Whatever you see in the news, whatever you hear from countless town halls and state fairs and all around you, it’s the conservatives who are the violence-prone wackoes.

No  matter what the evidence:

An opponent of government healthcare programs had part of a finger bit off during a fight at a pro-healthcare-reform rally this week in Thousand Oaks.

William Rice, 65, of Newbury Park was with a small group of counter-protesters at a vigil Wednesday night organized by Moveon.org when a man bit off part of his left pinky finger during a scuffle, authorities said. Doctors were unable to reattach Rice’s finger.

Remember – right-wing domestic terror is the greatest danger to democracy today.  Pinky swear.

It would be even funnier if it wasn’t all true. Enjoy.

Click to play!

Jeff Johnson, over at the Hennepin County Taxpayer Watchdog blog, notes that HenCo is spending taxpayer money to lobby for higher taxes

Bottom line (and pardon my crudeness): Government is giving the finger to the taxpayers of Hennepin County as it spends taxpayer money to lobby the legislature for increased taxes on those same taxpayers.
The Project began several years ago and is funded jointly by the counties of Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis, the cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth and the school districts of those same three cities. Each entity allocates approximately $10,000 each year to the Project.

Money taken from the children’s mouths, in the case of the school districts.

The Project essentially funds one “consultant” (who happens to work for Matt Entenza’s liberal Minnesota 2020 think tank) year after year to prepare a report that pretty consistently says the same thing: Minnesotans are not taxed enough. That report is then used to lobby the legislature for increased taxes, apparently in hopes of obtaining more money for cities, counties and school districts in Minnesota.

And, indirectly, to support the advancement of any number of other MN2020 objectives, including the harassment to extinction of Minnesota’s charter schools.

Government’s chief objective, at least in Henco, Ramco and Duluth, seems to be purely to perpetuate itself.

…in the age of Obama:

Know your place, you racist teabagging peasant!

…especially any of you that have ever used the term “teabagger” to refer to a conservative exercising his/her free speech, and/or written any conservative grass-roots action off to “astroturfing”:

1. So I take it you’ll be ignoring all of the “research” and “data” coming from Citizens for a Supine “Safer” Minnesota from now on.  Right?  Because y’all seem to take them pretty seriously today, even though the “group” is essentially one woman, Dr. Rebecca Thoman (who is an OBGYN, not an emergency room trauma surgeon, by the way), and her majordomo, Heather Martens.  If they go to a demonstration, and they call on their “friends” at “Million Mom March”, they may draw half a dozen people, mostly out-of-work professional activists.  Indeed, various second-amendment activist friends relate stories of going to C”S”M meetings where shooter “ringers” outnumbered the anti-gun activists by several to one – where “one” is an absolute number, not a ratio.
2. Let’s accept, for the moment, that all of the conservative response at Town Hall meetings, and all of the Tea Parties, are in fact being coordinated by some cabal of right-leaning “astroturf” groups.  OK – so what?  Do you think that just because someone sets a meeting and says “let’s protest”, that it’ll draw a crowd?  Especially a crowd of conseratives – people who never come out to picket, wave signs or chant slogans?  With Democrats, of course, it’s ture – to paraphrase Fred THompson in The Hunt for Red October, Democrats don’t take a restroom break without some gropu gtelling them where to go or what to do.  But conservatives?  Election day is the biggest “demonstration” most conservatives ever make it to, ever, their lives.  So even if  there were some shadowy cabal out there, what makes you think people would come to the town halls and tea parties if the anger wasn’t very , very genuine?  You can start an astroturf group – but that doesn’t mean people will come, and bring the passion that the anti-Obamacare dissidents bring.  Just watch a “Million Mom” or “Code Pink” or ACORN demonstration for proof.

Of course, you do know that’s the truth – which is why the campaigns to mock, dismiss and intimidate these outbursts are being coordinated from the White House itself.
But since “astroturf” is newly “un-american”, I figured I’d give all you stalwarts in the lefty alt-media a chance to show your consistency.

Go to it!

It good to know I’m not the only one drawing this conclusion these days….

What we’re seeing in Washington these days is beginning to look like Jimmy Carter II.

Carter, like Barack Obama, started out with the idea of stimulating the economy.

His plan was to give every taxpayer $50, then throw in a few billion for tax cuts and public works programs. Simple, right? Wrong: In Washington, this soon became very complicated. Within a month, the package grew from $20 billion to more than $31 billion — a significant amount in the 1970s.

Ah, those were the days. Elitist liberal miscreants like Obama pissed away mere billions instead of trillions.

Obama is losing momentum and spending political capital as fast as stimulus dollars. Will he change course?

In April of his first year in office, Carter finally threw up his hands and scrapped the whole idea. He had dithered for four months. He had nothing to show for the effort. By then he was fatally diminished, his authority substantially eroded.

With the Obama administration, a similar unraveling is well under way and gathering momentum. Voters are increasingly restive. The country is souring on Obama’s gargantuan policy ambitions. The sense is growing that he has grossly overplayed his hand.

Regrettably, I think Obama is more committed than Carter was to government engorgement of the private sector. Let’s not underestimate of the damage Obama, Reid, Pelosi and their posse are prepared to perpetrate on America.

Like Carter, Obama looks increasingly like a president out of step with the times. Like Carter, there is a large gap between what voters expected based on the measured and moderate tone of his campaign and what began unfolding after his inauguration. Obama ran as a centrist, but he is governing from the left.

Surprise! (not)

In an NPR poll, a plurality of Americans opposed Obama’s health care efforts. In a recent Rasmussen poll, those who strongly disapproved of the president’s performance outnumbered those who strongly supported him by 11 percentage points.

