The Washington Times this morning carries the story that DC’s Southeast residents are more than a little miffed at the rise in homicides in that quarter of the District – and they’re blaming the serial criminal they elected to the City Council;
A recent surge in homicides in Southeast has embattled residents pointing the finger at D.C. Council member Marion Barry, who is seeking re-election in November.
Yesterday, I read about Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive being refused service at the Hawk and Dove pub on Capitol Hill because he was wearing one of his famous Dou-Che` T-shirts
Uncle Jimbo is a pretty big dude (he has a reputation for being somewhat unstable while imbibing in adult beverages) and I’m surprised someone named Edgar would take a chance at pissing off someone of his impressive stature and unbalanced nature.
Barely related to Uncle Jimbo story, at Babalu Blog, Ziva points us to a story about the wonderful world of ANSWER LA where they celebrated the 55th Anniversary of Castro’s opening salvo against the Batista Administration in Cuba. I hinted at this twisted bit of propagandizing the other day when I asked where the anti-war clowns were going to protest the Russian invasion of Georgia.
But the communists in LA are still enraptured with the Castro revolution. It seems that 300 Communists turned out for the event…and the article calls that a “huge turnout”. In Los Angeles, the largest city in the nation, if not the world, 300 is not huge, guys. There are 300 people lined up behind every urinal in LA at any given moment. Nonetheless;
The huge turnout to celebrate Cuba’s revolution showed that the struggle for a better world is very much alive in the hearts and minds of people in Los Angeles and far beyond. We will continue undeterred to celebrate Cuba and to defend its revolutionary gains.
Undeterred, because of unanimous and unrecorded bomb threats and threats of violence that always seem to happen when the Left has an event…but strangely enough nothing ever happens. Just like the death threats we hear about from the right-wing nuts…no one ever gets killed, but still the Left likes to pump up their self-importance with these imagined dangers.
The success of the evening in the face of adversity was a clear victory for the pro-Cuba organizers and attendees.
So brave these revolutionaries…just like Che and Fidel, aren’t they? No, not really. being a Communist in Los Angeles isn’t brave at all. There was no inherent adversity in 300 people going to a Castro love fest in the furthest Left (politically) part of the country. The Left has pushed the envelope so far that being a communist is passe` – even Hugo Chavez is losing his cachet.
If you want to see brave, watch Uncle Jimbo wear his Che` shirt in DC where the people voted 90% for John Kerry in the last presidential election. Of go to a Freedom Works counterdemonstration against MoveOn in DC. That’s bravery. Not being just another communist in a city full of communists.
I was reminded this morning of some thoughts I had last night about a post I wanted to write on Liberals’ pretending to care while I was reading this at Cold Fury;
The harmful effects of our national safety obsession ripple outward into society. One in six children in America is obese, and many of them will face a lifetime of chronic illness. According to the Center for Disease Control, this problem would basically cure itself if children engaged in the informal outdoor activities that used to be normal. But how do we lure children off the sofa? One key attraction is risk.
Read the whole thing and you’ll see where I’m going.
Yesterday, two incidents happened to trigger this line of thought. First, our resident troll urged me to stop smoking…of course, he’s unsure if I even smoke or not since I’ve never said I do, but for some reason he felt the need to save me from myself. How noble…and insincere. The second incident happened on my long nightly bike ride. As I zoomed past a guy about my age walking his two homosexual-looking tiny, useless terriers, he felt the need to shout out “Get a helmet!”
Now, the thing in common with Richard Wheeler and the old queer with the queerer dogs is that neither of them know me, that my death or injury wouldn’t really affect their lives to any measurable degree, but they both felt the need to give me unsolicited advice to quench their own sense of self-satisfaction. It made them feel better to think they were doing me some good – not for my sake, but for their own sakes. And that’s what Liberals do…they make themselves feel better by imposing on other people’s lives. (Never mind that their own lives are in irreparable turmoil)
Just like in Los Angeles where they’ve forbidden new fast-food joints from opening in poor neighborhoods to prevent obesity among the poor. Will it affect obesity even a little bit? Nope. But the Liberals feel as if they’ve done something. Banning transfats in cities is just as useless…but the Liberals can sleep at night knowing they’ve done something – they’ve done something useless, but they’ve done something. What have you done? Nothing? Well, I did something!
