Tucker Said It

I know I said I was going to shy away from macro politics for awhile, but THIS.

I've been saying this for decades. The democrats smashed the black family many years ago, and now they're smashing the white family. The repubs responded by filing their claws and raking in cash for their own personal enrichment. Tucker thinks the pubs COULD step up if they wanted to. I have zero faith that they will do so.

We'll never see term limits or fair taxation. Feminism and social programs have destroyed the family. Church pews are empty because there is no Message, no teaching the word of God, only social justice foot-stomping and posturing.

Invest in rope and lampposts, comrades!

Slip Slidin' Away

Um...run that by me again?

Ángela Bachiller recently became Spain's first city councillor with Down Syndrome. Aged 30, Bachiller had already been working for two and a half years at Valladolid City Hall as an administrative assistant.

Keep in mind that virtually all Down Syndrome folks possess low IQs and varying degrees of mental retardation. Then this:

Following a hectic first week on the job, Bachiller is now taking a holiday with her family in Mallorca.

Alrighty then.

I ran across this gem in the WSJ:

In a move some claim is tantamount to social engineering, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is imposing a new rule that would allow the feds to track diversity in America’s neighborhoods and then push policies to change those it deems discriminatory. 

The policy is called, "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing." It will require HUD to gather data on segregation and discrimination in every single neighborhood and try to remedy it.

That's right. The Gov't is going to "remedy" it. People living in failed communities will be injected into nice neighborhoods. I wonder if the gubmint will gather up destitute Appalachian "crackers" and foist them upon successful black neighborhoods as part of this doomed-to-fail social experiment? Probably not.

I've been saying for quite some time that the only way to beat these effers at their own game is to consistently claim any "minority" genes you can scrape from the bottom of the genetic barrel. Go to 23 and Me, spend the hundred bucks, and let 'em sort through your cheek-swab cooties for that .01% of sub-Saharan African or that tiny drop of East Asian/Native American. Then CHECK THE BOX on all government forms.

There! I'm a subversive plus I'm WAY out on the political un-correctness limb! WOOT! 

Today's levity:

Skool Daze

For the life of me I can't fathom why we even bother having schools anymore. Pink Floyd were obviously more prescient than originally given credit for.

The Double-Edged Sword...

...of electronic medical records.  From a court case in Florida:

July 3, 2012 — Florida cannot enforce a law that prohibits physicians from asking patients whether they own a gun because it infringes on their First Amendment right to free speech, a federal judge in Florida has ruled.

US District Court Judge Marcia Cooke in Miami issued a temporary injuction against the Firearm Owners' Privacy Act for that very reason in September 2011. Last week, Judge Cooke made the injunction permanent, and in a final judgment filed yesterday, she declared the Florida law unconstitutional.

The problem isn't the doc asking if you own a gun and giving you advice on how to keep your guns out of the hands of children. The problem is that all of this information will be entered into a federal system, under your name. There are two issues intertwined within one another; your privacy and value of your healthcare provider's time.

The whole "electronic health records" thing will be coming up A LOT unless ObamaCare is struck down in it's entirety in January. The "do you own a gun" court case is an ominous bellweather for what's to come. Documenting, in a government-run computer program, which millions of people can access with the click of a mouse, all of YOUR personal information each time you seek health care is an infringement upon your right to privacy, and an enormous burden upon your health care providers.

Nurses will exit the field in droves (they already are), because charting requirements have become ridiculous, and will get worse, much worse. Nurses do NOT want to spend all of their time trying to navigate leviathan databases to chart every tiny item of a patient's care AND WHAT THEY OWN OR DON'T OWN, rather than a quick running narrative focused on your health coupled with lots of hands-on care. They won't put their patient's lives or their licenses at stake, not even shrieking, frothing-at-the-mouth progressive nurses who helped create this unholy mess.

Private doctors will be run out of business. Who can afford to transfer all of their patient records into this burdensome system? Who can afford the software? Who can afford the TIME to navigate this monstrosity? Physicians are stretched to capacity now; adding government-mandated charting requirements (for the sole purpose of data collection) is a recipe for disaster.

