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Dem Pollster: Yep, We're In Trouble

Although Republicans have a remarkable track record of screwing up elections, Democrat pollster Celinda Lake admits that her party's in a lot of trouble this time around. She's advising Democratics to distance themseves from Obamacare and focus instead upon fixing the problems with the law while emphasizing their support for the little guys. That's exactly the approach Alex Sink took in the recent Florida election, whereas her opponent ran on repealing Obamacare. Sink lost.

Democratics own Obamacare, which has inflicted considerable harm on the "little guys" they claim to support, so claiming that they're the ones to fix it is kind of a stretch. Moreover, some Democratics actually seem to be helping Republicans this time around, as evidenced in the Iowa Senate race in which Democrat Congressman Bruce Braley, running for Senate, shot himself in the foot:

If you help me win this race you may have someone with your background, your experience, your voice, someone who’s been literally fighting tort reform for thirty years, in a visible or public way, on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Or, you might have a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law, serving as the next Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Because, if Democrats lose the majority, Chuck Grassley will be the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Umm...does Bruce realize that many of his Iowa constituents are farmers? Or that Grassley's approval rating in Iowa is +35%? Sure, Bruce was speaking to a bunch of lawyers, but you'd think he'd have known that insults like these are going to come out.

Compare his excerpt above with this ad from an opponent:

Stick A Fork In MSNBC

It was popular for a few years due to its continual ragging on Bush and then its glorification of His O'liness, but now that 59% of voters dislike Barky while 41% approve, they've got nothing. In fact, viewership has dropped by nearly 25% during the prime-time hours in which they peddle most of their ginned-up outrage. And while FNC and even CNN have seen daytime viewership increases, over at MSNBC numbers continue to plummet.

They're fast becoming a visual version of "Air America".

That's not burnt toast you're smelling.

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Those Wacky California Democratics

Seal of the Senate of California 

Not content with the 2/3 supermajority they've held in the California state Senate since 2012, they've given it up.

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- State Senator Leland Yee has been arrested on bribery and public corruption charges in a sting that has led to the arrest of 30 people across the Bay Area.

He was led out in tastefully matching cuffs. Dang, and he was running for Secretary of State and all.

Yee is one of three Democratic state senators facing criminal charges. Ronald S. Calderon, of Montebello, is facing public corruption charges. Roderick Wright of Inglewood was found guilty of eight felony counts of perjury and voter fraud, for lying about where he lived when he ran for the senate office.

Calderon's decided to take a leave of absence, so he still gets his $95,000 a year salary. He's charged with 24 felony counts of taking bribes in exchange for legislative favors. Not that he's giving up much now; he'd already lost his committee assignments, and he term-limits out at the end of the year.

Wright's also taken a paid leave, but somehow managed to avoid expulsion. If these guys were Republicans, they'd be so out of there. But Democratics protect their own, no matter what. Curiously, Wright was convicted of voter fraud, which every Democratic knows never occurs. Imagine that.

 

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Systematic Disarmament

USS Florida launching a Tomahawk cruise missile

His O'liness' latest move is to scrap the Navy's Tomahawk and Hellfire missile programs. The Tomahawks are probably insensitive to the Indians or something, while Hellfire's too much like Christians going after Muzzies.

The proposed elimination of these missile programs came as a shock to lawmakers and military experts, who warned ending cutting these missiles would significantly erode America’s ability to deter enemy forces.

No kidding. But what do you expect from a guy whose sole claims to fame are campaigning and "community organizing"? And what better way to "fundamentally transform America"?

 

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Bureaucracy Creeps On In Portland

The Debt Collector 

City of Portland bureaucrat Kelly Ball says that residents who didn't pay the City's "arts tax" last year can still pay up by April 15 of this year and avoid any penalty. If they don't, they'll add another $35 to the $35 head tax and will hire an outside collection agency to track them down.

Apart from the fact that the constitutionality of the head tax is still being decided in the state courts, the fact of the matter is that the threat itself appears more or less toothless:

A banking professional called that plan "totally impractical," but declined to be identified because she did not know the specifics of the city's plans.

The banking professional said it would be unheard of for any organization to hire a debt collector to track down an unpaid bill of $35 or $70, given the time and resources it takes to contact each individual debtor.

Even if the city hires a debt collector, it's unclear what would happen if taxpayers simply ignored them, too.

The debt collector may report the debt to credit bureaus, but the impact of an unpaid $70 bill on your credit history remains questionable.

What likely irks a lot of people is that the ballot measure was presented as (as always in Porkland) being For The Children™, when in fact 50% of the money raised goes to organizations with large endowments, such as the opera and the symphony. Moreover, after passage, the City Council that pushed the measure found that some parts of the tax "law" were unenforceable; they can't take money from people on federal retirement benefits or SSDI, for example, so they ended up "tweaking" it several times after the fact.

The result is that their new "arts tax" bears little resemblance to what voters believed that they were approving at the time.

Snohomish County Tries A Different Approach

While the search for bodies buried in the massive mudslide continues, the County's director of Emergency Management is blaming the victims:

"This entire year we have pushed message after message that there's a high risk of landslides," said John Pennington, director of Snohomish County Emergency Management. "The dangers and the risks are known."

Um...hey, John - most of the people living across the river had no idea that a massive slide would cross the river and bury their homes, and the folks driving on the highway likely never expected it either. If you knew that something like this was likely, or even possible, then why didn't you and your crack team of professionals shut down the highway? Certainly, the last slide didn't make it all the way to the river, let alone cross through it and demolish homes a couple of blocks inland.

Slides happen fairly often here in the Pacific Northwest; they just generally don't occur on anything close to this scale, or with this level of destruction. Rescuers assumed that people in cars and trucks would be okay, and that once they reached the vehicles they could simply pull the victims out. But the reality is far different: many of the vehicles they've encountered have been crushed to the size of a large garbage can.

It's a bit much to claim that everyone knew the risks for such an event.

 

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You Feel Safer Already

In recent years, a hot new trend in justice has emerged: the "specialty court". There are now "drug courts", "homeless courts", veterans courts, prostitution courts, teen courts, mental health courts, gambling courts, domestic violence courts, and more - in addition to the usual criminal and civil courts. Apparently, equality under the law is an outdated concept now.

Oh, the intentions are quite good, but there are a few issues that might seem noticeable to us outsiders, who goes into which court seems to be more a matter of whimsy than hard-and-fast rules, for example. One wonders if the addition of so-called "hate crimes" into the system didn't actually open the door to increasingly discriminatory (and therefore unjust) administration of justice. Good intentions all around, to be sure - but inequality in the administration of justice.

By way of illustration, if you're walking down the street and a pavement ape smacks you in the head with a skateboard (as has happened at least twice in downtown Portland in the past year), does it matter to you if the person who committed the assault is homeless, on drugs, has mental health issues, or just plain didn't like the color of your skin? For most people, the answer would likely be "no" - and that's an entirely reasonable view. 

Should your assailant receive "outreach", in the form of treatment and individual attention while retaining his freedom at a time when you and your insurer are paying for treatment of the injuries he inflicted upon you? Or should he be in the criminal court? Differential justice amounts to injustice, and recent trends deserve hard scrutiny.

For You Non-Econ Majors, This Is NOT Good

Video Poker

The USA is now spending 26% of tax dollars on interest payments. They're not significantly impacting the principal balance, yet they keep borrowing more and essentially throwing it away on things like windmills, solar panels, and Obamaphones.

Our government bears an uncanny resemblance to a video poker addict who drains his bank account and maxes out his credit cards in order to keep playing. And at this rate, it won't be long before one-third of all tax revenue will be devoted to interest payments. And as for Medicare and Social Security? It's to laugh: Democratics have already started gutting Medicare and Medicaid because Obamacare. If you're a kid, it's pretty safe to say that So-So Security's not going to be there for you - or if some of it is, the eligibility for claims will be raised into the early nineties.

Live long but don't prosper, because they'll tax it out from under you.

Oh, and on a side note for kids: advertisers for upscale products are targeting the "young urban male" demographic, these days - referred to in the lingo as "Yummies". Embarassed much?

EPA Seeks Jurisdiction Over Puddles And Ditches

Wetlands at the Hillsboro Landfill (Photo credit: born1945)

Despite Supreme Court rulings in 2001 and 2006 (the latter stating that federal authority over "waters of the U.S." is limited to relatively permanent or large or continuously flowing, the EPA yesterday went for another overreach; proposing that it "regulate" temporary wetlands as well.

The EPA proposal would apply pollution regulations to the country's so-called "intermittent and ephemeral streams and wetlands" -- which are created during wet seasons, or simply after it rains, but are temporary.

They simply refuse to accept that SCOTUS has clearly delineated limits to the Agency's power; the Judicial branch is obviously viewed as merely an irritant to be overcome. Under this proposal, EPA can claim regulatory jurisdiction over puddles in your yard and rainwater in a ditch, yet they advance the Orwellian claim that it doesn't "really" add to the scope of their reach:

"To be clear, our proposal does not add to or expand the scope of the waters historically protected under the Clean Water Act," EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a video accompanying the announcement.

Gina'll pee on your foot and tell you it's raining.

Professional agitators and litigators will also enjoy this power grab, as it'll make it easier for them to sue private landowners. All those years of the revolving door between Sierra Club and others into and out of EPA are finally paying off.

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Left Behind

Barack Obama's signature on the health insurance reform bill at the White House, March 23, 2010. 

Latinos are staying away from Obamacare in droves, and that has His O'liness really upset. So he's back to doing the only thing he really knows how to do: he's campaigning.

“You don’t punish me by not signing up for health care,” Obama told Hispanic audiences during a recent televised town hall. “You’re punishing yourself or your family.”

Like a candidate hunting for votes in the closing days of a campaign, Obama was back on Hispanic airwaves Monday as Univision Radio broadcast his latest pitch.

“The problem is if you get in an accident, if you get sick, or somebody in your family gets sick, you could end up being bankrupt,” the president said.

Well, why in the world would they not be signing right up for Obamacare? Oh, right - it's the same reason why Holder's DoJ and Democratics in general fight voter ID, despite the fact that 78% of  Americans favor it:

Fear that applying for health care will bring unwelcome scrutiny from immigration authorities. The health insurance exchanges are only for citizens and legal U.S. residents, but many Hispanic families have mixed immigration status. Some members may be native born, while others might be here illegally.

"Might be"? Why, who'd ever have thought it?