Bourbon Pundit

Sex Offender Search

I hate the fact that our society forces me to take up blog space with tools like this; but I found a new search site to find sex offenders working or living in your area.

Weather Channel goes stark-raving mad

Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=32abc0b0-802a-23ad-440a-88824bb8e528

The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.

The Weather Channel’s (TWC) Heidi Cullen, who hosts the weekly global warming program "The Climate Code," is advocating that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revoke their "Seal of Approval" for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe.

Smells like how the roman catholic church wanted to shut everyone up who didn't believe the earth was the center of the universe. We all know how that one worked out. Global warming is a THEORY. You believe in THEORIES. Science is based on FACTS. You don't have to believe in FACTS, they stand regardless.

Who is this Heidi chick anyway? Well, first a little background. The Weather Channel debuted in 1982 and became a well-known and respected cable network based on the fact that they delivered accurate weather information and nothing else. People wanted that and they prospered for it. The EVP of The Weather Channel decided she liked the way CNN shifted from a straight news outlet to a personality-driven model. If it's good for CNN, why not TWC? Media Village reported that the move by The Weather Channel "is intended to establish a broader perspective on the weather category and to move the brand from functional to emotional."

Emotional weather. Think about that.

Heidi Cullen, the new global warming martyr, and supposed expert on climatology, gained her expertise by her bachelor's degree from Juniata College. Oh yeah, it's a degree in near eastern religion and history. No offense, if I passed the Draw Dippy test, I thought I could have had her job.

Somehow, I think when she was working on her sanskrit thesis, she missed the lecture about Climatology being the study of LONG TERM climate trends. Man has barely been industrial for 100 years; I'm not sure how 100 years is all of a sudden a macro study. Anyway, the point here is she can spout all this crap for decades and it'll be decades more before we can even say if we're truely in a warming period and probably longer before we can say man had anything to do with it. The earth has gone through many cooling and warming periods. Do we really believe that our study of such, reflecting a very short period of time, has any bearing on the actual long-term processess at work here?

Here's her blog, go read for yourself...
http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html

Democrats reform free speech

Ok, so Nancy Peolosi wants to clean up politics; nice idea; but the devil is in the details. What the democrats are really after is you mouth; mostly to shut it up.

"Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the Senate, would require grassroots causes, even bloggers, who communicate to 500 or more members of the public on policy matters, to register and report quarterly to Congress the same as the big K Street lobbyists. Section 220 would amend existing lobbying reporting law by creating the most expansive intrusion on First Amendment rights ever. For the first time in history, critics of Congress will need to register and report with Congress itself," according to a statement from GrassRootsFreedom.com" (source)

"The bill would require reporting of 'paid efforts to stimulate
grassroots lobbying,' but defines 'paid' merely as communications to 500 or
more members of the public, with no other qualifiers." (source)

One more brick in the foundation of a revolution. Elected representatives, senators, executives and judiciary...you sure you want to go down this road?

The tax increase you didn't know about

As the US House of Representatives was all too happy to pass an increase to the federal minimum wage; the left cheered and many thought it was a victory for the working class. In truth, it was something different entirely...

The current Federal minimum wage is $5.15 per hour; as the House has passed their bill (not yet a law), that rate would go to $7.25 per hour, and increase of $2.10 per hour. Sounds nice; I'm sure some people could use a little extra coin in the pocket.

Let's not forget that the government gets it taxes before you get your paycheck.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payroll_tax#United_States

FICA - You pay 6.2% of your gross pay and your employer is required to match that amount. You pay FICA on all wages up to $97,500 for 2007.

Keep in mind, you employer knows it must match this amount and takes that into account when you negotiate your salary so this IS part of your compensation whether you like it or not. This is the economic theory of tax incidence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence Basically it says you will bear the burden of all taxes as the employee no matter who is paying the tax.

FUTA - Federal Unemployment rate is 6.2%, but you can net out the SUTA taxes paid so it's generally less. You stop paying FUTA when you have reached $7,000 in wages in a calendar year. For this example, we'll using Indiana, making this tax 3.5%.

SUTA - State Unemployment for Indiana is 2.7% and can change after 3 years based on if any of your ex employees have filed a claim for benefits. In plain language, that means it goes up. See the net effects of FUTA.

