CVS announced that it will stop selling tobacco products in all of its stores by October of this year.

CVS, the nation's second largest pharmacy chain, said Wednesday that it would stop selling all cigarettes and tobacco products nationwide by October, saying they have no place in a drugstore company that is trying to become more of a health-care provider.
(....)
For CVS, the move will be costly. The drugstore chain estimates it will lose $2 billion in annual revenue from tobacco and other sundries as a result, which amounts to about six to nine cents a share this year and about 17 cents annually from next year on. CVS, with annual revenue of more than $123 billion, projects its 2014 earnings will be $4.36 to $4.50 a share.

They are a private company (publicly traded) and entitled to make whatever business decision they see fit. While I never discourage personal boycotts, I think an organized one would be silly. Many people support Hobby Lobby's right to not provide abortion coverage to employees on moral grounds. The same should be true for a company like CVS.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:17 AM | Comments (515)
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• Five Devastating Obamacare Facts From The CBO's Latest Economic Report
  
• Goldberg: Think Power Inequality
  
• NYT: Jobs Lost To Obamacare 'Mostly A Good Thing'
  
• The Exhausted US Economy, And A Lesson For Republicans
  
• Sandra Fluke Pulls Out Of Running For Waxman's Seat
  
• The Tyranny And Lethargy Of The NYT Editorial Page
  
• Democrats Fundraising Of Philip Seymour Hoffman's Death
  
• Nine Reasons The Farm Bill Is Bad For America
  
• Barack Obama, The Tone Deaf President
  
• Judge: Drivers Allowed To Warn Fellow Motorists Of Speed Traps
  
• Syria Could Become Base For Attacks Against US
  
• Things Not Looking Good For Alaska's Democratic Senator
  
• The Weird, Wobly World Found By NASA's Kepler Telescope
  
• Finnish Soul Is Reflected In Goalies
  
• Okay, Fess Up. Who Stole The Owl?
  
• Steve Moffat Explains The Origin's Of Sherlock's Best Man Speech
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:23 AM | Comments (460)
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During his big Fox News interview on Sunday, President Obama claimed that there was "not even a smidgen of corruption" at IRS, just some "bone-headed" decision-making. This is understandably raising some eyebrows, particularly since just last May, he said that the targeting of conservative groups by IRS was "intolerable and inexcusable."

Yesterday, Deputy Attorney General James Cole suggested that Obama had not even been briefed on the investigation into the IRS.

On Tuesday, Mr. Cole told the House Judiciary Committee that he doesnÂ’t know what evidence Mr. Obama is using, but that nobody from the department briefed the president.

“Generally we do not brief elected officials,” Mr. Cole said.

That left Republicans with more questions for Mr. Obama.

“How can he be so sure, when it’s an ongoing investigation?” said Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican and chairman of a key investigative committee looking into both the IRS and the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the agency.

The Wall Street Journal, observing that we've gone from "inexcusable" to "bone-headed," rightly wonders, "If there was no corruption at IRS, why did Lois Lerner invoke her Fifth Amendment rights?"

But hey, if the President says it's all kosher and the FBI doesn't intend to pursue criminal charges in its probe of the selective IRS screening procedures, why should Ms. Lerner take the Fifth? Perhaps we'll get to hear what Ms. Lerner meant when she wrote in February 2011 emails that the tea party matter was "very dangerous" and that "Cincy should probably NOT have these cases."

This is quite right. Obama glibly tosses aside even the possibility of corruption in the IRS before the investigation is even complete while Lerner's decision to clam up actively prevented further investigation into her role in targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny and holding their applications in administrative limbo for longer than liberal groups.

We can and we should take the negative inference from Lerner's decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment. She had no reason to do so unless she believed a crime had been committed. I think we should take Lerner, who was present and involved in the event, at her word when she indicated that crimes might have been committed. Certainly Lerner is more credible on the topic than the President, who wasn't even briefed on the matter.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:24 AM | Comments (185)
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Happy Wednesday.

Silly season is well underway. Clay Aiken announced his candidacy for a congressional seat in North Carolina. Sandra Fluke did the same for the seat Rep. Waxman is vacating in California.

Sen. Cruz is starting to play nice with his Senate colleagues. "

Lots of great Ask the Blog questions for the podcast crew came in yesterday. Good job, ya'll.

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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:54 AM | Comments (248)
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The Great 2013 Commenter Stats Tally

Last night some of the commenters were asking about how many commenters there are around here which reminded me that I had completely forgotten to calculate and post the 2013 overall commenter standings AKA the Hall of Shame. So here they are.

But first some overall blog stats from the year 2013:

Number of blog posts:  4815
Number of comments:  1510735
Number of unique hashes:  48129 [I dub them Breitbart's Coveted 50K]

Top 20 commenters:
1 [28133 comments] 'sven10077' [77.08 posts/day = 1 comment every 18.7 minutes 24/7/52]
2 [19432 comments] 'Anna Puma (+SmuD)'
3 [16170 comments] 'Vic'
4 [15586 comments] 'EC'
5 [14733 comments] 'Niedermeyer's Dead Horse'
6 [13787 comments] 'Mike Hammer'
7 [13317 comments] 'MWR, Proud Tea(rrorist) Party Assault Hobbit </s></b></u></i>'
8 [13176 comments] 'Jane D'oh'
9 [11894 comments] 'Nevergiveup'
10 [11757 comments] 'BCochran1981 - Credible Hulk'
11 [11611 comments] 'thunderb'
12 [11488 comments] 'Jones in CO'
13 [11433 comments] 'J.J. Sefton'
14 [10861 comments] 'willow'
15 [10486 comments] 'garrett'
16 [10312 comments] 'RWC'
17 [10278 comments] 'rickb223'
18 [10149 comments] 'Flatbush Joe'
19 [9323 comments] 'AllenG (Dedicated Tenther)'
20 [8682 comments] 'zsasz'

