62% of Voters Prefer Fewer Government Services with Lower Taxes

(originally posted May 27, 2008)

I know I've been busy the last week so if someone else posted this I am not snatching it without giving credit where credit is due, I just missed it. But while I don't know if I missed one of you posting this poll from Rasmussen I'm relatively sure the MSM stayed away from it like a vampire from daylight.

62% of Voters Prefer Fewer Government Services with Lower Taxes

Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 62% of voters would prefer fewer government services with lower taxes. Nearly a third (29%) disagrees and would rather have a bigger government with higher taxes. Ten percent (10%) are not sure. Those numbers have changed little over the past month.

Republican voters overwhelmingly prefer fewer government services—83% of the GOP faithful hold that view while just 13% prefer more government involvement. Democratic voters are evenly
divided on this question: 46% prefer more government services, while 43% prefer less government services.

Not surprisingly, conservative voters like less government while liberal voters favor a bigger government. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of politically moderate voters prefer smaller government. A separate survey found that most adults (56%) are worried that the next president will raise taxes too much.

Sixty-two percent (62%) of voters think American society is generally fair and decent. Twenty-seven percent (27%) think it is unfair and discriminatory. Those numbers have become slightly more positive over the past month.

I don't mean to offend, but...

(originally posted May 20, 2008)

I have listened to many of my conservative friends talk about being in support of legal immigration, but against illegal immgration; many legal immigrants share the same position.
But many "conservatives" are objecting to bipartisan bills currently in congress that suppport extending permission for legal migrant workers to continue working AgJobs due to a shortage of others willing to work those jobs. Additionally these same "conservatives" object to extending HB-2 visas to seasonal workers so they can continue working seasonal jobs at beaches, resorts, boardwalks, circuses, carnivals, amusement parks, hotels/resorts and camps.

Without caling anyone a hypocrite or outright liar, I ask my friends to search their feelings and be honest whether they feel anti-immigrant or anti-illegal immigrant. Because if you support legal immigration these bills should make you happy that the USA is granting permission for estalished immigrants to work for another few years. Since these visa types cannot petition for permanent residency there is nothing to fear.

But if you object to these pieces of legislation solely because it allows these foreigners to legally work and live in the USA you are taking advantage of, and missing the point of your forefathers sacrifices made while establishing this country.

Strudy says global warming not worsening hurricanes

(originally posted May 18, 2008)

WASHINGTON - Global warming isn't to blame for the recent jump in hurricanes in the Atlantic, concludes a study by a prominent federal scientist whose position has shifted on the subject.

Not only that, warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson reported in a study released
Sunday.

In the past, Knutson has raised concerns about the effects of climate change on storms. His new paper has the potential to heat up a simmering debate among meteorologists about current and future effects of global warming in the Atlantic.

Ever since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, hurricanes have often been seen as a symbol of global warming's wrath. Many climate change experts have tied the rise of hurricanes in recent years to
global warming and hotter waters that fuel them.

Another group of experts, those who study hurricanes and who are more often skeptical about global warming, say there is no link. They attribute the recent increase to a natural multi-decade
cycle.
(article continued)

Dr William Gray was the nations preeminent expert on hurricanes until he expressed his doubts concerning anthropomorphic global warming. He was shuffled aside and a younger protégé who was willing to buy into the global warming scam took his place.

Any bets on how long Knutson lasts before anouncing his "retirement"? Or perhaps, as his study is on his homepage hosted by the NOAA cooler heads will prevail (NPI).

From Knutson's NOAA homepage.

What is in a name?

(originally posted May 11, 2008)

Saturday morning I spent a few hours waiting for my connecting flight home, CNN kept talking about the typhoon in Burma. The vacuous talking heads kept refering to the country as Myanmar, and interspersing clips of US officials refering to the country as Burma and then coming back and saying Myanmar, occassionally thy would say "Myanmar, sometimes refered to as Burma." At no time throughout the morning did CNN take time to explain why the US government says Burma while CNN and the junta that took control of Burma say Myanmar.

