The New Media Militia

Next up, Dick “Darth Vader” Cheney and his storm troopers were the object of hate from the left, right up until yesterday when the Stormtroppers did what they have been doing all along–but on Obama’s watch. (H/T Powerline– story by Mark Hemingway)

“After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet.”

Hersh then went on to describe a second area of extra-legal operations: the Joint Special Operations Command. “It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently,” he explained. “They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. … Congress has no oversight of it.”

“It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on,” Hersh stated. “Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.

It’s not really an ‘Olympics’ is it?  It’s more like an excuse to make naked people shake.  Now far be it from me to prevent such things under the proper circumstances, but calling it an “Olympics” seems a bit far fetched; here’s what they’ve got.

Organiser Dean says the emphasis on Sunday’s event is having fun rather than winning gold medals.

“We do a lot of beach sprints, egg-throwing contests, conga lines, marathons, tug of wars,” he said.

“There’s a whole bucket load of stuff we do, but like I say, the emphasis is more on fun and camaraderie than out-and-out blood and guts glory.

A 500 person nude conga line…? That could be a very unpleasant experience if the “athletes” are not exactly in the best of shape. 

So it’s more like the Nudist Inc. Company picnic.  It’s 500 people who’ve got no problem being naked in public, or in the company of another 499 other naked people, at a concentrated two-day summer camp.  Any chance the event schedule includes archery or lawn darts?  How about Jousting? Probably just a men’s division for that I would think.  And who will be toasting the weenies.  Wait–its Austraila; everyone whose got one, unless they happen to have the SPF 9000 handy.  (How do you apply that discretely?)

“Why you walking like that Bill?”

“Eh? Oh.  Got sunburn at the Olympics?”

So there you have it.  This weekend at Alexandria Bay Beach in the Noosa National Park, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, people who are better at being naked than anyone else–just think how easy it will be to pack?–will gather to toss eggs, conga, play tug of war, and it’s not really about the medals, it’s all about the fun; because nothing is as fun as a tug of war– naked.

Fox Sports

ABC (Australia)

I have some questions for the pro-income tax folks out there.  (In New Hampshire)

Who are ‘The Rich?’ You always want to tax the “rich” to make it “fair.”  So who are they and what is the income cut off?

How much will it cost us to create the necessary bureaucracy to handle a new income tax and all the family fun related to collecting, processing, returning, disputing, investigating, litigating, and so on? Include state salaries, benefits, pensions, operating costs, and estimate total department growth, administrative costs related to dealing with another bunch of state union employees, and will the increased dues paid to the unions through these state workers (who vote for pro-tax democrats) still be tax-deductible,or can they be considered income for taxing purposes without deduction?

What will the state do with the money, aside from grow uncontrollably?  And how long will they pretend to legislate it only for specific forms of tax relief (of the ‘fair’ variety) before they start tying strings to it and making town selectmen and councilors behave like Dickensian orphans to get a piece of that pie?

Which lobby will become the most powerful first once we have nearly invisible, unencumbered revenue pouring into Concord?

How much will property taxes go down?  And how long before they go back up and then surpass where they were when you lied about tax relief while promoting a new income tax? 

Don’t we already tax profits and income from the job creating class through the BET and BPT?

Will this new tax replace those taxes, and are we going to stop taxing business profits as personal income for LLC and S-corps or (as I suspect) are you just going to tax these folks again. (Bride of LLC Tax).

How long will before people realize you are scamming them?

Who actually funds the very partisan Granite State Fair Tax Coalition? Are they from other states who are pissed off because they can’t compete with us in New Hampshire?

If you like income taxes so much, and they are so “fair,” why don’t you just move to a state that has them already?  Are you put off by their lower quality of life, higher overall tax burden, larger populations of unemployed, higher poverty rates, higher crime rates, and invasive meddling bureaucracies of those other states?

Why are you incapable of making any connection between the kind of taxes and government you claim to want, and the kind of state you end up with after you get them?

With any luck I shall correct that today.  Just not this morning. (Not the abuse of parentheticals, just the lack of writing.)

Obama seeks another congressional end around in an effort to intimidate free speech.  Picture how this White House might make spending decisions after culling a list of political contributions made by contractors which exists by executive order? You’d be cowed into withholding donations knowing it might affect your business.

“The White House cannot arbitrarily amend federal contractor requirements without a vote in Congress.  This is an end-run around the constitutional process, with the Obama Administration once again attempting to implement administratively what it cannot achieve legislatively,” Wilson declared.

