At Least Get the Big Lie Straight 

By: John Ransom  / Townhall Columnist

Donjindra wrote: We're running huge deficits. Of course our tax bill will go up. It should go up. Do "conservatives" think there's a free-lunch? That money grows on trees? Apparently so. - Merry Christmas: This Tax Increase is for You, America

Dear Comrade Jindra,
OK, so now liberals are worried about the deficit? And you guys are lecturing the rest of us about fiscal responsibility and how money is created?

Typical tough talk from a group that can’t even pass a budget, yet alone balance one.

Here’s a good idea: Have your messiah present a plan to Congress that balances the budget, right now, not after the passage of time and some mythical increase in GDP created by “voodoo” tax increases on everyone.

Because Obama’s newest plan is basically the same, old plan he had last year- and the year before- that even Democrats wouldn’t vote for…not one vote.

“Even after granting all the phony spending cuts and similar gimmicks in Obama’s budget of last February,” writes Heritage’s J.D. Foster, ”federal debt held by the public rises by $8.5 trillion over the next 10 years without the tax hike and by $7.7 trillion with the tax hike. Expressed another way, allowing some of the Bush tax cuts to expire as Obama demands represents less than 10 percent of the projected debt increase.”

Only a true liberal would could come up with a plan to minimize the damage done to the economy by the expiration of $500 billion in tax cuts by raising taxes another $1.6 TRILLION, including $600 billion on ordinary, middle class Americans.

I really hope Obama gets his party to vote “yes” on these tax increases.
DagNabbit wrote: As I read through this column and the comments, I realize, like pretty much EVERY comment on TH, that the mouth breathers that TH attracts (meaning those of us who don't come here to shoot fish in a barrel) still believe that the reason we have a deficit is because of "entitlements". They don't want facts; they want RELIGION. And their religion is a deep belief in the idea that the reason we have debt is because the Government is handing out their hard earned tax dollars to lazy drug addicts on Welfare. Yeah, that $38/week is really going to screw up your retirement plans. LOL. - Merry Christmas: This Tax Increase is for You, America

Dear Comrade Dag,
I combined two of your comments on the same subject because I found them equally idiotic.

How do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you deny that entitlement spending is contributing to our deficit? Sure, defense spending is a pretty big line item, but: 1) It’s authorized under the Constitution; and

2) Even if you cut it by half, you still have a trillion dollar deficit.
Oh, I know, I know: You think that programs like Social Security are not entitlements because people paid into it. Well that would tend to prove that you don’t know anything about how federal programs operate.

Social Security isn’t an insurance scheme whereby you pay in, the government invests your money, and then at retirement you get your money back plus interest. Instead, you pay into the system now, along with others, to help support 1 (one) retiree. As long as there are enough people paying into the system to support all the
eligible retirees, then it works, mathematically at least. But that’s not the case.

“In 1950,” wrote our friend Michael Tanner over at Cato in 2005, “there were 16 workers paying taxes into the system for every retiree who was taking benefits out of it. Today, there are a little more than three. By the time the baby boomers retire, there will be just two workers who will have to pay all the taxes to support every one retiree.”

Social Security is an entitlement because no one actually gets back what they pay into it. In order for it to work in the future, taxes will have to be raised unless we turn it into a savings and investment plan.

Continues Tanner:

The Social Security payroll tax is already 12.4 percent of wages, or one eighth of a worker's total annual wages. It is the biggest tax the average household must pay. Roughly 80 percent of American families pay more in Social Security taxes than they do in federal income taxes.
Despite that already huge tax burden, the payroll tax will have to be increased by nearly half in order to continue paying Social Security benefits. That's a terrible burden to impose on our children and grandchildren.

DagNabbit wrote:

Jeez. Repubes lost SO BIG. And it's killing them. Life is freakin' GREAT, ain't it? - Buffett Boosts Own Morale with Hypocrisy

Dear Comrade Dag,
It’s a Hat Trick! Three in a row!

