The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

HR1586: ‘Legislate In Haste, Amend At Leisure’ Now Making Oscar Wilde
Look Serious

Posted on | August 10, 2010 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

Unserious

Bluegrass Pundit has us on a merry chase, trying to find out the meaning of HR1586, which was passed :

Cato and CNET were on the case:

It was supposed to be some routine election-year largesse from Democrats: a $26 billion spending measure to aid two of the party’s core constituencies, labor unions, and government workers.

But a watchdog Web site on Sunday evening spotted an unusual feature of the legislation, which the Senate approved by a 61-to-39 vote last week.

Suggested alternate titles:

  • Immoral Act of 2010
  • 1586th Idiotic Act of the 111th Congress
  • Can’t Get It Together Act of the Usual Suspects
  • Anti-Constitutional Act of Godforsaken Commies
  • Anyone Disagreeing With The Progressive Agenda Is Raaaaacist Act of 2010
  • Stacy McCain Needs Vanilla Pudding

By the time you get back to the Library of Congress, the title seems to be somewhere between TARP and tarmac:

1 . To impose an additional tax on bonuses received from certain TARP recipients. (Introduced in House – IH)
2 . FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act (Engrossed Amendment Senate – EAS)
3 . To impose an additional tax on bonuses received from certain TARP recipients. (Engrossed in House [Passed House] – EH)
4 . XXXXXXAct ofXXXX (Engrossed Amendment Senate – EAS)
5 . Aviation Safety and Investment Act of 2010 (Engrossed Amendment House – EAH)
6 . To impose an additional tax on bonuses received from certain TARP recipients. (Placed on Calendar Senate – PCS)

As of this writing, it is unknown to what degree my local Congresstool’s stellar leadership record did or did not contribute to the “Legislation With No Name” debacle, but you can bet there was a fistful of dollars involved.

Serious

Instapundit posed a reader’s question:

Staggering deficits. Exploding national debt. Grossly underfunded public pensions. Aging populace. Social Security on track for insolvency. Investors running for precious metals. Higher education bubble. Stagnant economy. Massive new government healthcare program. Words like “unsustainable” in CBO reports.

I have racked my brain and debated with anyone who was willing. I can’t come up with a way out of this that doesn’t involve printing vast amounts of cash, double-digit inflation and interest rates, and the end of the dollar as a global currency because we “soft default” trillions of the national debt. What productive capacity we have left would be gutted by the tax increases needed to honestly pay what we are going to owe. And the people we owe (China, seniors, public pensioners, etc) aren’t going to just write off the debt like a bank short-selling a beach house.

So my challenge to your readers is this: “How do we get out of this WITHOUT printing money?”

In that post, another reader’s response:

There are a nearly infinite number of solutions, but the key is this: if the rate of GDP growth is greater than the rate of government spending growth, everything will come out.

Insty followed up with a realistic response:”The end of responsibility: From homeowners to government, the buck stops nowhere”

First, what is responsibility? For my purposes, responsibility is the negative feedback loop that dampens idiocy over time. More briefly, responsibility is that which our government lacks.

Why?

The Federalist model of government stands effectively scuttled for at least three reasons (he said in a Gillespie tone)

DC is the ultimate source of loot, punishing and rewarding by whim. Citizens have been rewarded for jacking the incumbency rate to full-on aristocratic levels.

Now someone says, ‘well, if we just curb the spending. . .’ Really? Really?

No, until you’re doing something to alter the context, to revitalize the states, to break the back of Progressivism, you’re sadly working for the other team. You’ll clean House in November, 2010, sure. You’ll maybe even up the ante in 2012. But that silent, unelected, tumorous, Orwellian staff of federal zombie-crats will, eventually, inexorably set about dining on a brain near yours, because there is no feedback loop flogging responsibility into the system.

When we’ve reached the point of honestly revisiting the last century, and set about delegating all social safety net programs to the States, over time, sensibly, to survive or die as the voters are willing to fund them sustainably (if I can use an eviro-weenie word in an economic context, knowing it’s a ‘narrative’ violation, but so is this whole blog FTW), then We The People will not seem as un-serious as a Congress that can’t get a name on legislation before voting.

It has suddenly come to me, in closing, that this could be the most honest title of any legislation in the 111th Congress. Soon, they may pass the Everything Men Know About Women Act (read the first review).

Category: Congress, Corruption, Democrats, Progressivism

Wasn’t The Lemonade Sufficient Brew-Ha-Ha?

Posted on | August 9, 2010 | 21 Comments

by Smitty

First they came for the adorable daughters selling lemonade. Via BlogProf, the word that Julie Murphy can’t have a lemonade stand made a sweet, sticky splash in the dextrosphere over the weekend. $120 for an asinine ‘temporary restaurant license’? At the posted $0.50 a glass, the unfortunate kid has to give the first 240 glasses of lemonade to the government just for the privilege of a bureaucratic probing.
Frank J. came out a thoroughgoing apologist for the fascists:

Do you know what kinds of diseases can lurk inside improperly handled lemonade? No, you don’t. And neither do I. So obviously, that threat is so severe that medical scientists won’t even tell us about it so as not to create a panic. And do you know how many people died from contaminated lemonade before stringent health regulations were enforced? I’ll give you a number: 52,143,000. Well, the number of people who died from improperly handled lemonade involves one or more digits from that number.

