After my first explosive reaction, I started to rant to Hazel.  While I was ranting I realized something: the same Constitution that allows these sycophantic idiots to do what they have done is the same one that I do NOT wish to have an amendment attached to forbidding burning or desecration of the Flag.

Freedom of speech.

The single most powerful and important right enumerated by the Bill of Rights.

That these idiots can actually not see the irony involved in plastering 44′s name and picture on the symbol of our country, the same flag that has been burned and pissed on by protesters who are strangely allowed to continue breathing because the United States doesn’t shoot protesters, is not lost on ME, however.  These sub-literate mouth breathers seem to think that the United States hasn’t done anything for them.  They don’t understand that just by being here, they are given a chance that no other subject or citizen of any other country is given.  They have given over their sense to a cult of personality led by an empty suit.  They have false expectations that will not be met, sad little Liberal agendas that will not unfold according to plan, and oddly enough, no idea that the rest of world ISN’T suddenly going to love us all and put down arms.  But they have the right to be that stupid.

As for agendas, mine has become simplified greatly: protect my family from the vandals-including the ones that run our school systems who are trying to brainwash our kids, call these people out publicly on their idiocy at every opportunity, make sure I only give my dollars to politicians or companies who have the same sensibilities I do, and to await the day when the first crack in the ice appears.

They are already putting 44′s face on our flag; how much longer until they put it on giant banners hanging from government buildings?  And when they start, I’m pretty sure us bitter clingers will have something to say about it.

Meanwhile, if anyone can figure out who printed those flags, please let me know so we can hold THEM up ridicule.

TAMPA – Hillsborough County soon will begin enforcing its strict ordinances governing adult businesses now that a federal appeals court has ruled the restrictions are constitutional.

…

“But we will make sure that these businesses comply with the law,” she said.

The ruling from the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals means that dancers at bikini bars will have to stay 6 feet away from patrons, and the sale or consumption of alcohol will be prohibited at adult businesses.

Additionally, adult video stores would be prohibited from having private viewing booths and workers would have to pass a criminal background check before they are hired.

When I lived in Atlanta, you could go to a nudie bar and have your 14th shot of tequila served to you by a butt naked chick grasping the glass in a way that would, from first appearance, be viewed as anatomically impossible. Now, if you wished to keep your nose centered between your eyes and mouth, you didn’t want to grope the girls but they’d touch you, that’s for sure.

In a free society, what I wish to pay for is my business. If I want to go watch some lady take off her knickers while consuming absinthe with a handful of Flintstone vitamins and having taco sauce poured over my freshly shorn genitalia for $25.95, that’s my business. No one else’s. Period. It doesn’t matter how ‘icky’ you find it, how morally degrading it seems to you, it’s none of your business.

But that’s the problem we have in our society, and both sides, left and right are to blame. When the left sees someone not caring enough, they give the government more power to take away things and redistribute. When the right sees someone parking their trailer in the wrong side of the gas station, the impose “community protections”. And both have the audacity to bitch when the other side does the same thing.

Look, we can’t live in anarchy. I’m not a full blown Libertarian because they don’t have enough of a plan to keep society from tearing its own throat out. The non-aggression principle works fantastic when everyone is non-aggressive. I can even understand the idea of zoning for businesses and residential areas. But that’s about it, folks. Once you say “You can run business of type X here”, that’s where the line is drawn.

Of course, that would take control away from the elite, and they’re not real keen on giving it up.

Now, the constitution doesn’t allow mini-tyrants local governments to prevent people from running nudie bars. So what to the tyrants legislators do when they can’t directly attack the constitution? They impose “regulations”

Imposing tight regulations is one way jurisdictions can attempt to control adult businesses after courts ruled cities or counties can’t pass such restrictive zoning requirements that leave no place for the businesses to operate. The regulations don’t outlaw the businesses, just stringently regulate them.

You see, you can still run a tittie-joint but the girls must wear county approved pasties, dance no more than 78″ away and not less than 72″ from the patrons, only operate between 3AM and 4AM, cannot serve any alcohol, and must employ only blind nuns who have never been in a car with anyone who’s ever had a speeding ticket. As long as you follow the near-impossible set of regulations, you can run your business as you see fit.

