SALT TYRANTS: Walter Williams explains.

WELCOME TO FLYOVER COUNTRY. “I’m never against elected officials coming to the tri-states to really hear what the heart and soul of America is thinking. It’s when they come to simply get photo ops, gather cheap political currency, and have no plans of listening whatsoever that it infuriates me. If you’re coming to really find out what ideas we have to fix your mess, that’s great. Enjoy your stay. If you’re coming to just use us as props in campaign photos, please stay in the plane.”

Photo ops aren’t environmentally friendly; please save jet fuel and stay home.

THE MEDIUM ISN’T THE MESSAGE. The Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby has some thoughts on technology and messaging in pursuit of democracy and freedom.

WANTED - DEAD COYOTE: Florida’s Charlie Crist is getting desperate (third item).

SAN FRANCISCO calls for Arizona boycott. But it won’t take Arizona's illegals.

Hypocrites. Let’s see what happens if the state of Arizona boycotts San Francisco.

IF AMERICANS RESPONDED with "Go to hell" and "See you in court" each time they were asked to produce their license, both hell and court would be very crowded.

UPDATE: It appears that it “reveals a fundamental lack of empathy” when I “fail to comprehend” that being asked for a driver’s license is more burdensome in some circumstances than in others. Nuts. Empathy for whom? If you are doing something illegal, then even mundane interactions with the police are “burdensome.”

THE WASHINGTON POST’S Colbert I. King is unhappy that he can’t have his cake and eat it too.

Enacting D.C. voting rights legislation with a "poison pill" gun amendment [restricting D.C.’s absurd gun laws] attached would have been worse than winning ugly. It would have meant accepting the assertion that Americans in the District of Columbia don't have a fundamental right to representation in Congress ....

If D.C. residents really wanted voting rights, they’d exercise their right of retrocession and rejoin the state of Maryland. But they don’t, really; they’re “too important” to be mere citizens of Maryland.

They want to remain victims with special rights, so they continue to whine.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON examines the Arizona hysteria.

OBAMACARE IS A RATIONING SYSTEM, and the IPAB [Independent Payment Advisory Board] will be one of the key drivers for that rationing. If you don’t believe me, just listen to [OMB Director Peter] Orszag.



Linked from Hot Air.

FINES ARE FOR LITTLE PEOPLE. Vehicles assigned to the offices of [Washington D.C.] Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee have racked up more than $1,000 in unpaid parking tickets and traffic fines, according to a new D.C. auditor's review.

No surprise here, of course. Traffic fines are for little people, not D.C.’s movers and shakers.

Here’s the interesting factoid, though. Washington D.C. has a total land area of 61.4 square miles; it has 40 Metro (subway) stations, or roughly one station for every 1.5 square miles. If they were uniformly distributed over the land area, there would be one within 1,200 yards of wherever you are in the city.

Yet the city owns a fleet of 2,635 vehicles, or just over 40 vehicles for every square mile of land area.

Can’t they use the Metro?

OBAMA TO DEBT COMMISSION: ‘Everything Has to Be on the Table’.

The Washington Examiner’s Chris Stirewalt observes (third item):

The president certainly likes to set a big table, but the portions usually seem to end up being pretty skimpy for those who disagree with him.

As with health care, Afghanistan strategy, economic recovery, energy and seemingly everything else, Obama favors a laborious process of decision making before arriving back at his obvious decision.

His debt commission seems to be the most lavish example of this process-intensive approach to validating his decisions so far.

The end result from the deficit commission – after Alan Simpson gets done berating his fellow Republicans for anti-gay bias and a list of other offenses real and perceived – will be the president’s support for a huge tax increase and some modifications to Medicare to help battle the deficit that is squeezing America so much tighter after the president’s emergency spending and national health program.

The best evidence is that the administration so often finds ways to rephrase candidate Obama’s iron-clad promise not to raise taxes on any family making less than $250,000 a year: “Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes,” he once said. Now, the president talks about a promise not to raise “income taxes.”

After the election, get ready for some even more creative language.

In other words, the panel is designed, not to succeed, but to give Obama cover.

AFTER POLICY STUMBLES, Obama turns to politics.

In his first 14 months in office, Barack Obama worked to change public policy, with partial success. He jammed through the stimulus package in February 2009 and health care legislation in March 2010 on party-line votes.

But he paid curiously little attention to the substance of the legislation. One-third of the stimulus money went to state and local governments -- i.e., to public employee unions -- which helped ensure that the bill would not hold down unemployment to the promised 8 percent. And the health care bill, we now learn from Health and Human Services Department actuaries, is going to increase spending rather than hold it down.

Now Obama seems to be pivoting toward legislative priorities chosen not for policy but for political reasons.

It’s all about power.

THE SUPREME COURT said that a lower court went too far in ordering the removal of a congressionally endorsed war memorial cross from its longtime home atop a remote outcropping in California.

A small step, perhaps, in returning to freedom of - and not from - religion.

EVEN USING THE BEST COMPUTERS, garbage in still produces garbage out.

“The computer models used to determine whether it was safe for airlines to fly through the ash resulting from the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in southern Iceland were flawed ... and ‘based on incomplete science and limited data, according to European officials. As a result, they may have over-stated the risks to the public, needlessly grounding flights and damaging businesses.’ "

DON’T TREAD ON ME.



The Gadsden flag pictured here is seen flying – sometimes en masse - at almost all Tea Party protest rallies. At the Tax Day protest in Washington D.C. on April 15, I noted an individual, probably a journalist, talking to all the flag bearers, presumably about the flag.

If he was trying for a “gotcha” moment, he was clearly failing, as everyone I saw was enthusiastically talking to him.

Rummaging around the internet for the origins of the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag has been an interesting journey. The origin, as best as I can determine it, is with Benjamin Franklin, who in 1754 during the French and Indian War, published a woodcut of a snake cut into eight sections. It represented the colonies, with New England joined together as the head and South Carolina as the tail, following their order along the coast. Under the snake was the message "Join, or Die". It played off a common superstition of the time: a snake that had been cut into pieces could come back to life if you joined the sections together before sunset.

Franklin’s woodcut cartoon was popular and widely published throughout the colonies, and in the 20 years leading toward the American Revolution, the snake began to see more use as a symbol of the colonies. Many of the colonial militias used some variant of Franklin’s serpent as their unit insignia.

Two stand out. The now familiar Gadsden flag, a coiled rattlesnake with 13 rattles symbolizing the 13 colonies on a field of yellow and the words “Don’t Tread on Me” beneath the snake, and the Navy Jack, an uncoiled serpent on a field of alternating red and white bars, also with the words “Don’t Tread on Me” beneath the serpent.

Both have naval origins. The Gadsden flag, named after Christopher Gadsden, was presented to (Commodore) Esek Hopkins, as the commander-in-chief of the Continental Navy, to be used as his personal standard. Hopkins then directed that “a striped Jack” (presumably the Navy Jack) be flown on all Continental Navy vessels.

