BREAKING: Barack Obama to Seek Re-Election

President Barack Obama formally announced today that he would be seeking re-election in November. Thus ends months, even years of speculation as to his intentions. He kicked off his official campaign in the battleground states of Ohio and Virginia, on the trail to visit all 57 of our great states.

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Found on Facebook today

Victims of Communism Day

Today is May 1st, and instead of “Occupying” something and whining that I don’t have a Porsche and free birth control and a pony, while attending a swank Ivy League school, or some other loathsome pursuit, I chose to read today’s Volokh Conspiracy.  Since 2007, they have been commemorating the victims of brutal Communist regimes worldwide, not just in Russia or China. Ilya Somin wrote, in 2007:

The authoritative Black Book of Communism estimates the total at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined. We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day. It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny. And May Day is the most fitting day to do so.

And so I remember, hoping the fools “protesting”about everything they want but don’t have, using hollow communist slogans to feel smarter than everyone else under the guise of “fairness”, will someday soon get a clue.

Finance Wizards in the Senate Vote to Throw $11B to Post Office

The whiz-bang financial analysts of the United States Senate approved a measure that would give the Postal Service $11B (that’s Billion with a “B”), freeze most facilities closings that were planned to reduce costs, along with implementation of 5-day delivery. For the first time ever, I have to side with the Postmaster General on this issue:

“It is totally inappropriate in these economic times to keep unneeded facilities open. There is simply not enough mail in our system today,” the Postal Service’s board of governors said in a statement. “It is also inappropriate to delay the implementation of five-day delivery.”

This is coming from the guy who’s captain of the sinking ship, and throwing a life-preserver isn’t going to help this vessel - plugging holes and bailing is a better course. In fact, the Senate bill explicitly prohibits the USPS from making most of its cost-cutting measures for YEARS to come:

The Senate bill would halt the immediate closing of up to 252 mail-processing centers and 3,700 post offices, part of a postal cost-cutting plan to save some $6.5 billion a year. Donahoe previously said he would begin making cuts after May 15 if Congress didn’t act, warning that the agency could run out of money this fall.

The measure would save about half the mail processing centers the Postal Service wants to close, from 252 to 125, allowing more areas to maintain overnight first-class mail delivery for at least three more years. It also would bar any shutdowns before the November elections, protect rural post offices for at least a year, give affected communities new avenues to appeal closing decisions and forbid cuts to Saturday delivery for two years.

Got that?  The Senate wants to spend $11B this year to prevent the USPS from saving at least $6.5B every year, and start paring down its operation.  Since the Post Office is a creation of the Legislature, they require its authority to do anything, even save money.  Where the hell does this $11B come from, anyway?  The USPS reminds us on its website that

The Postal Service receives NO tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. We are required by law to cover our costs.

Unless Congress says so. I smell election-year hijinks and 500,000 solid Democratic votes.  There are a nice bunch of Postal employees in swing states  according to workforce size by state listings. California, New York, and Texas are the states with the largest postal workforce, but filling in behind is : #4 Florida: 32,000, #6 Pennsylvania 27,600, #7 Ohio: 22,300, : #10 North Carolina 15,200 ,and  #12: Virginia 15,300. Interesting. It remains to be seen what the House of Representatives does with this next.

Isaraeli Independence Day

A thank you to friends of Israel from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Let us pray that Mitt Romney’s administration will prove to be a better ally to Israel than we are today – it should not be difficult to beat that standard.

Women are Bitches – to Each Other

Democratic Adviser Hillary Rosen opened the angry-mommy floodgates this week by arguing that Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life”, so she should not opine on economic matters.  She could have said that the Romneys have never dealt with financial hardship, so they cannot relate to Americans that are in dire financial straits, and that would have been a factual observation. But instead, she said what many liberals (to include liberal women) believe: that choosing to stay home and raise your children is an under-utilization of your skills and intelligence, and a cop-out to accepting real-world responsibility.  This was just another slap at traditional American family life, delivered by a person very close to the White House.  Ms. Rosen dug herself deeper when she “apologized” for coming off badly, but she kind of flubbed that, and I think she said exactly what she wanted to say.  Now the Democrats are running for cover to distance themselves.  But the message was delivered.  And received.

Ann Romney never had to get a job and just stayed home with her kids = Bad!