And what about your right to privacy? Do you REALLY want every tiny detail of your health AND your life on a government database run by bureaucratic idiots?

I think your private information belongs to you.  How do you all feel about this? Do you like the convenience of any health care professional being able to access your data at a moment's notice, including whether or not you own a gun? Honestly, some of the information on that record may save your life in an emergency situation. Then again....

John Roberts, I Thought We Knew Ye...

UPDATE:  To the voting booth!

Perfectly Safe Streets, Except For The Whole "Hail Of Bullets" Thing

The juxtaposition of the "unicorns 'n' rainbows" bizarre and the bloody reality of life in ChiTown...first from WGN:

25 people were shot in Chicago overnight.

19-year-old Jaleel Beasley and two other young men were hit just after 2 a.m. outside a bar in the Lawndale neighborhood.  Beasley died later at Mt Sinai hospital.

The other two men were brought to Stroger Hospital and are in stable condition

Two other people were shot in the same area within 20 minutes of the first incident. Police are investigating the possibility that the two events were related.

So far, no arrests have been made in connection with any of the shootings.

Rahm and his merry band of Ivory Tower  problem-solvers are diligently working to make Chicago's streets safer, not by controlling the horrific violence stalking the city's neighborhoods, but by doing this:

Eliminate all pedestrian, bicycle, and overall traffic crash fatalities within 10 years.

Really. I'm not making this up.

The Tunnel-Vision of White Guilt

Norris Burkes is a pastor who, for years, has written a little column that's syndicated in many newspapers. I enjoy his column; it's generally uplifting and homespun. This week? Not so much.

"When one of my editors suggested I write about Trayvon Martin, I wasn’t sure I could do that. After all, I wasn’t in Sanford, Fla., so I don’t know what happened there.

However, I do know what happens in my heart. It’s easy to condemn George Zimmerman, Trayvon’s shooter, but how am I different than Zimmerman if I don’t examine my own role in racism?

As a white man, I don’t experience oppression — I experience privilege. Just as Zimmerman was given the benefit of the doubt, society also gives me the same benefit, but with no requirement to earn that privilege."

It gets worse. You can read his contributory wedge between Americans here.

 Burkes, and high-falutin men like him, refuse to look around at the way the world REALLY operates. They are cocooned by their own conceptions and perceptions, and so self-absorbed that they cannot see that their gilded premise rings totally false to the vast majority of Americans who pack their lunch box and trudge off to work every day.

It's all roses that HE has never been "oppressed" or "discriminated" against, but that is not reality. If you grew up poor, or ARE poor, chances are you won't be welcome in a five-star restaurant, what with your shabby jeans and second-hand shirt. If you're blond and blue-eyed, you might not be served at the snack bar at a high school basketball game in Kayenta, Arizona, or be safe taking a midnight stroll down Flushing Avenue in Brooklyn. How about being admitted to a decent college? Owning up to Caucasian genes won't help you there; and if you're of the "male" persuasion? Fuggetaboutit. There are quotas to fill, dammit. If you're a woman over the age of 25, you've been overlooked for a promotion. I guarantee it. Are you short? Fat? Have bad skin? Too many freckles? Bad or discolored teeth? A history of depression, or a chronic health problem? You've been discriminated against. That's life!

Burkes, and people like him, fan the flames of racial divides instead of uniting us all as one people. Men with no callouses on their hands, nor ideas to advance mankind, pontificating from on high, living in gated communities and untouched by the seething masses, are deplorable. I want to grab him by the front of his starched shirt and scream in his face "SHUT UP YOU IDIOT!".

Burkes has, with no facts of the case, decided that Mr. Zimmerman is guilty of murder. He must be! He's privileged because he's "white", isn't he? Guilty! What poppycock. I reject Burkes and his entire column of drivel and nonsense. He may not have "earned his privilege", but it's a safe bet that many of the rest of us (all colors and races) damn sure have. Put a cork in it Pastor Burkes.  You're NOT helping.

And Speaking Of Schools...

...here's a bit of gobsmacking idiocy.

