Google – incompetent, arrogant, evil, or all three?

New York City has 16,000 fewer employees than 2001…but spending on salaries and wages has increased from $3.8 bn to $10.8 bn; and spending on pensions has increased from $1.3 bn to $8.3 bn over that same period.

What can’t be sustained, won’t.  We’ll be seeing this all over the country before long.  Economic reality can’t be denied, however politically unpopular that might be.

One thing that might get lost in all of this – this raid was the result of aggressive interrogations (water boarding) and the activities in Gitmo. A shrewd observer will note that these actions have been highly unpopular, and some good men have had their reputations destroyed over them (see the ex-POTUS and VP). This trail started in the previous administration, and while their political enemies used these programs to excoriate them, those men remained silent about what they were learning. They allowed themselves to be smeared and torn down, and took the lumps for the sake of the intel that was being gathered. They took those hits for the sake of the country, and they are man enough to permit the next POTUS (who bitterly opposed these programs) to reap the rewards of success. I still congratulate Obama for following through on this, but I would at least like to see some credit being attributed to the previous administration who practically immolated themselves for the sake of this outcome.

A preview of the coming 2012 campaign – any criticism of King Barak the Man-Child will be de-legitimized as racism.

I’ve decided simply not to interact with people who deploy this argument.  There’s no having a rational discussion with those people, so I’m not going to waste my time trying.

However, it is funny to watch the media and those on the Left act like this was some big ordeal for the president.  As if releasing a birth certificate, a task slightly less difficult than signing up for Paypal, has a waste of his mighty resources and precious time.  Yeah, ‘birtherism’ was kind of a silly little conspiracy, but he could have put an end to it two plus years ago with a simple document release – a document that just about every American has to produce when getting a job, or a driver’s license.  When a man spends a few million in legal fees to fight the disclosure of a simple document, it isn’t unreasonable to wonder why.  Yet now that he has released a very simple document, that turned out to have NOTHING on it that would embarrass him in the slightest, we’re left wondering why he fought it so hard?

And don’t forget that Lt. Col. Larkin was sent to PRISON for questioning the legitimacy of Obama’s birth status.  Rather than produce a simple document that would assuage the concerns of an honorable military officer, he was just fine with watching that officer go to jail.

Only when it was politically expedient for HIM did Obama release the document.

Nice work, champ.

But I guess I’m still a racist.  Whatever.

Addendum: I see that Ace covered this today.  As usual, better than I could have.

Addendum II:  More on the topic.

I love my friends.

But for many of them, their world views are so strange and perplexing, I just can’t take it.

I hate to be the cranky guy at a party mumbling about deficits and doomsday, but things really are quite bad in our fiscal and political system.  In most times, we have the luxury of ignoring it and getting on with our lives.  After all, people have been grousing about this stuff since the 1700s.  In normal times, I viewed politics and news as an aggressive hobby.  Today, it is far more serious than that, and we’re hurtling towards the brink of some transition that will leave us in a world we won’t recognize.

Debt, spending, feckless leadership, and the rise of that death-cult known as Islam – these things matter a great deal.

Yet those I interact with in the social sites either don’t see it, are immune to persuasion, or subscribe to a world view that I just cannot fathom.  Those on the ‘left’ are particular frustrating – I can’t tell if they really believe the things they say (which terrifies me), or they simply are so ill-informed that they can’t help it (which at least could be fixed if they were motivated).  It drives me over the edge, and it is all I can do not to burn bridges with some.

I love my friends.  Even those in this aforementioned category.  I respect them as people, but the frustration remains.

In normal times, this would all be a sign that I’m taking this stuff far too seriously.

These are not normal times.  I know that each generation thinks things are worse now than ever.  I get the fad of the apocalypse.

But objectively, by every measure, we are in new territory – territory that sovereign nations generally don’t return from with their character intact.

As the 2012 electoral season starts, it is going to get far worse.  The child-president in office is simply not up to the task, and even the most aggressive reformer on the political stage (Paul Ryan, or maybe Rand Paul – tossup) does not have a plan of sufficient depth to reverse our position.

And the voters simply have not come to grips with the reality of our situation.  Our people are unplugged, ill-informed, and still living in a fantasy land when it comes to fiscal reality.

Yeah, I’m not hopeful for the future.

And it pains me to see my friends whistling past the graveyard.  When things do go to crap, they are going to be the first who will ask ‘what happened?’, and inevitably, the first to draw the wrong conclusions about how we got here.

I have no answers.

Embedded.

When was the last time the Democrats lost a close vote?  It is almost miraculous, isn’t it?