It's a small tax, fifteen cents per tree.

So what? What possible justification is there for taxing Christmas trees?

Here's their justification:

The Obama administration has imposed a 15-cent tax on Christmas trees in order to pay for a new board tasked with promoting the Christmas tree industry.

We need to promote this industry?

Here's a good question. The tax will be imposed on sellers of Christmas trees, who will in turn collect it from buyers of Christmas trees.

So, the tax is taken from buyers of Christmas trees to promote to them the idea that they should buy Christmas trees.

We now need the federal government to impose a tax, and make a purchase slightly less beneficial for the user (by making it more costly) in order to... tell him he did a good thing in making the purchase?

As Instapundit used to say, "Gee, I'm so glad the government has every other duty squared away that it can now go looking for new dragons to slay!"

On Twitter, I asked, "What new rent-seeker are we now obligated to provide a fat lifestyle to in perpetuity?"

Here's the answer:

The board, proposed earlier this year, is the culmination of a years-long effort by the fresh Christmas tree industry to promote itself, according to the background provided in the Federal Register. The industry has faced increasing competition from producers of artificial trees, but efforts to collect voluntary contributions for a fresh-tree marketing campaign have repeatedly run out of funding. So the government stepped in to mandate a fee to support the promotion board.

I oppose this with all the bitterness in my black heart.

Fend for yourselves, assholes. You want to run an advertising campaign? God love ya. Do it with your own damn money.

No. A thousand times No. It is a time for a serious rollback of Uncle Sugar, not an expansion of Uncle Sugar into more and varied Venture Socialism opportunities.

I love fresh Christmas trees.

That's not the point.

It is not the federal government's job to now add to its list of responsibilities (and powers) taxing citizens to encourage them to buy the thing they already bought. It is not their job to tell people that fresh trees are better than artificial ones.

Everyone goes to Washington with their hands out.

It is the duty of Washington to begin telling people:

This is America. People work for a living here. The Free Money Shop is closed due to their being too much interest in it.

Posted by: Ace at 09:09 AM | Comments (192)
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Am I overreacting? I don't think so.

Want to regurgitate your breakfast? Here's some reading material that will make you want to puke. Fast forward to the "Victim #2" section of the report for bonus outrage.

So how do these sub-geniuses from State College react to news that their beloved head coach turned a blind eye to a kiddie-raper in the midst of his program? They have a nighttime demonstration.......in support of the coach.

As the lolcats might say........UR DOIN IT RONG.

(The 19-year old boy who was raped in the shower as a 10-year old back in 2002 was unavailable for comment.)

UPDATE(and a caveat): From DiT, here's this gem, from Michele Catalano.

Also, now that I've cooled down for a second, I should probably say that while I want to take pliers & a blowtorch to Coach Sandusky for what he did, I'd like to see everyone who knew about this and failed to report it to the authorities flogged in public, and I'd like to see the State College PD wade into the idiot demonstrators from last night with batons whistling and pepper spray unholstered.....I realize that the Greater Penn State Community did nothing wrong in this case. Unless more evidence comes out that the tens of thousands of Penn State students, alumni and fans in Western Pennsylvania actually knew about this story before it broke and did nothing, it's hard to tar them all with the same broad brush.

With that said, I will NOT apologize for the hastily-written title to this post. If my "Fuck You" to the Penn State community is more offensive than coaches and administrators enabling a child predator to continue his sick pastime in and around the Penn State campus, then maybe you need to step back and look at your priorities. (UPDATE WITHIN AN UPDATE: because I don't want my justified use of profanity to detract from my justified outrage here, I have replace all but one of my f-bombs in the original draft of the post with the names of Muppet Characters. See if you can spot them all!)

BONUS UPDATE (with bonus "KERMITS" and invocation of tBCoS): From Slublog, there's this link of breaking news. So Joe Paterno is going to retire at the end of the season?

Whiskey? Tango? Foxtrot? Does Joe think he is going to be carried off the MISS PIGGY field to the BEAKER cheers of the DR. BUNSEN HONEYDEW crowd after leading Penn STADLER State to another GONZO bowl game? FOZZIE BEAR that noise. He should have the common DR. TEETH & THE ELECTRIC MAYHEM decency to slink out the back door of the coaching offices in shame like John SAM THE EAGLE Edwards leaving a session of a Federal RIZZO THE RAT Grand Jury.

That moderation expressed in my first update? KERMIT that. If Joe JANIS THE BASS PLAYER Paterno is allowed to coach another ANIMAL football game at Penn RALPH THE DOG State University, every WALDORF fan in the stadium who so much as smiles when their BERT team scores their first ERNIE touchdown can go Suck The Barbed Cock of Satan as far as I'm concerned.

BIG BIRD! Now I'm pissed.

