North Carolina’s Examiner has this to say about two Americas.

Tuesday is the deadline for filing federal income taxes. Half of American taxpayers will pay 97 percent of the individual income taxes the government will collect for 2008, according to IRS data. The other half will pay little or nothing, yet receive billions in benefits in the form of cash, subsidies, “free” services and other benefits, and loans. There are indeed “Two Americas,” but the two aren’t the rich and poor, but taxpayers and tax consumers. It’s going to get even tougher for the taxpayers in the near future, thanks to legislation being readied by Democrats who control Congress.

And can you say Jesus Fucking Christ!:

Even without the reserve tax hikes, allowing the Bush cuts to expire will mean that 20.3 percent, or one of every five dollars, of gross domestic product will soon be consumed by government.

It seems to me this is inverted. Why should the federal government tax so much money. It does not even provide local services for the citizens. Citizen’s taxes rates should be proportionally higher the more local that goverment is in relation to them. Cities should have the highest tax rates while federal government’s rates should be a trifling amount. It makes no sense to me that the state entity that I have the least control over receive the most of my tax money. Oh wait, that makes perfect sense to me now that I think about it.

I would also like to point out that the most of the policies that will lead to the federal goverment receiving over 20% of the GDP comes at the hands of liberal and democratic policy. That being said, President Bush has done a piss poor job of reigning in goverment spending and the current crop of presidential canidates will do no better, and in the case of the democrats, will exacerbate the problem. I can only imagine how much of the GDP will be forcibly stolen by the state to subsidize health care if Hilary Clinton makes it to the white house.

I find it ironic that the likes of Darwin complain about large companies and lobbyists using money to influence legislators but remain quiet when politicians implement policy to pay off large groups of voters with the money of other voters. Forcibly taking other people’s money to pay for the votes needed to win an election is just as corrupt if not more so than lobbyists influencing legislators by paying for dinners and trips. Yet liberals remain silent on this kind of corruption. If the politician uses the rhetoric of good intention then they can be pardoned for getting votes by giving away other people’s money. Hillary can forcibly take another quarter of our GDP so long as she brings free health care to the poor (aka her supporters).

Apparently Eric Alterman has written a book about what it is to be a liberal. Given what he says in this video i’m forced to conclude that liberals are idiots.

Did he actually say:

To be liberal just means you believe in the truth

So because I’m not a liberal I believe in the false. How has this guy written a full book on liberalism and fail to have on single semi-profound thought. Its excusable for a groups of partisans to never really think about their position fully but to spend a large segment of your timing attempting to define something and failing to have a single insightful thought, well, that takes a real special kind of stupid.

I should also like to point out that he really actually argues that the world liberal has gotten a bad name because of conservatives spending hundreds of millions of dollars to sully the word. That in and of itself is enough for me to conclude this guy is a retard.

Apparently the universal health coverage in Massachusetts in costing more than predicted.

The subsidized insurance program at the heart of the state’s healthcare initiative is expected to roughly double in size and expense over the next three years - an unexpected level of growth that could cost state taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars or force the state to scale back its ambitions.

State projections obtained by the Globe show the program reaching 342,000 people and $1.35 billion in annual expenses by June 2011. Those figures would far outstrip the original plans for the Commonwealth Care program . . .

The state has asked the federal government to shoulder roughly half of the program’s cost from 2009 through 2011, but there is no guarantee of that funding.

“The state alone cannot support that kind of spending increase,” said Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-funded budget watchdog group.

The best part is that the state bureaucrats are trying to find a way to get the Federal government to pay for their predictable miscalculation. Apparently I should pay for free health care for the citizens of Massachusetts. Sigh. It gets old people wanting to use the state’s coercion to force me to subsidize their unattainable attempt at Utopia. In high school their should be a mandatory course on learning about how incompetent the state is just so our children can learn how unwise it is to use the state as the solution for any thing. It could come between a Biology course, forcing scientific value on our children, and a course on Intelligent design, forcing religious values on our children.

If we just teach our children the values of distrust and contempt for the state, this country would be so much better. It would extra super duper better.

I’m confused. I was assured that invading Iraq would only create more terrorists.

In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives.

“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.”

Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: “The religion men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore.”

The shift in Iraq runs counter to trends of rising religious practice among young people across much of the Middle East, where religion has replaced nationalism as a unifying ideology.

While religious extremists are admired by a number of young people in other parts of the Arab world, Iraq offers a test case of what could happen when extremist theories are applied. Fingers caught in the act of smoking were broken. Long hair was cut and force-fed to its wearer. In that laboratory, disillusionment with Islamic leaders took hold.

Let me get this straight. So an individual may claim to support an ideology but then when they are forced to live in that ideology withdraw their support. You don’t say. Really? Average people don’t like to live under austere religious conditions. Having to live in those conditions makes them antipathetic towards such fundamentalism.

And here I figured it would make them more fanatical. More like to join the ranks of Al Qaeda. Turns out freedom is the antidote to fanaticism. Well shucks. Who knew? Technically the conservatives did, but people on the left might have a hard time fessing up to that.

I have found my new favorite website.

About time.

It would seem my kind are migrating that way.

The Free State Project (FSP) is a plan to have 20,000 individuals move to a single state in the United States, with the intent of influencing local politics and policy in an effort to reduce the size and scope of government at the local, state, and federal levels. In 2003, the group chose New Hampshire, known for its “Live Free or Die” motto and absence of a state income tax and state sales tax, as its target.

It was recently reported that

Apple has announced that music sales from its iTunes Music Store now eclipse CD sales from Wal-Mart as the impact of the music download era hits home.

The latest data released by the NPD Group in February indicates that iTunes has over 50 million customers, cumulative recorded sales exceeding 4 billion, and a music library over the 6 million song mark.

Its almost like Wal-Mart does not have the coercive power to force people to buy their music from them. Odd.

Venezuela has been going down the road of socialism for a while. This will only make things worse.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is planning a government takeover of his country’s cement industry, his latest effort to impose state control over key sectors of an economy battered by shortages and inflation.

I have absolutely no doubt that government will make this all better. It always does.