Boortz was right

"When Obama becomes our (czar) President any utterance of disapproval with any proposal he floats before the congress will, of course, be racist. It is going to be a fun four years." - Neal Boortz in October 2008

"...Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it." - Maureen Dowd (of the New York Times) in September 2009

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man." - Jimmy Carter in September 2009

"My sense of the teabaggers is more complicated: they are primarily working-class, largely rural and elderly white people. They are freaked by the economy. They are also freaked by the government spending--TARP, the stimulus package etc.--that was necessary to avoid a financial collapse. (I'm not sure Keynes is taught in very many American high schools.) But most of all, they are freaked by an amorphous feeling that they America they imagined they were living in--Sarah Palin's fantasy America--is a different place now, changing for the worse, overrun by furriners of all sorts: Latinos, South Asians, East Asians, homosexuals...to say nothing of liberated, uppity blacks.

In that sense, Barack Obama is the apotheosis of all they fear." - Joe Klein (of Time Magazine) in September 2009

Boortz was right.

Friday funnies

Too much funny stuff today, so I thought I would lump it all into one post.

First, today's Dilbert:


Second, from Neal Boortz's website:

Mike forgot his wedding anniversary and his wife was really ticked off at him.

She told him, "Tomorrow morning, I expect to find a gift in the driveway that goes from 0 to 200 in under 6 seconds, AND IT BETTER BE THERE."

The next morning, Mike got up really early.

When his wife woke up a couple of hours later, she looked out the window, and sure enough, there was a small gift-wrapped box sitting in the middle of the driveway. Confused, the wife put on her robe, ran out to the driveway, and took the box into the house.

She opened it, and found a brand new bathroom scale.

Mike is not yet well enough to have visitors.

Finally, in the category of "I can't make this stuff up", we have this little bit of actual news from the Times Online:

Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

Somebody needs to tell Andy Skurka about that study:

Andy Skurka is walking. Everyday, all day. In rain, snow, and scorching heat. And nothing can slow him down -- not cougars, bears or snakes. Not blisters or burning muscles. Since setting out from the Grand Canyon on April 9, Skurka has covered 3,653 miles … and he's only halfway home.

Andy Skurka's "GoLite on the Planet" walk has reached the halfway point. The nearly 7,000 mile odyssey -- roughly the distance from Los Angeles to Istanbul, Turkey -- is an effort to provide a first-hand look at the damage global warming is having on America's National Parks and wilderness areas.

Andy, stop! You're killing the planet!

On the minimum wage

"A question for you: Do you think that it would be appropriate for the federal government to force you to pay more for a product at the store than that product is worth to you? What if the government came to you and told you that the company making the product you wish to buy just isn't making enough money. Their profit margin has been stagnant for four years, and so the government wants you to pay more for the product so that the company making the product could get more profit. Like the idea? Do you think the government should tell you what must pay more for an item from the department store or grocery shelf than it is worth? If not .. then how can you support the idea that the government should tell an employer that he has to pay a person more for his labor than it is worth?" - Neal Boortz

What Boortz neglects to add here is that is EXACTLY what government does when it increases the minimum wage. Who do you think pays the cost of a higher minimum wage? Evil greedy companies? Au contraire mon ami. It is the consumer who pays the cost, which companies just pass along with higher prices.

By the way, which companies usually pay minimum wage to their employees? That would be companies whose profit margins are the tightest. Companies which sell a lot to the poor and low wage earners. So it is completely meaningless to the poor. They end up making more, but they also pay more.

What about small businesses which can't afford to raise their prices (in order to stay competitive), but also can't afford to pay their employees more than the current minimum wage? They get squeezed out of business, while the Walmarts of the world roll right along.

On the bright side, unionized workers will make more (due to collective bargaining agreements which raise salaries every time the minimum wage goes up). Great news for the struggling U.S. auto manufacturing companies and airlines. Instead of the slow, strangling death they were facing due to too many union concessions, let's blow those industries out of the water!

One final point, which Neal Boortz made the other day:

"But here's what I don't understand. How's come whenever Democrats talk about raising the minimum wage, it's only a dollar or two? They want to raise it to $7.25 or whatever....talk about being cheap! If you can't raise a family on $5.15 an hour, then how are you going to do it on $7.25 an hour? Why not raise the minimum wage to something livable...like say, $25 an hour. Obviously the single mom running the drive-thru at the local taco stand deserves that.

Oh...we can't raise it that much? Because it would kill jobs? Then if that is the case, liberals themselves are proving the point of their opponents. And by the way, this idea that somebody is supposed to raise a family on the minimum wage is nonsense. The minimum wage is for high school kids...people just entering the workforce. If that's the best you can do after working several years, then there is only one way to describe a person in that situation: a loser."