And when you come back with the "look at all he's done for the community" card, tell me this. How many other kids have been raped since 2002 because JoePa and the other jackasses at Penn State didn't think it was necessary to get the police involved in this situation? Ten? Five? Even one? Is that a fair trade for all that Joe Paterno has done for his community?

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 08:37 AM | Comments (394)
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Filed a complaint (not sexual harassment) about alleged unfair treatment at the job following the one at the NRA.

And also complained of a sexually-charged email sent by a supervisor.

— A woman who settled a sexual harassment complaint against GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain in 1999 complained three years later at her next job about unfair treatment, saying she should be allowed to work from home after a serious car accident and accusing a manager of circulating a sexually charged email, The Associated Press has learned.

Karen Kraushaar, 55, filed the complaint while working as a spokeswoman at the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Justice Department in late 2002 or early 2003, with the assistance of her lawyer, Joel Bennett, who also handled her earlier sexual harassment complaint against Cain in 1999. Three former supervisors familiar with KraushaarÂ’s complaint, which did not include a claim of sexual harassment, described it for the AP under condition of anonymity because the matter was handled internally by the agency and was not public.

To settle the complaint at the immigration service, Kraushaar initially demanded thousands of dollars in payment, a reinstatement of leave she used after the accident earlier in 2002, promotion on the federal pay scale and a one-year fellowship to HarvardÂ’s Kennedy School of Government, according to a former supervisor familiar with the complaint. The promotion itself would have increased her annual salary between $12,000 and $16,000, according to salary tables in 2002 from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Kraushaar told the AP she considered her employment complaint “relatively minor” and she later dropped it.

Well, okay, so she's a bit of a complainer, something of a drama queen who thinks everything's unfair and isn't shy about filing a complaint to get "justice."

But at least she's being forthright, forthcoming, and candid about this whole episode.

Kraushaar said Tuesday she did not remember details about the complaint and did not remember asking for a payment, a promotion or a Harvard fellowship. Bennett, her lawyer, declined to discuss the case with the AP, saying he considered it confidential.

Wait, what? She doesn't remember and her lawyer, who handled it, won't discuss it?

Well, okay, I'm sure it's embarrassing for her to talk about this. At least I'm sure that that sexually-charged email she complained of was a serious matter, and not the sort of thing that hypersensitive thin-skinned feminists complain about just to prove their mouths work.

I mean, I'm sure the email was really sexually charged, and none of this will play into the stereotype of a dour, vindictive mouse of a woman who takes offense at jokes you might see on Tim Allen's kid's show Home Improvement.

The complaint also cited as objectionable an email that a manager had circulated comparing computers to women and men, a former supervisor said. The complaint claimed that the email, based on humor widely circulated on the Internet, was sexually explicit, according to the supervisor, who did not have a copy of the email. The joke circulated online lists reasons men and women were like computers, including that men were like computers because “in order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.” Women were like computers because “even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.”

Wh-- But she likes horses still, right?

Yeah, I'm going to need that press conference at this point.

Posted by: Ace at 07:14 AM | Comments (517)
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Signposts on the way to DOOM: the failure of the State to protect its law-abiding citizens. This is the breaking of the civilizational compact, and is as clear an indication as you’re ever going to get that things are spinning out of control. When the barbarians can act with impunity, or even with the complicity of the State, then the whole notion of “a nation of laws” is put to rout.

Quan's command center call was the latest example of the mayor's resistance to using police force on demonstrators, a position that is being reinforced both by her closest advisers and her family.

In fact, eyewitnesses say Quan's husband was among the banner-wavers blockading the port in a nonviolent action earlier Wednesday.

Posted by: Monty at 04:42 AM | Comments (350)
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Tim Blair picked up on something that's been bugging me about the Occupods ever since the story of the stolen $5,500 MacBook.

The recent Occupy Wall Street protests (and their Occupy Sydney and Occupy Melbourne cousins) have aimed their message at the income disparity between the 1% richest and the rest of the country. But what happens when you expand that and look at the 1% richest of the entire world?

How much do you need to earn to be among the top 1% Â… ?

$34,000.

U.S. median household income (2009): $50,221

U.S. poverty threshold (family of four, 2009): $21,756

Being poor in the U.S. looks pretty damned good to the vast majority of the world's population (as is self-evident by the issues along our southern border). And the middle is downright rich by comparison. The self-anointed 99% would do well to get over themselves.

(h/t Slublog)

Posted by: andy at 03:50 AM | Comments (76)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:55 AM | Comments (154)
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Why Liberals Hate E-Cigarettes

Currently one of the most promising techniques for getting hard-core smokers to quit is weaning them onto e-cigarettes and then slowly lowering the amount of nicotine.

Reduces harm and doesn't produce any annoying smoke. Sounds great right?

Yet guess who would like to see them banned:

Though this was just a small pilot study, the results fit with other encouraging evidence and bolster hopes that these e-cigarettes could be the most effective tool yet for reducing the global death toll from smoking.