The Jack of the United States (Navy Jack) is still in use today, and one warship in the active Fleet is entitled to fly the original (First Navy Jack). In 1980, Edward Hidalgo, then Secretary of the Navy, directed that the ship with the longest active status shall display the First Navy Jack until decommissioned or transferred to inactive service, at which time the flag is passed to the next ship in line.

Today, the honor of flying the First Navy Jack belongs to the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN-65), commissioned in 1961.

In 2002, the Secretary of the Navy issued Instruction 10520.6[3] directing all Navy ships to fly the First Navy Jack as a temporary substitute for the Jack of the United States "for the duration of the Global War on Terrorism".

More flag history can be found here, here, and here.

DEBT COMMISSION GETS STARTED with 'everything' on the table, including national sales tax.

I’ll go out on a limb and bet ‘everything’ doesn’t include spending cuts.

But taxpayers may prefer them. In the two most recent gubernatorial elections (New Jersey and Virginia), Governors Christie and McDonnell have in fact managed to cut back state spending: “What's happening in states like Virginia and New Jersey ... suggests that voters may support spending cuts more than most American politicians and pundits have assumed.”

And much more than additional taxes.

REP. PATRICK KENNEDY SPEAKS ON SUBSTANCE ABUSE, then downs six shots of vodka at the Capitol Lounge.

Heh.

NANTUCKET SOUND WIND FARM APPROVED: “A proposed wind-farm that liberal faux-environmentalist elites on the east coast have fought for the better part of a decade — because it would look so much better in your backyard instead of theirs — got the go-ahead today from the Obama administration.”

Heh: “Wind farms near blowhards: It only makes sense.”

FINANCIAL OVERHAUL WILL END BAILOUTS: “Regulatory overhaul legislation working its way through Congress will end taxpayer-funded bailouts ‘once and for all,’ President Obama said Saturday.”

Possibly, though his arguments are unconvincing. In my view, the “financial overhaul” is missing the point – the bailouts shouldn’t have occurred in the first place.

ACCORDING TO THE WASHINGTON POST, “Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law Friday the most restrictive immigration bill in the country, setting the stage for a showdown with the Obama administration and reigniting a divisive national debate ....”

The Post forgot to mention that the Arizona immigration law exactly follows current federal law. Oops.

Not to be outdone, current [Democrat) Phoenix mayor Phil Gordon published an editorial in the Post (Eh ... why the Post? Why not the Arizona Republic?) lambasting the law, calling it “humiliating,” and those responsible “bitter, small-minded and full of hate.”

Hmm. If it’s so godawful bad, then why do a majority of Arizonans approve of the law?

More pundit knee-jerk stupidity here.

SELF RIGHTEOUS OUTRAGE AND BONE-DEEP STUPIDITY: Glenn Reynolds reacts to liberal outrage over Arizona’s immigration law.

Follow the update link to this treasure:

So what to do in the meantime? Here’s a modest proposal. Everyone remembers the wartime Danish king who drove through Copenhagen wearing a Star of David in support of his Jewish subjects. It’s an apocryphal story, actually, but an inspiring one. Let the good people of Arizona — and anyone passing through — walk the streets of Tucson and Phoenix wearing buttons that say: I Could Be Illegal.

My guess is that one could walk the streets for days without getting more than a good-natured laugh from passers-by.

LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING.

The president's Earth Day speech may not have been as green as it looked.

[Last] Thursday President Obama spoke at a Des Moines, Iowa plant that makes towers for wind turbines. CBS News reports the president's team burned 9,116 gallons of fuel in the air during the 1,800 mile trip. That does not include the gasoline for the motorcade and all the various support vehicles.

A speech in the White House's Rose Garden definitely would have been more green.

Translation: we must be green so he can remain in the long green.

BAD FLAG ... BAD, BAD FLAG: “The many nations helping Haiti recover from the devastating earthquake that struck there have set up their own military compounds and fly their flags at the entrances.... But the country whose contributions dwarf the rest of the world's — the United States — has no flag at its main installation near the Port-au-Prince airport....”

Because “Barack Obama has just ordered all U.S. installations to take down their American flags, lest we be seen as an ‘occupying army’ rather than ‘international partners’."


It is patently appalling that a president of the United States would consider our flag to be a symbol of militaristic takeovers and colonialism, especially when serving (to a greater degree than any other nation on Earth) a humanitarian purpose. No other country giving aid in Haiti has lowered its flag. But then again, no other country has a leader who is offended by their own flag.

NOTE: cartoon courtesy of Hope n’ Change.

DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS. Governor shoots, kills coyote during jog.

MSNBC’S CHRIS MATTHEWS: Palin aspiring to be “a professional ignorant”.

Er, Chris, I hardly think she aspires to be like you.

QUOTE OF THE DAY (second item): “Why do lawmakers always prefer comprehensive legislation? You can hide more in a big bill than you can in a small one.”

RISK GROWS THAT ISRAEL will go alone to take out Iranian nukes.

That may not be a bad thing.

SUBSIDIZING AL GORE: A big bet on big government. “Almost any time you read about people making money with ‘green energy’ or the like, look for political connections.”

NEW SEIU HEAD wants to steer union away from politics.

And the sun rises in the west.

UNBELIEVEABLE: Costly IRS mandate slipped into health bill.

A few wording changes to the tax code’s section 6041 regarding 1099 reporting were slipped into the 2000-page health legislation. The changes will force millions of businesses to issue hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of additional IRS Form 1099s every year. It appears to be a costly, anti-business nightmare.

Under current law, businesses are required to issue 1099s in a limited set of situations, such as when paying outside consultants. The health care bill includes a vast expansion in this information reporting requirement in an attempt to raise revenue for an increasingly rapacious Congress (emphasis added).

So, if as a retiree, I do a little outside consulting and pay my neighbor a few hundred bucks to upgrade my home computer network, I’ll have to send him - and the IRS - a Form 1099 at the end of the year?

15,000 new IRS agents, coming to a neighborhood near you.

Sheesh.

WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE about this guy?

ABOUT THOSE LOWER INSURANCE COSTS WE PROMISED ....
“[W]hy, barely a month later, are Democrats scrambling to pass a new bill that would impose price controls on insurance?”

More taxes? Or more rationing? Most likely, both.

WE THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS. The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt has a theory:

[D.C. voting rights advocates, g]ays, immigrants, union leaders, budget hawks, campaign finance reformers, environmentalists, free-traders, human rights activists and civil libertarians all have had cause to wonder whether they were right to trust Obama. The list is familiar, but the explanation remains disputed.

My theory: The culprit is less ideology than Obama's fidelity to a strategy he can't, for tactical reasons, publicly acknowledge. Given the hand he was dealt, the evidence suggests he resolved that he had to choose only one domestic and one foreign objective for his first two years in office.