Reminds me a lot of “common sense gun regulations”.

Here’s another little factoid – I don’t particularly care for strip joints. Never have. For one, I am a very, very cheap bastard and paying $10 for a watered down coke just so some strung out bint can shake her plastic tits in my face isn’t what I’ve ever considered economical. For much less I could always get some girl drunk enough to take home which not only cost less, it generally ended up being much, much more enjoyable than just watching. Generally. And I know it’s cheesy, but the prude in me always felt sorry for the dancers even though most of them did not want nor need my pity.

But that’s me. If you like it, who am I to tell you no? And that’s what pisses me off so much. If you value freedom, then that means letting other people do things you would never consider. I’m not into the whole gay thing. Not my bag of tea. But I’ll be damned before I let some jack-ass politician tell me who (or what) I can and cannot have relations with.

Each time you allow your representatives to tack on more and more “regulations”, you limit your freedom more and more. Each time you vote to increase the power of the government, even when you think that particular increase is beneficial, it will never go away and always be added on to, generally by people who you didn’t want to have that power in the first place. Don’t like the way Bush uses his authority? YOU gave it to him. Maybe not directly, but by constantly assuming it’s the government’s responsibility to do X, you grant them more and more power.

This isn’t how free men and women live, this is how slaves are created.

So far today, I have heard and read both sides of the aisle carooming off the walls about Gov. Palin. I knew about her before today, but got a huge flood of info starting at about 9:30 a.m. She is a mom of five. Her eldest just enlisted. She hunts moose. Didn’t she get some cop fired because he divorced her sister? Her hubby is a oil guy/fisherman. She is a hockey mom. She kicked the ass of the Republican incumbent to win her governorship. She is a reform candidate, and we all know how twitchy they can be. She cut property taxes, but increased the oil dividend payments to the citizens of Alaska. She is suing the Federal Government over the polar bears on the Endangered Species List thing since polar bear populations are the highest in decades and it doesn’t make sense and set bad precedent. She stopped the infamous “bridge to nowhere.” She sold the State jet on ebay for a profit because she didn’t think her state needed something like that. She doesn’t have enough experience. If she is such a reformer, how come Ted Stevens just won his primary? She went back to work three days after having her fifth baby. Who has Down’s Syndrome. Who needs her at home.

Excuse me?

Let’s compare resumes here, Sparky. She has two terms on her city council, two terms as Mayor, and has a ninety percent approval rating in her state where she has been the chief executive for two years. (Um, that makes ten years of executive experience, then throw in her city council job on top of that. What has BHO got again? As a chief executive?) A job she took from the incumbent of her own party because she wanted to stop her state sucking of the teat of the federal government, get rid of the ethics violations ruining her state, and actually put the resources of Alaska to work for her country and her state. As for Stevens, well, he did just get indicted, yes?

The rest of the list up there is pretty much open book to anyone who wants to look into it. But here is the part that makes me freaking boil.

Someone actually had the gall to say she needed to be home with her baby instead of running for office. John Roberts of CNN called it to question in a national forum but I have been hearing it on the radio all day. (Of course, Roberts also called into question her experience, and promptly stuck his foot in his mouth, so maybe he is just in the tank for someone else and desperately striving for relevance.)

The Left, capital “L”, (and can tell you much I HATE having to group the democrats, the environuts, the commies, socialists, and progressives, the feminists, and the gottdammed ufologists into a single label) has been telling us for decades that a woman can do anything, go anywhere, be everything to all and still be a woman. As long as she happens to be a liberal and conform to their agenda. It must be some kind of special hell to them to see a successful woman who isn’t. For decades, THEY have said that women shouldn’t have to stay home and take care of the babies if they don’t want to. Hire a nanny. Force your office to provide day care. Hell, you don’t even need to have a husband to have a baby, but it shouldn’t keep you from pursuing your own dreams or career. Paraphrasing something I heard recently: you shouldn’t be punished with a baby. So instead of standing up and saying “Wow, Sister. You sure are strong to have five kids and a career”, I have heard all day about how she shouldn’t have continued her career since her fifth baby was born with DS. I have heard women, WOMEN, saying that she should have aborted the baby when she found out it was going to be born with Down’s but since she didn’t, she should have had the grace to step out of public life to take care of it full time. I have heard folks today saying that there is no way she should even consider public life with a child that young, even if the boy didn’t have Down’s. These were all folks from Left saying this. The same ones who wouldn’t recognize hypocrisy if it French Kissed their grandmother.

