insignificant thoughts

I saw a lot of commercials last night that were cute. Funny dogs. Smiling, mischievous babies. Lovable polar bears. I saw some stupid ones, too, like the insulting and endless demeaning of women by GoDaddy, or something about a kid relieving himself in pool. I guess that was an ad for porta-potties?

But there was one ad that struck me as the most honest, most riveting and most compelling of all. You see, the game had just ended, and Colts great Raymond Berry ran the Giant gantlet with the Lombardi Trophy. Suddenly it seemed like every other Giant pulled out an Apple(AAPL_) iPhone to snap pictures of the moment. One after another after another. And I said to myself, there it is, not some pet dangling a bag of chips or some headlights killing vampires or King Elton getting trapdoored. Nope, there was an ad worthy of Steve Jobs and the company he built.

Yep. Hard to argue, too.

Awesomeness. I need this and want this.

What’s the worst policy idea that would cause the most damage to society?

I’m tempted to say the value-added tax since our hopes of restraining the federal government will be greatly undermined if we give the buffoons in Washington a new source of revenue. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why Mitt Romney may be an ever greater long-term threat to American exceptionalism than Barack Obama.

But even though the VAT is fiscal poison, it’s not the most dangerous policy proposal.

At the top of my list is global taxation.

But our government wouldn’t throw us under the bus and allow us to be taxed by the UN whom we didn’t elect, right?

Right?

BILL MAHER: Let me ask you about another occupation, because this is – and you would be good on this too, panel -, the occupation, the Occupy Wall Street, because similar to Afghanistan, when you occupy anything for too long people do get pissed off. And as I watch them on the news now I find myself almost agreeing with Newt Gingrich. Like, you know what – get a job. Only because, you know, the people who originally started, I think they went home and now it’s just these anarchist stragglers. And this is the problem when you, you know, when your movement involves sleeping over in the park. You wind up attracting the people who were sleeping over in the park anyway.

[Laughter and applause]

MAHER: And I think that’s where we are now with the Occupy movement. They did a great job bringing the issue of income and equality to the fore, but now it’s just a bunch of douchebags who think throwing a chair through the Starbucks window is going to bring on the revolution.

Usually every nasty word that comes out of this irrelevant old man is quoted ad nauseum to everyone because, well, you guys, he’s just so brilliant we all need to hear his words.

I wonder what happened?

The company starts off with a view of people lined up in front of an Apple Store, complaining about their afflictions. Whether it is the long wait, or the weather, or the lack of features on the latest phone, or the lack of a redesign; Samsung takes advantage of it all. The ad then transitions to the obvious savior: a person carrying a Samsung product.

The people in line display initial skepticism over the value of the product. Eventually, though, they are persuaded to stop being so blind and stupid and instead leap over the line’s wall and joining the free masses (very original, Samsung).

The advertisement itself is reminiscent of the Windows vs. Mac ads that Microsoft and Apple sparred with a few years back. However, there is one key differentiator. Whereas Microsoft and Apple made jabs at each other, Samsung is instead taking jabs at not only the products, but the customers of the products. Yes, Samsung is running attack ads against the people they are trying to convince to buy their products. Brilliant!

The situation would be fine if this was in response to something Apple did to Samsung, or something Apple said. However, Samsung continues to throw punch after punch against Apple customers, with Apple refusing to respond. At some point it stops being creative, and starts being insulting. That point was roughly three commercials ago.

It’s an interesting point. If Samsung wants Android converts, they’re going to have to come from the iPhone pool, I’m assuming, so why would an iPhone user, after being insulted and stereotyped want to buy their product?

I won’t even get into (although many who know me have heard me say this more than once) how Samsung would give body parts of its executives to have a line for their products or the product loyalty that Apple engenders. I guess that’s the way children work, though. If you don’t have something, you just make fun of those who do and pretend you don’t want it.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — U.S. taxpayers likely lost $1.3 billion in the government bailout of Chrysler, the Treasury Department announced Thursday.

The government recently sold its remaining 6% stake in the company to Italian automaker Fiat. It wrapped up the 2009 bailout that was part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program six years early.