As a firm believer in Occam’s razor, I have a simpler [for the progressives, simpler means less nuanced] theory: all the above are wildly unpopular with the majority of the U.S. electorate.

‘OUTRAGED’ BY THE BEATINGS of University of Maryland students, Washington Post reader D. R. Longway thinks police should wear numbers so they can be identified in videos.

Um, given that 24 ‘students’ were arrested in the post-game ‘celebration,’ perhaps the good Mr. Longway would also be willing to require University of Maryland students wear their university ID numbers so that they can likewise be more easily identified by the police when they’re rioting?

SEE THE USA in your (1935) Chevrolet. For those of us who remember Chevy’s “See the USA” television commercials. This one is particularly interesting personally, since my wife’s grandfather worked on the highway from Marathon to Key West.

EARTH DAY, LEFT AND RIGHT. The New York Times
laments the ‘corporatization’ of Earth Day while the Washington Examiner’s Chris Stirewalt observes (scroll down; 4th item):

Writer Leslie Kaufman offers a lamentation on the corporatization of Earth Day and looks at the ways in which big bad capitalists have found ways to make money on the 40-year-old liberal holiday. It’s a sell out, man.

But there’s money to be made from suckers and as NBC, Pepsi and many others know, there’s a great concentration of suckers inside the environmental movement. If companies can get people to pay extra by slapping an “organic” label on something, even if organic often means more pollution, they’re going to go for it.

Kaufman does not, though, explain why it is that so many environmental groups have been willing to become corporate handmaidens. It’s the money. The huge salaries and expenses at liberal scare groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club have created a dependence on corporate contributions. Like their cousins in the racial grievance business, many environmental groups have become shakedown artists who offer protection for a price.

“Protection for a price” - the Mafia goes legit.

WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY and he is PowerPoint.

Duh. Where is Obviousman when you need him?

EXTREME GALT: More American expatriates give up citizenship.

THOMAS SOWELL on misusing history.

DOCTORS LOVE OBAMACARE. A flyer taken from my surgeon’s office last week:

Ask Congress to Keep Doctors for Medicare Patients

Dear Patient,

For a Medicare patient, a doctor can mean everything: independence, hope, and security. Medicare makes it possible. For a doctor, treating our patients is everything. We have cared for many of you covered by Medicare for years. We know many of your children and grandchildren – our patients are family. The last thing we want to do is tell our patients that we can no longer care for them. I want to continue taking care of my Medicare patients – that’s why I became a doctor.

Even though the new health care bill promises to cover more patients, some big problems still exist. The health care bill did not fix Medicare - ;the government’s largest health care program.

Congress must fix Medicare now, so that you and other Medicare patients can have the doctors you need when you’re sick. You deserve to receive the care you’ve been promised. Congress MUST focus on this problem. Congress must finally fix a problem it has been putting off for more than 10 years,

A statewide effort now is underway to collect 1 million signatures. The petition drive is asking Congress to stop the Medicare meltdown so patients can choose their doctors and the doctors can stay in the program. However, due to government regulations, I cannot collect your signature on a petition. So instead, I'm sharing the information with you.

Go to www.ipetitions.com/petition/meltdown. Tell Congress to continue its work. Tell Congress to fix the crumbling foundation of our health care system.

Oh, and I signed the petition.

FIXING CALIFORNIA. Victor Davis Hanson on what it would take:

[W]e would have to close the borders; adopt English immersion in our schools; give up on the salad bowl and return to the melting pot; assimilate, intermarry, and integrate legal immigrants; curb entitlements and use the money to fix infrastructure like roads, bridges, airports, trains, etc.; build 4-5 new damns to store water in wet years; update the canal system; return to old policies barring public employee unions; redo pension contracts; cut about 50,000 from the public employee roles; lower income taxes from 10% to 5% to attract businesses back; cut sales taxes to 7%; curb regulations to allow firms to stay; override court orders now curbing cost-saving options in our prisons by systematic legislation; start creating material wealth from our forests; tap more oil, timber, natural gas, and minerals that we have in abundance; deliver water to the farmland we have; build 3-4 nuclear power plants on the coast; adopt a traditional curriculum in our schools; insist on merit pay for teachers; abolish tenure; encourage not oppose more charter schools, vouchers, and home schooling; give tax breaks to private trade and business schools; reinstitute admission requirements and selectivity at the state university system; take unregistered cars off the road; make UC professors teach a class or two more each year; abolish all racial quotas and preferences in reality rather than in name; build a new all weather east-west state freeway over the Sierra; and on and on.

With a few adjective changes, there’s nothing on the list that doesn’t apply to the U.S.A as a whole and every state within it.

A YEAR AGO the president promised us $100M in budget cuts. Here's what those budget cuts looked like in the context of the 2009 federal budget.

It gives new meaning to the phrase 'a drop in the bucket' doesn't it?

And since then we've had Stimulus II and ObamaCare.

God help us all; Obama sure won't.

WHAT A ‘LARGELY PEACEFUL’ DEMONSTRATION LOOKS LIKE. Hint - it’s not a Tea Party.

THE CHATTERING CLASS IS AGHAST at Arizona's new immigration law.

"Harkens back to apartheid," says the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker. "Shameful," says the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne. "Terrible…an invitation to abuse," says the New York Times' David Brooks.

For his part, President Obama calls the law "misguided" and says it "threaten[s] to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans." Obama has ordered the Justice Department to "closely monitor the situation and examine the civil rights and other implications of this legislation."

Has anyone actually read the law?

Of course not. Facts don’t matter when your mind’s already made up.

EUGENE OREGON is a hate-free zone ...


... so this cannot be an example of hate speech.

Right? Uh, ... right?

IN HIS DEFENSE OF LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE, I was amused by Peter C. Pfeiffer’s assertion that elite colleges require foreign language study to “allow students to take on an alternative identity and see the world in different ways.”

President Obama went to not one, not two, but four “elite” schools: Punahou, Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard Law. He can’t speak Austrian, but he does speak Australian.

And he certainly does “see the world in [a] different way.”

NANNIES RUN AMUCK: Officials in Santa Clara [CA] are convinced that luring kids into eating foods with high sugar, sodium and fat by using toys will make them overweight and cause long term health problems.

Sorry, kids, no more Happy Meals. Sorry, parents, you just thought you were responsible for your kids.

NOT TOO ‘HIP’ AND ‘EDGY’ FOR CENSORSHIP. Mark Steyn writes on Comedy Central’s caving and censoring South Park in response to terrorist threats: “We should be grateful to its jelly-spined executives for reminding us that the cardboard heroes of the American media are your go-to guys for standing up to entirely fictitious threats. But for real ones? Not so much.”

AN AMUSING MOMENT: I just walked past my pickup in the garage and noticed the T.E.A. party sticker on the bumper - and a pitchfork in the truck bed.

But no tar and feathers.

