A Nod To The Gods

The Washington Redskins have been in existence for 82 years. For about 80 of those years, virtually no one, including the vast majority of American Indians, was troubled by the name. Yet it is now of such importance to the American Left that the majority leader of the United States Senate has repeatedly demanded, from the floor of the Senate, that the team drop its name; 50 U.S. senators, all of them Democrats, have signed an open letter demanding the same; Sports Illustrated‘s Peter King no longer uses the name; other leading sportswriters have adopted the same practice; and the president of the United States has weighed in on the issue.

 

…First, there is a rule in life: Those who do not confront the greatest evils will confront much lesser evils or simply manufacture alleged evils that they then confront. This has been a dominant characteristic of the Left for at least half a century. keep reading

Apparently this decision was reversed, but they still ran it up the flagpole. Bastards all of ’em:
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Do they really think nobody is watching? This deserves a personal call to your congressman. With an approval rating in the toilet, this is a slap in the face of every American who concerns themselves with political corruption.

A member of Congress used to have to specifically report the details if they traveled on someone else’s dime. As of last week, that rule was lifted with no public announcement. National Journal reports:

The move, made behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee, reverses more than three decades of precedent. Gifts of free travel to lawmakers have appeared on the yearly financial form dating back its creation in the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal. National Journal uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when analyzing the most recent batch of yearly filings.

For a group of officials that considers an adjustment to their burrito order worthy of a press release and a television appearance, that this change was made literally behind closed doors tells us everything we need to know about it. Members of both parties reached across the aisle and kept their mouths shut about it.

These trips still must be reported to the Office of the Clerk and disclosed there, but the decades-old requirement for individual members to also disclose their particular activities  on their annual financial forms is now gone.

The fundamental reasoning behind these rules is that they make clear the relationships between the politician and any private group paying for trips. Trips, by the way, which occurred more last year than in recent history.

The implication is that if the public is aware, for example, that Representative Vandelay is taken via Gulfstream G5 to the Four Seasons Bora Bora for a week of “seminars” and it’s all paid for by the largest latex company in the country, then Vandelay’s votes benefiting the company can be understood to have been bought and paid for.

As the federal leviathan grows ever-larger and is more intricately involved in every teensy-tiny area of American life, the financial incentive for lobbyist to influence legislation to their clients benefit grows as well. A subtle change in a trade agreement, import duty, or regulation can mean millions of dollars to a firm.

It’s far easier to write a check to a Washington insider to get the field tilted in one’s direction, than to actually compete in the marketplace. And how better to get a politician’s attention than to provide them (and their significant other) with a lavish vacation or trip? This change just means it’s that much harder for us to find out about it. That is not good and should be changed back immediately.

Better yet, it’s time for the Federal government to get out of the business of picking business winners and losers, so the incentives for such behavior are eliminated altogether. We’ll not be holding our breath on this one… found here

This is how I would.

An overhead view of the infamous “Highway of Death”, the name given to Highway 80 following the carnage visited upon the Iraqi forces who used it as they retreated out of Kuwait, 1991

“Politicians want office, power, and applause – period. And most sell their souls without the slightest hesitation to increase their prospects of receiving such tacky and ego-bloating ‘rewards.’ So politicians are neither courageous nor leaders. Instead, they are cowards who pander to crowds and then pretend that their typically idiotic orations to the crowds are evidence of their genius, humanity, and courage. All in all, politicians are a loathsome and disgusting lot.” Don Boudreaux

I really don’t eat fast food anymore but I can guarantee you will never see me in another Burger King. I don’t care whether you are gay or not, just keep it out of my face and my life. Burger King has decided to embrace the LGTB community so I don’t plan on spending another dime there.

There you go BK, have it your way. Let me know when you figure out you can’t keep the doors open pandering to 2% of the population who refer to themselves as gay.

The “Be Your Way” project was created at a Burger King franchise in San Francisco, where a limited edition “Proud Whopper” sandwich was added to the menu to coincide with the city’s annual pride festivities. According to press materials, guests who ordered the “Proud Whopper” found that the sandwich was the same as a classic Whooper, but came wrapped in a rainbow-colored wrapper with the inscription, “We are all the same inside.

In other news: McDonalds answers the Burger King strategy

Obama is running around the country sprinkling a bunch of unicorn dust on his useful idiots. Problem is, unicorns are not real, and neither is his bullshit.

In fact, Mr. Obama says Americans have never had it so good.

 

“Over the past 51 months, our businesses have created 9.4 million new jobs,” he said at a feel-good stop in Minnesota. “Our housing market is rebounding. Our auto industry is booming. Our manufacturing sector is adding jobs for the first time since the 1990s. We’ve made our tax code fairer. We’ve cut our deficits by more than half. More than 8 million Americans have signed up for private insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act.”

Of course, as usual with the president, none of that is true. In 2007, there were 146.6 million Americans employed. Last month, there were 145.7 million people in the workforce. But it’s all worse than that. The labor force participation rate dropped more than 3 percentage points, which equals nearly 8 million people. Now, just 62.8 percent of working-age Americans hold jobs, a dismal number that’s the lowest in 35 years. found here