Charm has its limits

Dana Milbank  "Carney smiled, charmingly. “Republicans made a choice,” he said. “The sequester is here, it’s being implemented as a result of the choice made on Capitol Hill by Republicans,” he added.
As for cooperating with Republicans, Carney argued that Obama’s agenda “is inherently bipartisan” — and that it was up to Republicans to sign on. “There’s nothing partisan about deficit reduction,” he said. “There’s nothing partisan about comprehensive immigration reform. . . . I would argue that there’s nothing partisan about common-sense solutions to reduce gun violence in America.”"

 

Marriage: What It Is, Why It Matters, and the Consequences of Redefining It

Heritage  "Marriage is based on the truth that men and women are complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the reality that children need a mother and a father. Redefining marriage does not simply expand the existing understanding of marriage; it rejects these truths. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. By encouraging the norms of marriage—monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and permanence—the state strengthens civil society and reduces its own role. The future of this country depends on the future of marriage. The future of marriage depends on citizens understanding what it is and why it matters and demanding that government policies support, not undermine, true marriage."

Lets see, what would be a good way for Obama to save money in this financial dust bowl we call the sequester

Mike Ramirez; Obama Should Cut His Million-Dollar Golf Games, Not White House Tours    ""President Obama has spent far more lavishly on White House state dinners than previous chief executives, including nearly $1 million on a 2010 dinner for Mexico's president, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner."
"One dinner: $969,793."

Yes, that Mike Ramirez!  Ramirez is an IBD senior editor and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for political cartooning. Who knew he can write too?

It’s Obama’s Economy—at Last  "For most of his first term, President Obama successfully sold a line to the public that economists will tell you is, at least in part, intellectual snake oil. He managed to blame our historically slow economy almost entirely on President George W. Bush."

Even ABC News Can’t Ignore the Pettiness of Obama’s Canceling of White House Tours   "...but it certainly is implied that canceling White House tours is a childish move intended to make the sequester as visibly painful as possible while “saving” very little:"

 
Obamacare: Seven Feet of Job-Killing Regulations
 
" "This is over 20,000 pages and measures 7' 2.5"," McConnell said of the amazing photo. "These are all the Obamacare regulations published in the Federal Register up through last week. Then last Friday they added another 828 pages."
" "These additions seemingly come on a monthly basis as Congress finally starts finding out, as Rep. Pelosi said, "what's in the bill" and more rules are added, clarified, and altered.
"Obamacare isn't just a harmless stack of paper though, McConnell says. Hidden in those thousands of pages is a myriad of job-killing rules that have already had real-world consequences."

Poll shows Nightmare on Sequester Street a flop   "It goes by many names — crying wolf, Chicken Little, or just plain hyperbole.  What happens to a politician who insists that the world will end unless his policies are implemented, only to have the globe keep on turning as usual with little impact?  Barack Obama may be finding out, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll (via Jim Geraghty):"

Just HOW stupid are we, anyway?

http://terrellaftermath.com/

Alan Caruba; Stupid Food and Drink Bans  "The founders of this nation fought a Revolution to rid themselves of a monarch and a parliament that thought they could and should tax everything it could to pay for their wars. Today, the vast bulk of Americans simply roll over and accept every idiotic law passed by Congress and others who feel they are empowered to determine every aspect of your life. They aren’t."

When Big Gulps are outlawed, only outlaws will.....

Nanny B’s Soda Ban Struck Down!  "[Judge] Tingling ruled, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city’s Board of Health did not have the authority to issue the soda ban. You can read the full text of the ruling here."

Really stupid school "zero tolerance" rules

A Texas school district tried to expel a 16-year-old high school student for a year when a butter knife was spotted in the back of his pickup truck.

Wisconsin: A sixth-grader gets suspended because of a science project. The project involved cutting an onion. He brought a kitchen knife to school.

Texas: This zero-tolerance idiocy comes from Ft. Worth. Cory Henson plays baseball on the Diamond Hill-Jarvis baseball team. In the trunk of his car is his baseball equipment, including aluminum bats. In the front seat of his car was a souvenir baseball bat, made of wood and 8” long. Ft. Worth government school officials decided that the 8” bat was [a] weapon! The real aluminum baseball bats are not. More here.

Political correctness displaces common sense  While rejecting what this site says about anti-bullying, it is an excellent compilation about silliness in our society. Want to get some time off for your child? Teach him how to make an origami pistol,

Drop the paper gun and back away!

Chicken Little, Sequester Edition  "If the GOP caved, spending would have continued to grow out of control, just like he wants. For that matter, it will still grow out of control, just at an imperceptibly slower pace. In reality, the spending "cuts" for FY2013 amount to just $43 billion."

Judge Halts New York City Soda Ban

Wall Street Journal 

A state judge on Monday stopped Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration from banning the sale of large sugary drinks at New York City restaurants and other venues, a major defeat for a mayor who has made public-health initiatives a cornerstone of his tenure.

The city is "enjoined and permanently restrained from implementing or enforcing the new regulations," wrote New York Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling, blocking the rules one day before they would have taken effect. The city's chief counsel, Michael Cardozo, pledged to quickly appeal the ruling.