CONTEMPT OF FOR CONGRESS. The experienced motorist will have seen a multitude of road signs warning of children crossing, elderly pedestrians and wildlife. Now Italian prostitutes get their own road sign to warn motorists of impending hookers. The sign is here.

Instapundit suggested somebody should put one in front of the Capitol building:


It fits.

WILL DEMOCRATS 'go for it' on immigration reform? Obama, Pelosi and Reid seem to be driven by a desire to avoid, not confront, the voters' top priority, which is the economy and jobs.

Well, of course. They tried – and failed spectacularly. Now it’s time for Plan B: divert America’s attention from that failure.

What’s Plan C for when B fails?

AVATAR SETTING ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY. "Actress Sigourney Weaver testifies before the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on the topic of ocean acidification. Because, you know, she played an environmental scientist in Avatar."

Yes, real scientists are just so ... so .... icky.

IN MEMORIAM


Dixie (1996-2010). Rest.

PENSION REFORM? Oh, my, this one is good! Especially the reader comment that “prevailing unemployment” be extended to Congress.

POLICY CHANGE: progressives rename themselves.

WORSE THAN A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS: A Plague of ‘A’ Students.

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT - so I’ll have more of it to enjoy for myself.

Link from Instapundit.

IF PRESIDENT OBAMA IS 'AMUSED’ by the Tea Partier’s distaste for ObamaCare, then what must he think of the Constitution?


by Nate Beeler at the Washington Examiner.

DEMOCRATS AT THE EDGE OF THE ELECTORAL CLIFF with a long fall to the bottom.

We can only hope.

POPULISM OF THE PRIVILEGED: the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto laughs at the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne.

OBAMA’S SPACE PROGRAM; more conservative than Bush’s space program.

Rand Simberg, who blogs at Transterrestial Musings, argues in favor of the Obama plan for restructuring America’s manned space program, believing it is, at least, a (poorly conceived and badly executed) step in the right direction toward space colonization.

Others, including Neil Armstrong and many in the astronaut corps, strongly disagree.

In the long run, I have to agree with Simberg. Manned spaceflight will never be more than a ‘lab curiosity’ until the next Pan Am starts scheduled suborbital and orbital service. In the short term, though, the astronauts are correct; Constellation is needed to ‘keep the dream alive’ until Pan American World Spaceways is in operation.

The pity is that this argument should have been had - and settled - 15 years ago.

OBAMANOMICS: coming to an economy near you. Read it and weep for the America you thought you knew.

CLIMATEGATE IS DEAD; long live Climategate. The IEEE’s energy correspondent sees the handwriting on the wall: the British House of Commons's attempted whitewash of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit failed.

NEVER IN THE FIELD OF HUMAN CONFLICT was so much said by so many for so little. “[T]he torrent of words that spewed forth for two days at the Washington Convention Center would have been enough to fill every missile silo in the world.... [but] ... We are no closer to meaningful sanctions against a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. And the only countries to have ever been caught disseminating nuclear capacity – Pakistan and North Korea – were not part of the discussion.”

The Washington Post story (Obama secures 47-nation pact at nuclear summit, 14 April) is here.

THE POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT & THE TEA PARTY: Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club comments: “Nothing throws [politicians] for a loop more than some[one] that doesn’t want anything they can bestow. The Tea Partiers already know the establishment is bankrupt. They don’t want to be the next Botox Queen, the next guest on Oprah or the man with Internet access on Air Force One; they only want their freedom and a chance to meet the crisis with common sense, if that’s not asking too much.”

AN AGE OF UNTRUTH. Victor Davis Hanson on liberal lies and other hypocrisies.

IN SEC VS. GOLDMAN, who's really at fault?

The answer is, of course, everyone.

What I find amusing is Chris Stirewalt’s comment: “As Goldman is now finding out, the problem of being in business with the government is that sometimes they cheat for you, but when the political climate demands it, they start cheating against you.”

"TO KEEP US FROM OWNING GUNS, DC politicians are willing to trade our voting rights."

While I happen to think this is the right call (no voting rights for D.C.) for the wrong reason (maintain tight gun control regulation), I am amused by this quote: “In Washington, D.C., we get precisely the representation we deserve.”

FDA PLANS to limit amount of salt allowed in processed foods for health reasons. Chris Stirewalt comments (fifth item):

What in the hell?

The FDA has the power to limit sodium content in food? When did that happen?

[I]n the post-American America, those who fail to heed the warnings are a cost to all of us mandatorily insured workers of the world. A government that has a fiduciary interest in your blood pressure is a government that will run your life.

What a prissy country this has become.

But, but ... it’s for your own good.

AND IN LOCAL NEWS: At the company I work for, a “staff member complained about coworkers speaking vehemently about their political beliefs while at work — to the point that this person felt uncomfortable.”

There’s a ‘right to be comfortable’? I wonder if I can cite feeling uncomfortable as a reason for walking out of the annual ‘diversity training’ sessions.

THE WORLD is still coming to an end. Chicken Littles never give up.

ACORN BOSS AIRS HER POLITICS: ”Any group that says, ‘I’m young, I’m Democratic, and I’m a socialist’ is all right with me.”

At least the taxpayers are (at least temporarily) no longer funding ACORN.

THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY. The dream - that America is a special place - is dying. Read it all.

There are, I think, two lessons - both on warfare - to be taken from Allen’s commentary. The first is that if the goal is nation-building, then the enemy must be utterly crushed. Rubble bounced, culture destroyed, population left in despair. And a minimum of a generation to rebuild. The second is that if the goal is threat removal, then it must be utterly and completely destroyed, along with the infrastructure needed to reconstitute it. Then leave. Leave quickly, and leave the populace to its own devices.

America hasn’t yet learned those lessons.

CHANNEL SURFING THE OTHER NIGHT, I happened to catch a brief ‘Great American Panel’ segment on Sean Hannity’s show in which the Democrat spinmiester expressed amazement that the Tea Partiers would want to cut taxes. “Don’t they know those taxes pay for the police protection at their protests?” I had to laugh, since at the March 20th protest on the Capitol steps (roughly 30,000 protestors) I sat for an extended time next to the single Capitol police officer within 200 yards: he was bored.

Later that same day, I walked past the anti-war rally at Lafayette Park next to the White House. The rally was already winding down; there were fewer than 200 protestors still in attendance - and I counted no fewer than 30 park police and Secret Service agents forming a bicycle barrier between the protestors and the White House fence.

The lady (spinmiester) doth protest too much.

WHY WE SHOULD THROW ALL THE BUMS OUT: Both national party committees spend big chunks [of money] on fancy meals, hotels, travel.

TOO MUCH GREEN? Governments across the Washington region spend millions of dollars on recycling each year, but national recycling experts say a lot of that taxpayer cash is going to waste.

Am I supposed to be surprised?

JUST ANOTHER PR STUNT: go to Kennedy Space Center to make a speech on future space policy and bring along your own syncophants for an audience. No KSC workers need apply.