"The Chicago Teachers Union is asking for raises amounting to 30 percent over the next two years, the opening salvo in heated contract negotiations with school officials who are implementing a longer school day across Chicago Public Schools next school year."

Give Me an Effing Break

OK, George. If those 400,000 jobs have not gone overseas, then where are they?

And if the American car manufacturers have come back, it wouldn't be because they have dumped unwanted cars on dealers -- members of the 1% you want to tax the snot out of, would it?

If you want to be a flaming moron, go ahead. But don't throw my country onto the same garbage heap that many other countries have been thrown upon in the past to salve your liberal self-hatred.

The Crazy Train Rockets Down The Track

The ancient, sparsely-haired crone has, from the comfort of its seclusive (and exclusive) ivory tower, written another op-ed with no grounding whatsoever in reality. In a nation overrun with lawyers snarling like rabid dogs over any hint of a dollar, the NYT wants to dumb down a profession already choking on its own lack of ethics and dearth of basic critical thinking skills. They begin with a bit of hang-wringing:

American legal education is in crisis. The economic downturn has left many recent law graduates saddled with crushing student loans and bleak job prospects. The law schools have been targets of lawsuits by students and scrutiny from the United States Senate for alleged false advertising about potential jobs. Yet, at the same time, more and more Americans find that they cannot afford any kind of legal help.

Anybody too stupid to research the worth/market of a degree in their chosen field is too stupid to be an attorney. And no, thank you; as a taxpayer, I do not want to pay their student loans. There's more:

Even after the economy recovers, the outsourcing of legal work from law firms and corporate counsel offices to lower-fee operations overseas is likely to continue. Belatedly, some law schools are trying to align what and how they teach to what legal practice now entails and what individuals and institutions need — like many more lawyers who can serve as advocates for the poor and middle class.

The bolding is mine. The Times is advocating a new class of government drones; badly educated lawyers. The taxpayers will foot their inflated salaries, and they can work alongside the glutted "social worker" profession, hanging out in our neighborhoods and driving government-issued Hummers. But hey! There's more!

In American law schools, the choice is not between teaching legal theory or practice; the task is to teach useful legal ideas and skills in more effective ways. The case method has been the foundation of legal education for 140 years. Its premise was that students would learn legal reasoning by studying appellate rulings. That approach treated law as a form of science and as a source of truth.

That vision was dated by the 1920s. It was a relic by the 1960s. Law is now regarded as a means rather than an end, a tool for solving problems. In reforming themselves, law schools have the chance to help reinvigorate the legal profession and rebuild public confidence in what lawyers can provide.

Who needs attorneys that actually...er, you know...study law? Or critical thinking? Or ethics? Why don't we cut to the chase, and bestow a law degree on community organizers? That would fit well with the model being championed by the Times.

Largest Municipal Bankruptcy In United States History

But hey, it's only 4.1 billion. Pfft.

Leaders of Alabama's most populous county on Wednesday voted to declare an estimated $4.1 billion bankruptcy, the largest for a municipality in U.S. history.

Two months after it seemed Jefferson County had struck a deal to settle the debt, the commissioners took the action. It came after spending about six hours over two days meeting with its lawyers to discuss legal options. Those options included a Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing and a settlement with creditors on the county's $3.14 billion sewer debt.

The debt stems from sewer repairs gone disastrously wrong. A few crooked politicians are serving federal time for the shenanigans.

Lotta Good That Did Ya.

George Zimmer, president of Men's Warehouse (He guarantees it!) closed his store in Oakland, California on Wednesday in solidarity with the Occupy Oakland protesters' general strike.

Here's what he got for his efforts:


Before:



After:

Targeted Taxation

Surely this can't be legal?

For decades, Jack Daniel's whiskey has celebrated its small Tennessee hometown of Lynchburg with folksy, black-and-white advertisements urging folks to slow down and have a sip.

Now local officials want the maker of the world's top-selling whiskey to pay a bigger bar tab as they struggle with their budget. How does up to $5 million sound?

A measure approved by the Moore County Council asks the Tennessee legislature to authorize a local referendum on whether the distillery should pay that much in new taxes on the 500,000 barrels it fills with whiskey each year.