“The fact that the company has done so well — that they were able to go out and raise private capital to repay us the loan so quickly, is really the big story,” said Tim Massad, Treasury assistant secretary for financial stability.

Fiat paid the Treasury a total of $560 million for the remaining shares, as well as rights to shares held by the United Auto Workers retiree trust. Fiat now owns a 53.5% stake in the company.

So yeah, Clint… It’s halftime in America… And right now the taxpayers are big losers because people are handing out our money to prop up their friends and donators.

Halftime? Appropriate analogy because it’s all a game.

The White House is seeking to contrast Obama’s stance with that of Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney, who has said foreclosures should be allowed to run their course.

“The truth is, it will take more time than any of us would like for the housing market to recover from this crisis,” Obama said at a community center in Falls Church, Virginia. “But there are actions we can take, right now, to provide some relief to folks who’ve been making their payments on time.”

The $5 billion to $10 billion program, that would be funded by a tax on the nation’s largest banks, would allow homeowners to refinance at record low borrowing costs through government-backed loans. A senior administration official said it could reach 3.5 million Americans whose loans are not government-guaranteed. An additional 11 million homeowners whose loans are backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could also be eligible, the official said.

How much more are we going to prop up people who made bad decisions and got in over their heads?

As much as he’s painted as a bastard for saying so, Romney is 100% right. Foreclosures have to happen. People who screwed up have to be made to pay for it and if that means losing their homes, they should lose their homes. If you make $40,000 a year, you know you can’t afford a $300,000 house and if you make that move, you deserve to pay for it.

And don’t hand me that shit about having no place to live. There are cities with rental properties and apartments. Move. Yes, that’s right, the same way you moved to your house, you can move to an apartment.

And no, I don’t feel bad in saying so.

At some point the risk in buying a house has to fall on the person who voluntarily sought to purchase one, not everyone else around them. If you can’t make it work, that’s fine. Just don’t expect me to catch you every time you make a mistake.

If you want to save the housing market, you need to stop encouraging bad loans by backing them with federal dollars, stop suing banks for not making loans for reasons you perceive as redlining, and stop bailing out people who get in over their heads.

Those three things need to happen, and if they don’t, then the housing market will never recover.

Attorney General Eric Holder vigorously denied a “cover-up” by the Justice Department over “Operation Fast and Furious,” telling a House panel investigating the botched gun-running program that he has nothing to hide and suggesting the probe is a “political” effort to embarrass the administration.

“There’s no attempt at any kind of cover-up,” Holder told lawmakers well into a hearing about whether he had been forthright in responding to requests of the House Oversight and Government Relations Committee led by Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

The hearing came after Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, his Senate partner in the probe, asserted that top Justice officials are covering up events surrounding the flawed gun-smuggling probe. 

There’s no attempt of any kind at a coverup? Really?

Because Mr. Holder has been caught numerous times lying to investigators about Fast and Furious, including lying about having no knowledge of the operation up until he was questioned about it in Congress. And just for shits and giggles, he repeats that claim again, even though CBS News (in the link a few words ago) shows that he was sent briefings on it long before he was ever called to testify.

Yet the mainstream media is way more interested in Donald Trump endorsing Mitt Romney today.

A wealthy Florida polo club founder has adopted his longtime adult girlfriend in what attorneys believe may be a legal maneuver to protect his financial assets as he faces a trial for a drunk driving incident that killed a 23-year-old.

John Goodman, 48, formally adopted Heather Laruso Hutchins, 42, in October 2011. The couple started dating in 2009. Goodman is the founder of the International Polo Club Palm Beach in Wellington, Fla.

West Palm Beach Judge Glenn Kelley wrote in a court order that the twists in the case “border on the surreal and take the Court into a legal twilight zone.”

“The Defendant has effectively diverted a significant portion of the assets of the children’s trust to a person with whom he is intimately involved at a time when his personal assets are largely at risk in this case,” the judge wrote.

Goodman is being sued by Lili and William Wilson for the wrongful death of their son Scott Patrick Wilson, who come home from college for his sister’s birthday, and died in a car crash on Feb. 12, 2010.