Bonus points to AllahPundit for letting two critics of the cancellation speak.

TWO PICTURES, a thousand words. Here is what Obama needs set up to talk to a few school children.


Here’s what the last guy needed.


One is a Messiah; the other was a mere President.

THE NEXT OBAMACARE TARGET: your bacon sandwich.

Barring the success of lawsuits or huge gains by Republicans this fall, the president's health program will be imposed in pieces over the next four years. By the end, the government will have a fiduciary interest in the waistlines and cholesterol counts of every American.

As the most unaffordable aspects of the Obama plan come on line, expect more dietary restrictions as the government looks for ways to control the enormous costs related to unhealthy habits.

For decades, insurance companies have tried to get their customers to quit drinking and smoking and to slim down and exercise.

But imagine what they could have done if they had the power to simply outlaw behavior that drove up costs.

Taking away your bacon will be deemed a small price for helping cover the Obamacare deficit.

Welcome to the Brave New World.

BLOWBACK TO A BLOW(HARD). The New York Times’ “visual OpEd columnist” Charles M. Blow disses the Tea Party movement. The “dissee”, AlfonZo Rachel (ZoNation), responds:

A NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER is unconstitutional. Wisconsis U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional Thursday, saying the day amounts to a call for religious action.

Presidents going back to Washington have called for national days of prayer – calling on citizens to pray for the nation in whatever way they prefer and to whatever God they worship. There’s no penalty for those who don’t participate – just an exhortation to people of faith to put in a good word for the U.S. of A.

President Bush ... totally dug the idea and always brought together a boatload of preachers, rabbis, imams and whatever holy rollers he could find for a big ceremony and some pastries. Obama, whose attitudes about religion are quite prickly, scrubbed the ceremony and issued a statement that essentially endorsed the idea [of] prayer and that it is probably a good thing to do, unless they don’t pray, which is good too.

If President Obama has a core belief, it is that he has no core beliefs.

DURING HIS ELECTION CAMPAIGN, President Obama made a very clear and unambiguous promise: “If your family makes less than $250,000 per year, then none of your taxes will be increased -- period.”

“But in order to gloss over the tax increases contained in Obamacare -- on the sick, the uninsured, and durable medical equipment -- President Obama is trying to alter that pledge in the middle of his term.”

"And one thing we have not done is raise income taxes on families making less than $250,000. That's another promise we've kept."

In the business world, you generally try to renegotiate the contract before it expires – not after.

THINGS YOU NEED TO WIN IN 2010: a truck, a barn coat, and a Cosmo center-fold.

If you’re a GOP candidate, I’ve got a high-mileage pick-up I might be willing to lease.

A BIT OF CULTURAL NEWS: After a two year loan to the United States, Michelangelo's David is being returned to Italy.


Surely David's condition on return to Italy must have provided impetus to the drive to pass health care reform.

REDUCTION is theme of President’s next act: it will challenge average Americans to accept reduced services or increased taxes [reduced income] — or, probably, both.

And you thought it meant reduced government? Silly you.

CARRYING ON about carry-on fees. Jacoby’s right; let the market sort this one out. If the government wants to get involved, let them do something about these “nickel-and-dime” fees.

[T]he US ticket tax, which adds 7.5 percent to the price of every domestic flight? Or the $16.50 the federal government charges for each international departure and arrival? Or the $17 in customs and inspection fees paid by passengers flying into US airports from abroad? Or the "passenger facilities charges" (up to $18 per round-trip)? Or the "US Security Service Fee" ($2.50 per departure)? Or the "domestic segment fee" ($3.70 per flight segment)?

Let’s see. If I had my trusty hand calculator, I could probably figure out that the sum of these government-imposed fees are at least equal to the $30 that Spirit Airline wants to charge for carry-on bags.

OBAMA TELLS FOREIGN PRESS one of his personality traits is 'humility'.

Every Obama statement comes with an expiration date, but this one arrived stillborn.

THOSE REVOLTING ELITES: Professor Bainbridge takes on the new elitism.

In sum, if by elite you mean the end result of a meritocracy -- a fair tournament in which everybody competes on a more or less even playing field (equality of opportunity) -- than I agree that I'd like the next SCOTUS to be an elite judge. But if by "elite" you mean one of Lasch's new elites, with their children of privilege, and their contempt for religion and traditional American values, then count me out.

By all means, read it all. And from the comments, I like this definition of elite:

"I'm a by-God American. I have no betters and damn few equals."

Linked from Instapundit.

SCHOOL LUNCHES a national security threat.

And as Instapundit notes, “So the one meal where teenagers are fed directly by the government is a major source of obesity, but we keep being told that the solution to widespread obesity is . . . more government? Uh huh.”

FLABBY THINKING: I may be fat, but you’re stupid.

And I can diet.

Link from Instapundit.

MORE RIGHT-WING VIOLENCE goes unreported in the media.

Oh, wait ... that was violence targeted against Republicans; not by them. Never mind.

A TRICKLE, NOT A FLOOD, but a growing number of American expatriates and green-card holders are “voting with their feet” and severing ties with the U.S.

My question is this: Suppose the elections of 2010 and 2012 manage to restore a measure of sanity to the federal government. Will these people come back?

Link from Instapundit.

EUGENE ROBINSON goes off the deep end again.

The overhyped Tea Party phenomenon is more about symbolism and screaming than anything else. A "movement" that encompasses gun nuts, tax protesters, devotees of the gold standard, Sarah Palin, insurance company lobbyists, "constitutionalists" who have not read the Constitution, Medicare recipients who oppose government-run health care, crazy "birthers" who claim President Obama was born in another country, a contingent of outright racists (come on, people, let's be real) and a bunch of fat-cat professional politicians pretending to be "outsiders" is not a coherent intellectual or political force.

With drivel like this you have to wonder why the Washington Post keeps him on.

ROAD TRIP ADVICE for electric-car owners.

Umm, take an extra-long extension cord?

OBAMA IN FAIRYLAND: Mark Steyn on President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit.

If you read in the paper that New Zealand had decided to go nuclear, would you lose a moment's sleep over it? Personally, I'd be rather heartened. It would be a sign that a pampered and somnolent developed world had awakened and concluded that betting your future on the kindness of strangers is a helluva gamble. What Mr. Obama and his empty showboaters failed even to acknowledge in their "security" summit is the reality of the post-Big Five nuclear age: We're on the brink of a world in which the wealthiest nations from Canada to Norway to Japan can barely project meaningful force to their own borders while the nickel 'n' dime basket cases [North Korea] go nuclear.

Comforting thought, isn’t it?

ACORN CEO: “We're on Life Support.”

Now all we need is the courage to pull the plug.

THE NEW YORK TIMES AND CBS take a poll of the Tea Party participants and finds them to be whiter, older, richer, and more educated than the ”average American“ – a blindingly obvious no-brainer for anyone who’s ever attended a single Tea Party rally. The Times then passes the data a couple of times through their spin machine to conclude that “these rich old white people have no right to complain. And they watch Fox News. Gross.”

