This and That...

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Obuma's definition of Bipartisanship:

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Boy, do I feel sorry for smokers these days.

Smoking used to be so fashionable and hip in the James Dean and Steve McQueen days.

Women who smoked used to be sexy. No sooner did they pull a Virginia Slim out of a cigarette case than men would rush at them with lighters.

Even when smoking was cool, people knew it wasn't healthy. Some unhealthy smokers sued tobacco companies for concealing the unhealthful effects of sucking carcinogens into their lungs — and not one prevailed.

That changed in 1998, when 46 states sued the four biggest tobacco companies to recover Medicaid costs for tobacco-related maladies. The states won big. The tobacco industry has been nicotine-coughing up billions of dollars to the states ever since.

Or, to be more precise, smokers have been nicotine-coughing up billions. A pack of cigarettes costs five or six bucks. Taxes account for more than half of that price.

In any event, over the years, smoking has lost its coolness appeal among the public. Anti-smoking groups have made tremendous gains banning smoking in public places. To date, 38 states and all 60 of our biggest cities have public smoking bans in place.

To be sure, the anti-smoking sentiment is one of the few bipartisan issues left. People on both the left and right loathe smoking the way people used to hate polio and communism.

Many people on the right, sick of dining in restaurants where smoking was still allowed, were all for government bans on the legal activity. Didn't secondhand-smoke studies warrant it?

Many people on the left were for such government bans, too, for the simple reason that they love when the government tells people what they cannot do — except when it involves smoking marijuana.

And so it is that the bipartisan anti-smoking mob has relegated smokers to secondary-human-being status.

Smokers are shunned at family gatherings and sent to the garage or the street, so as not to stink up the house.

Even corporate CEOs who smoke are sent to the alleyway, where they mingle with other smokers like hapless pigeons.

And just when smokers thought things couldn't get worse, boy, are they getting worse.

Government regulators, who are now interpreting President Obama's Patient Protection and (ha ha!) Affordable Care Act, have determined that smokers should get hammered by insurance companies.

Starting next year, health insurers will be permitted to charge smokers who purchase individual policies up to 50 percent more for their premiums.

A 60-year-old smoker will pay, on average, $5,100 more than he is paying right now.

Why? Well, the fellow's smoking could cause him to have health issues, which others in the insurance pool would ultimately have to pay for.

Since he is a higher risk for the insurance pool, shouldn't he be required to pay more?

Many in the anti-smoking mob, on both left and right, surely think so — as they miss the larger point: If our federal government has gotten so big and meddlesome that it can single out a particular citizen who has freely chosen to use a legal product as a vice, what CAN'T our government do?

How long before chubby people and snack-cake eaters and people who like to hang-glide over mountain cliffs are also singled out by the government?

How long before the government in a big city, such as New York, bans salt and large soda drinks?

Oops, that has already happened.

Yeah, I feel sorry for smokers, but the way things are going, we'll all be mingling like pigeons in alleyways, secretly enjoying snack cakes, salty snacks and sugary drinks and hoping the government doesn't catch wind of it.

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Dems Recoil In Horror As Rand Paul Returns $600,000 Operating Budget Surplus To Treasury...



Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says he will send a $600,000 check to the U.S. Treasury, returning the part of his operating budget as a senator that was not spent.

Paul made the announcement at press conference in Kentucky on Wednesday. According to a press release from Paul's office, the sum is over 20 percent of the total operating budget.

Last year, he returned $500,000 worth of unspent funds to the Treasury.

"I ran to stop the reckless spending, and I pledged to the people of Kentucky that I would work to keep their hard-earned money out of the hands of Washington bureaucrats whose irresponsible spending has threatened our country's economic health," Sen. Paul said.

The Republican senator and son of libertarian icon Ron Paul is considered a likely 2016 presidential contender.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/21/rand-paul-returns-surplus-operating-budget/#ixzz2La74wgCb

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Biden: "I Am Going To Say Something Outrageous: You've Had No Better Friend Over The Last 35 Years Than Me"...