Immaterial. Obama is smarter than we are and knows what’s best for us. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

Many legitimately fear that if not stopped, Obama and the Democratic Congress will take this country well beyond the point where the public sector starts to “squeeze the life” out of the economy.

Too late. I believe we’re calling it the Great Recession.

It’s not too late for Obama to make a major adjustment. Bill Clinton’s initial months were equally turbulent. He was savvy enough to make a mid-course correction — but it came only after the election of a Republican Congress. On his present course, Obama is making that eventuality increasingly likely.

Then again, Bill Clinton was a fiscal conservative, compared to Obama and Bush.

Let’s establish this in advance:  Congresspeople get unlimited franking, immediate and usually slavering access to the mainstream media, and usually a fan-club of alt-media types – bloggers and talk radio, whether left or right – to help them get their views out.

It’s practically impossible to “silence” a United States congressperson.

Now – I keep asking this, but every time I think “this can’t possibly get any worse”, I’m always unpleasantly surprised.  I ask the question “do you remember three years ago, when “dissent was the supreme form of patriotism””?

Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, writing in USA Today, doesn’t want you to think they do (emphasis added):

These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.

Are you people embarassed yet?
Nancy Pelosi – you live by Alinsky, you die (rhetorically) by Alinsky.  Didn’t he revolutionize civil dialog?

At any rate – it’s the facts that get us to these meetings.  The nation will be bankrupted.  The healthcare system – the best in the world – will be destroyed.

One America speaks its mind.

The other America stomps the first America while it’s lying on the ground.

Twelve years ago, Clinton Derangement Syndrone swept many reaches of the American right.  Fringe-y conservative pundits claimed Clinton had done everything from murdering Vince Foster to giving prisoners AIDS-tainted blood to (I’m getting a little foggy on the story) make money from the hike in blood prices (?).

Over the past eight or so years, the debt was repaid with loan-shark interest; Bush Derangement Syndrome (he brought down the Twin Towers, doncha know) spawned at least two broadast radio networks and most of MSNBC’s current lineup.

But this pathology is evolving into an uglier, more virulent pathology.  Because while distrusting the government is normal (and to a certain degree healthy), when the government and its attendant “elites” start assuming the people are some sort of mass of depraved animals, it’s a very bad thing.

Paul Krugman, Nobel prize winner, is shocked – shocked – that people are upset about Obamacare.

And he just can’t find a historical precedent for the anger he thinks he’s seeing:

That’s a far cry from what has been happening at recent town halls, where angry protesters — some of them, with no apparent sense of irony, shouting “This is America!” — have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform.

(Because members of Congress, especially those who support Obama, just can’t get heard in this day and age, can they?)

Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds.

And, Paul Krugman, you can’t find any examples of union goons beating up dissenters in 2005, either, can you?

What possible difference is there between now and then?  Between the Social Security debate and Obamacare? I’ll let you take a moment and turn that keen, Princeton-trained mind on solving that little riddle as we move on?

And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received.

Paul Krugman:  you seriously claim you can’t find any expression of anger in the past, say, eight and a half years, any expression of rage that overtopped the banks of sanity?

OK – that’s two jobs for that keen, Nobel-prize-winning intellect to tackle.

We’ll take a detour through crummy journalism…:

So this is something new and ugly. What’s behind it?

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, has compared the scenes at health care town halls to the “Brooks Brothers riot” in 2000 — the demonstration that disrupted the vote count in Miami and arguably helped send George W. Bush to the White House. Portrayed at the time as local protesters, many of the rioters were actually G.O.P. staffers flown in from Washington.

But Mr. Gibbs is probably only half right. Yes, well-heeled interest groups are helping to organize the town hall mobs. Key organizers include two Astroturf (fake grass-roots) organizations: FreedomWorks, run by the former House majority leader Dick Armey, and a new organization called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.

…because goodness knows a movement like Krugman’s, which depends on MoveOn.org, ACORN, the NEA and the SEIU to get crowds out for events can’t stand the thought of political action groups actually…organizing politics!

But with that out of the way, let’s move on to the casual class defamation:

That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the “birther” movement, which denies Mr. Obama’s citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don’t know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it’s a substantial fraction.

Michael Savage told me that the only way Paul Krugman could win a Nobel Prize was by providing sexual favors to Nobel committee members. I think he just might be right.

“Wow”, you might say – “That’s defamatory”.

It would be, if I meant it.  It’d take a bit of scabrous (and in this case fictional) libel from a “source” whose only motivation is hatred for Paul Krugman, and waters it down with just enough weasel words (“he just might be right”) to give myself some ethical wiggle room.
So let’s unpack Krugman’s last paragraph – which is easily the most cynical, stupid paragraph I have ever read in the Old, Gray, Increasingly Demented Lady.

• So Paul Krugman – do the “Birther” “movement” – a paranoid conspiracy theory rejected by the vast majority of Obama’s opponents – and opposition to Obamacare – which is based on an empirical reading of the supply and demand for healthcare, as well as the real-life experiences of healthcare consumers in Canada and the UK – actually share a “driving force”, or do they only “probably” share one?   Because when you say…
• “…we don’t know how many of the protesters are birthers”, and you “wouldn’t be surprised” if it was plenty?  That’s called “weasel words”.  You don’t know.  And worse, your only “source” is…
• …Dick “Turban” Durbin, who is one of the weasels being pummeled in public, and whose contempt for the opinion of the American Peasant is summed up by his support for reintroducing the “Fairness” Doctrine, and whose hostility to dissent is famous.

What is the difference, precisely, between Krugman’s real paragraph and my made-up one?

