Farsighted too

Color Blind

Would you, ah, like to borrow my handkerchief, Mr. President?

Mandingo Marking His Territory

I saw the Ka-Ching! picture and knew it was comedy gold.  Then I wandered over to Sondrakistan, and she'd already done the alchemy. A commenter's "Mandingo Marking His Territory" finished me off .   Barry does have a clumsy, pig-penish gift for setting himself up for ridicule.  Rookie.

School Proms

It Happened Ona Day

True Love A kerfuffle over a school dance in Ona, WV. “   ONA - Members of the Cabell County Board of Education and some parents disagree about what constitutes provocative dancing, which prompted the ejection of four or five couples from the Cabell Midland High School prom on May 1. Cabell County School Superintendent Bill Smith said the couples were repeatedly told to stop but continued. Smith said some parents complained last year about lewd dancing at the prom. In response, Principal David Tackett developed a dance contract with the help of students, parents, teachers, counselors and administrators. It outlined acceptable dancing and specifically prohibited "grinding" and "dirty dancing." In order to go to the prom, participants had to sign the contract.   "We're not talking about using a ruler and measuring the distance between the dance partners, like they used to," Smith said. "What we're talking about is truly engaging in a sex act with their clothes on." ” I know that our school dances were chaperoned, and I seem to remember a few instances where a couple was warned about having a too embiggening dance floor experience  I remember Father Schaeffer at St. Joe's Texas CYO dances.  He would  come by and see to it that there was a hand width between bodies.  We thought nothing of it.  I know times have changed, but you'd think parents today would welcome this supervision, intended to maintain the same virtues they teach at home.  Did I say this was West Virginia? “ At a board meeting last week, some parents complained that kids were told to stop "grinding." They argued that it is the only way kids know how to dance these days. One parent said she would not have spent money for her child to go to the prom if she had known of the dance restrictions.(!) Parents also said that they wanted to receive a copy of the dance contract sooner and have more input on the prom activities. [Full] ” That's it, no West Virgina marriage jokes.  I've milked this cow.

The FIX

That depends on the definition of 'nothing'

Like Limbaugh said today,  'I guess we know why Obama and Clinton had lunch yesterday, to get their stories straight'  The first thing Bill asked Obama was, "Did you leave any stains on his suit?"  And what a story they concocted: Bill Clinton was "tasked" by Rahm Emanuel to offer Rep. Joe Sestak nothing if he would drop out of the race against Arlo Sphincter. Such a deal.

One wish

Asset Forfeiture

What Gummint Does .. ... that NOBODY wants it to do.

This could be a long list indeed, but I'll show restraint.   From Bob Barr, who I think is a principled, stand-up guy, even if I don't always like what he says and does, I learned this. “ Census workers can enter your apartment in your absence What many Americans don’t realize, is that census workers — from the head of the Bureau and the Secretary of Commerce (its parent agency) down to the lowliest and newest Census employee — are empowered under federal law to actually demand access to any apartment or any other type of home or room that is rented out, in order to count persons in the abode and for “the collection of statistics.”  If the landlord of such apartment or other  leased premises refuses to grant the government worker access to your living quarters, whether you are present or not, the landlord can be fined $500.00. That’s right — not only can citizens be fined if they fail to answer the increasingly intrusive questions asked of them by the federal government under the guise of simply counting the number of people in the country; but a landlord must give them access to your apartment whether you’re there or not, in order to gather whatever “statistics” the law permits. In fact, some census workers apparently are going even further and demanding — and receiving — private cell phone numbers from landlords in order to call tenants and obtain information from them.  Isn’t it great to live in a “free” country? ” Hmmm.  I wonder if that's what's behind Census Takers Targeted in More than 100 Assaults in May?   Bad as that abuse is, it doesn't come close to  Asset Forfeiture: when it come to jack-boot government. The first I heard of asset forfeiture was on a 60-Minutes segment, maybe 20 years ago.  A guy was going to South America, and had no luggage. The feds questioned him before his flight, and discovered he had around $20,000 in cash on him.  They assumed he was going to buy drugs,  and confiscated his money.  Slam-bam, on the spot!  They confiscated the car he drove to the airport as well, if I remember correctly. It turned out he had a legitimate reason for flying to S.A. with that bundle, but too bad.  The courts upheld the seizure.  I long ago asked myself, was putting a few mafiosi in prison worth that loss of our freedom?  Yeah, Asset Forfeiture is the spawn of RICO, which has been the most abused, and politicized law on the books.  Reason has more on this.  It stinks, and needs dismantling.