Top 20 sockpuppeteers:
1 [2096 names] 'The Political Hat' [5.51 unique names/day]
2 [1266 names] 'Cicero (@cicero)'
3 [998 names] 'Islamic Rage Boy'
4 [909 names] 'Romeo13'
5 [793 names] 'zsasz'
6 [761 names] 'Adam'
7 [734 names] 't-bird'
8 [651 names] 'Brandon In Baton Rouge'
9 [639 names] 'phreshone'
10 [585 names] 'mindful webworker - choose'
11 [543 names] 'Low Information Voter'
12 [530 names] 'Mike Hammer'
13 [529 names] 'pep'
14 [524 names] 'Truck Monkey'
15 [514 names] 'toby928©'
16 [512 names] 'derit'
17 [505 names] 'Doctor Fish'
18 [462 names] 'Prez'nit 404'
19 [446 names] 'Buzzsaw90'
20 [439 names] 'Count de Monet'

You know they do have therapy for this now. And it's even covered under the ObamaCare Gold plan - assuming you could afford it. Just remember that you aren't using all of your valuable pla$ma all of the time.

Update: Commenter Laurie David's Cervix puts it all in perspective.

123
28,133 comments sven10077

Say 10 words per comment on average

281,330 total words written

Word Counts of Some Famous Novels

30,644 – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
64,768 – The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury
82,762 – Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank
107,349 – Gullivers Travels – Jonathan Swift
127,776 – Life on the Mississippi – Mark Twain
177,227 – The Fellowship of the Ring – J. R. R. Tolkien
144,523 – One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
211,591 – Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
311,596 – The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand

Posted by: Laurie David's Cervix at February 04, 2014 10:46 PM (kdS6q)

Which means that over the past year sven has commented the equivalent of Crime and Punishment AND Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:10 PM | Comments (791)
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Wired had a fun piece about the dos and don'ts of online dating profiles. Apparently, tatted men are hawt, tatted gals are nawt. Also, don't mention the Almighty, but DO watch Homeland.

One assumes that to find a good conservative mate, sammiches and bacon should appear prominently in your online dating profile.

Anyhoo, Wired's article reminded me of those old Dewar's Scotch ads. Remember them?
more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:20 PM | Comments (218)
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The Senate passed the Food Stamp bill that also includes subsidies for farmers.

Reminder: It's a crowded field but Oregon kind of stands out among all the ObamaCare disasters.

Judge in Connecticut upholds the state's gun law.

Liberal spin...ObamaCare won't kill jobs, it will just enable people to quit their jobs. So you get to pay more for insurance so that your neighbor can quit his job. Welcome to Obama's America...spread that wealth around.

Posted by: DrewM at 01:19 PM | Comments (658)
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I'm impressed. I am truly impressed by the accomplishment.

A Brit has, it appears, set a new record for the largest wave ever surfed.

What I always wonder when I read stories, such as this, is whether it's a show of bravery or of foolishness to attempt such a remarkable feat. God instilled in us an adventurous spirit, but how carelessly are we allowed to pursue it?

A few weeks ago I posted a video of a monster water slide which I'd hop on in a minute, but this... THIS.... just looks crazy. What sane person paddles out to greet an 80' wave?

So, how far would you go for adventure? What wouldn't you do, even on a dare?

What has, thus far, been your greatest risk-taking adventure?

Open thread.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:17 PM | Comments (411)
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Sorry, another one of those days.

Posted by: Ace at 09:50 AM | Comments (882)
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The surrender addicts in the GOP need a hit but before they can surrender they need to pretend they are going to fight for something. With the debt ceiling hike coming up this month they have narrowed their phony demands down to two options.

Several House members told The Washington Post on Monday that Republican leaders have narrowed their list of possible debt-limit strategies to two options: trading a one-year extension for approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, or trading a one-year extension for repeal of a provision of the Affordable Care Act.

...

A clean debt-limit extension is not yet on the GOPÂ’s radar....

Oh it will be. It will be.

You know how I know the GOP will fold on all of these things? Boehner has already said he won't push this to default.

See, the key to playing chicken is to make the other guy you won't swerve first. Announcing before you start your engine that you will be turning away well before you come close to colliding sort of eliminates the other guy's incentive to give in.

Also, you may have noticed the GOP has a bit of history when it comes to this sort of thing. Remember Boehner's pledge to tie hikes in the debt ceiling to equal or greater spending cuts? Yeah, that died with the Ryan-Murray budget deal that busted the sequester to pieces.

Now if the GOP is going to try this, why are they even thinking of pushing the Keystone Pipeline? Isn't this the year of ObamaCare (and amnesty)? Why would you make this about anything other than OBAMACARE? Even if they cave on it, and they will, at least they'd be making people aware of something I best most people don't know...sure you'll be paying more but you'll also be bailing out the insurance companies for the privilege.

Oh and have you noticed the stock market has been tanking for a couple of weeks? Of course the media isn't really playing that up because it's not good for Obama but the second they can tie "Your retirement account is shrinking because the GOP is playing games with the debt ceiling!" you know they will. Is that a lie? Sure. Will it matter to Team Media/Democrat? Not a bit.

Personally, I think they should just pass the damn debt ceiling. They are going to do it anyway and they won't get anything for it. The list of GOP surrenders is long enough, there's nothing to gained by adding another one.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:11 AM | Comments (501)
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