Barney Frank is a weenie

The 2010 Census caused Massachusetts to redraw their congressional districts, and look which district got more conservative as a result: the district represented by Democrat Rep. Barney Frank.

Frank is a bitter, nasty, mean, combative, insulting, pig of a man who also turns out to not have much courage either. Now that his redrawn district would provide some real competition for his reelection efforts, Frank is bowing out. He is not going to run for reelection next year. Thank God.

Now, the cynical conspiracy theorist inside me could easily believe that Frank is quitting for other reasons upon which he chooses not to elaborate, but if being a cowardly wimp is his story, then I will believe him. I know he is 71, but he just always struck me to be one of those power-hungry congresscritters who would only leave if they were not reelected or they were taken out on a stretcher or slab.

Either way, I am thrilled to see this... person... leave Congress in January 2013.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

It's like I'm a kid again!

But not in a good way. Several times during my childhood, I suffered from bouts of Strep Throat, but I had yet to suffer from it as an adult... until now.

My son has it too; we both caught it while visiting relatives in Las Vegas. A doctor friend of my wife's told her that the streptococcus bacteria that causes this horrid condition thrives in desert conditions.

So here we sit today at home, playing hooky from school and work. We have a 10:30am appointment to pick up our anti-biotics, and we can't get them soon enough. I don't know if you the readers have ever had strep, but it makes you feel like you are swallowing a handful of thumbtacks... if you are even able to swallow at all; my uvula - you know, the hanging thingy at the back of your throat that causes the gag reflex - is swollen to at least four times its normal size and is resting on the back of my tongue, causing me to gag - how ironic; add to this the requisite fever, chills, body aches, and headaches, and you have one heck of an affliction on your hands.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

How many feet high is 57,000 pages?

For the record, about 19 feet. What in the world would be a 19-foot tall stack of 57,000 pages? Try the 2010 corporate tax return for General Electric (GE).

But it gets better. After crunching GE's numbers into 57,000 pages of tax return, it turns out that GE paid not a penny on the $14 billion dollars in profit it made that year.

I'm sure it doesn't hurt that GE's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, is a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and that Immelt's company has received billions of dollars worth of tax credits from our federal government because they have joined in on the taxpayer-funded green energy gravy train.

Remember folks: human nature is human nature, and if the people who run corporations and businesses out there see a way to get a leg up on their competition, they are going to take it. When the government offers that leg up in the form of tax credits and the granting of monopoly status, a corporation would be stupid to not take advantage of that opportunity, as they figure if they don't, their competition will. What needs to happen then is that our federal government needs to get out of the business of picking winners and losers in our supposedly free-market economy.

The way to stop the federal government from picking winners and losers is to return it to the limits put upon it by the Constitution. Show me where in Article I, Section 8 Congress is given the authorization to grant tax credits to selected private businesses whose work the Congress (and the President) happens to like. If consumers in this country truly wanted CFL lightbulbs, wind power, and solar power, then they would voluntarily choose to use those products rather than have them forced upon the market through the use of coercive laws and taxpayer-funded subsidies to the companies who make these otherwise unprofitable products.

There is a reason that the Founding Fathers gave the federal government such limited powers in the first place. The power to use taxpayer money to pick winners and losers in our economy, and ensuing efforts by companies to influence government in order to be in the winner column is why the federal government was not given this power in the first place.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

A "Reader's Digest" version of two Obama Administration scandals that the statist media would rather you forget

It must be nice to be on the left side of the political aisle and thus have an entire media apparatus run interference for you by not reporting to the American people that which would be blasted from the rooftops if a conservative President occupied the White House. Here are the two scandals currently flying under the radar, either of which would sink a conservative presidency:

Solyndra:

It's simple really: Barack Obama hates oil and coal. He is one of these eco-topia nutballs who thinks we should do away with carbon-based fuel sources that are actually effective and inexpensive, and replace them with so-called "green" or "clean" sources of energy such as wind and solar that are mostly ineffective, prohibitively expensive, and not nearly as clean as he would like you to think. That is why his administration has been handing out billions of our taxpayer dollars to private companies - or more specifically, EVIL CORPORATIONS - that produce these pie-in-the-sky power products that can only turn a profit if they are heavily subsidized by Joe Taxpayer. Even then, after being thoroughly padded with our hard-earned tax money, many of these "green energy" companies still go under. And the tragic part is that apparently, the Obama administration is willing and able to give these companies our money even when it is perfectly clear that the company is doomed to financial failure.

