Tuesday, October 05, 2010

NANNY OF THE MONTH. Nannies are alive an well ....

July:



August:



September:



Reason TV is here.
IT’S NOT A POST ON HIGHER EDUCATION, but this statement caught my eye: “One wonders for how much longer parents will be willing to pay to have their children indoctrinated, in the sloppiest possible way, by ill-informed goofballs ....”

Read it all.

Monday, October 04, 2010

HERE’S AN INTERESTING BILL. HR4646: to establish a fee on most transactions (meaning any transaction that uses a payment instrument, including any check, cash, credit card, transfer of stock, bonds, or other financial instrument). Meaning if you buy or sell anything, you pay a fee to the federal government.

Talk about the potential for intrusiveness ....

It won’t pass, of course. Probably won’t even get out of committee. But it does give you some insight into the mind of a liberal Democrat.
NOT A SPOILER AFTER ALL: Rep. Castle says no to write-in bid. More here.
I WISH MY CATS HAD INSURANCE ...


... they need it, and I could use the income.
A NEW BUMPER STICKER

Saturday, October 02, 2010

WATCH THIS SPACE for my report on today's "One Nation" rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

We arrived about the time the "One Nation" rally was to begin. We came down 23rd Street from the Foggy Bottom metro stop to find ANSWER at the entrance distributing flyers.



The next two pictures were taken from the walkway at the base of the steps to the Memorial. Above us, the Memorial and the speakers' stand; below us the crowd and behind them, the reflecting pool. At Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally, the speakers' stand was below the walkway and we were able to go up to the Memorial itself to get photos looking down into the crowd. Not so today - the Memorial Steps were for the speakers and - I suppose - guests.



There was security posted at either side of the steps; one had to leave any signs behind to go up to the lower steps, and there was further separation between those folks and the speakers' platform.



The next three photos are crowd and sign shots taken alongside the reflecting pool as we walked from the Lincoln Memorial toward the WWII Memorial at the other end of the pool.

The crowd appeared to be heavily union. We saw large numbers of union T-shirts: SEIU, CWA, Teamsters, AFL-CIO, NEA, and numerous others. At a guess, 1 in three wore union T-shirts. The racial mix was something on the order of 60% minority; age distribution was older (Vietnam-era hippies were abundant) or younger (mostly college-age activist). There were few families and fewer children.

At least 90% of the signs were preprinted. I didn't get a picture, but one notable one said "End Racist Employment."

Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't the unemployed been mostly white males? [Hey, I'm one.]





No left-leaning rally can ever be without puppets. Here is today's puppet.



Listening to the speakers - both from the podium and in the crowd, there was no common theme to the rally. It was just an agglomeration of the usual Leftist pressure groups, each doing it's own thing. Unions appeared to be mostly concerned about (protecting their) jobs; the civil rights crowd was busy crying 'racism’, and there was a smallish number of immigration protestors calling for open borders. The surprising thing about the immigration protestors was that the largest contingent was Asian “drummers” - the next photo.



The next photo was taken from the Washington Monument looking back toward the Lincoln Memorial. The crowd can be seen lining the reflecting pool on both sides; crowd depth was 50-60 feet on each side; more densely packed near the podium, much less so farther back.



To estimate crowd size, I used Google Earth to get some measurements. The reflecting pool is 2300’ long, and the ralliers took up 50-100 feet on either side. Assuming 1 person for every 10 square feet, which is probably a bit high for average density, there could be no more than 46,000 people around the reflecting pool. The area between the WWII Memorial and the Washington Monument measures roughly 350 feet by 500 feet and - as seen in the photo - the crowd density was much less, say 1 person per 100 square feet. Add another 2,000 to the crowd, maximum.

So figure a high side estimate of 50,000 attendees, which strikes me as about right, since I felt the Restore Honor rally was 6-8 times larger. [Additional bits of evidence -- there were no waiting lines at the port-a-potties; and Metro was not crowed either inbound to Foggy Bottom or outbound from L’Enfant Plaza.]

JWF was wrong on one count; there was plenty of trash left behind, as evidenced by this photo.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION reduced to “hippie punching.” Watch it all.
IF YOU LIKE YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE, you can keep it. Until your employer changes it. Mine just did.

Thanks, Obama.
PRINCIPLES. Once you abandon them, you’re through.

Read it all. Then vote in November.
I LIKE MIKE ROWE: Rowe touts 'Dirty Jobs' in Washington.

Hat tip to Instapundit for bringing the link to my attention and allowing his readers to comment.

A plumber is worth 1000 politicians.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

IF E. J. DIONNE really believes this tripe, he’s even dumber than I give him credit for.

The “how dare you not acknowledge my superiority and inevitable right to control your lives” force is strong on the Left. Which probably explains the Left’s secular nature: they simply can’t imagine a being superior to them.
THANKS TO OBAMACARE: McDonald's may drop health care plan. Um, wasn’t ObamaCare supposed to help low-income workers?
DEMOCRATS ARE space aliens. Keep scrolling through the 9/29 cartoon.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

WHEN YOU HAVE A HAMMER, everything looks like a nail. Come November, the hammer will be mine.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

THE COFFEE PARTY should be renamed the “Sanka Party”: Coffee Party national convention rumored to have occurred over the weekend. Of course they had low attendance; Coffee Partiers can’t attend if they’re not paid (from the public till).

Legal Insurrection published a neat measure of the party’s importance (linked from Instapundit).

To soothe their wounded egos, maybe they could engage in some theraputic drumming.
OBAMACARE: “If you like your medical plan, you can keep it.”

Not.
THE WASHINGTON POST’S Robin Givhan on ugly, er, fashion.
MY COEXIST BUMPER STICKER can beat up your coexist bumper sticker.








I want one.
IT’S OUR MONEY; stop whining and start spending it.