCg


The relentless push for ObamaCare is driving down President Obama’s net disapproval rating to its worst performance ever. The Rasmussen Daily tracking poll, which is based on an automated telephone poll of likely voters, making it one of if not the most reliable poll. From today’s Rasmussen report:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 22% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (43%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21. That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President.

Also from Rasmussen… Fifty-seven percent (57%) of American voters believe that passage of the proposed health care legislation will hurt the economy. Just 25% believe it will help.

Update: Thanks to Jill at Pundit & Pundette and Fishersville Mike for linking. Thanks to Obi’s Sister for linking too. Linked by Thomas Jefferson Club Blog who has more coverage of the event. Thanks to Chris at Wyblog who wonders, “Does anybody from Chicago really care about time?”
Be sure to read Michelle Malkin’s post on the Slacker Mandate.
Kelly sent me her reaction to the speech read A Young Conservative’s Reaction to Obama’s Health Care Speech

UPDATE: Coverage of the protest by FoxPhilly

200 is a great turnout. I had a feeling there would be a strong showing and I wasn’t wrong. Signs visible in the following news clip “Obama Here’s Your Pink Slip,” and “Obamacare Is A Debt Sentence.” Here is a slideshow of signs seen at the protest.

http://media2.myfoxphilly.com/slideshows/030810teaparty/1/med/tea_8.htm

“The information I gave out last week was based on conversations with staff that I’ve had here in the building, and I’ve been given nothing that would change that advice that I was given last week,” he said at Tuesday’s White House briefing.

House and Senate leaders have brushed off the mid-March push but have indicated they would like to pass something by Easter recess closer to the end of March. Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad said they expect to get preliminary scores today on the pieces CBO has in hand.

“Are we gonna get some scores from them tomorrow?” Conrad asked. “We anticipate we will. Final scores? No.”

House members are concerned the Senate could fail to approve the corrections bill, making them nervous about passing the Senate bill with its much-maligned sweetheart deals for certain states.

“We’re well beyond that,” Pelosi said Tuesday, though she did not clarify.

While members await a final package and a CBO score, Senate Majority Whip Durbin said Democrats have asked Senate Parliamentarian Alan Frumin for information on how reconciliation can be used “with our goals” and what “the basic rules are.”

and then maybe Canadians will get mad and elect a conservative government that will end this nonsense.”

Makes perfect sense. Except that Canada already has a Conservative government under a Conservative prime minister, and the very head of the “human rights” commission investigating me was herself the Conservative appointee of a Conservative minister of justice. Makes no difference.

Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever-expanding number of government jobs will be statists – sometimes hard-core Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily “compassionate” statists, but always statists. The short history of the post-war welfare state is that you don’t need a president-for-life if you’ve got a bureaucracy-for-life: The people can elect “conservatives,” as the Germans have done and the British are about to do, and the Left is mostly relaxed about it because, in all but exceptional cases (Thatcher), they fulfill the same function in the system as the first-year boys at wintry English boarding schools who, for tuppence-ha’penny or some such, would agree to go and warm the seat in the unheated lavatories until the prefects strolled in and took their rightful place.

Republicans are good at keeping the seat warm. A bigtime GOP consultant was on TV, crowing that Republicans wanted the Dems to pass Obamacare because it’s so unpopular it will guarantee a GOP sweep in November.

OK, then what? You’ll roll it back – like you’ve rolled back all those other unsustainable entitlements premised on cobwebbed actuarial tables from 80 years ago? Like you’ve undone the federal Department of Education and of Energy and all the other nickel’n'dime novelties of even a universally reviled one-term loser like Jimmy Carter? Andrew McCarthy concluded a shrewd analysis of the political realities thus:

“Health care is a loser for the Left only if the Right has the steel to undo it. The Left is banking on an absence of steel. Why is that a bad bet?”

Indeed. Look at it from the Dems’ point of view. You pass Obamacare. You lose the 2010 election, which gives the GOP co-ownership of an awkward couple of years. And you come back in 2012 to find your health care apparatus is still in place, a fetid behemoth of toxic pustules oozing all over the basement, and, simply through the natural processes of government, already bigger and more expensive and more bureaucratic than it was when you passed it two years earlier. That’s a huge prize, and well worth a midterm timeout.