One such example was Solyndra, a Fremont, California-based company that produced solar panels. Notice I speak of this company in the past tense because Solyndra is now bankrupt and defunct. But not before Solyndra first received about $530 million of our taxpayer dollars in the form of a federal loan guarantee. Emails are now surfacing due to FOIA requests and a House investigation revealing that the Obama administration pushed to have Solyndra receive this half-billion dollar, taxpayer-funded, loan even though it was already apparent that Solyndra was going broke. In fact, it now looks like the Obama administration was strong-arming Solyndra to not announce their inevitable layoffs until the day after the November 2010 mid-term elections. But boy, in the meantime, Solyndra made for a great success story photo-op when Obama made a visit to the company building to showcase to the American people what a great alternative solar was to that icky oil and coal on which we so much depend. Not only that, these "clean energy" loans somehow tend to end up in the hands of wealthy campaign donors and bundlers who helped Obama get elected, or are trying to help him get re-elected.

Fast and Furious:

Two years ago, the American lamestream media made great hay out of reports that many of the guns that were being used to commit crimes in Mexico were being traced back to the United States as the country of origin. In April of 2009, President Obama announced in a speech that more than "ninety percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States." That turned out not to be the whole truth, as not every gun recovered was traced. What was likely happening was that the Mexican government was submitting for tracing, guns that likely had come from the United States. That will of course increase the percentage.

Now that the Fast and Furious scandal has begun to gain some traction in the wake of the beginning of Congressional hearings that have made AG Eric Holder look like a liar or a blithering idiot, we can start to get an idea of why so many guns captured in Mexico turned out to be from the United States: because U.S. federal law enforcement agencies were ensuring that guns from U.S. gun stores were being smuggled into Mexico and handed over to Mexican drug cartels. Ultimately, those guns have been estimated to be involved in the murders of at least 200 Mexican citizens and 2 U.S. law enforcement agents.

Now why would Obama's Justice Department do such a thing? The purported purpose was to allow these guns to be traced to the cartels so that criminal charges against them could be shored up. However, accountability of the guns was quickly lost, and they disappeared into the netherworld of the Mexican crime world, only to resurface at the scenes of hundreds of murders.

I will now add my opinion. I believe Fast and Furious was an effort by Obama and Holder to demonize gun dealers and gun owners in the United States, and use the violence caused by the use of these weapons in Mexico as a pretext to strip law-abiding Americans of our right to defend ourselves through the keeping and bearing of arms as is guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Why do I think that? Because I remember when the "90%" meme was being bandied about in 2009, politicians were calling for the stripping of the rights of law-abiding American gun owners in order to remedy the situation. How convenient is that?

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Like I stated, this was only a "Reader's Digest" version of these two scandals; a primer if you will. For the finer details, do your own research. If you will only Google or Bing "Solyndra scandal" or "Fast and Furious scandal" you will find mountains of news stories, both from so-called mainstream and alternative sources, that will cover every angle of these scandals. The mainstream media do report on these scandals, but they either bury it on page A24, such as the N.Y. Times did with Solyndra news the other day, or they report it and then move on without further comment. A good example of this technique was noted the other day by the conservative blogo-sphere when the statist talking heads on MSNBC's Morning Joe program spent oodles of time mocking and insulting the Republican presidential candidates, but when a news story was mentioned about the Obama administration requesting that news of Solyndra layoffs be held off until the day after the 2010 midterms, those same talking heads clammed up, and far off in the distance, a cricket chirped. They spent a lot more time making fun of Herman Cain's fedora than they did about the deliberate waste of a half-billion taxpayer dollars.

Watch Newsbusters' compilation of the hilarity:



With that kind of hard-hitting coverage (/s) of Obama's scandals, it is not surprising that the average citizens out there haven't a clue what is going on.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Consistency is for fags

WARNING: EXTREMELY BAD LANGUAGE QUOTED AHEAD... SERIOUSLY, DON'T KEEP READING IF YOU OFFEND EASILY:

Now, now. Before you get all worked up, allow me to explain the context of my catchy title for this post.