The Washington Examiner relooks at the data and takes note of the obvious: “the middle and upper middle class never protest or get this angry, so this represents something very different in the history of American politics.”

But the truffles to be snuffed out are here:

It is noteworthy that 1 percent of tea party supporters think the current members of Congress ought to keep their jobs. But it’s more noteworthy that 10 percent of the general public feels the same way -- 7 points lower than before the 1994 elections. It may be true that only 6 percent of tea partiers trust the government, but only 20 percent of the general public does. It’s interesting that 74 percent of tea partiers think the bailouts were unnecessary but more interesting that now 51 percent of the general public does (only 36 percent think they were needed). It’s not surprising that only 6 percent of tea party fans hold the Democratic Party in a favorable light. It is surprising that the party’s standing with the general public (42 percent) is lower than any time since the fall of 1994.

The general public – that hypothetical “average American” – is following the lead of the Tea Partiers.

The liberals have failed to learn the First Rule of Holes: when you find yourself in one, stop digging. If anything, they seem to be bringing in heavy equipment.

DROP THE GUN METAPHOR. Takoma Park resident John Guernsey writes:

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin continues to use the rallying cry "Don't retreat. Reload!," but now she's adding the disclaimer, "And that's not a call for violence!" ["Palin, with swipe at Obama, fires up GOP on midterms," front page, April 11]. My question to her is: If such a simple and straightforward statement needs to be clarified, why bother using it?

Er, because liberal readers are too nuanced to understand a simple and straightforward declarative statement?

VOLCANO PICTURES: some beautiful photos from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull (wow!) volcano eruption.

THE NEW GM (Government Motors) proudly introduces ...



... the 2011 Obummer.

It runs on hot air, bull-shit and broken promises. It has three wheels that speed the vehicle through tight left turns. It comes complete with two TelePrompters programmed to help the occupants talk their way out of any violations. The transparent canopy reveals the plastic smiles still on the faces of all the happy owners.

Comes in S, M, L, XL and XXL.

It won't get you to work, but hey, there aren't any jobs anyway!

I’M ALWAYS AMUSED BY THE FREIGHT RAIL ADS that air on WTOP radio every morning. According to the ad, freight rail eases traffic congestion by taking 427 (or some such number) of trucks off the road for every freight train on the rails.

Well, yes, that may be true - but those are long-haul semi-trailer trucks that primarily ply the interstate highways. They don’t typically contribute to local congestion (with the possible exception of the outer loops around the city); it’s the thousands of box trucks that unload those freight trains and make local deliveries that do.

IN DEFENSE of Obama’s golfing adventures. I would only add that if golf keeps him from the Oval Office, please go for the record (400 rounds in a single term).

WHY I MISS TEXAS











Bluebonnets in the spring.

'TEA PARTIERS' more wacky mavericks than extremist threat. The Washington Post’s Robert McCartney explains the new liberal Tea Party spin. They’re not “seething, ready-to-explode racists;” they’re just ...

... paunchy small-business owners aged 50 and older [in] three-cornered hats [with] rattlesnake flags ... exercising their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble.

Kooky. Wacky. Paunchy. Dressed in 3-cornered hats. Not exactly the kind that sober liberals would take seriously, right?

In addition, they had ...

... far-out views. Abolish public schools ... repeal the progressive income tax ... abolish the Federal Reserve Board ... privatize the U.S. Postal Service ... Social Security is unconstitutional.

Well, yes, I guess those views are “far-out” to someone who inhabits the liberal fringe.

But ...

Explain to me why it is “far out” to not cede control of my child’s education to a bureaucracy hundreds, if not thousands of miles from my home? Why is it “far out” to want to replace our present nightmare of an income tax with something simpler? Why is it “far out” to replace Social Security with a privatized system that will provide a better retirement for even the poorest among us?

Like the people in the television commercial, Mr. McCartney and those of his ilk should push through their tiny ‘calling circle’ bubbles and join the rest of America.

THE AIRLINES' GOLDEN AGE wasn't so golden. “Americans today want flying to mirror the image in their heads of the glory days of air travel.... [Y]ou probably envision smartly dressed businessmen reclining in big, comfy seats and enjoying elaborate meals. Meanwhile, attractive young stewardesses fawn[ed] over their customers -- the legendary ‘coffee, tea or me’ days. Those days weren't, however, as glamorous as you might imagine.”

No, they weren’t. And back then, if you weren’t flying on business, you weren’t flying.

PAYBACK? The Obama administration has been stealing from America for 15 months. I guess the robber felt it was time to get his back.

Must have been one of those deranged Tea Partiers.

A CHAT WITH FRED. Leaving the gas station Sunday after my early morning coffee fix, I was approached by a young gentleman whom I’ll call Fred, asking me if I owned the truck with the Tea Party bumper sticker.

When I said yes, he immediately struck up an extended conversation. A political independent, Fred has until recently mostly uninvolved in politics beyond voting regularly, but is now concerned by the direction the Obama administration is taking. Fred wanted to know more about the Tea Party philosophy and how to contact a local Tea Party group.

Here’s the nutshell version of my conversation with Fred:

The Tea Part(ies) are true grassroots; there is neither a central organization nor a common, coordinated political “platform,” but the core principles could probably be summed up as a belief in individual liberty, limited government, and low taxes. Prominent - but subsidiary - concerns include employment, the repeal of ObamaCare, pork and special-interest lobbying, Second Amendment concerns, energy (cap-and-trade), illegal immigration, deficit spending, intrusive regulation, and a strong military.

The closest I’ve seen to a Tea Party “platform” is the Contract from America, calling on those seeking public office to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom. It has ten “planks”:

1. Protect the Constitution
2. Reject Cap & Trade
3. Demand a Balanced Budget
4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government
6. End Runaway Government Spending
7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care
8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy
9. Stop the Pork
10. Stop the Tax Hikes

For all you “Freds,” here are some ways to find a Tea Party near you.

FreedomWorks predates the Tea Party movement, but does act as a sponsor for many tea party related activities. Look for the “states” tab at the top.

Tea Party Patriots is a coordination organization. From its web site, you can link to state and then to local tea party groups affiliated with the Tea Party Patriots. The National Capital Tea Party Patriots is an umbrella organization for the Washington D.C. metro area, and locally (for me) are the Jefferson Conservatives (Manassas) and Prince William County Tea Party (Woodbridge).

Find a group near you - or form your own - and make your voice heard.

SHOULD THE GOP PUSH FOR TOUGH REGULATION OF WALL STREET? No. Not if it “amounts to granting ‘too big to fail’ status to financial firms like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase ... and it tells those firms' creditors and shareholders that Uncle Sam will bail them out if they make what turn out to be imprudent loans.”

The Republicans must make it well-known that dinosaurs will be allowed to become extinct.

