Sandra Fluke Makes Massive Campaign Donation, Can't Afford $9 Birth Control

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sandra Fluke, the feminist twit who stood before Congress and proclaimed that she couldn’t afford $9 a month for birth control so taxpayers should fund it, is making a massive loan to her campaign to become a state Senator in California.

WND reports that Sandra Fluke is preparing a $100,000 loan to her campaign in addition to the $12,000 she’s already donated and another $4,826.27 in non-monetary donations. As WND points out, $100,000 could fund her promiscuity for 11,111 months, or to put it in perspective; 925 years from generic suppliers.

Her individual contributions have helped bring her fundraising total up to $416,185, including over $20,000 from her in-laws and $9,600 from her own family, according to California campaign finance reports. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that buys a hell of a lot of birth control.

Read more:
Mad World News: Sandra Fluke Makes Massive Campaign Donation, Can't Afford $9 Birth Control

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Hump Day Hunnies

A Tale of Two Brains

The Obama Manifesto

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You may not have read much of the rhetoric Vladimir Lenin spewed as he launched communism in Russia.

It’s worth taking a look at.

As you may know, he first targeted businesses and his political opponents.

Businesses, some of which were desperately trying to locate overseas to escape his confiscatory tax rates, were labeled “corporate deserters.” Lenin declared they were taking advantage of a Tsarist-era “unpatriotic tax loophole” and were “fleeing the country to get out of paying taxes,” locating their headquarters overseas even as they still did most of their business in Russia.

Their activities were “a threat” to us all, he charged, and they needed to be roped in.

That they were in fact obeying the law mattered little to Lenin, who of course specialized in altering laws to suit his purposes, and who viewed his own morality as taking precedent over legal inconveniences.

“My attitude is I don’t care if it’s legal — it’s wrong,” Lenin said, ominously for Russia. Even some in Russia at the time realized that the chief of state saying “I don’t care if it’s legal” was a frightening thing.

He went on, of course, to suggest his opponents were traitors of a sort, suggesting those who disagreed with him lacked “patriotism.” The Gulag wasn’t far behind.

Oh wait, those comments weren’t Lenin. That was all Obama. Thursday.

Read more:
The Obama Manifesto | The Blog on Obama: White House Dossier

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Maryland passes new gun control, Beretta takes factory and 300 jobs elsewhere

(Photo credit: Inmigrante a media jornada)

Last year, when Maryland was considering tough new gun control legislation, it received a warning from firearms manufacturer Beretta. Ban our products, and we'll start making them elsewhere.

 …Maybe a free state like Tennessee.

Gun Control advocates scoffed, probably said "good riddance," and passed the legislation anyway. The new ordinances banned 45 different types of firearms, including the AR-15 platform.
So, Beretta has decided to make good on their threat.  They're closing their Maryland facility, and heading for Tennessee - taking several hundred jobs with them.

As The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Beretta USA, one of the nation’s largest firearms manufacturers, will move its manufacturing and approximately 300 jobs out of Maryland because of the state’s new gun control laws, the company said in a statement Tuesday.
Beretta said the company will transition its manufacturing from Maryland to Tennessee in 2015, citing Maryland’s passage of Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley’s Firearms Safety Act last year and the state’s general gun control atmosphere.

Beretta has released a statement which outlines its decision.

“During the legislative session in Maryland that resulted in passage of the Firearm Safety Act of 2013, the version of the statute that passed the Maryland Senate would have prohibited Beretta U.S.A. from being able to manufacture, store or even import into the State products that we sell to customers throughout the United States and around the world.  While we were able in the Maryland House of Delegates to reverse some of those obstructive provisions, the possibility that such restrictions might be reinstated in the future leaves us very worried about the wisdom of maintaining a firearm manufacturing factory in the State,” stated Jeff Cooper, General Manager for Beretta U.S.A. Corp.
“While we had originally planned to use the Tennessee facility for new equipment and for production of new product lines only, we have decided that it is more prudent from the point of view of our future welfare to move the Maryland production lines in their entirety to the new Tennessee facility,” Cooper added.

Good for Beretta.  We're sure Tennessee will welcome the additional jobs with open arms.   ...And the state's right-to-work laws will probably be a bonus for Beretta as well.


Politics: Maryland passes new gun control, Beretta takes factory and 300 jobs elsewhere | Best of Cain

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Andrew Klavan: Country Without Borders

Friday Funnies

Obama: The Affirmative Action President

 (Photo credit: transplanted mountaineer)

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages.  How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions.  He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as legislator.

And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor"; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor.  It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president?

Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal:

To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass.

Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass -- held to a lower standard -- because of the color of his skin.  Podhoretz continues:

And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon -- affirmative action.  Not in the legal sense, of course.  But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves.  

Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back.  Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow.  Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action.  Yes, racist.  Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin -- that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is.  And that is what America did to Obama.