Sarah Palin was governor of a state and ran as Vice President and did not stay at home with her kids = Bad! Very, very bad!

Hillary Clinton famously commented that “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life” = You go, girl!

Today’s feminism is not about supporting women in their almost limitless choices in this day and age, or about ensuring equal opportunities for women, or supporting women’s rights worldwide (cue the crickets on the liberal response to women’s rights worldwide).  Today’s feminism is about women applying a different set of standards to other women, depending on which side of the aisle they sit on.  And the bottom line to all of this unprincipled posing, posturing, and judging is abortion.  It seems that the unfettered right to abortion is the modern woman’s Holy Grail, and it must not be threatened in any way.  Are we seriously so “evolved” that this is the single most important issue in our lives? What does that say about us as women, if the most important issue in our lives is the ability to end one?

We do not have to agree with each others’ choices, but we must respect and support them.  To be used by politicians to apply a double standard to different women makes Ms. Rosen and her ilk unprincipled whores, plain and simple.  And I respect their decision to be whores - tools of men in power, but I certainly do not agree with their choice. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must get out of my bubble bath, stop eating my bon-bons, and get to library duty at my kids’ elementary school.

International Women’s Day – I Didn’t Get My Cards Sent Out Again

Today is International Women’s Day, and I’ve missed the boat on sending out my “girl power” cards to all the ladies. Yay, women!  Shouldn’t every day be women’s day? Why are we making a stand on ONE day?  I have been a woman for my whole life, and I had never heard of this holiday until I saw today’s Google doodle. In today’s America, women hold enviable social position and standing compared to most of the world, yet more than anywhere else, we save our womanhood as a card to be played on any and all occasions.  Many of our female elected officials and role models hold double standards toward women, depending on which end of the political spectrum someone resides.  Many of them turn a blind eye to true injustices against women in other less “enlightened” countries, because it is more important to support a narrative than to fight for actual rights, justice, and humanity.  My suggestion for this “holiday” is to take a moment to consider how lucky you are, and re-commit to being a better woman, which usually just means being a better person.  We could all start with being nicer to, you know, OTHER WOMEN. The Washington Post has suggested ten other ways you can celebrate:

1. Take the day off – it is an official holiday in Armenia, Burkina Faso (huh?), Mongolia and Kazakhstan; in China, only women get the day off. They are soooo socially advanced there, even though they abort like a million female babies a year. You go, girls!

2. Give flowers to women. Oh, kind of like Valentine’s Day. This is not a stereotypical gift or anything.  Right on, ladies! Will the husbands and boyfriends get in trouble for forgetting?

3. Donate money to women’s causes.  Specifically, they suggest microloan programs that go to lesser developed countries.  I actually like this one, because it is real help for real women in need.

4. Protest.  Goody!  Today you should protest “for political freedom, equal pay and working rights, among other causes”.  Go Occupy something, girl!

5. Wear red lipstick.  “how effective this would be as an awareness-raiser for the cause of International Women’s Day (and about the agency’s plan to team up with a cosmetics brand) but women who want to celebrate femininity”.  Brought to you by a cosmetics company, how interesting.  Whooo -hoooo girls!

6. Stand on a Bridge.  This “started with Rwandan and Congolese women, who met on a bridge joining their two countries as a demonstration that women could build bridges of peace”.

7. Check out some art.  Oh, art by women, of course.  Perhaps take in a showing of the Vagina Monologues or something.

8. Eat a cupcake. Done and done! Some of the more sensitive ladies are not happy with this celebration idea, because cupcakes aren’t taken very seriously in the baked goods world; too girly.  Oy. You can’t even eat a damned cupcake without somebody grousing.  But flowers and lipstick is ok?

9. Defeat sexual harassment.  Right on.  But women have a hand in defeating it, too, by not suing their employers and co-workers for ANYTHING they feel distasteful.  Stop playing the girl card and toughen up a bit.  Working with repellant, distasteful asses is not the same as suffering sexual harassment.  It is the real world. Seriously. We are ruining the cases of women with legitimate charges.

10. Look back – and forward. Of course this blurb talked about how we can vote and everything now, but there is ”still work to be done”.  More specifically, issues related to “reproductive health”, and Rush Limbaugh’s comments about Sandra Fluke (but nothing about Bill Maher’s remarks about Sarah Palin, or past comments about Laura Ingraham or any other conservative woman). If only conservative men didn’t call women names, and society paid for birth control and abortions, the world would be perfect!

Now You Know How I Feel at EVERY Election, But I Still Manage to Vote for one of You Fools

Looks like Newt Gingrich and his wife, Calista, will not return to Virginia to vote in today’s Super Tuesday Primary (nor did they apply for absentee ballotts).   Needless to say, Newt is not even on the ballot in Virginia, but his campaign spokesman said :

“In this Republican primary, when given a choice between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, they could not pick either one.”  (R. C. Hammond)

Now, I guess not voting is a teensy bit better than voting “present“, but a guy that won’t vote for himself, or write himself in is NOT EVER going to get my vote.  Voter apathy at the highest level, people.

Spotted Owl Economics

Last week the news reported the latest plans to protect the threatened Northern Spotted Owl.  The spotted owl is famous in the Pacific Northwest because of the decades-long battle between conservationists and industry with respect to the scope and cost of the owl’s protection.  The latest government report indicated that the population of spotted owls has dropped by 40% in the last 25 years, in spite of the government setting aside millions of acres to preserve its habitat, and greatly restricting the use of millions more acres of private and federal lands.  Now it seems that the problem is the Barred Owl.  The Barred Owl is simply moving into the protected territory and is a much more successful, albeit unprotected, owl.  The Bard Owl has no special privileges, but seems to thrive wherever it goes. The Spotted Owl has received special treatment by way of habitat preservation, criminal penalties for harm of the owl, and millions and millions of dollars in preservation, yet it cannot survive in nature, even with these Herculean efforts.  The latest government response is to announce an “open season” on the Barred Owl – yes, actually shooting lots and lots and lots of these owls – and further tinkering with forest management.

This sounds strangely like the economic policies we have observed over the last few years where the government has made its business to pick winners (“green” energy companies, pharmaceutical companies, Spotted Owls, GM, GE) at the expense of losers (coal, oil industries, non-GM carmakers, Barred Owls, everybody else) in the wild we know as “business”. The government gives its protection to the winners in the form of government loan guarantees, grants, easy regulatory approvals, seats at the grown-ups table when discussing industry policy, and outright beneficial legislation.  The losers,  in the meantime, are shut out from policy discussion, are faced with intense IRS scrutiny, regulatory hurdles, and vilification by the White House at every opportunity.

When the government picks winners in the wild or in business, it is interfering with natural and capitalistic survival forces.  No creature or business can evolve better survival traits until their survival is actually threatened – ask any small business owner you know.  Resources in nature or business are finite; we are all fighting for a spot at nature’s/banker’s table.  The poor Spotted Owl will fail to evolve because we won’t allow it to.  Similarly, coddled “green-energy”, or other favored companies will not evolve to become better financial survivors unless we shut off the spigot of state favoritism. Many have proven that the state spigot does not guarantee success:  Solyndra, Beacon Power, Evergreen Energy, A123 Systems, Fisker Automotive, etc. If these were such great, innovative, successful companies, how come they couldn’t get private funding?  How many healthy Barred Owls have had their tickets punched because they didn’t donate to the correct political cause?

At the end of the day, the Spotted Owls of the world cannot survive on their own in the wild, and the government response is to shoot great quantities of their competitors.  The government has picked a winner, and won’t change its mind or methods, and now there are a select group of people cashing in on these picks.  I’m not so sure that Spotted Owsl are all that threatened; I read about similar creatures in the news almost every day.  Barred Owl brethren beware:  you are firmly in the crosshairs.

ANNOUNCED: Fundraising Event for Obama

WASHINGTON: The committee to re-elect President Obama today announced its latest fundraiser, scheduled for Friday, July 29th from 2-2:30 PM EST. The President is scheduled for his six-month dental cleaning, and ten contributors of $10 or more can attend this intimate event. Said area coordinator Sally Letterbee, “we’re running out of events to turn into fundraisers, but we think the American people, you know, the small donors, will like this one. It will show that the president is just like everybody else. Except people will realize that the President has dental insurance.  We’re hoping nobody will remember that the President’s big health care legislation didn’t include dental.” The group expects to have a lottery to determine attendees if more than 10 people sign up for the event. The committee notes that no “souvenirs” will be distributed, to include the little spit cup thingy, or the President’s bib.