Does this sound familiar? It should: it’s a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites…But right now Mr. Obama’s backers seem to lack all conviction, perhaps because the prosaic reality of his administration isn’t living up to their dreams of transformation. Meanwhile, the angry right is filled with a passionate intensity.

And in Paul Krugman’s special little world, “right wing intensity” can only come from some depraved, immoral motive.

That is the legacy of the Obama administration, so far; dissent is worse than unpaatriotic; it is depraved.

They hate you.

(Via Mr. D @ TvM)

Setting aside the unpleasantness which characterizes so much of our political discourse today, I’d like to turn my attention to something which we can all celebrate together, as it has absolutely no potential downside.

If you live in a city with a good metro system, you’re probably used to having a swipe card system of some sort – load up money on the card, swipe it as you enter the station and as you exit, and your card is deducted the amount that ride cost…. [W]hat if your swipe card were based on carbon emissions instead? That’s the idea proposed by designer Nick Hunter for this wearable carbon emissions tracker.

Rather than a key or a card, the carbon meter would fit on your hand and glows a particular color – green, yellow, orange or red – depending on how well you’re using your public transportation allowance. Are you saving more carbon by hopping onto a train for a short ride, or would the hybrid bus have actually had the smaller footprint? The meter would let you know. But there’s more…it’d give the government insight on how well the public transportation systems are being used.

Isn’t that great? No longer do we need to debate the complicated trade-offs of energy use versus freedom in regard to an individual’s personal transportation decisions (let alone worry about the tedious science underlying hundred year climate forecasting based on projected human carbon emissions… bo-ring!). The government will take all of that burden off our hands, providing us a rating from “nice” all the way to “naughty” without requiring us to fill out a single form or stand in any lines! All we need to do is put on our government issued “wearable carbon emissions tracker.”

Here’s a picture of what the new wearable emissions device might look like. Prepare to see the future…

(more…)

I hadn’t thought of this almost zen-like contradiction:  why is it that the people who are most in favor of forcing all Americans to turn their healthcare and healthcare records – the most sensitive, personal data there is – over to huge, lumpen, stupid government…

…are the same people who yakked to high heaven to defend the right to privacy of people getting phone calls from terrorists?

Over the past week, congresspeople have been running into grass-roots anger over Obamacare.

And yesterday, it spread to Cash For Clunkers:

Rep. Russ Carnahan was clobbered by tea party protesters at his Cash for Clunkers rally today in St. Louis.

The protesters who disagreed with Carnahan were forced outside of the dealership.

KSDK has video from his event today at McMahon Ford in St. Louis City.

Make sure the White House hears about it.  Wonder how many of these protesters are on Janet Napolitano’s list?

To:  President Obama and his Administration

From: Mitch Berg – human ATM machine

Re: Your Stasi

Mr. President,

Before we get down to business:

For the record, the President has consistently said that if you like your insurance plan, your doctor, or both, you will be able to keep them. He has even proposed eight consumer protections relating specifically to the health insurance industry.

Ah.  “For the record”.  Well, that makes everything totally different.

Look: paper protections mean exactly as much as the paper prediciton that “Cash for Clunkers” funding would last a month.  Oh, the paper “protection” might be there – but there is no way for the private insurance industry to compete with a government-subsidized plan over time.  The market distortion and its’ “Unintended” consequences count for a lot more than any paper “guarantee”.

OK.  Let’s get down to business:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Flag this.  Like most criticisms of Obamacare, it’s not “misinformation” in any way.
Mitch.  Berg, with an “e”.

You can come on the Northern Alliance Radio Network and “set the record straight”.  Have your people call our people.

John Edwards, in a line that may well top off his political epitaph one day, famously said that there are “Two Americas”.  He was referring to the literal and metaphorical gulf betweenr America’s “Haves” and “Have Nots”.  He didn’t note that there are also two Indias, two Phillipines, two Frances and two Argentinas, but Edwards has never been one to let eternal truths of the human condition get in the way of a sound bite.

Conservatives accept these gulfs, recognizing that talent, innate applied intelligence, hard work and just-plain-luck and the lack of them will put people in one America or the other.  At the same time, most see a moral obligation to cut down the hurdles and obstacles between the two – especially the exits from “Have Not” America.

The left, on the other hand, has always sought to make life in “Have Not” America at least superficially less onerous, all the while making “Have” America a refreshing oasis for those who spend their days dwelling on the plight of the “Have Nots”.    Their rationale isn’t much different from the one that royalty accepted in years past; the responsibilities of taking care of ones’ inferiors justified life’s little luxuries, and the big ones as well.  In big ways (the USSR’s kommissars shopped at special stores and lived in special housing while the proles waited in line for bread and crammed entire families into studio apartments) and little (count the number of anti-Second-Amendment celebs who’ve used their connections to get themselves and/or their bodyguards concealed carry permits), the left constantly squirrels away perks for their fellow “haves”.

Since the bloom is finally coming off Obama’s electoral rose, it’s time to catalog the Administration’s, and the Democrats’, attempts to make “Have” America a nicer place for those who take care of all of us peasants.
Heathcare

• The Peasant Plan:  The Obama Administration is trying, inexorably, to force “the American street” into a “public” (read: socialized) healthcare system.
• The “Haves” Plan:  Congress and their union benefactors are making sure it (and its benefactors) are exempt from Obamacare.  Expect the rest of the elites to follow suit.

