Comments welcome.
Which are your favorites?
Enjoy!

Share or Bookmark

No. You didn’t lose a day. Truth in Toons will be here tomorrow, as usual.

I was going though some old email yesterday and found one containing these political cartoons. Apparently, they originated overseas in 2010, though I don’t know where. (Thanks go to buffalogrammy for sharing them.)

They’re not especially funny, except, perhaps, in a macabre way, but what struck me about them was how they’re still relevant two years later.

Whether or not you like or detest Obama or could not care less either way, you have to admit there is a lot of truth in these ‘toons.

Do you agree or disagree?

Which do you think are the most relevant today?

Share or Bookmark

I can’t say I was all that surprised by the following story.

Poll shows low opinion of Facebook; lack of trust may hold back ad sales

Facebook’s reach is wide but not deep. Few users surveyed in an Associated Press-CNBC poll say they click on the site’s ads or buy the virtual goods that make money for it.

More than 40 percent of American adults log in to the site — to share news, personal observations, photos and more — at least once a week. In all, some 900 million people around the world are users. But many of them don’t have a very high opinion of Facebook or trust it to keep their information private.

If Facebook the company were a Facebook user, it would have a lot of virtual friends but not many real ones, the poll suggested.

Users’ distrust limits the value of the site’s ads. Advertisers want to target their messages to the people most likely to respond to them. And the more Facebook knows about us, the better it will be at tailoring those ads to our interests.

Yet in the poll of U.S. adults published Tuesday, only 13 percent said they trust Facebook “completely” or “a lot” when it comes to keeping their personal information private. A majority, or 59 percent, said they trust Facebook “only a little,” or “not at all.”

Click Here to read the rest of the story.

As I said, I’m not surprised by any of it.

Facebook has always seemed to me to be relatively unconcerned about its users, which may speak to why so many of them distrust it even as they use it.

How do you feel about it?

Do you trust them with lots of personal information?

Would you trust them if they could deliver targeted, relevant ads to you?

Either way, what do you think Facebook could do to garner more trust from its users?

Share or Bookmark

Yesterday, I read an an excellent commentary by Jeff Jacoby about state involvement in health care.

As you all know, Obamacare Light, also known as Romneycare, has been working its ruination on Massachusetts for six years now. Sold as legislation that would insure everyone, reduce premiums, and end chronic reliance on emergency rooms for healthcare services, it has created a huge new bureaucracy, doesn’t insure everyone, doubled and tripled premiums, and actually increased the use of emergency rooms by the newly insured poor who pay little or nothing in premiums and co-pays and so have zero incentive to do anything but run to the emergency room when they get a cold.

Now that Massachusetts politicians have created a problem where before, none existed, they’re all bleating about the need to lower the high premiums they caused along with the overall cost of providing health care to Massachusetts citizens and the swarms of illegal “residents” the state welcomes with open arms and pocketbooks. And since no “need” can go legislated, both the House and Senate are debating new bills to impose the ideas of people who have no idea how to do anything related to healthcare on those who do know, as well as on all the rest of us who have to foot the bills.

Health care: No, the state doesn’t know best

PRICES WERE OUT OF CONTROL at the end of 3^rd-century Rome, and the Emperor Diocletian was determined to rein them in. In AD 301 he issued his famous Edict on Prices, a complex piece of legislation that banned speculation and established price ceilings for a wide range of goods and services. But the ambitious law failed. Though violators could be punished with death, inflation and speculation persisted. Goods were hoarded, or sold on the black market. The economic crisis worsened. Eventually the law was abandoned. Like countless rulers before and since, Diocletian discovered the hard way that price controls don’t work. They worsen the problem they are intended to solve, leading to shortages, rationing, and even higher prices.

Yet the belief that government can control inflation by fiat never seems to lose its allure.

Which brings us to the “Health Care Quality Improvement and Cost Reduction Act of 2012,” a 178-page bill introduced in the Massachusetts House this month amid jaunty predictions of cheaper insurance premiums for Bay State families and tens of billions of dollars in medical savings over the next 15 years. An even longer bill — 235 pages — has been introduced in the state Senate.

These bills aren’t written in Latin and they don’t impose the death penalty, but their core principle is not much different from Diocletian’s: The state knows best. What fraction of the local economy should health care consume? How fast should medical spending rise? On what business model should provider networks be organized? How should hospital and doctors fees be calculated? Where should consumers get information on quality and cost of care? When are a provider’s high rates justified? What penalty should it bear when they aren’t? In the world these plans envision, decision after decision comes not through the voluntary interplay of doctors, patients, hospitals, and insurers, but from government agents who impose them from above.