Joe, you're Outrageously STUPID!!


From The Durge:

HARTFORD, Conn. (CBSNewYork) -  Vice President Joe Biden joined Conn. Gov. Dannel Malloy, other lawmakers and the parents of a young girl killed in the Sandy Hook massacre at a conference on gun violence Thursday.

The conference was held a few miles from the scene of last year's Newtown school shootings.

Biden is trying to rally support for the administration's proposals to curb gun violence, saying there will be a moral price to pay for inaction.

Biden said America has changed its views of gun control since the Dec. 14 massacre of 26 people inside Sandy Hook Elementary School.

"Common sense facts are these assault weapons are unnecessary and dangerous weapons that put our law enforcement personnel at risk," Biden said. "You guys know a lot of departments around the country. I've been working with the police agencies for 35 years. I am going to say something outrageous: You've had no better friend over the last 35 years than me."

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From Politiclo:
The Democratic National Committee raised $4.3 million in January, but is still weighed down by a significant amount of post-election debt.

While it's not unusual for political parties to creep into the red after an election, Democratic Party ended the 2012 cycle with a debt of $21.5 million, according to a new filing with the Federal Elections Commission.

The committee's latest report shows the DNC paying down nearly $700,000 of their post-election debt — which shrank to $20.7 million.

Earlier Wednesday, the RNC announced it had raised $6.9 million in January, with $7.1 million in the bank. The committee retired the last of its outstanding debt at the end of 2012.

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From the Mind of a Democrat...



From Snopes

More Modern Way of Living
Claim:   Text reproduces letter to the editor from a "proud Democrat."


MIXTURE


Example:    [Collected via e-mail, February 2013]

I just came across a post on Facebook that seems too far fetch to believe. It's suppose to be a news article sent to the editor against gun control... It's states as a Democrat and fussing at Republicans as hiding behind the constitution to scare people and how the president is trying to make gun laws stricter for everyone like they are where he came from.

Beaufort, N.C.

Jan. 17, 2013

TO THE EDITOR:

Republicans and "so-called" conservatives are at it again. They are claiming that the Constitution gives people the right to have guns without the permission of the government. If that were true, then how could New York and Chicago have laws against it?

We Democrats are sick and tired of Republicans constantly using the Constitution to cover up their true plans, which are to make us all afraid of everyone else. Our great president came from a civilized part of the country where there is strict gun control, and he is only trying to bring the benefits of that more modern way of living to the rest of us. I don't know the exact statistics, but I'm quite certain that Chicago is a lot safer than Morehead City, when it comes to gun violence.

But do Republicans and conservatives listen to the voice of reason? No, of course not. All they want to do is whine and complain about how gun control and wealth 
redistribution violate the Constitution, as if the Constitution were all that great, anyway. There are a lot of things that need to be changed about the Constitution, I'd say, and President Obama needs to change it.

The Republicans are just trying to stand in the way, because the president is black. They even dared to question whether he was born in this country. I think all this demonstrates that the Constitution needs to be amended when it comes to the qualifications for being president. Right now, it says that a person has to be 35 years old and be a natural born citizen. Well, that is obviously unfair because there are a great many otherwise qualified people who cannot run for president because their mothers had to have a C-section. But because the Constitution was written a hundred years ago, nobody even thought of the discrimination that would result from a doctor having to deliver a baby in this unnatural way. Now that we Democrats are in control of the government, that's just one more thing we should change in our drive to make life fair.

Please withhold my name because I don't want to get crank calls.

PROUD TO BE A DEMOCRAT

Origins:   The farcical missive reproduced above is "true" in the very broad sense that it is in fact a letter to the editor which was published (under the title "More Modern Way of Living") by a regular newspaper, in this case the 29 January 2013 edition of the Carteret County (North Carolina) News-Times. That publication later prefaced the online version of the letter with an editor's note stating that:

The following Letter to the Editor, published in the Jan. 23 edition, has gone viral on the Web after a reader linked it to a Fox News Facebook page. It had received more than 4,000 comments and been shared more than 12,000 times by [the following week].

Whether this letter is "real" in the sense that its writer intended it to be taken literally by readers is something that can't be answered definitively (since the author is not identified by name), but almost certainly it was penned as a spoof of Democrats rather than as an earnest letter from a Democrat. The tone of the letter is tongue-in-cheek throughout, implausibly consisting of nothing but multiple obvious absurdities piled one atop another and recycling a number of old jokes, such as the notion that a person born by Cesarean section is not considered a natural-born citizen and the humorous stereotype of the individual who publicly proclaims himself as being "proud" of his membership in a particular group yet insists on remaining anonymous.

Last updated:   11 February 2013

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/modernway.asp#G24HiUFHajoDil3P.99

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20 Of The Most Embarrassing Moments In The History Of The Democrat Party

By John Hawkins
2/23/2013

For example, one will virtually never hear that the Palmer Raids, Prohibition, or American eugenics were thoroughly progressive phenomena. These are sins America itself must atone for. Meanwhile, real or alleged "conservative" misdeeds — say McCarthyism — are always the exclusive fault of conservatives and a sign of the policies they would repeat if given power. The only culpable mistake that liberals make is failing to fight "hard enough" for their principles. Liberals are never responsible for historic misdeeds because they feel no compulsion to defend the inherent goodness of America. Conservatives, meanwhile, not only take the blame for events not of their own making that they often worked the most assiduously against, but find themselves defending liberal misdeeds in order to defend America herself. -- Jonah Goldberg
1) The Trail of Tears (1838): The first Democrat President, Andrew Jackson and his successor Martin Van Buren, herded Indians into camps, tormented them, burned and pillaged their homes and forced them to relocate with minimal supplies. Thousands died along the way.

2) Democrats Cause The Civil War (1860): The pro-slavery faction of the Democrat Party responded to Abraham Lincoln's election by seceding, which led to the Civil War.

3) Formation of the KKK (1865): Along with 5 other Confederate veterans, Democrat Nathan Bedford Forrest created the KKK.

4) 300 Black Americans Murdered (1868): "Democrats in Opelousas, Louisiana killed nearly 300 blacks who tried to foil an assault on a Republican newspaper editor."

5) The American Protective League and The Palmer Raids (1919-1921): Under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson, criticizing the government became a crime and a fascist organization, the American Protective League was formed to spy on and even arrest fellow Americans for being insufficiently loyal to the government. More than 100,000 Americans were arrested, with less than 1% of them ever being found guilty of any kind of crime.

6) Democrats Successfully Stop Republicans From Making Lynching A Federal Crime (1922): "The U.S. House adopted Rep. Leonidas Dyer's (R., Mo.) bill making lynching a federal crime. Filibustering Senate Democrats killed the measure."

7) The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (1932-1972): Contrary to what you may have heard, Democrats in Alabama did not give black Americans syphilis. However, the experimenters did know that subjects of the experiment unknowingly had syphilis and even after it was proven that penicillin could be used to effectively treat the disease in 1947, the experiments continued. As a result, a number of the subjects needlessly infected their loved ones and died, when they could have been cured.

8 ) Japanese Internment Camps (1942): Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order that led to more than 100,000 Japanese Americans being put into "bleak, remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards."

9) Alger Hiss Convicted Of Perjury (1950): Hiss, who helped advise FDR at Yalta and was strongly defended by the Left, turned out to be a Soviet spy. He was convicted of perjury in 1950 (Sadly, the statute of limitations on espionage had run out), but was defended by liberals for decades until the Verona papers proved so conclusively that he was guilty that even most his fellow liberals couldn't continue to deny it.

10) The West Virgina Democrat primary is rigged by John F. Kennedy (1960): From an interview with the late, great Robert Novak.

John Hawkins: You also said that without question, John F. Kennedy rigged the West Virginia Democratic primary in (1960), but that the Wall Street Journal killed the story. Do you think that sort of thing is still occurring with great regularity and do you wish the Journal had reported the story when it happened?

Robert Novak: In my opinion, they should have. They sent two reporters down to West Virginia for six weeks and they came back with a carefully documented story on voter fraud in West Virginia, buying votes, and how he beat Humphrey in the primary and therefore got the nomination. But, Ed Kilgore, the President of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, a very conservative man, said it wasn't the business of the Wall Street Journal to decide the nominee of the Democratic Party and he killed the story. That story didn't come out for many, many years — 30-40 years. It was kept secret all that time.

11) The Bay of Pigs (1961): After training a Cuban militia to overthrow Castro, Kennedy got cold feet and didn't give the men all the air support they were promised. As a result, they were easily defeated by Castro's men and today, Cuba is still ruled by a hostile, anti-American dictatorship.

12) Fire Hoses And Attack Dogs Used On Children (1963): Birmingham, Alabama's notorious Commissioner of Public Safety, Democrat Bull Connor, used attack dogs and fire hoses on children and teenagers marching for civil rights. Ultimately, thousands of them would also be arrested.

13) Stand In The Schoolhouse Door (1963): Democrat George Wallace gave his notorious speech against integrating schools at the University of Alabama in which he said, "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

14) Escalation In Vietnam (1964): Lyndon Johnson dramatically escalated our troops' presence in Vietnam while he simultaneously put political restrictions in place that made the war unwinnable. As a result, 58,000 Americans died in a war that ultimately achieved none of its aims.

15) Chappaquiddick (1969): The Democrats' beloved "Liberal Lion" of the Senate, Ted Kennedy ran off the road into a tidal pool with passenger Mary Jo Kopechne in the car. Kennedy swam free and then spent 9 hours plotting how he would reveal the news to the press while she slowly suffocated to death.

16) Democrats Deliver South Vietnam To The North (1975): "In 1975, when there were no Americans left in Vietnam, the left wing of the Democratic Party killed the government of South Vietnam, cut off all of its funding, cut off all of its ammunition, and sent a signal to the world that the United States had abandoned its allies." -- Newt Gingrich

17) The Iranian Hostage Crisis (1979-1981): 52 Americans were held hostage by the government of Iran for 444 days. After Jimmy Carter's disastrous, failed rescue attempt, the hostages were finally released after Ronald Reagan's inaugural address.

18) Bill Clinton turns down Osama Bin Laden (1996): In Bill Clinton's own words, "'Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan. And we'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start meeting with them again. They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.' — Bill Clinton explains to a Long Island, N.Y., business group why he turned down Sudan's offer to extradite Osama Bin Laden to America in 1996." Had Bill Clinton accepted Sudan's offer, 9/11 would have likely never happened.

19) Bill Clinton was impeached (1998): Clinton became only the 2nd President in American history to be impeached after he lied under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

20) America loses its AAA credit rating (2011): The United States was first given its AAA credit in 1917, but it couldn't survive Barack Obama's record breaking spending. In 2011, America lost its AAA credit rating.

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Sens. Tom Udall And Richard Blumenthal Tied For First In Rankings For "Most Liberal Senator"...

Sens. Tom Udall And Richard Blumenthal Tied For First In Rankings For "Most Liberal Senator"...


Then again, they're just holding the spot for Elizabeth Warren.


Via National Journal:

These days you can't swing an NPR tote bag in the upper chamber without hitting a liberal senator. This year, the Senate saw the additions of Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, Tim Kaine, and Chris Murphy. They will surely fit in with the likes of Sens. Sherrod Brown, Al Franken, and Dick Durbin. It wouldn't have been a surprise if any of these big names won the title of "Most Liberal Senator."

That title did not, however, end up going to a particularly visible member. Instead, it was split by two relatively new and relatively unknown members: Tom Udall of New Mexico and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

To learn how the vote rankings are calculated, click here.


(....)


Michelle Obama: Shaken, Not Stirred

We predicted a parody coming on the Michelle Obama "Mom Dance" with Jimmy Fallon.

Here is Sooper Mexican's short ode to her dancing
skills, with the "Harlem Shake", especially for our
Wonkette friends:

Compare And Contrast...

A First Lady with respect and dignity for the presidency:



And the one with not so much:

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Idiots Converge on Freezing D.C. to Protest Global Warming

by Dan Greenfield

The United Idiots of America, in conjunction with the Sierra Club, Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream and a bunch of other organizations that no one had ever heard of before  held a "Forward on Climate" rally. No one including the organizers appeared to know what this meant or how it's possible to go forward on a climate.

The rally participants, mainly bored college students, were united in their opposition to the Keystone Pipeline which would create jobs for working class people. And united in their stupidity. One sign read, "Read My Lips, No New Carbons", apparently protesting the element. Unfortunately every time lips are opened and words come out, so do new carbons.

Another sign demanded, "Fight Climate Chaos." Refusing to cooperate, the weather in Washington D.C. dipped below 30 degrees forcing the assorted idiots to shiver while listening to speeches warning that the icebergs on the pole were melting. Again.




There were idiots dressed as polar bears and one idiot dressed up as a whooping crane.  Occupiers showed up in black hoodies with their faces covered, not so much as a disguise, but for warmth. The Forward on the Climate or For the Climate or Away from the Climate rally was a real cross-section of American idiots. There were electric bicycle salesmen, yoga instructors, Quakers and environmental science students.

Lots of white people raised their fists in the air in solidarity with something. Possibly the climate. Robert Redford wrote an editorial in support of the protest, but didn't bother flying a private jet over to take part. There was an awkward dance party. There were a few obligatory giant puppets. Everyone was cold, but everyone pretended that the planet was burning up.

Kids roped in by their idiot parents shivered while holding up signs about solar power. College students swarmed around the buses that brought them and texted while old hippies made speeches. There was a giant model of a pipeline or maybe a windmill. No one could tell. And there were lots of signs about how everyone loved Mother Earth.

Full speed ahead to STUPITY!

[Warph]

Obuma: "Alien Abductions Blamed For Disappearing Workforce In My First Term"

With over 8 million people mysteriously disappearing from the US workforce during President Barack Insane-Hussein Obuma's first term, experts are working on a number of theories to explain this riddle, the most commonly mentioned reason being alien abductions occurring throughout the US on an extraordinarily massive scale.

According to a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report, the number of people disappearing from the US workforce rose from 80.5 million when the president took office in 2009 to the current 89 million, while unemployment has remained steady near 8-9%.  In other words, 8.5 million people have simply vanished in a way that can't be explained by the usual retirement or disability trends.

"Since we can't blame it on the economy, the only conceivable explanation is that someone is taking people out of the labor market by force," said Malcolm Lenivie, noted economist for the DC-based Center for Keynesian Economics.  "The President has spent $6 trillion in stimulus packages and all our studies indicate that his plan is working, so something else must be at play."

Early theories included abductions by Mexican drug cartels, but leading security experts agree that it would be impossible to move eight million people across the US border undetected.

"Our border is extremely secure," said border security analyst Jared Contrabandzis of the American Progressive Initiative, a non-partisan think tank.  "No one can cross our southern border in any direction without our knowledge.  The Border Patrol catches them all and reports them to the authorities."

Sources say the President is taking this matter very seriously and is putting pressure on the Pentagon to investigate the possibility of alien abductions and to find a way to stop the disappearance of the American labor force.

Insiders in Washington speculate that if top brass in the US Air Force do not take immediate action, President Obuma will likely fire a number of generals and reorganize the command structure.

"The President will not let this crisis go to waste," said Lenivie, adding that heads will roll all over Washington until one of these theories can be substantiated.  "We know for sure the problem is not caused by the economy, since all of our numbers indicate that recovery is well on its way. It isn't just around the corner, it is here."

The White House is ordering the Air Force to review surveillance footage from radar stations throughout the world for evidence of alien aircraft, as intelligence satellites are being re-tasked from areas like the Middle East and China to scour the continental US for possible stashes of missing workers.

"All those people must go back to work," Lenivie said.  "They are tax payers, and we need them to be productive in order to keep our economy moving forward and our debt payments current."