Scary, isn’t it? That stupid little girl could have killed half of Oregon. Luckily the government was there to protect you. But the damage isn’t just limited to people’s health; there’s also the economic impact. She goes out there with her non-union labor selling lemonade for 50 cents, and who knows how many proper businesses that paid all their licensing fees and taxes she was undercutting? She was effectively stealing money from Oregon and the federal government. Thus while President Obama is working very carefully to revive our economy, she is working directly against him. That probably also makes her a racist.

Not content with that outrage, the State of Beaver Fever decided to double down and suds up:

When the 2010 Oregon State Fair opens on Aug. 27, there won’t be an amateur beer-brewers competition for the first time in 22 years.

An overlooked, 80-year-old statute that says Oregon home-brewed beer can’t leave the home has forced fair organizers to cancel the competition, which had 335 entrants last year, says Oregon Liquor Control Commission spokeswoman Christie Scott.

Brewers were reminded of the statute after the Oregon Department of Justice clarified the law for a pub seeking to serve home brew at an event, Scott says. “As long as this is the law, we have to enforce it,” she says, adding that the commission hopes to see the statute changed in time for the 2011 fair.

Now, if the ODoJ had merely contacted “Nation of Cowards” Holder, they could have found out that, as long as the beer is transported by illegal aliens (because transporting illegal beer is a job Americans won’t do), then the grand tradition of ignoring laws like they were the 10th Amendment can be merrily continued.

WTF happened to Oregon? I was born there a couple score years back. That State grows enough marijuana to outlast WJ Clinton’s famous ability to eschew inhalation. Portland had been called the microbrew capital of the US. Now they’re as humorless as a Barack Obama speech.

Category: Corruption

Fake Republican, Real Hate: Democrat Tries Moby ‘Racist’ Smear on Rand Paul

Posted on | August 9, 2010 | 18 Comments

moby (n) — An insidious and specialized type of left-wing troll who visits blogs and impersonates a conservative for the purpose of either spreading false rumors intended to sow dissension among conservative voters, or who purposely posts inflammatory and offensive comments for the purpose of discrediting the blog in question. The term is derived from the name of the liberal musician Moby, who famously suggested in February of 2004 that left-wing activists engage in this type of subterfuge . . .

Now watch as “Tyler,” a moby who supports Kentucky Democrat candidate Jack Conway, gets dead-cold busted trying to perpetrate a racism smear against Republican Rand Paul:

Hat tip to Jim Antle at The American Spectator, who links Dave Weigel who — surprise, surprise — is utterly convinced by the Conway campaign’s disavowal of “Tyler.”

Category: Kentucky, Politics, Racism, Senate, Video

VIDEO: John McCain Admits What Everybody Always Knew: He’s a Liar

Posted on | August 9, 2010 | 57 Comments

A genuinely devastating ad from the Hayworth campaign that even Ace of Spades admits is kinda awesome:

What did Crazy Cousin John admit lying about? The Confederate flag. That’s something that no one should tolerate, no matter how you feel about the Confederacy. Read more

Category: Arizona, Family, History, J.D. Hayworth, Senate

Christine O’Donnell Money Bomb!

Posted on | August 9, 2010 | 22 Comments

Got the word via Twitter from Stephen Kruiser:

Go contribute to Christine O’Donnell’s campaign now. Remember that every $10 or $20 helps. This post will be stickied at the top of the page until midnight. Below the fold, two new video interviews with O’Donnell and more. Read more

Category: Christine O'Donnell, Delaware, Election, Republicans, Shoe Leather Fund, Uncategorized

Levi Johnston at Teen Choice Awards

Posted on | August 9, 2010 | 23 Comments

“Ricky Hollywood” showed up on the red carpet with singer Brittany Senser, saying he would be appearing in a music video with her.

Notice that the “famous for being famous” aspect of celebrity no longer distinguishes between fame and infamy, so that even the World’s Most Notorious Deadbeat Dad is fawned over like royalty.

UPDATE: Levi Johnston is shopping a reality-TV series — a production deal in search of a network, a dime-a-dozen situation in modern Hollywood. Ace of Spades has an interesting prediction of Levi’s next career move.

Category: Celebrities, Video

Puberty Is Racist!

Posted on | August 9, 2010 | 28 Comments

A new study finds U.S. girls are reaching puberty at earlier ages:

Compared to the 1997 findings from girls across the U.S., girls in the current study – especially white girls – were more developed at a younger age. As previous research has shown, there were also large differences in development based on race.
At age 7, approximately 10 percent of white girls and 23 percent of black girls had started developing breasts – compared to 5 percent of white girls and 15 percent of black girls in 1997, the authors write.
Among 8-year-olds in the study, 18 percent of white girls and 43 percent of black girls had entered puberty – an increase from around 11 percent of white girls from 1997, but the same as black girls in that year.

So, black girls were more than twice as likely to have entered puberty before age 9. Will Al Sharpton lead a protest march against puberty, which is clearly guilty of racial discrimination?

Category: Racism, Science

Things White People Like: Getting Paid Six-Figure Salaries to Expose Raaaaacism

Posted on | August 8, 2010 | 10 Comments

Including $346,000 a year for Morris Dees. Can’t help noticing that even though Heidi Beirich has a Ph.D., she isn’t on the list.

“Heck, the SPLC is whiter than a bunch of MSNBC hosts at a Broadview Security commercial burglars’ convention.”

Category: Racism
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