France goes full Nanny

In full nanny state glory, France is now requiring people to carry a portable breathalyzer in their cars at all times.

New laws will make the equipment compulsory for all cars on French roads from July 1, with anyone caught without the equipment facing an 11 euro (£9.20) fine...

The kits, costing up to £2 are expected to be available at Channel ports and will enable motorists to see if they are under the French limit of 50 mg per 100ml of blood which is 30 mg lower than in the UK...

It is the latest in a series of requirements imposed on drivers by the French Government. Motorists are also legally obliged to carry a warning triangle and fluorescent vest as well as displaying a GB plate and adjusting their headlights to avoid dazzling oncoming drivers.

I suppose the next logical step would be to force car manufacturers to install automatic BAC detection devices that enable ignition. I mean it's not like those breathalyzers can be wrong.

via Samizdata.

Dem candidate: Israel guilty of crimes against humanity

And they say Republicans engage in hyperbole and demagoguery too much. But I think Dem candidate Evelyn Garcia is crazy enough to believe it:

In the emails, Evelyn Garcia, one of Palm Beach County's representatives to the DNC, a Democratic Executive Committee member, and a candidate for State House, District 88, accuses Israel of "crimes against humanity" and of running "mass concentration prison camps". The email exchange began with Garcia forwarding an email by Code Pink, "Time for a New Middle East Policy," which announced a conference opposing President Obama's pandering to the, "pro-occupation lobby."

You know Democrats, after so many bad apples your apple barrel starts to stink.

Shock Chart: Washington D.C. gets 10.5% raise

Must be nice getting rich off all the little people. The Heritage Foundation came up with a shocking chart based off Census Bureau data and their own research. 

This gave me ideas on how to get rich:

1. Move to Washington D.C.
2. Work hard in a Red State.
3. Become a government worker in a Blue State.

I don't know about you, but I hate having to actually work for money. So options 1 and 3 are looking good. Especially if Paul Krugman has his way.

Eva Longoria: No way women can vote Republican

In other news, Eva Longoria is the Obama campaign's Co-Chair?

“I don’t think it’s a hard choice if you’re a woman,” said Longoria during an Obama campaign event in Colorado over the weekend, according to The Denver Post. “We have to get out there and tell (others) ‘If you’re a woman, there is no way you can vote Republican.’”

Well, as a pre-op femme fatale I believe I can discuss this issue with absolute moral authority.

First of all, Obamacare won't even cover my sex reassignment surgery, only to throw additional taxes on my cosmetic surgeries. How can she even work for this blatant misogynist?

Secondly, I won't be getting free contraception because my premiums are going up thanks to Obamacare. I mean Obama is taking away my right to promiscuity by raising my premiums!!1!

And now I have to pay an extra tax just to look beautiful! How is a girl supposed to stay tan and affluent? Maybe I'll just keep trying this whole guy thing for awhile.

Obama to focus on Drug War if re-elected

GQ has the story, and it's not entirely clear as to what Obama is planning to do, just what he won't be doing:

[P]ot-smokers shouldn't expect the president to come out in favor of legalizing marijuana. But from his days as a state senator in Illinois, Obama has considered the Drug War to be a failure, a conflict that has exacerbated the problem of drug abuse, devastated entire communities, changed policing practices for the worse, and has led to a generation of young children, disproportionately black and minority, to grow up in dislocated homes, or in none at all.

For once, I'm in agreement with the President, but why do I get the feeling he's still going to be pushing that pull-open door?

Getting politicians to understand how their actions contributed to the problem is a lot harder and requires more effort, but will ultimately pay off...

Beyond that, since the United States isn't about to legalize or regulate the illegal narcotics markets, the best thing a president can do may be what Obama winds up doing if he gets re-elected: using the bully pulpit to draw attention to the issue.

Oh oh ohhh, so he's gonna talk about drugs.  Great, that should get the hope and change finally going. I won't hold my breath.

On this issue Obama=Romney. Joy.

via Hot Air's headlines.

Rand Paul: teaching Congress to read

I like the cut of this guy's jib:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced legislation that would force the Senate to give its members one day to read bills for every 20 pages they contain.

"For goodness sakes, this is a 600-page bill. I got it this morning," Paul said Friday, just before the Senate approved a massive bill extending highway funding, federal flood insurance and low student loans rates.

"Not one member of the Senate will read this bill before we vote on it," he added.

Paul also introduced related legislation Friday, S. 3359, that would prohibit the inclusion of more than one subject in a single bill.