Nobody has ever attempted this level of centralized planning for an advanced society of 300 million people. Even the control-freaks of the European Union have never tried to impose a unitary “comprehensive” health care system from Galway to Greece. The Soviet Union did, of course, and we know how that worked out.

This “reform” is not about health care, and certainly not about “controlling costs.

Dr. William Schreiber of North Syracuse, N.Y., told CNN that he sees 120 patients per week – He calculates that, under Obamacare, for every $5 he now makes, he’ll get $2 in the future. Which suggests now would be a good time to retrain as a realtor or accountant, or the night clerk at the convenience store. Yet Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., justifies her support for Obamacare this way:

“I even had one constituent – you will not believe this, and I know you won’t, but it’s true – her sister died. This poor woman had no dentures. She wore her dead sister’s teeth.”

Is the problem of second-hand teeth a particular problem in this corner of New York? I haven’t noticed an epidemic of ill-fitting dentures on recent visits to the Empire State.

Yet, even granting Congresswoman Slaughter the benefit of the doubt, is annexing the equivalent of a G7 economy the solution to what would seem to be the statistically unrepresentative problem of her constituent’s ill-fitting choppers? Is it worth reducing the next generation of Americans to indentured servitude to pay for this poor New Yorker’s dentured servitude?

Yes. Because government health care is not about health care, it’s about government. Once you look at it that way, what the Dems are doing makes perfect sense. For them.

Prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog by a caricaturist after he was targeted by an alleged assassination plot.”

Take that, Jihad Jane.

GOOD.

From Tom Elia: “Raquel Welch’s black-satin bustier set off a metal detector last week at O’Hare Airport, and the actress had to undergo a pat-down search.”

Um, yea. That’s what the security guard said. He wasn’t trying to feel her up. No, no, no. The bustier set off the alarm.

She turns 70 in September. A photo from last week at http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/10444

GOOD.

From the Times of London: “Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that ‘the Devil is at work inside the Vatican,’ according to the Holy See’s chief exorcist.”

This news will make Linda Blair’s head spin.

EVIL.

From Triangle Business Journal: “Unemployment in North Carolina rose to 11.1 percent in January from 10.9 percent in December. The rate in January 2009 was 9.2 percent.”

West Virginians will know it is bad in the Carolinas when their relatives start moving back.

EVIL.

From Fox News: “A 33-year-old Burbank middle school teacher accused of having sex with a teenage male student over a six-month period last year was charged on Tuesday with unlawful sex with a minor, MyFoxLA.com reported.”

The Scorekeeper looks at the picture of the pretty blond and asks: Where was she when the Scorekeeper was 16?

Oh, that’s right. She was 7 years from being born.

EVIL.

From the Associated Press: Only 27% of Americans want President Obama and his party to pass Obamacare without Republican Support.

The President only hears: “Americans want President Obama and his party to pass Obamacare without Republican Support.”

EVIL.

18. From the Hill: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested Tuesday evening that Democrats would have the votes to pass health-care legislation if it were taken up today.”

And the reason she is not holding the vote today is?

Bluff.

GOOD.

From the Chicago Sun-Times: “Last school year at struggling Hyde Park Academy High, more than 2,000 grades were boosted at least one notch — including more than 870 F’s that were changed to passing marks, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis shows. And this school year, blanket A’s were ordered issued to all students of five new Hyde Park teachers after the students suffered through a string of substitute teachers for most of the first quarter, a letter obtained by the Sun-Times shows.”

Well, after the president gave himself a B+, it was only fair to give everyone else an A.

EVIL.

From Reuters: “Nobel nominators figure: If Obama can win, why not So-and-So?“

The Scorekeeper nominates Steven Crowder: I Gots A Peace Prize Official
Song: http://bit.ly/3wxMZX

GOOD.

Special Thanks to:

Lil’ Producer
http://www.youtube.com/lilproducerprod

Brittany Taylor (sub to her!)
http://www.youtube.com/brittanilouise…

LYRICS: @YouTube

Daily Scoreboard
Don Surber
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber