Pot, Meet Kettle

Congress says that “veterans deemed too mentally incompetent to handle their own financial affairs [should] be prevented from buying a gun”. I say that anyone deemed “too mentally incompetent to handle their own financial affairs” should be prevented from serving in Congress.

Oh Boy, Another On-Line Petition!

My wife has seen people passing this one around on Facebook:

Support the Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012

Pardon me, but if you didn’t mean it when you signed your student loan forms, promising to pay back the money you took from them and squandered, then why should we assume that your signature has any value when you put it on this petition?

3Wood has written a short piece on Student Loans – The Next Bubble. I was a little more insulting when I hit this topic last year.

Fundamentally Transformative CHANGE!

It’s Up To You, New York, New York!

If Obama can’t make it there, he can’t make it anywhere…

Republican candidate Bob Turner has won the special election to finish the term of resigned-in-disgrace Representative Anthony Weiner (D). This is a historic victory, against a Democrat (David Weprin) with twenty years of elected experience and good personal popularity numbers, in a very Democratic district (thrice the number of registered Democrats as registered Republicans, and held by a Democrat for over ninety years). There’s only one reason why Turner even had a chance, much less managed to win decisively: Barack Obama. The special election was turned into a referendum on Obama’s jobs performance (and overt hostility to Israel), leading the electorate to crossover and vote against the Democrat to “send a message” to the President. There is no other way to interpret the results; but Lord knows the Democratic spinmeisters are still trying.

Naturally, this being a race that the Democrats really didn’t want to lose (because of the implications for Obama, and for next year’s elections) – Ah, who the Hell am I kidding? Because this was a race containing a Democrat candidate, there was naturally chicanery involved. Non-regular (absentee and provisional) ballots are being impounded by a court order because of “gross incompetence” on behalf of the Board of Elections, citing “absentee ballots being mailed to dead people and people who did not request them.” Fortunately, Turner’s support was not only above the margin of error, it was also above the margin of Democratic fraud.

In an unrelated story, Shekina Pena of Lansing, Michigan, was charged with registering voters by giving them marijuana.

CNN — A woman who operates a medicinal marijuana clinic in Lansing, Michigan, has been charged with breaking the state’s election law after allegedly doling out free marijuana to those who registered to vote, officials said Tuesday. Shekina Pena, 34, was charged Monday with a misdemeanor after authorities said she tried to influence voters with pot, considered a “valuable consideration,” according to a statement from Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette. … Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson argued that Pena’s intent was clear. “They offered their customers marijuana in exchange for voter registration. They also supplied a slate of their preferred candidates. This goes beyond election shenanigans.” …

Michigan Election Law prohibits the provision of anything of value in order to induce or influence the manner of voting (MCL 168.931(1)(a)). Such violations are misdemeanors punishable by up to 90 days in jail and/or a $500 fine.

Literally

Democrats: America literally cannot afford them anymore. (Infographic H/T: Roger Kimball, PajamasMedia; caption by me)

Isn’t Everything “Commerce”?

Obama thinks that forcing people to buy health insurance – specifically, his health insurance at his prices that covers only what he thinks should be covered and refuses the care that he thinks should be refused – “should not be controversial”… (H/T: WZ)

If the government has a right to control its citizens’ actions in the name of “commerce,” just think about all of the other “non-controversial” things the government can do with the exact same justification… (H/T IMAO)

“If Congress has the power to make you buy health insurance, where does it stop? Then they’d have the power to make you get tattoos, and they’ve got the power to make you wear little yellow stars on your coat sleeves.” –Doug Urbanski

“…If the government can compel people to engage in private economic transactions like… the individual mandate… because it might affect interstate commerce, then imagine if the government had the power to force people to pick cotton in return for room and board…” –ibid

Do you see any controversy? No? Me neither.

The Obama Downgrade, Alphabetically

This one is by Bret Stephens at the WSJ (H/T: HillBuzz) and contains an entry for every letter of the alphabet. I’m just going to quote a few of my favorites, but you should read the whole thing.

A	is for the Arab world, and our standing in it: This year, Zogby International found that 5% of Egyptians had a favorable view of the U.S. In 2008, when George W. Bush was president, it was 9%. Wasn’t Obama supposed to make the Arab world love us?
D	is for—what else—the federal debt, which grew to $14.3 trillion this month from $10.7 trillion at the end of 2008. D is also for the dollar, which has lost almost half its value against gold since Aug. 2008.
E	is for energy. The average retail price of a gallon of gas hovered near the $1.80 mark when Mr. Obama was inaugurated. It has since more than doubled. E is also for ethanol, the non-wonder fuel the U.S. continues to subsidize to the tune of $5 billion a year.
G	is for Guantanamo, which remains open, and for Gadhafi, who remains in power, and for Greece, which offers a vision of America’s future if we don’t reform our entitlement state.
I	is for Israel, a Middle Eastern country the president claims to support even as he routinely disses its prime minister, seeks to shrink its borders and—why not?—divide its capital. I is also for insane, for all the Jews who vote for Obama’s reelection next year.
J	is for jobs. In November 2008, president-elect Obama promised he would create 2.5 million jobs by 2011. By October 2010 the economy had shed 3.3 million jobs. For the seventh time, he’s now claiming to have shifted his attention to creating jobs.
M	is for Mexico, a country that manages 5.4% unemployment and 4.2% annual growth even as it fights a war against the drug cartels. Obama, meanwhile, is arming those cartels.
Q	is for QE2, the most disastrous experiment in monetary policy since Fed Chairman William Miller’s low-interest rate policy crashed the dollar in 1978. There is talk of QE3 coming soon.
T	is for taxes, which Mr. Obama would like to see raised for “millionaires and billionaires”—curiously defined as people making $200K and up.
X	is for Liu Xiaobo, an example of what a deserving winner of the Nobel Peace Prize looks like. X is also for Xanax, likely to be remembered as the drug of choice of the Obama years.
Z	is for zero, which is the likelihood that one of the current GOP hopefuls will defeat Mr. Obama in 2012. I hope this is wrong, but I fear it isn’t.

(Comments in red by yours truly.)

Just Because Low Taxes Cause Terror in THEM…

(From Hope n’ Change Cartoons. RTWT.)

I for one am sick and tired of being called a terrorist (which is the massively-coordinated MSM/Democrat talking point du jour) from people who are afraid to call actual terrorists “terrorists” … Not to mention by people who actually associate with actual terrorists (Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, just for starters). Sarah Palin points out that “if we were real domestic terrorists, shoot, President Obama would be wanting to pal around with us, wouldn’t he?” It’s disgusting to claim that people who simply want the government to act with responsibility and restraint in regards to the budget and our civil liberties are “terrorists” and “holding the nation hostage” (especially from the so-called self-described “party of civility”), and only serves to prove that Gerald Seymour had it backwards when he said that “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

After listening to Democrat politicians and the Democrat propaganda wing of the mainstream media continue to paint any opposition to higher taxes, higher spending, higher debt, and their Glorious Chairman Obama as “violent,” “extremist,” “racist” and “terrorist;” I think we can be forgiven to be a little leery about Obama’s latest strategy to combat violent extremism. (H/T: WZ)

Local communities, not Washington, are best suited to counter violent extremism, according to a new national strategy the Obama administration took more than a year to produce. The strategy pointedly does not focus on threats from Muslim extremism.

Of course not. And I doubt very much if it focuses on SEIU thugs or Ayers types either.

Outrage? Where is your HONESTY?

Today’s dose of Leftist revisionism and propaganda comes from Where is the Outrage:

GOP Equals Hypocrisy — With Eric Cantor walking out of the high-level debt ceiling negotiation, I thought it’d be interesting to look back and figure out how many times the House Majority Leader and his colleagues voted to raise the debt ceiling under George W. Bush. One would figure, because they are fiscally conservative, they probably only voted to raise the debt ceiling once or twice under the eight-year tenure of George W. Bush. The GOP hypocrites raised the debt ceiling … 7 times … under George W. Bush and not once did they hold the president hostage to debt ceiling negotiations. (H/T: Babbazee)

The bias and motivation are obvious. It’s also obvious that, in order for his claim (that hypocrisy is exclusively a GOP trait) to be true, that the Democrats (including Obama) must have remained consistent on their positions towards the debt ceiling. But since they voted against raising the debt ceiling under Bush, but are rabidly in favor of it now, why is a change of attitude only evidence of hypocrisy when the GOP does it? Surely, on that basis, if hypocrisy exists at all, it must certainly exist on both sides of Congress (and in the White House as well), no?

Of course, that makes the assumption that the situation under Bush then is identical to the situation under Obama now. If the only thing that’s different is that a Democrat (or “a black man”, to quote the deranged Sheila Jackson Lee and others) is in the White House now instead of Bush, and that this is the sole reason for the change in opinion (on both sides); then yes, a claim of hypocrisy may credibly be made (although the claims of racism, lack of patriotism, and so forth also being hurled at the GOP remain unsupported and reprehensible). However, the situation is not identical…

Then What *IS* an iPad Good For?

Wall Street Journal — The Federal Reserve has been on a media campaign to sell its monetary policy to average Americans, but this hasn’t always gone smoothly. Witness last week’s visit to Queens, New York, by New York Fed President William Dudley, who got a street-corner education in the cost of living. The former Goldman Sachs chief economist gave a speech explaining the economy’s progress and the Fed’s successes, but come question time the main thing the crowd wanted to know was why they’re paying so much more for food and gas. Keep in mind the Fed doesn’t think food and gas prices matter to its policy calculations because they aren’t part of “core” inflation. So Mr. Dudley tried to explain that other prices are falling. “Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful,” he said. “You have to look at the prices of all things.” Reuters reports that this “prompted guffaws and widespread murmuring from the audience,” with someone quipping, “I can’t eat an iPad.” Another attendee asked, “When was the last time, sir, that you went grocery shopping?” … (H/T: Little Miss Attila)

Bread and Circuses

InstaPundit has a running series called “Why They’d Rather Talk About Sarah Palin“, listing all of the other stories which the media could be spending a little time telling us about, but won’t. Examples include Investors Have Been Fleeing Municipal Bonds, Unemployment In The U.S. Is Actually Worse Than Pakistan, Soaring Global Food Prices, Over 1 million Americans seen losing homes in 2011, and U.S. On The Way To Losing AAA Credit Rating. (H/T: Spin, Strangeness, and Charm)

Not Such a Wilde Idea

Oscar Wilde famously quipped that “Work is the curse of the drinking class.” Maryland nanny-staters are working to elevate taxes to that position as well.

Baltimore — …It’s called the “Dime a Drink Tax,” and it would hit all alcoholic drinks, if Maryland’s legislature approves it this year. … “Alcohol excise tax is a win-win for the state. They provide much needed revenue, and reduce alcohol consumption and related problems,” said David Jernigan, Johns Hopkins professor.

I don’t know about that. The current reign of fascist nanny-state tax hikers have been far worse for my health, stress, and sanity than any amount of alcoholic drinks I may have had in recent years. Ironically, those same Democrats (who in Maryland did not take the major 2010 midterm hit that most of the rest of the country enjoyed) make me more likely to need a drink.

But an increase at restaurants and bars may not be such a good thing. Good times stopped rolling during the recession and business coming back now is still viewed as fragile. “We’re still in this economic recession right now, and anything more is going to take people out of restaurants in Baltimore and Maryland. And that’s not good for the economy,” said Bill Irvin, Kooper’s Tavern. The tax would also hit retailers, upping a six-pack by 60 cents and wine and spirits by a dime a serving.

Well, you can always trust the Democrats to snatch recession from the jaws of recovery. It’s almost as if they’re doing it deliberately…