Since they're essentially illiterate preschoolers now, maybe he should phase it in slowly. Like for the first year make it one day for every 5 pages, then after 10 years they could sit at the big boys table and read 20 or more. Nobody likes doing too much homework now Senator Paul.

Wages drop for 5th time in 33 years

Change. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics weekly wages have dropped, the fifth time in a generation.

In a just-released review of employment in the nation's largest 322 counties, BLS found that weekly wages dropped over the year by 1.7 percent to $955 in the fourth quarter of 2011 from a high of $971 in the fourth quarter of 2010.

That means the $50,000-a-year mark, busted in the fourth quarter of 2010, has dropped back to an average yearly salary of $49,660. And the wage depression was widespread: 282 major counties suffered wage declines; just 36 saw increases.

But it must be all those poor, suffering government workers right?

(chart from Michael Mandel)

Oh.

This is how Democrats create jobs

They hire new government workers.

States, cities, counties and school districts hired 828,000 workers in the first four months of the year, up 20% from a year earlier, and the most since 2008, according to a USA TODAY analysis of the government's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

Forget about where that money comes from, forget about the lack of contribution from those jobs to the economy, forget about creating wealth. This is how they think, and if it takes a lot more taxes to pay for them, all the better.

Remember all the stories from a month or so ago about how job cuts from state and local government payrolls were killing America's past, present, and future? Those apocalyptic visions of unemployed teachers roaming the streets like the Baseball Furies from The Warriors? For god's sake, didn't we understand that a 1.3 percent cut in state jobs and a 2.8 percent cut local in government jobs since 2008 was the very reason that unemployment was over 8 percent rather than over 7 percent (never mind that either figure was well above what the Obama administration had promised when it passed its $800 billion stimulus)?

A little snark from Reason's Nick Gillespie, who goes on to point out that State and Local governments are hiring faster than in the last four years.

This frustrates me. People either don't understand or don't want to understand the harmful effects of taking money out of the private sector to create government jobs. And it's not like that was idle money in the government's coffers; it's either tax money or debt--which is a delayed tax. No wonder the private sector is worse off.

Yes, there is a place for government workers and it's good that we have some, but that doesn't mean we should keep hiring more, especially now.

Mexico's IFE shows win for leftist PRI candidate. Updated

With over 95% of the votes tallied by Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), the PRI Party candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, is shown to be the clear winner in Mexico's General Election.

What does this mean, you may ask, for America? Well, not much or a lot--depending on how you look at it.

I'm no expert on Mexico's PRI, but they have run its executive government for most of recent history. Official relations will probably not change much between our governments, but border violence and economics might.

What I'm expecting from them are re-emphasized socialistic policies. The PRI did base much of their policies on the Soviet Union's. More nationalization, more central planning, which generally means slow growth in today's global economy. And slow growth generally means more crime.

Which brings me to Peña Nieto. The Mexican drug war has been astonishingly violent, and so dangerous for and increasing number of Mexicans that security is their number one issue. Peña Nieto ran on trying a different approach to the drug war; instead of focusing on the big fish, he plans to stop the everyday crimes.

That might be effective for people in Mexico, but I don't see it doing much to stop the border violence nor drug smuggling in the United States. With less heat on the drug cartels it might actually get worse.

Short of dramatic events or significant change in American policy, I expect more immigrants from Mexico both legal and not, similar if not increased levels of drug smuggling and border violence, but otherwise little change.

Update: Maybe Peña Nieto will put the heat on the cartels:

Peña Nieto wants to boost Mexico’s Federal Police, and he’s for creating a new national paramilitary police force to fight the cartels. His campaign has also been “highly solicitous” of the United States, notes Patrick Corcoran of InSight, an organized crime monitoring group. This could mean a bigger U.S. role. Naranjo is also reportedly close to U.S. officials.

Photo of the day

I would post it here but that would be like stealing the whole article. Photo at the link.

Bald eagle steals fisherman's catch.

via Fark.

North Korea getting a facelift?

Progress is progress I guess:

North Korea's youthful supreme leader Kim Jong Un is allowing women to wear pants, platform shoes and earrings, making more mobile phones available, endorsing previously banned foods like pizza, French fries and hamburgers...

These changes in food and fashion that Kim Jong Un seems to be embracing are the result of the impact of foreign culture and information. The sweet taste of capitalism has been spreading...