Tom's House

What if we could be China for just one day?

Boxer's VaJayJay

Tip: Bring a gun and pepper spray

Volunteers

WHEN  YOU THOUGHT IT COULD NOT GET ANY  WORSE Looks SFW to me

“ Rodger:   This  shot Oh come on. You can't see nuthin. shows the serious damage caused to the wildlife  by the recent British Petroluem blowout  ...          I am  volunteering right now to go down to the coast and  help clean the wildlife with my own two  hands.    Hardcrab   ”

Limbo does Obama

Where's the competence, Libs?

My previous post, parsing Peggy Noonan's He Was Supposed to Be Competent, set the theme for this one. Rush Limbaugh's show yeserday had the same theme [transcript]. Shortly before Obama's first press conference in 309 days began , Limbo listed 10 questions he would ask Obama.  “  Do you prefer golf or basketball when avoiding the hard work of being president?   Approximately 70% of the American people approve of Arizona's immigration law and want the border sealed.  What do you do, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Felipe Calderon know about these matters that we don't?  You say that you won't rest until every American has a job and the Gulf oil spill is capped and the area cleaned up.  Well, why are you vacationing in Chicago over the Memorial Day weekend and then returning to Washington for a Paul McCartney concert?  Speaking of Memorial Day, why not commemorate the day at Arlington National Cemetery?  Are you avoiding Arlington due to the fact that you embarrassed yourself there a few years ago when you said, "On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes, and I see many of them in the audience here today,... ?  When you do deliver your Memorial Day remarks, if the word "corpsman" pops up on your teleprompter, how will you pronounce the word, "corpsman" or "corpesman"?  Number six, did you learn to solve big problems by putting your boot on people's necks from Frank Marshall Davis, Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, or Rahm Emanuel? When you said to your staff, "Plug the damn hole," was it your impression that BP had not yet thought of that, and did it take you five weeks to come up with that solution?  What were some of the other ideas you had, if this was your latest and greatest idea, plug the hole?  When it comes to Gulf oil spill, would you say that better late than never is your motto, or is it, why do today what can be done tomorrow? Should the American people be saying "thank you" for the economy and for your response to the Gulf oil spill?  Number ten:  Does the Mexican president ever object to what you tell him to say? ” 11.  Why won't you produce your birth certificate?

Noonan does Obama

He Was Supposed to Be Competent

Despair.com “ What continues to fascinate me is Mr. Obama's standing with Democrats. They don't love him. Half the party voted for Hillary Clinton, and her people have never fully reconciled themselves to him. But he is what they have. They are invested in him. In time—after the 2010 elections go badly—they are going to start to peel off. The political operative James Carville, the most vocal and influential of the president's Gulf critics, signaled to Democrats this week that they can start to peel off. He did it through the passion of his denunciations. Peggy Noonan ”

While I no longer produce adequate insulin to fully appreciate Peggy Noonan's gifted writing style (The disaster in the Gulf may well spell the political end of the president and his administration, and that is no cause for joy), there's good  nutritional eats if I remove some of the meringue. “ The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. ... he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another. In his news conference Thursday, President Obama made his position no better. He attempted to act out passionate engagement through the use of heightened language—"catastrophe," etc.—but repeatedly took refuge in factual minutiae. His staff probably thought this demonstrated his command of even the most obscure facts. Instead it made him seem like someone who won't see the big picture. The unspoken mantra in his head must have been, "I will not be defensive, I will not give them a resentful soundbite." ... liberals and progressives ...  thought Katrina was the result only of George W. Bush's incompetence and conservatives' failure to "believe in government." But Mr. Obama was supposed to be competent. I wonder if the president knows what a disaster this is not only for him but for his political assumptions. ... "Trust us here in Washington, we will prove worthy of your trust." [Full] ”