A GLIMPSE into the mind of Obama:

Barack Obama considers this a revolution against the pillars of American liberty, and nothing short of absolute, ignominious defeat in all branches of the federal government is going to dissuade his revolutionary zeal.

With this sort of leadership, either liberalism must now suffer a decisive and complete defeat, wherein even its proponents begin to hide their heads in shame and remorse forevermore, or socialism will continue its march. There is no in-between, no compromise, and no turning back.

The will of the majority means nothing to this president.

Fence-sitting Americans must forcefully rid themselves of the notion that this president believes in majority-rule democracy. By his Chicago-way, thug-tactics victory in the health care battle, he has clearly shown his own stripes, those of a determined revolutionary without regard for the will of the people.

Read it all.

NEWSWEEK on the Tea Party movement:

“A Surge of Hate” reads the meta tag; “Hate: Antigovernment extremists are on the rise—and on the march” reads the actual headline. Yes, and if they succeed, they’ll … they’ll … make the government leave people alone and mind its own business! The horror!

The progressive mind explodes ....

NO REPRESENTATION WITHOUT TAXATION? Mark Steyn started it:

The top 5 percent of taxpayers contribute 60 percent of revenue. The top 10 percent provide 75 percent. Another 40-odd percent make up the rest. And half are exempt. This isn’t redistribution ... it isn’t even “spreading the wealth around” ... it’s an assault on the moral legitimacy of the system. If you accept the principle of a tax on income, it might seem reasonable to exclude the very poor from having to contribute to it. But in no meaningful sense of the term can half the country be considered “poor.” United States income tax is becoming the 21st-century equivalent of the “jizya” — the punitive tax levied by Muslim states on their non-Muslim citizens: In return for funding the Islamic imperium, the infidels were permitted to carry on practicing their faith. Likewise, under the American jizya, in return for funding Big Government, the non-believers are permitted to carry on practicing their faith in capitalism, small business, economic activity, and the other primitive belief systems to which they cling so touchingly.

Ed Morrissey, Doctor Zero, and CK MacLeod all jumped into the fray, arguing for, against, and around the idea of having every citizen pay at least some share of federal income taxes.

Their arguments – for, against, and around – are all well written and worthy of a careful read, but ... it seems to be that all are missing the point. It’s not a matter of fairness or unfairness; regressive taxation or progressive taxation, taxes or fees; it’s a matter of responsibility - of citizenship, if you will.

IN A MAJOR VICTORY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCATES, New York State has ruled that “outmoded cooling technology at the Indian Point nuclear power plant kills so many Hudson River fish, and consumes and contaminates so much water, that it violates the federal Clean Water Act.”

Its conceivable that the plant could be forced to close. Hey, it’s all right with me if New York wants to turn off its lights, but it’s not OK by me if they’re planning to import electricity from (and export their pollution to) my back yard.

WELL, RACISM DIDN’T WORK; let’s blame Bush again.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, when asked about the Tea Party protests, said in an interview Sunday that the Obama administration is paying more attention to deficit and spending concerns than the Bush administration did.

Only their arrogance exceeds their incompetence.

21ST CENTURY PEASANT: more gloom and doom from the environmental movement.

“Here’s all I’m trying to say: The planet on which our civilization evolved no longer exists,” asserts environmentalist Bill McKibben in his new book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. “The earth that we knew—the only earth we ever knew—is gone.”

[McKibben] thinks that the situation is so dire that centralized solutions will fail and that we’ll have to return to living in villages and farms—to become 21st century peasants.

They’d make much more headway if they were less apocalyptic.

Link from Instapundit.

MODERN PSYCHOLOGY: Dr. Helen Smith on narcissism, power, fear of death, and liberalism in therapy.

I quit seeing a therapist when I realized he was crazier than I was (am – Ed. Be quiet, Daisy.).

“AS PART OF THE PROMOTIONAL EFFORT to get Americans to participate in the Census, the Census Bureau has been handing out various tchotchkes -- coffee mugs, notebooks, insulated lunch bags, fans etc. -- with the department logo on them. The Orange County Register asked the Census Bureau how much they were spending on these items and was told to buzz off.”

We may not know how much the census bureau is wasting on “tchotchkes” but we do have some idea of how much waste there is.

NOTABLE QUOTES: A taxpayer is “someone who works for the Federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.” – Reagan


If only that were still true (Geithner, et.al)

From a Fox Forum opinion piece titled “Guess Who Didn't Pay Taxes On Tax Day.”

THE STIMULUS ARRIVED, HURRAH, HURRAH! ... to the tune of $100M. The company I work for was just recently offered the opportunity to submit an RFQ (Request for Quotation) to support the Ocean Observatories Initiative, funded in part by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 (e.g., TARP follow-on).

For successful proposers, that money could start flowing out of government/NGO coffers as soon as, umm ... fiscal 2011.

A TOUR THROUGH RECESSION AMERICA

As I watch this teeming recession-era energy — thousands leaving squalor in Mexico for the life raft of the U.S., thousands in the middle buying as birthright what a few decades ago would be considered the playthings of the aristocracy, and thousands living in a progressive bubble disconnected from the grime and mess that fuels it — I hope there are still enough around to keep all this going. I say that because a new Microsoft program, a better search engine, another recent arrival from Chiapas, and someone out of work and still at Best Buy simply are not going to get us out of this recession, find the energy to keep the country fueled, and create the money to pay off a soon-to-be $ 20 trillion debt. In short, from this week’s observations, I think our so-called poor need to read a bit more, and our assumed elite to read a bit less.

Read the whole article.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ASKS: How could we be so stupid? “[I]t is inexplicable how sane people could do such insane things.”

But it is perfectly explicable how insane people could do such insane things ....

UNEMPLOYMENT IS DECLINING, hurrah, hurrah!

Except it’s not declining. The trend has been flat to slightly increasing for the last six months.

And from the comments:

I used to agree with the people who said it doesn’t matter who is president at the time – if the economy is good the Prez will take credit and if it’s a downturn the Prez is the fall-guy. But not this time. Not with this guy. Eating dinner last night with 4 other docs who have their own office based practices and are “small business owners” as I am – no one is hiring at all because of fear of Zero’s rules, regulations, and fines. And we all noticed how we used to sometimes have 6-7 pharm reps pass through per day and now you maybe see one or two a week.

Italics mine. I assume the author is a doctor. I’d be interested if he/she is seeing more or fewer patients now than pre-recession.

MORE ENJOYMENT of Tea Party crashers getting their just desserts.

TEA PARTY SIGNS: The Most Outrageous Depictions From Tax Day Protests Across The Country.




And this was among the 30 worst signs throughout the entire country?

ARMY COLONEL REFUSES TO GO TO AFGHANISTAN, claiming that he wants to see President Obama’s birth certificate as proof that Obama is his commander in chief and thus his deployment order is legal.