But a substantial portion of the North Korean people now have access to information from the outside world through foreign TV, radio and DVD players, easily smuggled in. The spread of USBs and MP4s containing popular South Korean shows or dramas have been viral, and awareness of the outside world has grown exponentially, according to a recent study released by InterMedia Survey.

More and more it seems like the Supreme Leader's role is to manage the decline of his power. But NK still has a long, long way to go.

New poll spells trouble for Republicans?

At least it appears so on it's face. A Kaiser health tracking poll found that

a majority of Americans (56 percent) now say they would like to see the law’s detractors stop their efforts to block its implementation and move on to other national problems.

What went unreported however, is that among those polled, support for the Supreme Court's decision is basically split: 47% approve - 44% disapprove (3% margin for error). And Republicans have a slight edge on enthusiasm:

...to the extent that the court’s decision to uphold the law does motivate people to vote, higher shares of Republicans say the result makes them more likely to turn out on election day than Democrats (31 percent compared to 18 percent).

Now let's apply a little commonsense. Elections and issues aren't decided in a vacuum. This will be largely a referendum on Obama. While incumbents typically have a significant advantage, in my opinion this decision only serves to fuel the Republican base and ease Democrats' fears.

Repealing Obamacare on the other hand, is an entirely different story.

Obama's calligrapher making $96k a year

That's right, and the calligrapher's assistant is making $85,000 a year. Those are just two of Obama's 114 personal assistants.

The lowest salary is $42,000 a year--for jobs like receptionist, staff assistant, and "analyst". The highest paid staff are pulling in $172,000 a year, and there are quite a few of them.

Not only that but according to Politico, the presidential staff is growing:

A quick review found the White House payroll appears to have grown since last year, going from $37.1 million in 2011 to $37.8 million in 2012. The number of employees listed also grew  -- from 454 last year to 468 in 2012.

Via the irreverently funny site Michelle Obama's Mirror.

Arab Spring "a sick joke"

Via Insty, I couldn't help but quote this Daily Mail article:

"As hated leaders are replaced by even more brutally oppressive regimes, the Arab Spring has become a sick joke."

I'm not blaming this on Obama or Bush, but they both contributed to the state of things now. Protesting against and even overthrowing oppressive regimes are all generally laudable actions, but out here across the ocean I think we should pick our battles and allies very, very carefully.

From Egypt to Tunisia, Yemen to Libya, shockingly high crime rates, economies in free-fall and decimated tourism industries are the terrifying new realities Arabs must now confront.

And in each of those countries, radical Islamists have moved quickly to fill the social and political vacuum. They have used a simple strategy: relying on gaining a majority from the minority who vote, and blatantly disregarding rules that ban foreign campaign donations from neighbouring states, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, looking to extend their influence in the region.

Both these countries, although Western allies, also subscribe to Wahhabism — the strictest and most austere interpretation of Islam that even bans contact between unrelated men and women. They also consider it their God-given duty to promote this ‘pure’ version of Islam whenever the opportunity arises, thus their attempts to exploit the Middle East’s disarray.

In Morocco, Kuwait and Algeria — the only Arab countries that have held parliamentary elections during the past year — affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood have swept to power.

Instead of bowing to, fighting an air war for, or through official support offering cover for them; we should stand against the oppressors but otherwise remain neutral in precarious cases like these when the next guy could be a lot worse.

After all, our enemies might have more terrible enemies.

75% of Obamacare costs fall on middle class

According to the Wall Street Journal's senior economist, Stephen Moore, 75% of Obamacare's costs "will fall on the backs of the families" making less than $120,000 a year.

Great, it's as if the economy needed another shot of industrial strength horse tranquilizer.



Wait a sec... Just got an email from Friedrich Engels telling me not to worry, it's actually better this way. Well now, looks like we have a surefire way to finally nail down that elusive "recovery".

NYT: Obama's Bain attacks on Romney are so working!

Riiight.

So a failing president's attacks on a successful businessman are "making inroads"? Wait a minute... Yes, of course.  I just got off the phone with Karl Marx and he confirms that the Bain attacks are a good idea.

There you have it.

For a different opinion, ask Cory Booker. Mr. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection isn't buying it either.

Confirmed: Roberts switched his vote

It's unsettling to know a Chief Justice changes his position on such important constitutional issues. Apparently CJ Roberts originally sided with the conservatives in May, but as we all know changed his mind and joined the liberals.

Jan Crawford at CBS got the scoop:

[Roberts] changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations.

Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy - believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law - led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold.
"He was relentless," one source said of Kennedy's efforts. "He was very engaged in this."
But this time, Roberts held firm. And so the conservatives handed him their own message which, as one justice put it, essentially translated into, "You're on your own."

Naturally a lot of people are talking about this and I'm still skimming through all the commentary. But on page 2 of Crawford's article we're led to believe it is likely Roberts' vote was influenced by media coverage.

Rdbrewer at Ace's favorably compares French judges to Roberts, regarding potential outside influence. Roberts apparently absorbs news like a sponge. I tend to agree, at the very least, a Supreme Court Justice should avoid media coverage on the specific issue under consideration.

Randy Barnett at Volokh has more including video of Crawford on Face the Nation.

My main worry about the Obamacare ruling

I have been largely ambivalent about the Supreme Court decision. Like Krauthammer, Barnett, and Erickson, I liked the fact that this was largely a conservative/libertarian opinion in all respects save upholding the ACA. And given the public's opposition to it, I tend to think it only increased the odds of kicking Obama out this November.

However, stare decisis isn't sacrosanct. Far from it. I fear what John Yoo articulated so well:

[A]n Obama second term may see the appointment of up to three new Supreme Court members. A new, solidified liberal majority will easily discard Sebelius's limits on the Commerce Clause and expand the taxing power even further. After the Hughes court switch, FDR replaced retiring Justices with a pro-New Deal majority, and the court upheld any and all expansions of federal power over the economy and society. The court did not overturn a piece of legislation under the Commerce Clause for 60 years. [emphasis added]

I don't know why Roberts did what he did, perhaps even switching his vote at the last minute. Although I can understand rationalizing a wrong decision to save an institution, I couldn't condone it.

If it isn't the high court's "job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices" then it is surely not your job to protect a political climate from the duty of the court.

Politico reporter Joe Williams is out, after idiotic Romney remarks

It looks like another lefty reporter who talks before he thinks just got canned. Joe Williams has left Politico after he made some stupid comments about Romney (and others).

...Harris and executive editor Jim VandeHei sent a memo to staff announcing that Williams' remarks "fell short of our standards for fairness and judgment," and that he would be suspended pending review.

There's at least one other in Politico who could use a lesson in "fairness and judgment". 

White House: The Obamacare tax is a penalty

It's pretty obvious they would avoid using the word "tax", especially given it is the one piece of legislation so central to the administration, so close to an election.

But to me frankly, "penalty" doesn't sound much better. Here's what Press Secretary Carney said:

“You can call it what you want... If you read the opinion, it is not a broad-based tax. It affects one percent, by CBO estimates, of the population.”  Pressed on whether that 1 percent will be paying a tax or a penalty, he responded, “It’s a penalty because you have a choice. You don’t a have a choice to pay your taxes. You have a choice. If you can afford health insurance, if you don’t buy it.”

So if you decide not to pay the "penalty" you go to unicorn and rainbow prison, instead of that other kind? Penalty or tax, it still sucks being coerced into buying something. Second look at Freeganism (no income, no taxes)?

And only 1% paying a new tax? Really? I'm not so sure. It's not like health care costs are going up either.

The same way penalties are not taxes, the Affordable Care Act is not costly.

It's like there is something systemically wrong with the ATF

First, the wonderful idea that was Fast and Furious which got 300+ Mexicans and an American Border Patrol Agent murdered.

And after perhaps what many think would have been time spent soul searching or bettering themselves, now they go and do a thing like this:

“We just learned that ATF senior management placed two of the main whistleblowers who have testified before Congress about Fast and Furious under the supervision of someone who vowed to retaliate against them,” they wrote before describing how senior political figures have made dangerous threats before...

“We need to get whatever dirt we can on these guys [the whistleblowers] and take them down.”
Thomasson also allegedly said that: “All these whistleblowers have axes to grind. ATF needs to f—k these guys.”

I hope the investigation bears more fruit than slapping AG Holder on the wrist.
(via Insty)


pic from Waznmentobe

Obamacare ruling in meme form

From ErikLundegarrd.com:

From Never Yet Melted:

And one of my own:

Update: Here's an original:

Another update: Business Insider has more.

Feel free to link your own or put out some ideas.

Cagle's Mexican flag cartoon controversy

If the plague of Mexican drug cartel violence happened to be occurring here on a similar scale, I would expect the same kind of treatment. I just don't understand the outrage.

(Full size image at Cagle's site)

Here's Cagle on CNN explaining the obvious.

Sweet vid: Time lapse of Earth from space station