…

Wilson added, “It’s nothing more than a cynical gag order issued by executive decree with no basis in the duly enacted laws of the land.  As part of the contract-awarding process, the White House wants to know who is giving to whom and will surely make decisions based on that knowledge.”

Business as usual for the Obama machine.

H/T – Bill Wilson ALG / NH Insider

The Merrimack Town Council bent to the will of the voters and scrapped plans to institute a pay as you throw program.  That would have required residents to buy special bags for trash at $1.00 or $1.50 per bag, and you could only use those bags at the town dump.

But we’ve been warned.  This is an issue that will be revisited. Or so we have been told.

Well screw that, lets look at it now.

According to the Town this program could save taxpayers 0.19 cents/1000 off the tax rate.  Let’s just pretend it will do that.  If I do some back of the envelope calculations I would save (.19x 250) about $48.00 on my tax bill.  Money is money and who am I to complain, you ask?

Well, if I can mange to only generate 48 bags of trash over the course of a 52 week year (or only 32 if I use the family size bag) then I brake even. Sure, it’s less than one bag per week for a family of five but lets not be negative.  The end result is the institution of a program whereby the town contracts to buy bags, pays the bill, distributes the bags to local merchants, who sell them to the willing townsfolk, (and then send that revenue back to the town), while the humble townsfolk use these bags to dispose of their refuse, no one misplaces, loses, destroys, or embezzles anything, cue chirping birds, rainbows and Gregorian chant.

This is government efficiency in action.  I can either use the existing tax system to pay the 0.19/1000 on my tax bill that results from passing on pay to throw, or involve an entire (error free) supply chain, constructed by my benevolent municipality, with a new product, and new rules, and many middle men, that will actually cost me at least twice as much out of my pocket per year to use.

Yeah.  Saves me money?  I see that now.

I Tweeted this earlier, but since I’m short on time, it is more than Post-Worthy.  Apparently school vouchers result in a higher graduation rate at a lower cost to taxpayers–at least in DC and Milwaukee which both have them.

In Washington, D.C., a 2010 study by the U.S. Department of Education found that there was a 21 percentage point gap between the graduation rates of those in the voucher program (graduation rate: 91%) and those who had applied, but had failed to win the placement lottery (70%). A study released late last month by the University of Arkansas’ School Choice Demonstration Project showed a similar pattern in Milwaukee, with those using vouchers in the 9th grade graduating at a rate (77%) eight percentage points higher than their peers in public schools (69%).

Read the rest at The Corner

The UCC peddles left wing advocacy as Christian morality.  They are a prominent member of the National Council of Churches (NCC), which used to (inconveniently) be a Communist front group, the Federal Council of Churches; inconvenient because they share a similar “social agenda” with the socialists and communists, and use the same language and tactics to advance very similar statist goals.

So Reverend Gary and his like minded social justice brethren  just want to make socialist-wealth redistribution look pious, and as long as their invocations advocate the manifold of left wing agenda items, progressive talking points, socialist dogma and philosophy, and act on the left-wing ideological agenda as part of their “ministry,” Kathy Sullivan will not have to worry about bleeding out her eyes with rage over some Church meddling in temporal affairs.

And as touching and heartfelt as the Reverend’s editorial may seem, rather than encouraging the people to give of themselves to relieve mankind’s ills, through gifts to institutions far more well equipped, it seems he’d rather the government do it with the power of temporal law and bigger budgets, and if you object–the guns of government.  An odd tack for a group that insists on the right to conscientiously object to war.

Hardly much faith in mankind there, and far too much faith in a leviathan government run by the same men and women they seem unwilling to trust to give freely; but not surprising coming from a left leaning Reverend who probably has tax exempt status.  I can’t say for certain but raising your taxes probably wont cost him as much as it will cost you.  But it’s all in the name of Justice.

Some UCC Issues

Environmental Justice (Global warming alarmists)

Reproductive Justice (Killing unborn babies)

Worker Justice (Pro Public Union) 

Health Care Justice (Wrong on so many levels..)

Conscientious Objection (No, just to war–nothing else)

Faithfully facing dying (Government sanctioned suicide)

Worker Justice (pro-union, pro socialist worker) 

If you have issues with any links just jump to the original: http://granitegrok.com/blog/2011/04/reverend_jackboot.html