It occurred to me during the flight that the unelected junta ruling Burma will use the USA's official renouncing of the unofficial name of Burma as the reason they will not allow the US to help the recovery effort. This will allow the junta to paint themselves as victims while villifying the US. This will appeal to anti-US forces such as CNN who will play it up to no end.
And as the death toll creeps up from typhus, malaria, dysintery, malnutrition etc the junta will evade blame, laying it at the feet of the US (and George Bush) because we refuse to recognize an unelected military junta and the name they, and not an elected legislature, assign to the nation.

It should be noted that the left have traditionally been supportive of the Burmese who have protested the harsh regime that is guilty of a wide range of human rights violations, including violent and brutal crackdowns on dissenters. But watch how they allow their BDS to cloud their memories and join the junta in blaming the US government for the additional deaths. (Think Katrina.)

Celebrity Foreclosures

(originally posted May 2, 2008)
I read this last night and was about to fire something off but I'd been pretty prolific yesterday, but I wanted to get a few facts together and gin and research are not good bedfellows.

Baseball star Canseco loses home to foreclosure

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Former U.S. baseball star Jose Canseco said on Thursday he had lost his California mansion to foreclosure -- one of the first celebrities to publicly admit being a statistic in the U.S. housing crisis.
Canseco, 43, one of the most flamboyant U.S. baseball players until his retirement from the major leagues in 2001, told the celebrity TV show "Inside Edition" that it did not make financial sense to keep his 7,300 square-foot (678.2 sq-metro) home in the Los Angeles suburb of Encino.
"Inside Edition" said it had foreclosure documents showing Canseco owed a bank more than $2.5 million on the house.
"I've been out of the game for about eight or nine years and obviously this issue with the foreclosure on my home," he told "Inside Edition."
"I do have a judgment on my home and it to me is very strange because it didn't make financial sense for me to keep paying a mortgage on a home that was basically owned by someone else," he
said.
Canseco said the foreclosure was not a difficult issue emotionally. But he sympathized with the millions of other Americans who have already lost, or face losing their homes, because of soaring interest rates on sub-prime loans.
"I decided to just let it go, but in most cases and most families, they have nowhere else to go," he said.
It was not clear from the "Inside Edition" report where Canseco was now living.
U.S. home foreclosure filings jumped 23 percent in the first quarter of 2008 from the prior quarter and more than doubled from a year earlier, real estate data firm RealtyTrac reported this
week.

My first impression was "Is Jose Canseco is the best they can do to show how even the rich and famous are losing their homes?"

But then I read the piece and he admits he had a judgement against the house and he decided he would stop paying for a house that is not his, so he chose to stop paying, naturally the bank repossessed. The article makes you believe he lost his home like everyone else who paid too much for their houses, put no money down and took a three year interest only balloon loan; but the fact is he stopped paying his bills voluntarily, not out of necessity.

But what piqued my interest was when he stated he stated that he sympathized with the millions that faced, or are facing, losing their homes. The article then prints some data from RealtyTrac giving percentages of foreclosures and their increases from last quarter and last year.

Now when people go to the extreme of quoting percentages but give the total as "millions" that sets off the BS detector. So a mere 1.9 seconds after typing "2006 US foreclosures" into the search engine I was rewarded with the true data that there were 268,532 homes repossessed in 2006, in 2007 the number was approximately 405,000, while the number of foreclosures was approximately 1.3 million.

You see, foreclosure is the first step mortgage holders take to dispossess people of their houses, repossession is the second. Both require court judgements. The defendant can plead their case at both, and in 66% of the cases the bank and owner come to terms or the bank allows the defendant time to sell the house and pay off the mortgage.

So my point here, besides Canseco is a narcissistic tool, is that foreclosure doesn't mean dispossession. And percentages are only effective when used with raw data, otherwise they are just propaganda tools.