It’s a sad story in that the “birther” controversy gives more ammunition to the liberals who insist that they must be part-and parcel of the Tea Party movement.

What I find more disturbing than the doctor’s refusal (video here) is the reminder of President Obama’s incredible disdain for the American people. He had the opportunity when campaigning for the presidency to defuse the entire “birther” controversy by simply going home, rummaging through his records, pulling out his personal copy of his birth certificate, and passing it around at the next available press opportunity saying something like “Take a look, photograph it if you wish, but return it to me as I’ll need it to get my D.C. driver’s license.”

And for those of you who say “Huh?” let me ask: how many of you who are say, under 50, don’t have a copy of your – and your children's – birth certificates at home? I do – and mine is a pre-Xerox photostat of the Department of State certificate of live birth for a couple living overseas at the time of birth. Today you damn near have to have a certified copy of your birth certificate to get a job, to get a passport, to get a driver’s license, to enroll in school. Practically speaking, you need to buy a pack of cigarettes, a beer, or go to a night club that serves alcohol.

Obama had a chance to defuse the whole question at the very outset – and he deliberately chose not to.

MORE THOUGHTS from Tax Day 2010. I’m starting to see more automobile bumper stickers. Two that stand out:

Take It Back (referring to passage of the health care reform bill)

1/20/2013: Change You Can Believe In

Also the “Patriot II” flag (which I hadn't seen at previous protests), symbolizing a second American revolution, was much in evidence at the D.C. protest.

HATE CRIME? GOP official and boyfriend savagely beaten for wearing Palin pins.

The media will be all over this ... won’t they?

[ADDED] The incident occurred on April 12th; I’ve held off on posting it for a week to wait for confirming details. As of today, only the “wearing Palin pins” part hasn’t been confirmed. The Hayride has been following the story closely; their latest update is here.

The young woman involved, Ailee Bautsch, a campaign aide for Louisana Gov. Bobby Jindal, now “ has seven screws in her leg and five surgical scars. She didn’t just fall down, she was stomped on.”

ICELAND’S VOLCANIC ASH halts flights across Europe. It’s interesting that Iceland’s volcano eruption has not yet caused a climate change eruption claiming the volcano’s eruption to be a direct – or indirect, for that matter - result of global warming.

WORLD’S FASTEST TOBOGGAN: what happens when the wheels don’t stop when the brakes are applied.

THE BEST POST YET on the Washington D.C. Tax Day protest.

REPORTER CONFRONTS BLACK MAN: “Have you ever felt uncomfortable?” Postell rejected her loaded premise that race must divide Americans: “No, no, these are my people, Americans.”

TEA PARTY CRASHERS: San Francisco (natch!) gets all the fun. Follow the links at the bottom for more hilarity.

BEDTIME



Until tomorrow.

SONGS OF LIBERTY from the D.C. Tax Day rally. Sung by Grammy-winning musician Ray Stevens, the first is "Thank You".



And accompanied by the Tea Partiers, this is our National Anthem.

SOME OBSERVATIONS from the Tax Day Tea Party in Washington, D.C.

The rally officially started about 6:30 pm. When we arrived – around 5 pm – there were perhaps a few thousand present, widely scattered. By 7 pm, the preliminary estimate was 25,000 and people were still arriving. The maximum number I heard, at about 9 pm, was 40,000, which could be, but seems high. My guess would be on the close order of 30,000.

Yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flags were in abundance, and the local street vendors selling them should plan on having to pay much higher taxes this year [at least it'll be on much higher income]. I did notice one journalist (I think) targeting the flag bearers, asking (again, I think; I was never near enough to catch more than snatches of conversation) about their knowledge of flag history. If it was intended to be a “gotcha” moment, it failed.

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey spoke briefly. He had been working the crowd earlier in the evening, and went out of his way to salute the “435 villages are missing their idiots” sign, adding that “not so many years ago, I would have been one of those idiots.”

A group of Ohio coal miners drove directly to the Tea Party to plead their case for more coal and more jobs; they were not put off by the West Virginia mining disaster, saying in effect “we know what we’re getting into.” One miner, a big, burly, no-nonsense fellow had a word of advice for the President: “Americans bow to no one.” Cheers erupted throughout the crowd.

Racism seems to be a big issue on the Left; not so much on the Right. As usual, there weren’t enough minorities at the rally, but the ones who were there seemed perfectly comfortable instead of “fearing for their lives” as one leftist blog commentor thought they should. Corrogan Vaughn, running for soon-to-be-former Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski’s seat, was greeted by hugs and handshakes throughout the crowd. Dianne Borelli, of (the black conservative) Project 21 brought down the crowd when she touched her face with both hands and proclaimed “Mr. Olbermann, this color doesn’t fade!”

Lord Christopher Moncton, England’s leading climage change denialist had a few words of advice for the Tea Partiers: “Don’t dump the tea in Boston Harbor again; it tastes much better coming from a teapot.”

Country music artist Ray Stevens made several appearances throughout the night; his song ‘If 10 Percent is Good Enough for Jesus, it Ought to be Good Enough for Uncle Sam’ brought enthusiastic applause.

With that as a segue into tax reform, Grover Norquist and Neal Boortz announced a truce among the Fair Taxers, Flat Taxers, and anti-taxers for the purpose of getting tax reform on the Congressional agenda. Paraphrasing their announcement, “We’ll haggle over details later.”

“Crash the Tea Parties” was an epic failure. During the time we were at the protest rally itself, there were no incidents. I saw two obvious counterprotestors at the perimeter of the crowd, and the marchers pictured in this post made two quiet circuits of the crowd, then left.

And when we finally left, there was no litter.

TAX DAY Tea Party photos from the Washingon, D.C. protest. Fox News was there, of course. We saw Fox's Carl Cameron on site before the protest began. What's amusing about this photo is that we waited while another husband was taking a picture of his wife in front of the Fox logo. A CNN truck is parked just to the left of the Fox truck, and his wife asked "Don't you want a picture of the CNN truck?" The husband responded, "Nah."



"King" Obama created quite a stir in the crowd. The best part is that the young lady under the mask is ... wait for it ... black.



CO2 is plant food. Not much enthusiasm for "cap and tax."



Lot's of enthusiasm for change.



Still clinging to "God, guns, and Liberty" - with crib notes for liberals.



This one pegged the sarcasm meter.



See? Obama did reduce her taxes ....



This one came close to pegging the sarcasm meter.



Yes, we still have that privilege, and the Tea Partiers take it seriously.



The best sign of the evening - so good that former House Majority Leader Dick Armey mentioned it in his address to the crowd.



MSNBC took quite a beating, not just from the crowd, but the speakers as well (more in another post).



Another reminder that November is coming.



And finally, the counter-protest. They seem a bit math-challenged. The 95% should be more like 9.5% - but what's a factor of 10 among friends? They made two loops around the perimeter. We saw a couple of other counter-protestors, but they stayed at the fringe of the crowd, and were generally silent.