The 145-year-old distillery, tucked away on 1,700 hilly acres down the road from Lynchburg's quaint town square, now pays $1.5 million in local property taxes.

If the barrel tax is approved, it would be a huge help to the local government, whose annual budget is $3 million and would get every last drop, so to speak, of the money.

The people of this community have lost their minds. They should be ashamed of themselves. This company employs 450 people in a county with an unemployment rate of 10.6%.

"We're paying our part, our fair share," said Tom Beam, senior vice president and general manager of production at the facility. He said the distillery has already helped the area in several ways, including assisting with renovations at the courthouse and a swimming pool.

The senior vice president of Jack Daniels is Mr. Beam? Really? I wonder if the senior vice president of Jim Beam is Mr. Daniels...okay, enough silliness. There's another disturbing part of this story:

The Tennessean newspaper reports that the distillery's owner, Brown-Forman Corp., is ready to make political contributions as a possible fight looms: The company's political action committee has $278,000 heading into the 2012 elections.

Groan. The distillery has two choices; allow the local citizens to rob them of their profits through targeted selective taxation, or pay extortion money to state politicians.

Our system has rotted from greed and neglect. If the fine folks at the Jack Daniels distillery are smart, they'll lock the doors, board up the windows, and move their operation far from Lynchburg, Tennessee. Very far.

I'm sure the Canadians would welcome Old No. 7 with open arms.

Cultural FAIL

Discrimination? You want to holler about discrimination and naked racism, NAACP and assorted other "special interest" whiners? Here you go!

...The studies show that a black or Hispanic undergraduate applicant was more than 500 times likelier to be admitted to Wisconsin-Madison than a similarly qualified white or Asian applicant. The odds favoring black law school applicants over similarly qualified white applicants was 61 to 1.

The median SAT scores of black undergrads who were admitted were 150 points lower than whites or Asians, while the median Hispanic scores were roughly 100 points lower.

Absolutely revolting, and akin to a slow national suicide. If we're not educating the best and the brightest (regardless of "specialness") we are doomed.

The Country Formerly Known As Great Britain

Peter Hitchens throws political correctness out the window and takes a blistering, raw look at the violence in Britain in a rant worthy of a standing ovation. Says he:

As the polluted flood (it is not a tide; it will not go back down again) of spite, greed and violence washes on to their very doorsteps, well-off and influential Left-wingers at last meet the filthy thing they have created, and which they ignored when it did not affect them personally.

No doubt they will find ways to save themselves. But they will not save the country. Because even now they will not admit that all their ideas are wrong, and that the policies of the past 50 years – the policies they love – have been a terrible mistake. I have heard them in the past few days clinging to their old excuses of non-existent ‘poverty’ and ‘exclusion’.

He then goes on to grab the Prime Minister by the back of his powdered neck and thrust him into the spotlight, ruthlessly excoriating Cameron's response to the mayhem.

Water cannon and plastic bullets indeed. What an utter admission of failure, that after 50 years of the most lavish welfare state in the solar system, you cannot govern your country without soaking the citizenry in cold water and bombarding them with missiles from a safe distance. Except, of course, that it is because of the welfare system that this is so.

Read it all. There are graphic photographs of the destruction accompanying the column.

Hitchens (and Enoch Powell) are not alone. On a British news program yesterday, historian David Starkey added his own scathingly brutal commentary: White chavs have become black.

Bernanke: Print More Money!

QE 3 is roaring down the track.

The dollar is tumbling into the abyss, the Euro is up, and gold is setting new record highs. All aboard!

Extortion: The Latest Obama Ploy

He's as predictable as he can be.

President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.

"I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News.

The Obama administration and many economists have warned of economic catastrophe if the United States does not raise the amount it is legally allowed to borrow by August 2.

The effer will do it too; stopping social security checks to our elderly to get what he wants. Take a good hard look at what we elected, America.

H/T: Drudge

For Whom The Bell Tolls

Obama appointee Lisa Jackson, the czar of the Environmental Protection Agency, has snapped her royal fingers and issued a devastating decree which essentially clobbers the coal industry over the head.