The Left are the same ones who said Clarence Thomas and Gen. Powell were sell-outs to their race.

The Left are the same ones who ran New Orleans and Louisiana for generations and did nothing but beg for help after Katrina when their HARDER hit neighbors in Mississippi were taking care of themselves, while at the same time William Jefferson, D-LA, had National Guard troops haul his ass out to his house to collect $90,000 in cash that he still hasn’t explained.

The Left are the same ones who scream for alt energy but won’t let transmission lines go up.

The Left are the same ones who voted for the war before they voted against it.

You idiots on the Left are so wrapped up in the idea of power for it’s own sake, so that you can enforce your own twisted will on the rest of the populace, that you can’t even see you are using the same argument against Gov. Palin that you would have burned flags, bras, and effigies about forty years ago.

Gov. Palin seems to be a great choice for VP. It may come out at some point later that she has been eating the losing Iditarod teams; but for now, everything I have seen and heard and read had been positive. Her speech this afternoon had the ring of honesty and optimism that never comes out of BHO or Biden. It is beneath contempt that anyone could honestly question her choice to be “a heartbeat away” because she has a kid with Down’s Syndrome. Or that she doesn’t have enough experience. Or even that she is “too pretty to deal with the Middle East.” Beneath contempt, the hight of hypocrisy, and dammit, plain outright lies. Of course, I guess we can expect that from anyone who can say with a straight face that this country will be off of oil completely in ten years.

Let’s see where the bus takes us today…

In San Diego:

Helicopters kept searching for signs of the shark that killed triathlete David Martin, Solana Beach Lifeguard Capt. Craig Miller said.

Er, why? To arrest it for unlawful biting? Misdemeanor leg chompery? Ridiculous waste of time, money and resources.

In Tunisia:

A Tunisian family alleges their daughter was raped during a telephone conversation with a man, a lawyer for the family said.

The 30-year-old man said he never touched the young woman. But he acknowledged he heard her scream while they were “totally into” an erotic telephone conversation — and that she reported bleeding, Al Arabiya reported.

*blink* Who is falling for this, seriously? If this ends anywhere other than with that chick in a mental institution, we need to reconsider Tunisia’s “country” status.

In North Carolina:

More than 9,000 North Carolina license plates have been recalled because they begin with “XXX” — a common symbol for sexually explicit material.

Marge Howell, communications officer for the Department of Motor Vehicles, said DMV Commissioner William C. Gore Jr. made the call Thursday morning after receiving complaints from people who found the letters offensive.

Note to people offended by letters on a license plate: Get. Over. It. If this is the most upsetting thing you’ve seen today then you and I need to Have A Talk.

In Virginia:

City school administrators want to loosen academic requirements for ninth-grade athletes to keep them engaged in school and out of trouble.

They worry that freshmen banned from sports might turn to neighborhood gangs or other negative influences.

Last school year, three of every 10 rising ninth-graders in Norfolk – or 715 students – did not have the minimum 2.0 grade-point average required to play sports, according to division records.

Yes, that sends a positive message doesn’t it? Failing in school? No problem, we’ll lower our standards! You’re basically telling those kids that they’re too stupid to make it, so here’s a handout. You’re doing it WRONG.

And finally, from our state, Florida, a state that so often does it so very wrong that they rate their own Fark tag, someone doing it right for a change:

Osceola county school board member Jay Wheeler isn’t making any apology for his email I told the truth! Wheeler said. We asked, “Did you at all think that might be insulting to some? Wheeler replied, “I thought it might be a wake up call and I think it’s something people want to say but were afraid too.’

A little more than a week ago, the Osceola County School District decided to implement school uniforms. Since then, he says parents have complained saying they can’t afford the new clothing. He disagreed with parents and fired off an email to them saying:

“Everyone can afford Wal-Mart and if they cant they need to think about turning of their cable TV or stop buying alcohol or cigarettes and spend their money on their children.”