Education

• The Peasant Plan:  The Obama Administration wasted no time in cutting DC’s wildly-successful school voucher plan.  And Obama’s Democrat allies around the nation are busy trying to roll back charter schools, open enrollment laws, voucher plans and school choice in general, in particular in the communities that need them most, the inner cities and the various Indian reservations; while these plans are often wildly successful, they sap jobs from the teachers’ union – and that’s much more important than educating the children.  To be fair, it is a jobs stimulus plan – for public school teachers.  Not to mention all the people who’ll have to deal with the failure of our public school system. And India and China.
• The “Haves” Plan:  Being “Haves”, they send their kids to private schools (or, for the lesser “haves”, to public schools in areas with fewer of the social problems caused by three generations of using the inner city as a warehouse for other “have nots”.

Vices and Sin

• The Peasant Plan: The Administration promises to tax tobacco to help pay for Obamacare.  OK – Obama, a smoker, might eat this one, but cigarettes are usually the opiate of the declasse masses.
• The “Haves” Plan: I’ve heard nothing about taxes on plastic surgery or trips to Martha’s Vineyard.

Food

• The Peasant Plan:  McDonald’s – the fine dining of choice for middle-class Americans who judge restaurants by whether there’s a playland for the kids to run around in – stands to get taxed back to the stone age.

Obesity

• The Peasant Plan:  Soda pop – the cheap opiate caffeinate of the masses – is in line for punitive taxes.
• The “Haves” Plan:  Starbucks – home of the fat-bomb froux-froux coffee beverages that fuel the Administration’s kids’ all-night policy-mongering sessions – goes forth blissfully untaxed.  Live and latte live, I guess.

Transportation

• The Peasant Plan:  “Clunkers” – affordable used cars – are actively harassed off the road via “Cap and Trade” energy taxes, implemented to attempt to force people off the roads and into cramped, perpetually-late or broken-down public transit systems.
• The “Haves” Plan:  Hybrid vehicles – which are presently hideously expensive to buy, and moreso to maintain, and are thus the province of the well-off – are subsidized.

Self-Defense

• The “Haves” Plan:  The “haves”, being haves, live where crime is relatively low.
• The Peasant Plan:  The “have nots” will, in Obama’s perfect world, have no access to firearms to defend themselves.  It’ll work as well as it does in DC and Obama’s home, Chicago, where gang violence makes the Windy City more dangerous than Baghdad these days.

Energy

• The Peasant Plan:  “Cap and Trade” should make all forms of heating and cooking subject to federal legislation, and make owning a home north of Nebraska more expensive than penthouses in the Eighties in Manhattan.

Housing

• The Peasant Plan:  Obama’s proposed National Building Code will make attempting to buy, renovate or live in older, “affordable” houses prohibitively expensive for middle-class families.   Indeed, “building codes” serve little practical purpose other than to restrict the supply and affordability of housing.
• The “Haves” Plan:  No word on whether John Edwards and Al Gore’s carbon-belching mansions will be covered by the National Building Code.

It’s good to be king, isn’t it?

[UPDATE:  This post is cross-posted at Hot Air]

Well, if it involves alleged Black Panther voter intimidation, anyway

The third-ranking suit in Obama’s Justice department, Thomas Perrelli, allegedly gave the go-ahead to scuttle the suit:

The department’s career lawyers in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division who pursued the complaint for five months had recommended that Justice seek sanctions against the party and three of its members after the government had already won a default judgment in federal court against the men.

Front-line lawyers were in the final stages of completing that work when they were unexpectedly told by their superiors in late April to seek a delay after a meeting between political appointees and career supervisors, according to federal records and interviews.

The delay was ordered by then-acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King after she discussed with Mr. Perrelli concerns about the case during one of their regular review meetings, according to the interviews.

No word yet on the brand of beer the President intends to order for the Panthers and the voters they allegedly intimidated.

The Obama Administration is borrowing a key tenet of his “Heathcare” strategy from an infamous Minnesota initiative from the 1990’s; “Soak the Addicts Who Don’t Have Clout”.

In 1998, the State of Minnesota and Blue Cross sued and won $6.1 Billion from “Big Tobacco” – which was, of course, passed on to “Big Tobacco’s” customers, aka “smokers”.

But that was safe, because smoking – and smokers – were indefensible.  So nobody defended them.

Of course, the to make money, the strategy depends on having a boundless supply of people with declasse addictions and problems – smokers, drinkers, and – as the LA Times informs us with breathless excitement – the overweight and obese.

When historians look back to identify the pivotal moments in the nation’s struggle against obesity, they might point to the current period as the moment when those who influenced opinion and made public policy decided it was time to take the gloves off.As evidence of this new “get-tough” strategy on obesity, they may well cite a study released today by the Urban Institute titled “Reducing Obesity: Policy Strategies From the Tobacco Wars.”In the debate over healthcare reform, the added cost of caring for patients with obesity-related diseases has become a common refrain: most recent is the cost-of-obesity study, also released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It finds that as obesity rates increased from 18.3% of Americans in 1998 to 25% in 2006, the cost of providing treatment for those patients’ weight-driven problems increased healthcare spending by $40 billion a year.If you happen to be the 1-in-3 Americans who is neither obese nor overweight (and, thus, considered at risk of becoming obese), you might well conclude that the habits of the remaining two-thirds of Americans are costing you, big time. U.S. life expectancies are expected to slide backward, after years of marching upward. (But that’s their statistical problem: Yours is how to make them stop costing you all that extra money because they are presumably making poor choices in their food consumption.)

[Taxes raised on “unhealthy” foods] would pay for a lot of healthcare reform, which some have estimated will cost as much as $1 trillion to implement over the next ten years.And here’s the payoff: Conservatively estimated, a 10% tax levied on foods that would be defined as “less healthy” by a national standard adopted recently in Great Britain could yield $240 billion in its first five years and $522 billion over 10 years of implementation — if it were to begin in October 2010. If lawmakers instituted a program of tax subsidies to encourage the purchase of fresh and processed fruits and vegetables, the added revenue would still be $356 billion over 10 years.

Let’s be honest: the more affluent Americans will not feel the effect of a soda tax, nor that of the inevitable tax on fast-food purchases from McDonald’s, Burger King or Taco Bell…But let’s play along with the Ivory Tower bigwigs and self-appointed health gurus who are advocating the tax on “sugary” drinks as a means of off-setting the enormous costs of President Obama’s back-breaking health care initiative, as well as combating bad habits. Why stop at soda? How about a tax on every calorie-laden coffee drink served at Starbucks and its competitors? After all, a vanilla bean frappuccino with whipped cream is more than 500 calories, a beverage that health researcher Mike Adams calls “dessert in a cup.” Throw in a scone or brownie with one of those Starbucks “desserts” and a consumer is approaching, at mid-morning, the daily recommended calorie intake.

No knock against Starbucks, which I patronize, but it’s fairly inconceivable that either Congress or nutritionists would classify that chain’s offerings with the low-hanging taxable fruit of Pepsi and Coke. Taking this argument further: why aren’t the revenue seekers proposing slapping a “sin” tax on the following items that aren’t at all healthy (whether organic or not): butter, cream, eggs, bacon, corned beef, mayo, Godiva and Lindt chocolates, foie gras, triple-cream Brie, the entire dessert tray at a ritzy French restaurant, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, fried clams, squid, shrimp and oysters, entire menus at Chinese restaurants (both cheap and pricey) and fresh-squeezed orange juice? And maybe a tax credit ought to be awarded to those consumers who purchase olive oil instead of butter.

To add insult to injury; not only are “sin taxes” a way for the majority to punish the minority – they don’t work, either as revenue-generators or as societal behavior modification:

The consequences of the sin tax are often the very opposite of those intended by its designers. Rather than increasing revenue, the sin tax can reduce it. Rather than discouraging what are regarded as morally questionable behaviors, the sin tax can make them more appealing. Rather than reducing what are perceived to be internal costs of the sin, the sin tax can increase them and expand them to society as a whole.

The evidence that sin taxes are a failed policy approach is incontrovertible. According to a new report from the Mercatus Center, “taxes on sugar-sweetened soft drinks do not necessarily advance the overall public interest, may be regressive in nature, and hardly ever work as intended.” The bottom line, say researchers Richard Williams and Katelyn Christ, is that a convincing body of evidence tells us that boosting food and drink prices “is not sufficient to make ‘fat taxes’ a viable tool to lower obesity.” That’s because soft drinks are really a small portion of most people’s diets.

In short – sin taxes are a flop.  They drive down revenue, sap economic and personal freedom, and yet don’t affect behavior.  What they are is a handy way for those that are in charge in society to tell those that are not “there are gonna be some changes, here”.
So observe the number of ways the Obama Administration is telling 51% of the population to stick it to the other 49%.
And ask yourself “is this the society I want to live in?”

From a local list-server; a Minnesota small businessman has had enough:

Being born in Minnesota, I have always been proud to claim this state as my home, but no more. After experiencing the never-ending social politics and nanny state liberal policies unfold year after year, I realize that Minnesota is on a fast path to destruction in the name of all things liberal and socialistic. Our politicians somehow feel entitled to continually spend money they don’t have because the can simply stick their hands in our pockets whenever they want more. The taxes in this state are incredible, yet we are continually expected to keep paying more and more in order to redistribute the wealth of the productive working class.  The stream of social and welfare benefits never seems to end. Somehow, those of us who continually struggle to get ahead; to get a good education, and work hard to support our families are deemed as being “blessed by opportunities” and therefore somehow owe something back to society.  I am not buying into this nonsense.

            The opportunities I have had were self created through hard work, personal struggle and sacrifice, hardship and came at great risk. There has never been a handout for me. I have earned what I achieved and worked incredibly hard for what I have.  And yet, the more I struggle and work towards being a productive member of society, the more I am taxed and viewed as somehow being privileged. Due to our current state of economic affairs in this country, we are all struggling to get by. We are all working harder and making sacrifices. Yet our politicians, especially in Minnesota continually prove they have no common sense to grasp basic economics 101, or they simply don’t care. We are on the path towards never ending tax and spend. Minnesota is continually hitting small business in the pockets through increased taxes, fees and regulations. And yet, we are somehow expected to standby and “pay our fair share” while the same politicians choose to frivolously spend more and more of our money on self serving interests in the name of social welfare or to further their careers.

            Well Minnesota…I am done!  I am no longer sticking around to support those that continually look for a free hand-out and those that seek to make their “self proclaimed rights” my burden. I am taking my productivity elsewhere and refusing to play the social redistribution of wealth game. I owe no one for my opportunities and success but God and family. I will create opportunities for those around me elsewhere, and will contribute towards productivity that serves to reward those willing to put it all on the line and take personal risk.  In a sense, I am now one of these former Minnesotans that has had enough and taking my money and labor out of this state. As more and more businesses and hard working individuals (and yes, the wealthy included) choose to leave this state and relocate to other states that are more business friendly and less tax happy, maybe Minnesotan voters will wake up and realize that one day, no one will be left to fund their socialistic welfare programs. Who will they tax then?