Adding up the “dizzying and expansive” array of decrees in the House legislation, health-care analyst Joshua Archambault of the Pioneer Institute finds 941 instances in which the bill mandates that something “shall” be done. Among these are more than 25 kinds of penalties, fines, and surcharges, for price control and punishment always go hand in hand. Looming over all would be a new Division of Health Care Cost and Quality, a command-and-control behemoth that would dominate the state’s medical and health-insurance landscapes, with the power to affect billions of dollars and millions of lives.

And would any checks and balances restrain this behemoth? In the language of the House bill, it “shall be an independent public entity not subject to the supervision and control of any other executive office, department, commission, board, bureau, agency or political subdivision.” Throw in a toga, and Diocletian would feel right at home.

Click Here to read the rest of the column.

Note that last paragraph. This new bureaucracy would not be subject to review by anyone. It will be a Healthcare Dictatorship in the state where American freedom was birthed. Of course, it will be a benevolent dictatorship. No worries about rationing and doctors fleeing the state and/or profession as their workload increases while their income plummets.

Right?

Those of you who still cling to the fantasy of Obamacare doing anything but ultimately

– destroying the healthcare infrastructure
– making private insurance unaffordable by all but the most wealthy
– reducing and rationing care for the rest of us
– and adding untold numbers of new Federal employees to the tax burden

should open your eyes, take a look at the reality of government managed health care, and pray the Supreme Court kills the entire unholy, unAmerican thing. Because if they don’t, what’s happening in Massachusetts will be coming soon to you.

Comments? Opinions?

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

Share or Bookmark

When the mainstream media finally realized the Tea Movement was not populated with a bunch of extremist yahoos, but with ordinary Americans who have grown tired of the politics-as-usual crowd who have divided the nation, systematically stripped our rights and freedom, and driven us to the point of bankruptcy in their never-ending frenzy to buy more votes, they pretty much vanished from the news as presented by the big daily papers and TV networks. If they were your only source of news, you might well think the Tea Movement no longer existed.

But the funny thing about grass-roots movements is that once the grass takes root, it doesn’t need mainstream publicity to continue to flourish.

The Tea Movement is alive and well as two recent startling-to-the-establishment election results have demonstrated.

Last week, the Tea Movement helped Richard Mourdock whip Indiana’s long-time Sen. Richard Lugar in the state Republican primary. Voters there grew tired of Lugar’s “centrism.” They want a Senator who will stand up to the left, not one who goes along to get along.

This week, we have another Tea Movement-backed upset.

Fischer upsets Republican rivals to win Nebraska Senate primary

Nebraska state Sen. Deb Fischer upset her Republican rivals Tuesday night to win the party’s nomination for the Nebraska Senate.

Nebraska state Sen. Deb Fischer

The underdog candidate will take on former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey this fall in a closely monitored Nebraska Senate race.

Fischer came out of nowhere in the final weeks to pass state Attorney General Jon Bruning, widely regarded as the “establishment” candidate and Don Stenberg, the favorite of the Club for Growth and Sen. Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservative Fund. Both men heavily outspent Fischer in the primary.

Click Here to read the rest of the story.

Since it’s inception, I’ve maintained the Tea Movement is the last, best hope for a once-great nation that has been driven down to second-rate status by economic fools and political whores.

If America’s Founders were alive today, I believe they would be leading their state Tea Movements. I’m reminded of a passage from the Declaration of Independence:

…all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

The Founders threw off the shackles of their overbearing Government with guns. We have the opportunity to throw off ours with Tea. And we can still do it if enough of us, in enough states, offer our full support to candidates, regardless of political stripe, who pledge to steadfastly work for and vote for smaller, less intrusive, less costly government.

So the question of the day is, are you drinking the Tea, too?

Share or Bookmark

Congratulations to this week’s Comment Contest winner – Dan.

***

Frankly, I’m surprised this story isn’t being reported from here in The People’s Republic of Massachusetts. I guess it just goes to show that Nanny Staters are everywhere.

New Troy Police initiative aims to reduce theft from parked vehicles

TROY – With a recent spike in thefts from parked cars, the Troy Police Department is looking to roll out some preventive measures it thinks will not only reduce the amount of thefts but also make some residents more aware of what they’re leaving in their cars.

In this effort, if a police officer does notice a valuable item laying out in plain view in a parked car, the officer will then check its plate numbers, and if the address comes back locally, the officer will go to the registered owner’s place of residence and leave a blue card in the entrance way of the building. If the car does not belong to a local address, the officer will then leave the card on its windshield.