Berkeley Democrat Proposes Taxing Email To Keep Post Office Afloat…

Weasel Zippers

Add email to the never ending list of things Democrats want to tax.

"Gordon Wozniak suggested that using email, which is partially responsible for killing off demand for letter-carrying services, could save “vital functions” of the post office, the news site Berkleyside reported.

"“There should be … a very tiny tax on email,” he told the City Council. “There should be something like a bit tax. I mean, a bit tax could be a cent per gigabit and they would still make, probably, billions of dollar a year.”

And we all know from experience how that "tiny tax" will metastasize over time, don't we?

"The problem is, such a levy wouldn’t be legal unless the Internet Tax Freedom Act is allowed to expire in 2014."
 

You may appreciate the comments accompanying the above article. Every day, we become less and less free.

 
 about.com

Our Indefensible Commander-in-Chief

By William Kristol in The Foreign Policy Initiative  "President Obama is an appalling commander in chief. In the last couple of months alone, he’s selected and muscled through the Senate the least qualified nominee for secretary of defense in a half century; forced out of his position early a superb combatant commander, General James Mattis, because Mattis took seriously the Iranian threat; [then Obama] blithely ordered women into combat arms units, with no pretense of serious consideration of the effect of this on the capability, discipline, and morale of our warfighters. "Before that, while growing every other part of the federal government, he cut defense. So we shouldn’t be surprised that he’s not doing anything serious about the further devastating cuts sequestration will impose on the military."

...."But the GOP is now saying: Yes. Which means the Republican party is complicit in the failure of political responsibility and national seriousness we’re now witnessing. Which means, unfortunately, that historians will say not just of the Obama administration but also of today’s Republican party: “They were weighed in the balance and found wanting.” "

 

Why Obama will be dead weight for Democrats in 2014

Rick Moran at American Thinker  "To net 17 seats and flip the chamber, Democrats have to win predominantly on GOP turf, in districts that Mitt Romney won and where Obama and his agenda are unpopular. A number of Democrats made clear in interviews that the more partisan posture Obama has adopted over the past few months -- particularly on cultural issues like gun control, and to a lesser extent on immigration and gay marriage -- is making an uphill slog that much steeper.
...."Republicans won't be in much better odor with the voters but will have the advantage of not being responsible for a weak economy and far left agenda that is going over so far like a lead pipe."

But complicating the mix is the one issue that is supposed to remain unspoken, yet Robert Babcock dares to speak it:
My Fear of a Black President 
"I don't know why I hadn't realized this before. Until now, I had believed that I have subjected Mr. Obama to the same standards of judgment I've applied to other presidents. I had believed that I have been critical of Mr. Obama for substantive reasons, such as infidelity to the Constitution, bad policies, screwed-up values, and rude and arrogant behavior unbefitting a U.S. president.
"Yet, according to Chris Matthews, it's all really just about my fear of color."  Read more.
 

Bad Science and Bad Journalism are a Bad Combination

Alan Caruba  "Instead, we continue to be the victims of global warming charlatans, some of whom are “scientists”, while other scientists with far more integrity have been engaged in debunking their lies since the 1980s. The only thing we know for sure is that the global warming “scientists” are destroying the public’s confidence in the integrity of climate science."

" “Such hysteria,” warned Dr. Lindzen, “simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing.” "

JoNova; Tackling tribal groupthink

Transgender Restroom Signs

With liberals running this government expect to see these signs in military barracks someday.

The Toilet Book  Right: Sign for bathroom designated for transgender students at a Thai elementary school.

Mockazine

College Insurrection; maybe you want to bookmark this site

From College Insurrection; William A. Jacobson, Associate Clinical Professor, Cornell Law School (who also blogs at Legal Insurrection) enters this post on today's media:

St. Louis U. student takes on media bias   "Saint Louis University student Amy Lutz has some thoughts regarding the role leftist bias plays in the distorted reporting:"

The leftist bias in the main stream media further solidifies the denigration of the press as a check on government activity. During the 2012 election, the media went to bat for President Obama. Every statement Mitt Romney uttered was examined with a fine toothed comb and relentlessly criticized the former candidate while President Obama was seemingly outside the scope of media investigation. And don’t even get me started on the debate moderators (Here’s looking at you Candy Crowley).

In making her case for the need to have independent media (which I like to think includes this blog) she observes that:

...the main stream media bias is self-imposed. Yes, they often face pressure from government officials to publish favorable stories, but there’s no law or regulation saying they must do so. The bias in the main stream media is perpetuated by peer pressure, intimidation, and a shocking lack of individual initiative.

Original article here: The (Un)Freedom of the Press

Other sources comment on this same issue:
Liberal Commentator Twists the Facts about ‘the Rich’
A Break from the Liberal Agenda

Obama Flails as Republicans Stand Firm on Sequester

Michael Barone   "But the Republicans didn't deal. They decided to take the sequester cuts and make them the basis for a continuing resolution funding the government for the rest of the fiscal year.
"Obama responded by threatening all sorts of dire consequences -- Head Start kids left out in the snow, airline security lines as far as the eye can see.
Republicans would take the blame, the Obama folks believed. Polls showed they were far less popular than the president.
"Then on Tuesday it was announced that White House tours were cancelled. "The sequester meant there wasn't enough money to host those high school kids from Waverly, Iowa."