Social Security - Here we go again with matching. You pay 6.2% and your employer must chip in another 6.2% of your gross wages. See tax incidence above. Your paying into this until YOU have paid out $6,045 for 2007. Remember, it's a matched tax, so that number is really $12,090 paid to the government by you or on your behalf.

Medicare - Another matched tax of 1.45% and you're gonna pay it on everything you earn; there's no cap here.

What does it all end up as? I'm not going to get into a matrix where we deal with caps and earning levels since this article is really dealing with those earning minimum wage and they're not going to hit the minimums required to turn off a tax. Anyway, we're up to about 31.2% of your gross wages are paid as taxes before you even get to spend a dime.

So, back to the $2.10 pay increase...you get about $1.44 of that; the government gets $0.66. So, by increasing the minimum wage, they've given themselves $0.66 for every hour of your labor should you be making minimum wage. Let's say you work full-time at minimum wage, 50 hours a week times 52 weeks a year...2600 hours; that's $1,716 more (on top of the $4,177 they were already taking out of the $5.15) the government has voted themselves for your yearly labor because they raised the minimum wage.

But wait, there's more. Let's say you were making $7.00 an hour. Would it make sense that you're gonna just be brought up to $7.25 and hour? Nope, you should probably be making at least $2.10 more than you were making; making your hourly rate $9.35. Again, with 2600 hours; you're working your ass off because you need the dough, the government just voted themselves an additional $1,716 over the $5,678 they were already taking.

In the micro, those are some pretty impressive numbers; but in the macro it gets downright disgusting. About 2 million people currently make the minimum wage, well, about 2 million US citizens that is; but as I've described earlier, the wage pressure will extend well beyond those just making the minimum. About 9 million people will be affected by an increase in minimum wage.

Nine million multiplied by $1,716 works out to be $15,444,000,000 (that's $15.44 billion) the government just voted themselves under the guise of helping out the working man. Again, this completely ignores the taxes they'll pay when they actually try and use the $1.44 that comes through to their pocket and this document stop calculating past about the $9.00 per hour wage earner; the effects on costs of products would extend to all. The heritage.org article quoted below works this cost out (for a $1.50 per hour wage increase, in 2001 dollars) to about a $30.2 billion impact. I'm not doing the calculations; I've already made my point here.

I'm not even going to touch on the increased costs of goods sold and how that impacts the real wages in this scenario as we've already gone on long enough. Suffice to say, when you increase the cost of labor to make something, you increase the cost of the product to the end consumer and that's called inflation and it devalues the purchasing power of your dollar; what you get to keep of it that is.

Read some more about what was proposed in 2001 as a $1.50/hour minimum wage increase here. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Labor/WM19.cfm

Verizon Math

Basic math, it's just simple basic math and Verizon doesn't get it.
http://media.putfile.com/Verizon-Bad-Math

I actually had this happen to me a few months ago when I explored the idea of going from an "unlimited plan" to a metered plan for my wireless data services. They were quoting me cents intead of dollars per kilobyte of data usage, and I could read on their website it was written in dollars. I knew the rep was an idiot and I asked multiple times and did the math myself; but I decided to keep the unlimited plan because if they were really quoting dollars instead of cents my bill would be astronomical.

The guy is blogging this mess and is selling Verizon Math t-shirts. Predictiably, their lawyers are none too happy. Screw them.
http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/index.html

First

You heard it here first becaue I thought of it first.

I am the first person to use the word "Google" not as a noun or a verb, but a color.

The color google is something that is 33.33% Blue, 33.33% Red, 16.66% Yellow and 16.66% Green.

Google, you may feel free to buy the rights to my idea.

When I close my eyes, I see fire and bees...

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2243176

Just don't get it

Those paper toilet seat covers for those that are a little too germophobic...

So, you got someone that's freaky about using a public toilet so the building services provide a cutout tissue for them to place on the head. If they're really freaky, they don't bother to toss them away afterwards...assholes. If they're not so freaky, they do toss them...but what's up with that? If they're too freaky to put their butt on the seat, they'll put their hands closer to the seat to actually place the tissue than if they just dropped their pants and sat down.

What is up with that?

Oh yeah, and Nancy Pelosi is 1 1/2 heartbeats away from the presidency.