If a car is found to be unlocked, according to Police Chief John Tedesco, the officer will lock the vehicle.

Tedesco said the plan was developed over the last several months and has been approved by Mayor Lou Rosamilia.

Troy PBA President Bob Fitzgerald said these measures raise several concerns for not only officers but also the city as a whole. He agreed there has been an increased problem with larcenies from vehicles in the city, but while saying there needs to be a proactive approach taken, he said this particular plan could land some officers in trouble.

First, he said putting the card on the vehicle is merely signaling to a criminal there are valuable items in the vehicle. Tedesco said they have modeled Troy’s program based on similar initiatives used in both the Syracuse Police Department and the City of Yonkers Police Department and said there had been no such incidents created by the cards.

Fitzgerald also criticized the plan as he said officers have no business being in someone’s car as it is their private property. He also said if residents have knowledge police officers are going into cars to lock them but come back to find property missing, they could place blame on the police.

Click Here to read the rest of the story.

Isn’t it great the Troy police have so much spare time they can drive or walk around looking in people’s cars to make sure they’ve not left anything valuable where others can see it? It seems to me that if crime is low enough in Troy that officers can spend their time locking car doors for folks, Troy could probably get by with fewer officers and lower the tax rate  a bit.

What’s next? Will citizens be able to call the police for rides when they’ve had a bit too much beer at a local watering hole? Will they start checking front doors around town in case someone left theirs unlocked in their haste to get to work? And why stop there? They might as well check all the doors and the windows, too. And the garage. And shed.

What’s going to happen if you normally leave your keys under the seat with the door unlocked and a helpful gendarme locks he door, locking you out? Who pays for the locksmith to come and open the door?

I appreciate that Chief Tedesco and Mayor Rosamilia may well have had the best interests of the townfolk at heart when they cooked up and approved this scheme, but the PBA president had it right when he said the whole thing is problematical on several levels.

Locking one’s car in a city is something most folks understand is good practice. If others disagree, or believe themselves to be immune to bad things happening, then I believe it is not the business of the police or anyone else to correct them

Most people learn from their mistakes. The first time someone loses a camera or computer or watch or some other valuable, they’ll learn the lock their doors.

Experience is a great teacher. I say we should let it instruct those who most need the lesson.

And the police should keep their noses out of and hands off of private property.

What do you say?

Share or Bookmark

A Monday rerun

Some folks in New Zealand are upset because a judge overturned a city council decision banning some women from parading through town on their motorcycles. Topless. The Mayor claimed the council received 1000 emails and 150 “submissions” opposing the event. On the other hand, 80,000 people turned out to enjoy the last such parade. Hmmm…1150 against, 80,000 for. Seems pretty clear the judge did the correct thing, especially since New Zealand law permits both men and women to be topless in public.

My question is – what’s the big deal? They’re breasts. We all know what breasts look like. Many of us became attached to them shortly after birth. So why do we get all worked up about the sight of milk glands?

Why is it okay for him to be bare-chested in public, but not her?

I’ve never understood it. In fact, the women I know well enough to ask about it don’t understand why men find breasts so interesting. To many of them, their  breasts are just these lumps that have to be restrained,  often get in the way, and are frequently the cause of back pain and shoulder grooves.

Frankly, I think America should take a lesson from New Zealand and pass the same law. Given all the blather about “equal protection under the law” it would seem to be required.

I know men with boobs that are bigger than their wife’s. Why is it okay for them to doff their shirt on a hot, muggy day, but not okay for the wife to do the same? Seems like a clear-cut case of discrimination to me.

Are we afraid of inciting young boys to frenzies of uncontrollable lust? I think the sight of a few topless women is far more likely to incite them to uncontrollable giggles.

The simple fact is, if women started going topless, after a few weeks, nobody but the terminally juvenile would even notice.

Men cast sly glances and openly stare at women’s breasts all the time now, primarily because they’re wondering what they really look like under all that fabric. If they were right out there, they’d know. Then they’d be able to look a woman in the eyes when they’re talking to her without having to force their eyes not to drop to her chest.

I think the folks who are making a big deal out of this parade are boobs, but not the soft, pretty kind. All their bleating and moaning is providing the parade with far more publicity than it would ever have otherwise received.

Mrs. Blogger has been hinting about a vacation next year. I’m thinking New Zealand.

What do you say?

Ladies, would you go topless if were not illegal? Should it even be illegal?

And guys, do you think breasts would lose their allure if they were “out there” everywhere, all the time?