Oh no he di’int. Oh yes he did, and that makes him our Hero of the Day.

I don’t know the date of writing, so adjust any time references to whatever makes you comfortable. I also don’t know if the links are going to work. Also unknown is the original author. So much for my air of infallibility.

Let’s say any formatting errors were part of the original email.

Part 1

Remember the election in 2006? Thought you might like to read the following:

A little over one year ago:

1. Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high;
2. Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon;
3. The unemployment rate was 4.5%.

Since voting in a Democratic Congress in 2006 we have seen:

1. Consumer confidence plummet;
2. The cost of regular gasoline soar to over $3.50 a gallon;
3. Unemployment is up to 5% (a 10% increase); [Mycroft sez: But only 0.5% actual difference. I dislike scare statistics.]
4. American households have seen $2.3 trillion in equity value evaporate (stock and mutual fund losses);
5. Americans have seen their home equity drop by $1.2 trillion dollars;
6. 1% of American homes are in foreclosure.

America voted for change in 2006, and we got it!

Remember, it’s Congress that makes law not the President.

He has to work with what’s handed to him.

Quote of the Day……..’My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you’ll join with me as we try to change it.’ — Barack Obama

Part 2

Taxes…Whether Democrat or a Republican you will find these statistics enlightening and amazing.

www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html

Taxes under Clinton Taxes under Bush 2008

• Single making 30K – tax $8,400 Single making 30K – tax $4,500
• Single making 50K – tax $14,000 Single making 50K – tax $12,500
• Single making 75K – tax $23,250 Single making 75K – tax $18,750
• Married making 60K – tax $16,800 Married making 60K- tax $9,000
• Married making 75K – tax $21,000 Married making 75K – tax $18,750
• Married making 125K – tax $38,750 Married making 125K – tax $31,250

Both democratic candidates will return to the higher tax rates It is amazing how many people that fall into the categories above think Bush is screwing them and Bill Clinton was the greatest President ever. If Obama or Hillary are elected, they both say they will repeal the Bush tax cuts and a good portion of the people that fall into the categories above can’t wait for it to happen. This is like the movie, The Sting with Paul Newman; you scam somebody out of some money and they don’t even know what happened.

PART 3:

You think the war in Iraq is costing us too much? Read this:

Boy, am I confused. I have been hammered with the propaganda that it is the Iraq war and the war on terror that is bankrupting us. I now find that to be RIDICULOUS; I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them.

I have included the URL’s for verification of all the following facts.

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments. Verify at: http://tinyurl.com/zob77
2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens. Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens. Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English! Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html
5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies. Verify at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens. Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens. Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers. Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html
9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens. Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US. Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html
11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border; also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border. Verify at: Homeland Security Report: http://tinyurl.com/t9sht
12. The National Policy Institute estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.’ Verify at: http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf
13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin. Verify at: http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm
14. ‘The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States.’ Verify at: http://www.drdsk.com/articles.html

The total cost is a whopping $338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. Are we THAT stupid? If this doesn’t bother you then just delete the message.

[Mycroft sez: This would be a little stronger if the annual cost of the war were included.]

If, on the other hand, it does raise the hair on the back of your neck, I hope you forward it to every legal resident in the country including every representative in Washington, D.C. – five times a week for as long as it takes to restore some semblance of intelligence in our policies and enforcement thereof.

“If someone broke into your house, would you rather have the police be able to park in front of your house or have to park three blocks away and walk there?”

The attorney was rightly outraged that the officer was incapable of understanding the difference between responding to an emergency, and responding to hunger, and filed several complaints against the officer.

sigh…

Officers want our respect for the often dangerous job they do, but if they are unwilling to give us the same respect in return, all they will get is a grand public sneer. Here’s hoping that the Portland Department understands the problem and lets the officer enjoy his $450 in fines so as to remind the other officers to be respectful, and to win back a little public respect.

From an article about the new cover of Time Magazine, where a tree is used to replace the flag that Marines are raising on Iwo Jima in order to hype on more about “Global Warmening”, we get this quote from the Managing Editor of Time:

“I think since I’ve been back at the magazine, I have felt that one of the things that’s needed in journalism is that you have to have a point of view about things,” Stengel said. “You can’t always just say ‘on the one hand, on the other’ and you decide. People trust us to make decisions. We’re experts in what we do. So I thought, you know what, if we really feel strongly about something let’s just say so.”