            So, while I guess we can not choose where we are born, we can choose where we decide to live. In the next month, I will be shutting down my Minnesota [business].  It has been a fun run while it lasted and I really enjoyed being a member of this list.  You are all great people and as [small businesspeople], taking huge risks every day in this state. Thank you all for your support over the years. This list is a great resource and I will miss participating in the future. I look forward to hopefully meet many of you in Duluth in a few weeks, even if you don’t agree with my view points.  Best wishes to you all.

(P.S. I know the country is not doing much better lately either, but once a professional soldier,, always a professional soldier.  I refuse to leave the USA.) 

It’s a big step – the ultimate one, really, in terms of voicing displeasure over state politics.  But it’s a long American tradition; if your neighbors get too stupid for you, strike out for the wilderness.

It’s more tempting all the time.

The Congressional Budget Office has been misbehavin’ – how dare they assert that Government health care won’t save us money.

Obammy says it will!

This may explain the treatment of Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the supposedly nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office who last week told Congress that you can’t “save” money on health care by having government insure everyone.

…because they can do math, unlike Jimmy II.

For that bit of truth-telling, he was first excoriated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

…a badge of courage as far as I’m concerned.

Then he was summoned, er, invited to the White House for an extraordinary and inappropriate meeting Monday with President Obama and a phalanx of economic and health-care advisers.

Advisers should be in quotes methinks.

Shall we call them the Obama Spanking Machine^™?

…if Bush’s administration had suggested this – federal control over content on the Internet. White House advisor Cass Sunstein is talking about the White House – the Feds, anyway – taking a huge role in censoring the Internet.
And the insurgents – whatever their party?  They’d have been right:

Perhaps most disturbing is Mr. Sunstein’s vision for the future of web content, as he argues for a so-called “notice and take down” law. Under this provision, those who operate websites – – The Washington Post, radio stations, private bloggers, and perhaps even you, yourself -we would all be required “take down falsehoods upon notice” from the U.S. government.

And not only would the original content of websites be scrutinized by the government for “falsehoods,” website operators would also be held responsible for the content of “posts” created by the website’s visitors and readers. At first blush it may seem that, for a web operator to be held accountable for content generated by “posters,” is completely untenable. But that may very well be Mr. Sunstein’s goal – – to create an “untenable situation” for website operators – given his assertion that “a ‘chilling effect’ on those who would spread destructive falsehoods can be an excellent idea..”

Well, we all want “the truth” to prevail, don’t we?

But who shall determine what, exactly, is “true” and “false?” Mr. Sunstein laments the supposed “lie” that emerged during last year’s presidential race, that “Barack Obama pals around with terrorists.” Despite that fact that a friendship between Obama and known domestic terrorist William Ayers was something that both men acknowledged, Sunstein alludes to the notion that this was one of those “destructive falsehoods” of the sort that needs to be policed.

As I was recently talking about this matter on-air at Arizona’s NewsTalk 92-3 KTAR radio, a caller to the show observed that “there’s no way this could be legal, or constitutional..” Thoughtful Americans of all sorts will immediately view this situation through the lenses of constitutionally guaranteed rights.

But issues of “legality” don’t seem to matter, at times, with the Obama Administration. In March of this year, there was nothing illegal about executives of the AIG Corporation being paid bonuses that they earned from their employer, but they were harassed and publicly belittled, nonetheless. President Obama himself demonized them, while dozens of Obama supporters “demonstrated” in front of the private residences of the executives, alleging that it was “unfair” for those executives to be making “so much money.”

Remember when the lefties told us we were paranoid for thinking Obama would re-institute the Fairness Doctrine?

They may have had a point.  This makes the Fairness Doctrine look like a piker.

In a similar way, it appears that the Obama Administration may be ushering-in an era of harassment for website operators. Regardless of what U.S. courts may or may not say about this in the future, a “notice and take down” letter from the White House could have quite a “chilling effect” for today.

‘ For my part?  Consider this post a “Notice And Take Down” letter for this entire wretched administration.

I used to joke, before the election, that Obama would be the worst President of my lifetime by sometime on inauguration day.  I was joking.  At the time, anyway.

Another Obama “promise” bites the dust:

A few weeks ago, the Obama Administration officially abandoned the President’s “Sunlight before Signing” campaign pledge that the White House would post all legislation passed by Congress for at least five days before the President would sign it.

Naturally, the Administration maintained that they’d keep their promise even though they’d abrogated the formal commitment.

But since they were only talking to peasants, they had their fingers crossed:

When the New York Times published the story, five bills had been presented to the president and were awaiting his signature. Four more were presented to him after the story’s publication. All nine are now law.

And for the life of me, I can’t find where any of them have been posted on Whitehouse.gov. Surely it was clear to the White House that the five bills it had and the four soon to come would reach the president’s desk.

I disagree with arguments for releasing President Obama from his pledge to sign bills only after he has posted them for a full five days after receiving them. It would have the same effects as the 72-hour hold the Sunlight Foundation is seeking from Congress — also a welcome legislative process reform.

OBAMA APOLOGIST:  “But it’s just to haaard…”

Well, no:

And it’s becoming more clear that the five-day promise could be implemented. At this point, only one of 39 bills that the president has signed has been posted for five days in advance. (The DTV Delay Act was actually not held five days after formal presentment, but the White House posted it after the final version had passed Congress.) Twenty-four other bills have been held at the White House five days or more before the President has signed them. They just haven’t been posted.

To repeat, over 60% of the legislation coming out of Congress waits five days for the president’s signature as a matter of course. The only thing preventing implementation of the president’s promise as to these bills is the White House’s inexplicable reluctance to do what it says it will do.

So let’s get this straight; after promising a “transparent” governent, he runs an opaque administration.  Six months after ramrodding through a “stimulus” putatively aimed at saving and creating private-sector jobs, he’s only slowed the hemorraging at the government level.  And after promising to buff America’s allegedly tarnished image around the world, he’s cuddled up to dictators and slipped them all kinds of tongue.