Thursday the EPA announced that they have finalized additional Clean Air Act provisions, collectively known as “The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule” to ostensibly “reduce air pollution and attain clean air standards,” by requiring coal companies in 27 states to slash emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide by 73 percent and 54 percent, respectively, from 2005 levels by 2014.

According to the EPA, these emissions travel across state lines and contribute to ozone and fine particle pollution.

The rule will replace a similar 2005 standard called the Clean Air Interstate Rule. EPA claims that the new rule will result in a savings of $120 to $280 billion in annual health and environmental benefits as well as save 13,000 to 34,000 lives

What a load of horse manure. Remember when The One said that energy prices would "necessarily skyrocket"? Jackson is implementing the threat.

An analysis ACCCE released earlier this month by the National Economic Research Associates (NERA) used government data to examine the combined impacts of today’s rule and another EPA electricity regulation, the “Utility MACT” Rule. According to NERA’s examination, the EPA’s actions would cause a net job loss of over 1.4 million job-years by 2020.

Further, NERA found that electricity rates would increase over 23 percent in coal-reliant areas and that though the EPA might claim the regulations will create jobs, NERA predicted that for every job created four will be lost.

Jackson smugly and sweetly explains her decree to us lowly peons:

“No community should have to bear the burden of another community’s polluters, or be powerless to prevent air pollution that leads to asthma, heart attacks and other harmful illnesses. These Clean Air Act safeguards will help protect the health of millions of Americans and save lives by preventing smog and soot pollution from traveling hundreds of miles and contaminating the air they breathe,” Jackson said.

“By maximizing flexibility and leveraging existing technology, the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule will help ensure that American families aren’t suffering the consequences of pollution generated far from home, while allowing states to decide how best to decrease dangerous air pollution in the most cost effective way.”

Awww. Now that you put it THAT way...who wants to see American families suffer? I'm sure that when the new standards are met (or the coal plants shut down) the air will be squeaky clean, and all the peeps will refrain from smoking cigarettes, dope, and crack. The animals will stop shedding dander, and flora will not emit pollen and spores. Obese people with no insurance will push away from the table and begin jogging, and substances like alcohol and heroin will no longer be the scourge of our poor populations. Look!  Unicorns and rainbows are shooting out of Obama's ass!

The reality of this chills me to the bone. Hundreds of thousands of people will be thrown out of work. Millions will not be able to afford to heat their homes in the winter. An entire industry will be brought to its knees.  What then?
.

The Price Tag Of Globalism

I believe that most Americans are skeptical of the whole "one world government, one world bank" mantra touted by the progressives.  For years, they've been beating on the same drum, but we Americans have resisted, knowing full well what it would entail; financially supporting even more of the world than we already do.  Globalism is blatant wealth (and resource) redistribution, at our expense, and to our detriment. 

So, in typical progressive fashion, our elite ruling class decided to enact globalism nefariously, printing billions upon billions of greenbacks and covertly channeling the cash to foreign banks.  Say hello to QE2:

In summary, instead of doing everything in its power to stimulate reserve, and thus cash, accumulation at domestic (US) banks which would in turn encourage lending to US borrowers, the Fed has been conducting yet another stealthy foreign bank rescue operation, which rerouted $600 billion in capital from potential borrowers to insolvent foreign financial institutions in the past 7 months. QE2 was nothing more (or less) than another European bank rescue operation!

You can access the original article through my link (I won't link to them because, although they're smart and savvy financially, some of them are also creepy Jew-haters).

 

Dear Congressman Weiner

I really think it's time that you do the right thing and resign.  You have been a veritable lion for the progressive cause...a lion!...full of spite, and hateful zingers, and mind-numbing misinformation...but it's time to go.

It's not that you've been caught in a youthful indiscretion; you're not young.  You have exhibited such an appalling lack of judgement and morals that you make other sleazy men look tame by comparison.  Suddenly icky Tiger Woods and purulent Brett Favre seem misguided rather than scummy.   That is quite an accomplishment, Anthony.

Now, go.  Slither back under your rock.