3 million votes really isn’t that big of a loss.

Actually life hasn’t changed that much since last year or the year before when Obama wasn’t able to accomplish anything.

Enjoy the gridlock. I know I will.   

ericynot wrote: Through most of the days of the Romney campaign all you heard about here was how everyone in the Democratic Party was a free-cell-phone-using, no-tax-paying, freeloader. Now all of a sudden, that party is made up of a bunch of sneaky, conniving billionaires who want to destroy the country. Keep in mind, for every Buffett there's a Trump, for every Gates there's a Walton, and for every Rockefeller there's a Koch. And all of them, just like you and I, have the right to promote whatever political philosophy they like. That's the cool thing about America. And, Ransom, suggesting that people with whom you disagree should die is repugnant and profoundly un-American.

- Buffett Boosts Own Morale with Hypocrisy

Dear Comrade Eric,
I don’t think you can point to one instance where I said everyone in the Democratic Party was a free-cell-phone-using, no-tax-paying, freeloader. Or that I denied that the Party had a bunch of sneaky, conniving billionaires who want to destroy the country. What I SAID was the vast majority who voted Democrat were free-cell-phone-using, no-tax-paying, freeloaders... CONTROLLED by a bunch of sneaky, conniving billionaires who want to destroy the country.

If you are gonna come by here you should at least get your facts straight.

And by the way, Donald Trump is hardly the same for Republicans as Buffett and Soros are for the Democrats. I personally don’t have any use for Trump. 

John Calvin Errickson II wrote: Conservatives have told me for years  is the rest of us should worship the super rich and their ways. Are you experiencing class envy? And why are you complaining of Mr. Buffett and not creating wealth on a massive scale?

Dear Comrade Mr. John Calvin Erickson,
You don't know that I'm not creating wealth on a massive scale, Mr. John Calvin Erickson, the Second, by the Grace of God and the Royal Dominions.

I don't have class envy. I wish for Mr. Buffett, the First, to keep the whole of his earnings, which by the way, he will do.

I merely pointing out that he was successful under the old system.

You see the problem with his plan is that it taxes NEW wealth. Guys like him, who have already made it, are exempt for the most part.

Sincerely,
John Jeremiak Ransom, the Only, forever and ever, amen.

HoovervilleFollies wrote: Of course Ransom is engaging in a classic denier tactic -- cherry-picking to find a study somewhere that includes some data that can be employed to raise doubts about the overwhelming body of evidence that anthropogenic climate change is real, serious, and well underway. -More Settled Science: Wrong about Ice Melt in Greenland, Sea-Rise

Dear Comrade Hoover,
I didn’t cherry pick anything.

Look, here are the facts that liberal don’t want to admit: There is no settled science on climate change. From study to study you all can’t even agree on how fast the ice is melting in Greenland, how much the sea level rise is due to climate change or whether temperatures have continued to rise at all.
The study I pointed to said that the ice is melting at a slower rate- and the ice melt is accelerating at a slower rate- than previously estimated. 

The next day a different report reaches a conclusion that the ice sheet is melting faster than previously thought.

What I’m saying is that the first thing you guys need to do to push the Big Lie is at least get the lie straight.

See more about this below.

QuietReason wrote: Ransom has little grasp of science.
First step, read the original paper, not a newspaper's interpretation of it. Start with http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S35/40/38C46/index.xml?section=science and see what they really said. There is no suggestion that Greenland is not losing ice and in fact, the loss is accelerating. Second, realize that the Greenland Ice sheet is only one part of the earth's ice and talking about it in isolation is meaningless, what about the West Antarctic Ice sheet, which is also losing ice and accelerating rates. Third, 21ft of sea level increase would be disasterous, but smaller amounts would also be very bad--take a look at maps of New Orleans, Norfolk, Boston under scenarios of 3-6 feet sea level rise. -More Settled Science: Wrong about Ice Melt in Greenland, Sea-Rise

Dear Comrade Hills,
You have little grasp of reading.