Change!

Do you remember when lefties insisted President Bush, at the head of a “theocon” conspiracy, wanted to take dictatorial control of the whole nation, assume the power of life and death, and impose its awful agenda by force?

As always with this sort of thing, I refer you to Berg’s Seventh Law.

And then this piece in the Hot Air Green Room by Jim Treacher:

It turns out that John Holdren, Obama’s new “science czar,” has expressed some unusually radical ideas about stemming population growth. Or to put it more simply, he’s a totalitarian eugenicist:

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A “Planetary Regime” with the power of life and death over American citizens.

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both?

These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology — informally known as the United States’ Science Czar. In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

Please read the whole thing for the details, along with photographic proof that Holdren’s book, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, exists. Holdren really did say all that stuff, and he even lists the book in his cirriculum vitae. If he’s changed his mind about these things in the last 30 years, now might be a good time to say so.

If this is true – and it’s the kind of thing that passes as normal among a certain strain of scientists, like Robert Ehrlich (who advocated international triage to deal with the population and famine bomb that was going to kill billions by 1990) or some of the radical environmental crowd (who believe the worldwide human population should drop down into the tens of millions, living as hunter-gatherers) – then Holdren is going to need to do something radical.

Like take the media out for cheeseburgers and talk about John and Kate’s divorce.

All those who dissent from The One and His Ones must not only be defeated; they must be chastened pour le descouragement les autres:

Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are quietly targeting the Connecticut firefighter who’s at the center of Sotomayor’s most controversial ruling.On the eve of Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize what one called the “troubled and litigious work history” of firefighter Frank Ricci.

Dissenters must be taught; obedience is the only solution.

Step into line, peasants.  Your betters have spoken.

It’s Orwell 101; a dictatorship must have an enemy, to take the peoples’ minds off their own domestic woes.

Now, Obama’s not a dictatorship (knock wood).  But Rick Moran notes that he’s got reasons for putting Goldstein Bush Administration figures on trial that have a whole lot less to do with the law than with public relations:

A distraction like this is just what the doctor ordered to take people’s minds off the fact that the stim bill isn’t working, that there is a growing call from Obama’s left flank for a second stimulus measure, that his cap and trade bill is in big trouble in the senate, and that it is far from certain that his his health care plan will come out the way he wants – with a public option that will be paid for without taxing the middle class.

Rallying his base to the cause of prosecuting Bush administration officials for torture will also take their minds off how he has betrayed them on a host of issues from gay rights to his agreement to indefinite detentions of terrorists.

So might this unleashing of Holder on Bush era torture crimes be nothing more than a distraction from the woeful economy that is resisting the president’s importunings to improve? Obama wouldn’t be the first president to use the tactic and he wouldn’t be the last if that is his game.

The One wouldn’t be that cynical – would He?

A good old fashioned investigation with strategic leaks and the spectacle of Bushies marching into the Justice Department to testify would serve as excellent bait for the media who no doubt would go overboard in their coverage of the hated Bush administration’s torture policies.

Bread and circuses worked for the Roman pro-consuls who used the spectacles to distract a populace constantly on the verge of starvation.

When you see it popping up on the “E” Network and Oprah, you’ll know you’re onto something.

I would never bet against it.

We’re about 18 months away from the next round of elections to the US House of Representatives. 

I remembered that when I got this email from an anonymous source:

Let’s talk about MN 4th District Representative Betty McCollum.

“B-Cup Betty”, as she’s known to her smarter colleagues on Capitol Hill – which is, let’s face it, all of them – is a product of Saint Catherine’s,  a fifth-rate Catholic women’s college that seems to succeed only in teaching its graduates how to use that hot Catholic school girl uniform to get what they want.  Which was, in fact, the only way she could get a job, much less a guy.

McCollum, being too homely and brunette to get a job in entertainment or the media, not smart enough to get into law school and not masculine enough to land a women’s studies professorship, went into education. 

She stank at it, of course – the Saint Paul School District has a sub-50% graduation rate, which sank while she was teaching, and has only fallen further since she’s been in Congress.

Unable to finish the job she was given, McCollum manipulated the DFL’s gender-equity bylaws to get herself what is broadly regarded (by anonymous but reliable DFL sources) as an “affirmative action” nomination in a cakewalk district, the Fourth.  “This was basically the political electoral equivalent of walking into a bar full of guys and saying “any of you big strong fellas wanna help me push my car?” and showing a little leg” said an anonymous source.  And even at that, for two straight elections McCollum has shown neither the guts nor the brains to face any challengers in a debate, saying (in effect) “They might talk mean about me!  They hate women!”. 

“Of course she wins in the Fourth” said an anonymous DFL source.  “The DFL could endorse a pile of monkey poo and get 55% of the vote in the Fourth!  Good lord, those people are all lobotomized union droogs!  The real question isn’t “why did an inexperienced, not-so-bright, poorly-educated party hack win in the Fourth” so much as “is there another district where such a lightweight could win any office?  I swear, if she didn’t have her gender going for her, she’d come in third for Water and Soil District Commissioner”.

Anonymous sources say McCollum – who is anonymously known for being a strutting man-hating martinet – runs an office renowned for dubious ethics.  Although specific charges have neither been filed nor prosecuted, anonymous sources say it’s just a matter of time.  “McCollum shows all the signs of being an ethics disaster” said a source who asked not to be named, but is a higher-up in the DFL; “She’s female, she’s unqualified, ill-educated and dumb, she’s a castrating bitch – or so I’ve heard – she’s Catholic, she’s of Irish descent, she’s been a union member, and she’s a woman in politics; you just know she took every bit of swag that people left on the floor”. 