True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be?  As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate.  All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.  What could this breed if not the sort of empty  narcissism on display every time Obama speaks?

In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character.  Those people -- conservatives included -- ought now to be deeply embarrassed.  The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that's when he has his teleprompter in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all.  Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth -- it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years.

And what about his character?  Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles.  Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess.  It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence.  But really, what were we to expect?  The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In short: our president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job.  When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense.  It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office. 

But hey, at least we got to feel good about ourselves for a little while.  And really, isn't that all that matters these days?

This article was written by Matt Patterson and was originally published here:
Articles: Obama: The Affirmative Action President

You can find more of his articles at mattpattersononline.com

Hump Day Hunnies

Needed: A Patriotic Tax Code

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Anyone who supports the current tax system in America is unpatriotic.

There, I said it. The current IRS tax system is anti-American. It sends jobs and factories and research facilities that should be located inside the land of the free to places like Singapore, Ireland, and Indonesia. It hurts American workers — especially unionized blue-collar workers who see their jobs shipped overseas. And our workers’ wages are lower than they would be without this perverted tax code.

From a competitiveness standpoint, this is like Tim Howard playing goalie with just one hand. He’s still better than most, but it’s just dumb.

No rational person can deny that our corporate tax system puts America at a severe handicap. I spoke recently with a former executive from Microsoft who now serves on the boards of directors of several major U.S. manufacturing companies. “We don’t build plants in America anymore,” he told me. “We can pay tax rates half as high in Asia.” In many countries, he said, American companies can arrange sweetheart deals “to cut our corporate tax to close to zero.” They can stay in the U.S. and pay 35 percent, or they can go to Indonesia and pay nothing.

When will Washington wake up? In recent weeks and months, we’ve seen drug giant Pfizer threaten to become a foreign company and Medtronic, a medical-device manufacturer, announce it will merge with foreign owners and then move operations and jobs to Ireland. Former Medtronic CEO Bill George told the New York Times that taxes were a major factor in sealing the deal. Ireland’s corporate tax rate: 12.5 percent.

Wake up!

Read more:
Needed: A Patriotic Tax Code

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Gun-control Laws Failed Connecticut Children

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In the wake of the horrific school shooting in Newtown, Conn., voices across nation, and indeed across the globe, have been calling for stricter gun-control laws.

Yet what gun-control measure could have prevented this crime?

The state of Connecticut already has certain gun-control laws in place, at least three of which the shooter broke, as he could have only obtained the weapons through illegal means.

According to news reports, Adam Lanza, 20, shot his mother Nancy Lanza dead at their family home before driving to the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, where he gunned down more than two dozen people, 20 of them children, and then killed himself.

The Associated Press reports Lanza brought three guns into the school: a Glock pistol, a Sig Sauer pistol and Bushmaster rifle, which the New York Post further reports was a semi-automatic “assault rifle” chambered for a .223 caliber round, matching casings found at the crime scene.

Lanza, therefore, if you count theft, murder and breaking and entering – since CBS New York now reports it likely Lanza broke into the school through a window to circumvent a locked-door and intercom security system – would have violated a half-dozen laws in his crime, including the following gun-control statutes:

Read the full story:
Gun-control laws failed Connecticut children

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How Poor Are Democrats?

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This article, written by Kyle Smith, was originally published by The New York Post on 6/28/2014.

Hillary Clinton claimed that, at the moment she and her husband were signing up for $18 million in book deals, they were “dead broke.”

Harry Reid (who lives in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel) said liberals are getting bullied by Republican billionaires but the Democratic Party “doesn’t have many billionaires” behind it.

Joe Biden (family earnings: $407,000 last year plus a free house, driver, meals, etc.) claims, “I don’t own a single stock or bond. . . . I have no savings accounts . . . I’m the poorest man in Congress.” (Triple fail: Joe isn’t poor, isn’t in Congress and wouldn’t be the poorest member of it if he were.)

Right here in New York, we’ve learned that City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, the daughter of a wealthy doctor who left a $6.7 million inheritance, took advantage of a no-interest loan intended for underprivileged New Yorkers to buy a Harlem townhouse. Then she forgot to declare the rental income on required city disclosure forms. The townhouse you and I helped buy her for $240,000 is today worth $1.2 million.

The more Democrats insist on their proletarian cred, the more absurd it gets. They’re no longer just holier than thou: Now they’re prolier than thou.

Reid is worth about $3 million to $6 million and declined to release his tax returns even as he was screaming about Mitt Romney’s. His statement that “we don’t have many billionaires” was wrong too. Politifact dug up 22 billionaires who have made campaign donations to super PACs lately. Most of them — 13 — sent their checks to liberal and Democratic groups.

Biden may have been the poorest member of the Senate (not all of Congress) when he was there, but his net worth is still somewhere in the $39,000 to $800,000 range, reported the Center for Responsive Politics.

Why do all these exceedingly well-off people keep trying to convince us we’ll see them at the dollar store?