When I was stationed at a remote post in Germany, I’d take a bus about 150 miles to get to a MacDonalds and have two fish fillet sandwiches (the Germans called them FischMacs) and then get on the bus and go back. I’m pretty sure there are fast food joints closer than 150 miles to poor neighborhoods in LA. The only way to cure our obesity epidemic is with education.
But the Left would rather regulate our lives and make things difficult for us. The government has crept so deeply into our daily lives, that virtually nothing is left unregulated.
And it’s up to me to decide whether or not I wear a helmet when I ride my bicycle. They’re uncomfortable and block my view while I’m riding. And no one makes one that fits my enormous head. I have to perch the useless thing on my crown like a clown hat. I rode a bicycle for years without one when I was a kid, and I won’t start now.
A few years back, I crashed on my bike and fractured my arm and my leg. The first thing my doctor and everyone else who heard about it said was “Were you wearing a helmet?” A helmet wouldn’t have prevented my fractured arm or leg, but it made them all feel good to chastise me for not wearing a helmet.
Besides, all of you guys look like this when you’re wearing a helmet.
Last November, Maryland Governor O’Malley snuck up behind Marylanders and stabbed us in the back with a massive tax hike. Part of that tax hike was a doubling of the cigarette tax. At the time I wrote;
A pack of cigarettes in Maryland is already nearly $5/pack. Jack it up to $6, you fools – most Marylanders only need to drive a few miles in almost any direction and buy them cheaper. Raising the price $10/carton more makes it much more attractive to buy them out of State. How much revenue ya got then, chump?
Well, now we get our answer a mere nine months later as reported in the Wall Street Journal;
Politicians in Annapolis are scratching their heads wondering what happened to all those chain smokers who were supposed to help balance Maryland’s budget. Last year the legislature doubled the cigarette tax to $2 a pack to pay for expanded health-care coverage. Eight months later, cigarette sales have plunged 25% and the state is in fiscal distress again.
A few pols are pretending to be happy that 30 million fewer cigarette packs have been bought in the state so far this year. As House Majority Leader Kumar Barve put it, fewer people smoking is “a good thing.” Yes, except that Maryland may be losing retail sales more than smokers. Residents of Maryland’s Washington suburbs can shop in nearby Virginia, where the tax is only 30 cents a pack, and save at least $15 per carton.
The Maryland pols are so afraid this is true that they’ve made it a crime for residents to carry two packs of cigarettes that weren’t purchased in the state. In other words, the state says it’s legal to smoke, so long as you use cigarettes that the government can tax and thus become a financial partner in your bad habit. But if you dare to buy smokes across state lines, you can be fined.
Um, didn’t I warn you goofballs? Hell, you can even buy cigarettes on line, pay for shipping and it’s still cheaper than cigarettes in Maryland. Not that I do it – I don’t have to. But smuggling is a fact of life that politicians don’t understand. Whenever you make something difficult or expensive to buy, people will always find a way around it. It’s human nature.
As soon as Maryland’s tax went up, the border with Pennsylvania was dotted with new cigarette shops – the same thing that happened when New York raised it’s cigarette taxes. I was in Delaware a few weeks ago and it’s the same there.
Too bad O’Malley can’t find a way to tax the American spirit.
Crossposted at Red Maryland.
Reading all of those great blogs in my blogroll (please…help yourself) I happened across this post on Dust My Broom, a right-leaning Canadian blog, by Kateland about the latest gift from her local government;
Yup, it’s everything you need to live safely on the street as long as your behavior only includes risky activities like smoking crack and having sex with multiple partners. The Libertines’…I mean Libertarians’…heads must be exploding about now. Tacit approval for drug use, but paid for by the government.
By the way, the comments on that post are hilarious.
As an aside note, if you don’t read Dust My Broom on Friday nights, you’re missing some great beer reviews by Darcey.
“I’m not a star, and I don’t want to be a star. Stars fall. I’m an ordinary guy with an extraordinary job. I was living in a place where I was harming myself. I was irresponsible. I’d lost several apartments. I couldn’t hold a job. I was tired of being a no-good son of a bitch who called himself a man but was just a grown boy.”
I liked Bernie Mac. A lot. He was Every Man and I feel like I’ve lost a friend though we’ve never met. My condolences to his wife and his daughter.
Charles at Little Green Footballs writes that Elizabeth Edwards decided to apologize to America by writing on Daily Kos. I suppose because all of America reads the Kos (eye roll here) she considered that a proper venue. I didn’t read the whole thing, just the part that Charles quoted…I really don’t care that much about the whole story, just the lack of honesty and lack of shame of a guy and his family who wanted to represent our nation overseas and expected to formulate our national policy.
But anyway, Elizabeth Edwards caught my eye with these lines;
This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well. Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private.
What arrogance! She makes it sound like our fault that her husband got caught diddling some campaign flunky (and a fairly ugly one, at that). So if only we’d left him alone and let him sneak around behind her back (which I’m assuming he promised not to do seein’s how Elizabeth & John Edwards are still together) in a swanky LA hotel.
I’m guessing that everyone is saying that another campaign staffer is admitting the child is his to make Ms. Hunter appear as if she’s some kind of tramp who sleeps with anyone, including campaign staffers. See, that makes Edwards less culpable because he succumbed to the wiles of a wanton tramp – that’s Old Testament stuff, people. Read it! It’s what killed Sampson, for Pete’s sake!
The Jawa Report writes that the Hunter family is having none of that, though…they want a paternity test. They’ll probably get their paternity test about the same time John Kerry signs his Form 180.
I know Edwards is quietly waiting for 2012…by then everyone will be disillusioned with whoever is President and he’ll be able to capitalize on sympathy for his dead wife to overcome this setback. Reading the comments at Kos, I see the healing has already begun;
NC Dem Amy; Stay strong. I know you will.
We are behind you and your family 100%.
MiketheLiberal; And, for this particular male Edwards voter in 2008, please tell John I am disappointed. I’ll forgive, but I’m disappointed.
And this from a kozian whose screen name, ironically enough, is Silence is Complicity;
We support you 100%
UPDATE: Ms. Hunter’s lawyer says there’ll be no paternity test;
In a statement, Gordon says that Hunter is ruling out any kind of testing that could establish who the daughter’s father is.
“Rielle will not participate in DNA testing or any other invasion of her or her daughter’s privacy now or in the future,” he said.
Hmmm. According to the Left, Bush’s refusal to answer questions about his drug use means he’s a coke addict, so Ms. Hunter’s refusal means….
There was more coverage of the Move On protest yesterday from Politico;
Thomas Cannady, 53, a graduate student who lives in Hyattsville, Md., said he was on a MoveOn training call at around noon when someone broke in to say that the trainees were, to borrow a phrase from Bill O’Reilly, going to do it live. He spent the next few hours calling about 50 other MoveOn activists and then made his way to the Capitol.
He said that the European tourists, here enjoying the cheap dollar, were especially receptive to his call. “A lot of the Europeans are very much for it. ‘You should see how expensive it is in our country,’” he said they told him. The Old Worlders, he said, insisted that drilling alone was no solution to the high prices and that conservation and renewable energy investments were crucial.
Yuh, if a couple of European tourists say we shouldn’t drill, that’s who we need to listen to instead of policy makers and economists. Jeez, a 53 year-old grad student, for pete’s sake.