“She’s dumb, poorly-educated, has no political background and was a failure as a teacher, she’s never run a race against serious competition, and she’t not even close to hot”, the source continued, “and yet she’s a high-maintenance diva!”.

Well, I went and filed that piece in the “Stupid Hack Piece” drawer. 

Along with this.  And this.  And this.

Because there’s just no room for corrosive, stupid sexism in politics!  Why, just because every single thing in the scabrous email above was identical to similar defamations of, say, Sarah Palin or Linda Chavez or Margaret Thatcher or Laura Ingraham or Michele Bachmann or…

…um, where were we?

(more…)

In Steve Van Zandt’s classic 1985 “We Are The World”-era group protest ditty “Sun City”, Eddie Ruffin, joining a group of other singers promising not to play South Africa’s “Sun City” entertainment complex and lamenting the Reagan Administration’s policy of “constructive engagement” (which either property recognized national sovereignty or was prima facie evidence that the US was a racist nation, depending on who you asked), plaintively asked “…someone tell me why are we always on the wrong side?”

I’m starting to know the feeling.

The term “military coup” has gotten a bad reputation in the United States.  Justifiably so; the US was founded at least party with a sense of institutionalized paranoia about the military usurping power from the democratically-elected government.  And most military coups in our lifetimes have been dismal, miserable things, the stuff of banana republics and tinpot dictators.

But some military coups have their values. The Turkish constitution provides for military coups to prevent theocratic takeovers of Islam’s first secular republic.   And two of history’s worst dictators – Hitler and Stalin – rightfully feared military coups against them; Stalin purged his officer corps so ruthlessly it nearly destroyed the Red Army as a fighting force on the eve of World War II; Hitler spent endless time, effort and occasional brutality to bring the aristocratic Prussian Junker officer class to heel, and still came within a whisker of being toppled (in the Von Stauffenberg plot dramatized in the Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie). In societies plagued by violent, ruthless homicidal left-wings, the miltiary is sometimes a beacon of sanity; Franco’s Spain was nobody’s paradise, but career soldier Franco’s goal in the ruthless liquidation of the left was to leave Spain ready for democracy.  He was a brutal man, but he, like a lot of soldiers, put his country first.
And, it would seem, if you believe in the rule of law rather than the rule of men (especially currently-fashionably-left-of-center men), the coup in Honduras would seem to be a candidate for “good”, or at least “lesser of two evils”, status.

Pam Geller at AmThink breaks down how very, very wrong the Obama Administration’s response in Honduras has been:

What just happened in Honduras? A military coup, destroying democratic rule? No. What just happened in Honduras was an example of how democracy works – and yet more confirmation that Barack Obama is not on the side of freedom, but of tyranny. The United Nations, the leftopaths in the mainstream media, and the radical U.S. President are trying to paint what happened in Honduras as a coup. It was not. It was a democracy at work, saving itself from a Hugo Chávez-backed takeover.
The real story behind the chaos in Honduras is a huge story that needs to be exposed to the world. And the bottom line is that Obama got it wrong, again.

You have to write real slow to explain some of this stuff to the “Government Uber Alles” lefty community in this country.  Fortunately, Geller breaks it down  well:

Take this hypothetical: imagine that Barack Obama announced that he was going to hold a referendum on legalizing a third term for himself. Imagine that even his attorney general, Eric Holder, advised him that it was illegal. Imagine that the Supreme Court ruled that holding the referendum was unconstitutional. In spite of that, let’s imagine that Obama coerced the FEC into holding the referendum anyway. Then – let’s further imagine — we found out that Venezuelan strongman Chávez (who has pulled off a similar power grab in his own country) was financing the referendum. What should the Joint Chiefs do in such a case? And if they removed Obama from office, would they be destroying the Constitution or preserving it?

This is exactly what has occurred in Honduras, to a tee. The Honduras Attorney General and their Supreme Court did exactly that – ruled that President Manuel Zelaya’s referendum was unconstitutional. The Honduran Generals did what they had to do. But then Chávez, Zelaya’s friend and ally, announced: “I have put the armed forces of Venezuela on alert.” And at that point Barack Obama spoke out – to side with Zelaya, Chávez and dictatorship. Obama said he was “deeply concerned” about what was happening in Honduras and called upon that nation to “respect democratic norms.”

What we have here, of course, is a clash of cultures.  Obama is defending “democratic norms”.  Chicago-style.

Obama is on the same side as Chávez, Ortega and the Castro brothers.

If you look carefully, I think you will find many of us were warning you about that before the election.

And the irony is thick. In a press conference on June 23, Obama said: “I’ve made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not interfering with Iran’s affairs.” He never called upon the Iranian mullahs to “respect democratic norms.” On the contrary, he ostentatiously refuses to “meddle” in Iran, where individuals are courageously risking life and limb for the idea of free elections. Brutal Islamic nazis are crushing dissent, and Obama talks about “lively debate.” Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami spoke out Thursday against what he called a “velvet coup against the people and democracy.” Obama has sided with that coup, while in Honduras, Obama and the whores at the United Nations have no qualms about interfering to back a Chávez proxy. On Tuesday, U.N. General Assembly piled on, condemning the “coup” in Honduras and demanding that Zelaya be returned to office. It passed – by acclamation – a resolution calling upon all member states not to recognize the new government.

For all the left’s barbering about Bush’s alleged plans to abuse Democracy, Obama has done more damage in six months than Bush was accused of trying in eight years.