I’m going to rebut you almost totally from something written by Morgan Kelly, Office of Communications, Princeton University, because otherwise you’ll claim I’m too stupid to understand science.

An enhanced approach to capturing changes on the Earth's surface via satellite could provide a more accurate account of how ice sheets, river basins and other geographic areas are changing as a result of natural and human factors. In a first application, the technique revealed sharper-than-ever details about Greenland's massive ice sheet, including that the rate at which it is melting might be accelerating more slowly than predicted.

In addition, the enhanced detail of where and how much ice melted allowed the researchers to estimate that the annual acceleration in ice loss is much lower than previous research has suggested, roughly increasing by 8 billion tons every year. Previous estimates were as high as 30 billion tons more per year.

"Scientists are not totally sure what the driving force of the melt on Greenland is on short, yearly timescales," Harig said. "There is no certainty about which outside factor is the most important or if all of them contribute. Being able to compare what is happening regionally to field observations from other researchers of what a glacier is doing helps us figure out what is causing all this melt."

And really Mike, sea-level rise is not uniform, as you should well know, and would know, if of course you understood the science.

Sea-levels in New York have been rising at almost a constant rate for the last 150 years. And in 2011, the Journal of Costal Research found that sea-level rises were decelerating both in the United States and worldwide:

From the abstract:

Without sea-level acceleration, the 20th-century sea-level trend of 1.7 mm/y would produce a rise of only approximately 0.15 m from 2010 to 2100; therefore, sea-level acceleration is a critical component of projected sea-level rise. To determine this acceleration, we analyze monthly-averaged records for 57 U.S. tide gauges in the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) data base that have lengths of 60–156 years. Least-squares quadratic analysis of each of the 57 records are performed to quantify accelerations, and 25 gauge records having data spanning from 1930 to 2010 are analyzed. In both cases we obtain small average sea-level decelerations. To compare these results with worldwide data, we extend the analysis of Douglas (1992) by an additional 25 years and analyze revised data ofChurch and White (2006) from 1930 to 2007 and also obtain small sea-level decelerations similar to those we obtain from U.S. gauge records.

Mike, how do you get 3-6 feet of rise when scientists already agree that the next 100 years won’t produce a foot of sea-rise unless sea-rise rates accelerate, which now we know they aren’t doing?

Canetoad wrote: You go for it John, but for the future I'll be looking to emerging technologies in the green sector to invest my money. Pretty soon climate change will become so apparent that even the most ardent denier will be forced to remove his head from his rectum. You hang on to all those old fossilized stocks you are so fond of, but I'm betting the bank on new emerging green technology to sweep us into the new century and revive our economy. Unfortunately due to Republican obstructionism and just plain stubbornness, countries like Denmark, Israel, Sweden and Finland are outperforming us.- I Told You So Redux

Dear Comrade Toad,
You do that, Toad. Please. I mean that sincerely.

Because I really like making money and I need more counterparties in my trades. 
And under the GREATEST solar-powered president EVER, an investment of $10,000 in the one of the most popular green ETFs, the Claymore/MAC Global Solar Index, purchased in May 2008, would now be worth about $540.

By contrast, an investment in Exxon/Mobile would have retained about the same value under the most hostile administration to oil companies EVER.

You keep investing in sunshine. There is no shortage of that. It seems they make more of it everyday.
I’ll keep investing in the resource that’s scare.

Oh, and when those economic juggernauts in Scandinavia want to throw down over energy, I think we’ll be up to the task.

DAC wrote: You lost all credibility with your Romney landslide prediction. So SHUT THE F[edited] UP!! . - I Told You So Redux

Dear Comrade Dac,
Actually it doesn't work that way. The still expect me to write. And guess what? I have more readers than ever. AND starting January, I'll have a syndicated radio show.

More details to come

You can thank me later.