I have become less and less interested in the annual Academy Awards broadcast as the years go by, but I couldn't help but shake my head in disbelief when I found out the reason that the director of this year's show, Brett Ratner, was fired.

When asked by a reporter about his methods of management, Ratner was quoted as saying, "Rehearsal is for fags!" That is it. According to news stories, that simple comment got him canned as Academy Awards show director. I heard that news while driving to work to the other day, and I yelled at the radio, "What about Eddie Murphy?!"

See, Eddie Murphy had been picked months ago to be the host of this year's show. But when Ratner was fired, Murphy quit. Nevertheless, the producers of the show had been fully intent on going with Murphy.

Does no one remember Eddie Murphy's stand-up comedy routine from the 1980s? Remember his 1983 show called Delirious? In one sketch, he imagined what it would be like if tough-guy actor Mr. T were homosexual.

So let's juxtapose. Which of the following statements should get you fired (or never hired)?

Brett Ratner: "Rehearsal is for fags."

Eddie Murphy (as a homosexual Mr. T): "Hey boy... Hey boy... you look mighty cute in them jeans. Now come on over here... and fuck me up the ass... Hey boy slow down... or I'll pinch up my butt cheeks and rip your dick off."

Unless I'm missing something here, I can't understand how Hollywood can get so worked up over Ratner's statement, when under that kind of standard, Eddie Murphy's past performances should have been something to keep him from ever being hired to host the Oscars. One might make the argument that Ratner was speaking his true feelings, while Murphy was just performing on stage. But if that argument were to be valid, why did comedian Michael Richards (you know, Kramer from Seinfeld) get in so much trouble when he repeatedly uttered the word "nigger" while performing on stage a couple years back?

I will never understand society's selective outrage where some people are allowed to say a word or phrase with no repercussions, while other people are crucified for saying the same thing.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Throwing bad court decisions after bad

A flurry of lawsuits have been filed by assorted state attorneys general since the atrocity known as Obamacare was shoved down the American peoples' throats in March of 2010.

While we have won some and lost some, we had a big loss the other day when Judge Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals found that one of the worst features of Obamacare - the individual mandate that requires that Americans purchase health insurance - is constitutional.

It is bad enough that this judge put lipstick on this pig of a law, but what really steamed me was his rationale for finding the law unconstitutional. Hear it from the judge first before I pick it apart:

The mandate, Silberman wrote, “seems an intrusive exercise of legislative power" and “certainly is an encroachment on individual liberty, but it is no more so than a command that restaurants or hotels are obliged to serve all customers regardless of race, that gravely ill individuals cannot use a substance their doctors described as the only effective palliative for excruciating pain or that a farmer cannot grow enough wheat to support his own family.”

“The right to be free from federal regulation is not absolute, and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems, no matter how local — or seemingly passive — their individual origins,” Silberman wrote.

I know I am just one of those lowly proletarians with no law degree, but this judge is out of his friggin' mind. Just look at the past examples of legislative overreach he uses for his justification:

...a command that restaurants or hotels are obliged to serve all customers regardless of race: While people like to morally preen and feel all self-righteous by singing hosannas toward the 1964 Civil Rights Act, it is still a law that Congress was given no power to pass under our Constitution. A business today that tried to ban all members of a certain race as was done in the past would not be in business for long in our society. This would be true even if the 1964 CRA did not exist. Boycotts, social pressure, and ostracizing have always been more effective in shaping peoples' actions and behavior than laws ever have. Changes in attitudes about race were taking place even before the 1964 law, and would have continued to do so. The bottom line is that one can vociferously believe that the practice of racial discrimination by private businesses is wrong, but still demand that the Constitution be amended before the Congress passes a law in an area of concern for which they were given no authority under the Constitution.

...that gravely ill individuals cannot use a substance their doctors described as the only effective palliative for excruciating pain: Once again, show me in the Constitution where the federal government has the power to outlaw the use of drugs. News flash! There used to be no federal drug laws. Were there addicts out there? Yes. Did society survive? Yes. Like the previous example, you can be against the use of illegal drugs, but still recognize that regulating them is not the job of the federal government.