But there’s a powerful group working against this innovation — and it’s not Big Tobacco. It’s a coalition of government officials and antismoking groups who have been warning about the dangers of e-cigarettes and trying to ban their sale.

...When it comes to nicotine, though, the abstinence forces tend to be more liberal, including Democratic officials at the state and national level who have been trying to stop the sale of e-cigarettes and ban their use in smoke-free places.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:42 PM | Comments (1050)
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Second page of results, here. Houck (D) leads challenger Reeves (R) by 124.

Here's the thing: Virginia Democrats got 40% of the vote in total in the state, and Republicans got 60%. But because the gerrymandered map is so well done, Democrats can still get 50%+ of the Senate and House seats.

...

Virginia, Mississippi, Ohio, and Kentucky. Raquel prompted me to post this. I had forgotten.

In Mississippi, the Republicans are about to win the state house for the first time since... Reconstruction.

This is why I throw up my hands at the "Perry was a Democrat" thing. You think that Mississippi is Democrat? No. It's that since the Civil War, the Republican Party was kind of unpopular in the south for 120 years. It's only in the past 30 years that the southern states have shifted, state by state and legislator by legislator, over to the party which they historically despise but which happens to be ideologically aligned with them.

Anyway. Big wins in Mississippi.

In Ohio, it looks like Issue two (repealing Kasich's union reform bill) is likely to pass by the huge margins people thought it would.

In Mississippi, they're probably going to elect a Republican governor, Phil Bryant.

Kentucky will probably return Democratic Governor Breshear to office.

In Virginia, we need five seats to take control of the state Senate.

With about a quarter of precincts reporting, longtime Spotsyvania incumbent Sen. R. Edward Houck (D) was running slightly behind Republican challenger Bryce E. Reeves. But another longtime incumbent, Charles J. Colgan Sr. (D-Manassas), was running ahead of challenger Tom T. Gordy (R) in another closely contested race.

Results here.

DC Court of Appeals Rejects ObamaCare Challenge: More bad news, as the DC Circuit upholds ObamaCare's mandate, because it's so clear that the federal government, like, always had this power. They just didn't realize it for 250 years.

I've pointed this out before, but in WWII, the nation's finances depended on War Bonds. War Bonds put bullets in our boys' guns.

Question:

If the federal government had the power to demand that citizens buy things the government considered necessary, why did it not realize it could mandate that citizens buy war bonds?

If they'd mandated the purchase of war bonds, they could have reduced the interest rate on them. Could have reduced them even down to zero.

But I guess they just didn't remember they had this power.

Posted by: Ace at 05:27 PM | Comments (209)
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In an email thread, these videos popped up.

It is interesting that, from where I stand, a lot of the conservative movement has bought into the left's take on Reagan as an amiable empty-head. That sort of conservative may credit him as having good instincts and good general idea of what government and America and freedom were about, but that he was largely unencumbered by facts.

In fact, he was pretty damn sharp and fluent. He had clearly spent a lot of time thinking about these issues, and writing about them, and speaking about them.

In the first clip, he defends the Diem regime in Vietnam, which is tough to do (despite that being US policy), because the Diem regime was marked, like most governments throughout history have been marked, by corruption and oppression. But he clearly knows what he's talking about, and knocks down the British snot asking questions.

RDBrewer notes that this is an edited clip-- Senator Robert Kennedy made a mess of several questions and Reagan had to ride in to rescue him and clean up for him. He writes further:

Kennedy was beaten so badly and he was so upset about it, he immediately fired the staffer who put that debate together.

IIRC, he referred to it as, to paraphrase, "that debate with that governor from California."

Yes, this is a Cain-bashing post. But this idea that "authenticity" means "lack of detailed policy knowledge" is risible.

And watching Reagan here, I am reminded, again, that I do not want an amiable Everyman as President.

I'd much prefer an amiable Extraordinary man.

No, we won't likely see another Reagan. But let's not denigrate what "Reaganesque" meant. It meant the power to communicate clearly, and forcefully -- sure, it meant that. But implicit in that was the power to communicate ideas and, yes, details of policy, and details of history.

I do not see how we're to have all these changes in policy with a leader who is so uninterested in policy he doesn't know the basics of it.

Reagan understood policy -- perhaps not down to the wonkish detail of Paul Ryan, but more than just the basics.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:57 PM | Comments (232)
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An aircraft carrier-sized asteroid passed by the Earth this afternoon. The closest approach was at 6:28 p.m. Eastern, inside the Moon's orbit--its closest approach in 35 years. From Space.com:

The asteroid 2005 YU55 came within 201,700 miles (324,600 kilometers) of Earth at 6:28 p.m. EST (2328 GMT) Tuesday evening before speeding off into deep space once again at about 29,000 mph (46,700 kph).

Space.com provides this infographic:

Source: SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

Video below the fold. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 03:24 PM | Comments (153)
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