It’s all part of the increasingly delusional myth Democrats tell themselves that they are the tribunes of the middle class. In fact, their party is a strange two-headed beast — picture a Cerberus featuring the faces of Barbra Streisand and Lois Lerner.

The Dems are a coalition of ultra-rich cultural-elite donors on the one hand and government employees and their clients on the other. In 2012, President Obama carried those earning under $50,000 by a wide margin. But Romney easily bested him among those over that threshold.
Ever wonder why the Democrats seem to want to keep people poor?

But there’s another reason Democrats can’t talk about their wealth. It’s because they can’t say, “I made it big. Follow me and you can, too.”

Democrats earn their money in ways that aren’t available to most Americans. Yet even for Democrats, the Clintons got rich in an exotic way. They accumulated something like $100 million not by building a business or inventing something or even writing some hit songs. Their entire fortune came from political celebrity. (Their daughter has even accumulated $15 million by being the offspring of political celebrities. Or did you think NBC News paid her $600,000 a year because of her obvious broadcasting ability?)

If the Clintons had gotten rich inventing Facebook, that fortune would have spawned many others. But celebrity honoraria don’t work that way.

Drug dealers create more middle-class jobs than these people do.

Moreover, both Clintons have given so many speeches to big-bucks interest groups that there are legions of fat cats who think Hillary owes them a favor should she reach the White House.

No, Hillary, contra your interview in The Guardian, you didn’t strike it rich by “hard work.” Swanning around the world staying in five-star hotels, reading speeches drafted by someone else and signing your name to books written by someone else is not exactly quarry labor.

Hillary would have been better off admitting she has done well and then pivoted gracefully to how her ideas might benefit struggling Americans. Instead, by getting tetchy, she made her vast wealth the thing people are talking about. Her approval rating last week hit 52 percent, down from as high as 70 percent.

Her miscues in talking about money, though, like many political gaffes, are symptoms of an underlying problem: her likability.

Like Mitt Romney, she seems disconnected from ordinary American life. The more she tries to seem normal, the more she comes across as Lady Hillary.

By following her lead, her party risks becoming more and more alien to the middle class whose interest it purports to protect.


Why Democrats insist on lying about how ‘poor’ they are | New York Post

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Friday Funnies

The New Political Class

The problem America faces is not that government is dysfunctional—an election might fix that. It is
that America is now governed by a New Political Class, divorced from the concerns of all save its richest constituents. The Class is bipartisan, with members of both parties strolling arm-in-arm into a future in which the privileges the Class has quietly arrogated to itself remain intact regardless of the results of any election.

Any doubt about that was dispelled by the recent disappearance of Lois Lerner’s e-mails. The head of the IRS, and agency willing to fine or have you imprisoned if you cannot produce seven years of data when requested by some auditor, with or without a showing of cause, saw no reason to apologize for the disappearance of the emails. Worse still, the Department of Justice, which would surely fit you for manacles if you destroyed evidence in anticipation of an investigation – that is, even before an investigation had been formally announced – sees no reason to move against the evidence destroyers at the IRS. The Justice Department protects the IRS, the IRS protects its employees – the worst sanction is vacation-with-pay, or “administrative leave” in the jargon of the new class – and elected representatives protect them all, in the case of Republicans by their inability to trade the television time accorded their inept questioning for a professional special prosecutor.

Then there is the little question of performance bonuses. It took General Motors a long time, including the years in which it was owned by the federal government, but it finally found some low- and mid-level employees who were culpable in the decision to remain silent rather than switch the faulty ignition switches, and fired them.

The powers-that-be at the Department of Veterans Affairs found some employees who have been falsifying records, and others who were merely so inefficient that veterans were denied the care to which they were entitled, and sent an executive to the Hill to justify the VA’s performance bonus system that awarded these employees tens of thousands of dollars in bonuses. Screw up in your job and you are lucky if you get off with a talking-to; screw up in a government job and you get a bonus. After all, by reprimanding doctors who asked nurses to help clean up an operating room so that they could increase the number of operations per day, the bonus recipients kept the unions from making the executives’ day a bit more difficult. If there is anything the political class abhors, it is a tiff with a public-sector union representative who is on full taxpayer funded salary even though she performs no duties other than those related to her union chores.

Move on to smoking. The D.C. Department of Behavioral Health – yes, there is such a thing, with an annual budget of $230,000,000 and 1,400 employees in a District too strapped for funds to protect its citizens adequately or educate its children – says, “The law makes it a violation of District law for any person to smoke in an area where it is prohibited. … It is also a violation for an employer, owner, manager, or person in authority to permit smoking in prohibited areas or to fail to post ‘No Smoking’ signs.”  Prohibited areas include all places of employment and enclosed public spaces. “No Smoking” signs are available free of charge, but employers can be fined $500 if those signs are defaced. 

Read the rest of this story here:
The New Political Class | The Weekly Standard