People trust you?! Not according to most of the recent polls I’ve seen. As a matter of fact, most people don’t trust you to take out the trash, much less make wise or intelligent decisions about our country or our world.

Experts in what you do?! I guess so, although I did not know that spinning excrement was something you could be rated an expert in.

Seriously, stop thinking you are that relavant, and stick with either reporting facts, or spouting editorials. But please, stop dressing up your opinions as facts and then trying to tell the rest of us you are the wise decision makers.

Makes me glad that the only time I ever pick up a copy of Time is right before I see the Doctor.

Anyway. What really torques me about whoring Governors and diddling Judges is this sense of entitlement they seem to have. That the laws they purport to advocate mean exactly nothing when applied to them. Hypocrisy is nothing new from our elected officials, yet here we go, tolerating it again. What exactly would have happened had Spitzer refused to resign? Would the Federal Bee Eye have kicked in the door of the Governor’s mansion one night and hauled him away in handcuffs, boxer shorts drooping, fat tears sliding down his oh-so-sincere face? As if. What happened to “all men are created equal”? Oh, except when they’re party favorites?

Once again…and slower…we here in the United States do not have LEADERS. We have REPRESENTATIVES. And they should be held to exactly the same standards, and face exactly the same consequences for breaking the law, as the rest of us.

The Vatican has extended its list of mortal sins to include 21st century issues such as genetic experimentation, pollution, social injustice, drug abuse and excessive wealth.

“Sky News” is like Hungarian for “The Onion,” right?  RIGHT??

A Colorado Springs lawmaker referred Wednesday to unmarried, pregnant teenagers and the fathers as “sluts” who should be made to feel ashamed for their lack of morals.

Rep. Larry Liston’s remarks were made during a discussion with health care professionals at a Republican legislative caucus lunch about Colorado’s high teen pregnancy rate.

No, teens should not be having sex. They doubly shouldn’t be having unprotected sex. But they do have rampaging hormones, something of which the undoubtedly ossified Mr. Liston has only the dimmest memory. It is up to their parents to teach them the consequences of a lack of control, and to watch them like hawks to prevent windows of opportunity.

The trouble is most parents aren’t strong enough to put the fear of parental wrath into their children. Just knowing that I will extract something vital (with a spoon!) will serve to remind my children to use their damned brains in hormonally-driven situations. But many parents are either incapable of that level of attention-getting, or simply trust in the ephemeral threat of an Almighty-based smiting, oh, 70 or 80 years down the road. People, that is no kind of threat a teenager is going to take seriously.

Back to Mr. Liston:

“In my parents’ day and age, (unmarried teen parents) were sent away, they were shunned, they were called what they are,” Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Larry Liston said during the meeting in Denver. “There was at least a sense of shame.”

Would you like to know, Mr. Liston, where that sense of shame came from? The Church. Religion. The local preacher. This is the same sense of shame that prompts girls to keep the pregnancy secret and eventually abandon the newborn in a dumpster or bathroom. So, if anyone has anything to answer for, it is you holier-than-thou bastards who A) set up these horrible situations, then B) censure everyone but yourselves when they come to pass.

You want to know how to fix the problem of teen pregnancy?

#1 – Parent your children. Don’t leave the task to their school, their babysitter, their friends, or the pedophile in the nearest pulpit.

#2 – Remove the stigma you have painted on teen pregnancy. There are quite enough eager adopters out there that every single child accidentally brought into this world can have a happy childhood instead of a cold death.

#3 – And I suggest this even though I know there’s no way in hell you’ll do it…get OVER your problem with abortion. I realize funding is always a serious issue, what with Church A needing a new roof, and Church B losing constituents to Church C, but we are not your personal golden geese, bred for numbers and kept wing-clipped by evangelism. You can keep trying to sell that “birth control and abortion are forbidden” bill of goods, but we all know it’s just a cheap method of gaining new recruits. There are 6 billion people on this planet. You want more converts? Get your butts out there and get them the hard way…convince them you have something meaninful to offer.

Good luck with that, by the way.