...or that a farmer cannot grow enough wheat to support his own family: This one is my favorite. As part of the New Deal, FDR and the Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which limited the amount of crops that farmers could grow. The intention was to prop up the price of food by creating an artificial shortage. One farmer - last name Wickard - grew more wheat on his farm than the law allowed, even though he was growing the extra wheat simply to feed his family. After being pursued for this act by the federal government, Wickard argued in federal court that Congress had no jurisdiction over his growing of wheat because what he grew not only stayed within his state, it stayed on his farm. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court. In the infamous Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the Supreme Court found that even though farmer Wickard was growing the unauthorized wheat for his and his family's own consumption, and the wheat did not cross any state lines, Wickard's growing of the wheat still constituted interstate commerce (and thus the ability for Congress to regulate the situation) because that meant there was some wheat somewhere out there from another state that would not be purchased because Wickard had produced his own.

And let us not allow to slide by this final comment: ...and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems, no matter how local — or seemingly passive — their individual origins. No matter how local? The Tenth Amendment truly is dead with Circuit Court judges saying such things. It is so simple, I can type it from memory: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. That means if the issue is local, then it is NOT up to Congress to get involved, no matter how much they may want to.

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I am disheartened by Judge Silberman's comments. His justification for agreeing with the health insurance mandate is essentially that the federal government has run roughshod over our rights so completely over the past 70 years, what does it matter if they do so just a little bit more.

With different federal courts at both the district and circuit level giving differing positions on the constitutionality of Obamacare, and especially its mandate to purchase health insurance, the chattering classes are in almost unanimous agreement that the Supreme Court is going to take up this issue. If their decision-making processes are along the lines of Wickard vs. Filburn (or Kelo vs. New London, or Dred Scott vs. Sanford, for that matter), then we are in serious trouble.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Thank You

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

What the heck is a "Body Man," and why does the President have one?

President Barack Obama just had another member of his staff quit. This time, it was his long-time personal assistant, Reggie Love, to whom the President, and even the news agencies reporting the story, refer to as the President's "Body Man."

To whose body does the term refer? Is it similar to a bodyguard? If so, doesn't Obama have the Secret Service for that? Have other presidents employed someone in a similar capacity?

Just another headshaking feature of the Obama administration.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Catch it early on, folks

I took the day off from work today, and for my trouble I now have 12 stitches that run from the side my nose to the top of my lip. The reason? Basal cell carcinoma. I had a mole removed from that area a few weeks ago, and the biopsy came back positive. So now I am left lying here feeling like I got punched in the face. The worst part of the ordeal was when the doctor would use a cauterizing device to stanch the bleeding as he cut away the offending tissue. The smell of burning flesh is bad enough, but when the procedure is taking place a quarter of an inch from my left nostril? Yuck!

With my stitches and my deformed fat lip, I either look like I got in a fight, or I look like a villain from a James Bond movie. Hopefully in a few weeks, I will just look like me again.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Jesse Jackson: "Occupy Atlanta" reminds him of the Civil Rights Movement

Sometimes, I see a headline that causes me to utter an audible Scooby Doo-esque "Huhhhh?" A headline on Drudge that said Jesse Jackson compared the "Occupy Atlanta" movement to the Civil Rights Movement elicited that reaction from me.

The reason is that the only other thing I have seen of the "Occupy Atlanta" movement is when a bunch of cultish, statist, twinkle-fingered protesters (most of them white, by the way) rejected civil rights icon, Representative John Lewis, and kept him from speaking at their rally.

How cultish were they? Watch them repeat everything the moderator says as they eventually tell Lewis to take a hike. The video is 10 minutes long, but just watching the first minute or two will give you the gist:



Creepy.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

The "Nanny State" is now literal

I can't believe stuff like this is really, truly happening in this country -

Can't afford diapers for your kids? Not to worry. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) is riding to the rescue.

Senate Bill (SB) 1778 authorizes states to use federal block grant money to provide diapers for parents who have their children in federally funded daycare.

But wait, there's more! Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) is taking care of business on the House side by introducing the - this is serious now - DIAPER Act, or the Diaper Investment and Aid to Promote Economic Recovery Act. Seriously.

Bottom line: These statist northeast Congresscritters from the Democrat Party are trying to use our tax dollars to give free diapers to poor people who are squeezing out kids they cannot afford in the first place.

Hear that sound? That's the Founding Fathers spinning in their graves.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson