Comments Off on He built that
November 17, 2012 in Obamalot, The War
Tagged Benghazigate, Go After Me, He Built That
I’m as skeptical as Megan McArdle about the feds “allowing” the people of Colorado and Washington to get away with voting to legalize pot. They didn’t allow Arizona to control its own border with Mexico, remember? Even those so-called secession petitions to the White House were petitions, which is to say they were asking for permission to secede.
We’re simply not the Land of the Free that the flag wavers and patriotic song-singers like to pretend. The feds shackled us years ago and threw away the key.
The Tenth Amendment crowd like to write about the power of the states but, trust me, the states will do what Uncle Sugar says before they’ll give up, say, their federal highway and Medicaid money. For all the amusing talk around here about secession, Texas would be first in line to obey.
Washington’s legalization of pot on the alcohol model will be the easiest for the D.C. drug warriors to stop. They simply won’t allow the state’s licenses for growing and selling to mean anything. They’ll shut down the first business that tries to use the license and, if necessary, jail the executives. Risky investment, that one.
Colorado’s legalization will be trickier to overcome, since it wisely allows individuals to grow their own cannabis. Them as has the nerve, that is.
The DEA will simply get the always-compliant local badge gang to crank up their helicopters (or, maybe, their new video-carrying drones) and overfly neighborhoods to spy out any new crops amongst the tomatoes and sunflowers. And rely on neighborhood snitches to report the basement growers.
Labor intensive, sure, but a few spectacular urban court cases with big fines or long prison sentences should be enough to get the point across: the feds have billions of our tax dollars to spend and they like nothing better than to waste it on their ridiculous drug war which has given many cops employment and fancy new military weapons and, not incidentally, lined the pockets of the corrupt.
Instapundit raises the specter of “jury nullification” in these presumed upcoming federal marijuana indictments. That sounds good but requires individual jurors to stick their necks out so Uncle Sugar and his bully boys can chop off their heads. Not likely to happen.
If there really were a lot of bold Americans out there, who did more than whine on Facebook, there’d be a lot more than the ten percent of the eligible population that now volunteers for the military.
All in all, I doubt this legalization is going to work for long, unless the people of a lot more states (say thirty or more) vote to do the same at the same time. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t want to personally test it by lighting up a joint in a public park in downtown Seattle or Denver. But, like they say, there’s always that ten percent: folks who never seem to get the message until it’s too late.
UPDATE: Now, if the Republicans really want to Take Back The Joint…
Comments Off on That legal marijuana business
Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, The Drug War
Tagged legal marijuana, the drug war
“Because the media hasn’t done so, along with Sens. Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte, McCain is calling for Watergate-style hearings into the White House’s dishonest and/or incompetent handling of everything surrounding Libya:
“the lack and pulling of security in the wake of growing threats, the failure to send reinforcements during the seven-hour attack, and a false two-week narrative spun and sharpened over time by an administration that without any evidence whatsoever blamed the attack on a spontaneous protest.”
So, natch, Barry’s court news media—which has been frantically retailing a choking smoke screen of White House leaks on the Petraeus sex scandal—is going after McCain & Co.
Hey, dumbutts, four Americans were murdered in Benghazi: an ambassador and three others, two of them brave soldiers. How about questioning authority for a change? You know, like you were taught in journalism school?
Comments Off on Government media aids Barry’s cover-up
Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, Scribbles, The War
“A lady said to me yesterday wasn’t it terrible that the Director of Central Intelligence should provide such a poor moral model for the CIA?
“’Wouldn’t you think,’ I said, “that an agency whose business is to spy, steal, cheat, lie and probably kill dozens of people each month would be somewhat less than shocked at something like marital infidelity.
“That how curious it was that an agency like the FBI should find the time to investigate threatening emails? How passingly strange it is that the FBI should authorize any kind of investigation of its rival the CIA unless it was a big deal?’” —-Richard Fernandez
Well, it’s a big deal for some people. Barry and Hillary, for certain. Probably the FBI, as well.
But most Americans? I doubt it. If they couldn’t be bothered to vote last week, and more than seven million of them couldn’t, then why would they get exercised about whatever it is that’s really going on behind the Petraeus-Allen-Broadwell-Kelly sexual smoke screen? Especially when the Democrat media is still struggling to keep Benghazi buried and, so far, most of the Republicans in Congress are cooperating.
With the notable exceptions, at least in words, of Lindsay Graham and John McCain.
Comments Off on Moral models at the, uh, CIA
Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, Scribbles, The War
Tagged moral models at the CIA, Richard Fernandez, The Belmont Club
While the Democrat news media pretends that there’s only an enduring argument between Barry and the Elephants in Congress over whether to impose new job-killing taxes on “the rich,” new stealth taxes on the middle class from Obamacare are already poised to take effect in January.
According to an analysis by my insurer/mortgage lender USAA, taxpayers filing individually with wages and self-employment income above $200,000 ($250,000 for married couples filing jointly, never mind how many children for either category) will pay a new 3.8 percent surtax on the lower of:
their net investment income or their modified adjusted gross income above the aforementioned thresholds. And there’s still more to come in terms of employer health-benefit accounts and others more complicated and challenging to understand. Naturally.
These $200K to $250K folks used to be considered upper-middle income. Obviously, in Barry’s cosmology, they have become the new “rich.”
Comments Off on Our new stealth taxes
Posted in Obamalot, Texana, Troops
Tagged stealth taxes, the new rich, USAA
I must say I have missed hearing about the likes of dictator-lovin’ Sean Penn paddling into Staten Island in a canoe. Guess all those (mainly) white people freezing and starving in the dark isn’t a big enough concern for the manchild of Hollyweird.
It’s probably also the lack of guaranteed Democrat media hysterical coverage, which Istapundit puts the best possible face on:
“That, I suspect, is because Sandy happened in an area that reporters know. Media folks found it easy to believe stories about New Orleans that they wouldn’t believe about their own area. New Orleans is full of black people and southerners, two groups underrepresented in the national media. Manhattan, on the other hand, is familiar turf. Count on the press to give its own milieu a fairer shake.”
Well, fairer in some ways. They do seem to have “forgotten” this time to blame FEMA’s usual stupidity on the president who appointed its director. But of course. This president is a Democrat. And half-black to boot. Two media no-nos in one.
UPDATE: A roundup of the Democrat FEMA’s screwups with Sandy.
Comments Off on Katrina-on-the-Hudson
Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, Scribbles, Weather/Climate
Tagged FEMA stupidity, Instapundit, katrina-on-the-hudson, Sean Penn
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 