While everyone is all up in arms, the question is, “Is this legitimate?” And the answer? Why not? It’s no more “slick” than having lots of kids to get the increased stipend from the government every month.

This is the problem when the law sticks its nose into every aspect of our lives. We end up with smart people who know how to get out from under it in the manner that would provide the least amount of friction, and that’s what he’s doing here, and it appears as he’s doing so within the confines of the myriad of laws and loopholes.

Oh wait, what loopholes? Well, clearly this sort of thing can be done for taxation purposes, which brings up my consistent argument of why we need to set the rate at 17% for everyone and abolish all loopholes and deductions. Then you couldn’t set up trusts to avoid taxation in the first place, and this wouldn’t be happening.

Funny how everything ties together in a free society unencumbered by governmental meddling, isn’t it?

The Sitch: You’ve accepted a sleepover invite for your daughter, not realizing that only her pal’s divorced dad will be home. You’re not OK with it. What to do?

The Solution: “Call and say ‘I’m sorry, and this is about me and not you, but I just don’t feel comfortable with a man supervising an overnighter,’ ” says Paone. Offer to host the girls at your place instead, if you can, or ask to turn the sleepover into a “late-over,” where your daughter stays only till bedtime. In the future, always ask who’ll be on duty before you say yes to a sleepover.

Why do we allow this continuous slandering of men to continue like this? Honestly, this is downright disgusting advice from a downright disgusting magazine.

Imagine if the question were “I’m not comfortable with my daughter hanging out around her friend’s whore mother.” Do you think we would just be talking about concern for a child, or would “advocacy groups” be losing their minds?

If you want a case of clear bias, the Washington D.C. affiliate of CBS will surely fill the bill for its bias against pro-life supporters. On January 23 the DC affiliate featured on its website a photo slide show of pictures taken at the March for Life rally held annually at the nation’s capitol. Curiously, though, there wasn’t a single photo of any pro-lifers. Instead, the photo essay featured only photos of abortion-supporting protesters who stood on the sidelines taunting the pro-life marchers.

The photo slide show initially featured seven photos of abortion supporters, such as one of marchers holding signs saying “Family Planning Saves Lives Worldwide,” one featuring women holding signs saying that abortion should be kept legal, and another showing a woman sporting an abortion on demand sticker.

Upwards of 50,000 pro-life supporters turned out in the DC cold to participate in the March for Life, yet apparently CBS could only find the small handful of pro-abortion supporters to photograph.

Yet another example of the mainstream media purposefully ignoring the March for Life. The Washington Post has already come clean on its biased coverage of the event, and CBS has since updated that slideshow to reflect the 50,000 marchers better than the people protesting that march.

It continues to astound me the lengths the media will go through to ignore the pro-life movement in this country.

At least they tried to make it look like people were jumping into the tiny pool…

The 2012 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination should, once and for all, end the myth that the GOP is the party of limited government, free markets and personal liberty. I submit it is instructive to look at the records of the three remaining GOP candidates not named “Paul.”

The following bullet points were excerpted verbatim from Reason.com’s candidate profiles. Yes, I have cherry picked items inconsistent with limited government, free markets and personal liberty. Yes, these same profiles mention positions of each candidate that are consistent with limited government, free markets and personal liberty.

It’s a good thing he didn’t include Paul in that roundup; no one likes a merciless slaughter and beating.

Foxconn may employ tens of thousands of Chinese laborers to build the iPhone, but the vast majority of the labor costs associated with making an iPhone is spent right here in the States. In fact, only $10 per iPhone goes to paying workers abroad.

According to Forbes:

A report written by three U.S. professors showed that only about “$10 or less in direct labor wages goes into an iPhone or iPad is paid to Chinese workers.” The report points out that while Apple products — including components — are manufactured in China, the primary benefits go to the U.S. economy because Apple continues to keep most of its product design, software development, product management, marketing and other high-wage functions in the U.S., not China. China’s role is more of an assembler.

In other words, the only part of making an iPhone that is done abroad is the grunt work of actually screwing it all together. All of the high-paying, educated jobs involved in designing, engineering, marketing and selling the thing stay right here in the good old U.S.A.

That one ain’t gonna sit well with the populists.