Share or Bookmark

Okay, folks. If you’re reading this early in the morning, and you forgot it’s Mothers’ Day, you may still have time to run to a store for one of the leftover cards and some chocolates or flowers.

Following is a piece that ran in the Boston Globe yesterday. I thought it was pretty funny, and often right on the mark, and that any moms reading the blog today might enjoy it, too, so I shamelessly copied it here for your enjoyment.

Truth in Toons will return next week.

Happy Mothers Day!

***

The lesser-known maladies of motherhood
Do you suffer from pre-playdate stress disorder? Multi-taskaria? If you’re a parent, you might.

By Beth Teitell

Share or Bookmark

Facebook Co-Founder Saverin Gives Up U.S. Citizenship Before IPO

Eduardo Saverin, the billionaire co- founder of Facebook Inc. (FB), renounced his U.S. citizenship before an initial public offering that values the social network at as much as $96 billion, a move that may reduce his tax bill.

Facebook plans to raise as much as $11.8 billion through the IPO, the biggest in history for an Internet company. Saverin’s stake is about 4 percent, according to the website whoownsfacebook.com. At the high end of the proposed IPO market capitalization, that would be worth about $3.84 billion. His holdings aren’t listed in Facebook’s regulatory filings.

Saverin, 30, joins a growing number of people giving up U.S. citizenship ahead of a possible increase in tax rates for top earners. The Brazilian-born resident of Singapore is one of several people who helped Mark Zuckerberg start Facebook in a Harvard University dormitory and stand to reap billions of dollars after the world’s largest social network holds its IPO.

“Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” said Tom Goodman, a spokesman for Saverin, in an e-mailed statement.

Saverin’s name is on a list of people who chose to renounce citizenship as of April 30, published by the Internal Revenue Service. Saverin made that move “around September” of last year, according to his spokesman.

Besides helping cut tax bills stemming from the Facebook, the move may also help him avoid capital gains taxes on future investments since Singapore doesn’t have a capital gains tax.

Click Here to read the rest of the story.

There was once a time when talented, wealthy individuals, and many others, fled their home countries for the security and freedom the United States offered. Now, thanks to three or four generations of creeping socialism, intrusive laws, burdensome regulations, and confiscatory taxes, the trend has reversed. Now, the successful find it more advantageous to live anywhere but in America.

We lose much more than tax dollars when the best and brightest, and even the luckiest, abandon the nation that sees them as little more than a revenue source for social engineering fantasies. We lose their drive, their work ethic, their capacity for innovation, and their ability to create much-needed jobs, to name a few things.

While those on the left seek to gather power by giving away the store to the disadvantaged and those on the right seek to give it away to the already wealthy and powerful, those of us who sit between them find ourselves squeezed tighter and tighter, our standard of living decreasing, and our security, rights, and freedom threatened from within.

Is it any wonder so many are abandoning America for more welcoming nations? Or writing books to help people leave?

What do you think about this?

Under what conditions would you renounce your citizenship?

Or have you already done so?

Share or Bookmark

What would you do if you discovered one of your favorite stores was supporting organizations with ties to terrorist groups?

Former U.S. Marine James Canning, after learning that Best Buy was donating money to CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group the FBI has identified as supporting radical Islamic terrorists, made the one-minute YouTube video below and began a boycott of the store chain.

Former U.S. Marine James Canning

Although I think that corporate support for a variety of social and charitable groups is commendable, I also think the company should know to whom their money is going and what they represent.

I imagine there are any number of Islamic organizations to which they could donate that have not been named unindicted co-conspirators in supporting and funneling money to terrorist organizations.

Somebody at Best Buy dropped the DVD player on this one, but rather than admit their error, they’re sticking to their guns according to this quote from the below-linked article:

“Best Buy’s customers and employees around the world represent a variety of faiths and denominations, and we respect our employees’ efforts to constructively promote diversity and education in their communities.”

While expertly crafted to sound politically correct so as not to offend anyone, the statement completely avoids the true issue — their support of terrorist supporters, essentially telling their outraged customers where to stick it.

I don’t spend a lot of money at Best Buy. I might shop their once a year, so my support for the boycott is likely to have next to no impact. But I suspect there are a lot of ex-marines and soldiers and sailors and airmen and others who do shop there regularly. And those folks have families and friends who can choose where to spend their money

Best Buy’s decision about who not to offend in this matter would seem to mean they’ve decided their future lay with an ever-growing American and world-wide Muslim population.

Time will tell if they are correct.

Will you join the Best Buy boycott?

Here is a link to the story: Ex-Marine’s ‘Best Buy-cott’ gathers steam over radical Muslim ties.

Share or Bookmark