 |
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
|
|||
|
PIG
NEWS DIGEST
| NANNY STATE: LEGICRAP/DUMB LAWS/PORK BARREL
|
|
DECEMBER 2006
Gotcha, Hypocrite
Source: PIG’s Golden Oinks 2006 [12/22/06] As a 5-term member of Pennsylvania’s legislature, former state Rep. Mark McNaughton made a name for himself as a staunch foe of gambling. His reputation as a gambling foe was so high profile that he just landed a spot on Pennsylvania’s gaming board. Despite his gambling foe credentials, Mark has a dirty little secret that is now out in the open, thanks to the Philadelphia Inquirer. While Mark was voting against slot machines and other gambling in the Keystone State, in public, he was also making frequent trips to Atlantic City and Las Vegas where he - gasp - gambled, regularly. Somehow, that tidbit - including the $15,500 in winnings he declared on his tax returns - didn’t make the cut during his interviews for that cushy job on the state gambling board:
Mark insists - duh - that he’s not really a hypocrite. When he opposed gambling, he was channeling the views of his constituents. He’s not opposed to gambling, but he’s not ready to have it in his own backyard:
Fair enough, but why wasn’t he man enough to explain that BEFORE he got nailed as a hypocrite? Beantown Butthead Radio "shock jocks" decided to do something special to "celebrate" Boston’s annual homeless census headcount. Opie and Anthony call it their "Homeless Shopping Spree" and it sounds like big time fun. They did the deed on the day before Boston’s homelessness headcount, but they delayed the broadcast a day to coincide with Bean Town’s homelessness census. What, you wonder, is this "Homeless Shopping Spree"? Wonder no more.
It sounds like big time shock jock fun, but Boston Mayor Thomas Menino is "outraged" according to the Boston Herald: "Some of them might be recovering alcoholics coming back from addiction and recovery, and they’re doing this for ratings? For a cheap dollar?" Grow a pair, Tommy boy. They didn’t take them to one of your malls, so get over it. Nanny State Fun and Games Greeley (Colorado) The alleged target of the raid were certain border jumping scumbag invaders who were busted for "identity theft". This smoke and mirrors clown posse adventure is nothing more than public opinion spin doctoring. Its real purpose is making America’s rational adults think that somebody inside the D.C. Beltway is getting serious about cracking down on border jumping scumbags and those who hire them. Once you’re all suitably conditioned, RoveCo will start a massive spin doctoring campaign as they try to convince you that universal - instant citizenship - amnesty for all these diseased, chronically needy, crime-ridden border jumping scumbags is a just what America needs. Don’t hold your breath waiting for this pagan scribbler to buy that crap, clown posse punks, because I’m not that goddamn stupid. Tampa (Florida) Unlike so many aspiring tyrants, Mayor Pam wanted a legal opinion on her power to impose the ban. The question went up the food chain and landed in the laps of Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation. This week, they passed along their sage advice to Mayor Pam: "Don’t even think about it". Okay, that’s not their exact words, but the message is clear:
That didn’t sit well with an eager social engineer named Ellen Snelling, co-chairwoman of the Tampa Alcohol Coalition. She’s worried about this ruling’s impact on the children. What children? College students who are exceptionally fond of adult beverage and, regularly indulge in "binge drinking". Ladies drink free and dollar drinks encourage this dastardly "binge drinking". That, this whiner blithers, is why capitalists must be punished so these college drunkards can be saved from themselves. Does this ruling mean that these Tampa social engineers are giving up? Hardly. They might try their luck in a court room, where a bit of judge shopping might get the job done. Or, they could go up the Nanny State ladder and ask the state’s legicrats to infringe upon the rights of capitalists who run adult beverage emporiums. Two Twisted Nanny State Tales Camden (Maine) Johanna Tutone is a capitalist who owns Cappy’s Chowder House in Camden, Maine. Her improbable journey through brainless bureaucrat hell started when a patron at her restaurant noticed a certain decorative item in the eatery’s second floor dining room: ‘a black-backed gull stuffed and mounted under glass’ (Bangor Daily News). It’s a very tasteful item that’s ‘arranged in an ornate beveled glass frame so that its wings are spayed on either side of its long neck’ (Daily News). Purchased at an estate sale some 20 years earlier, and dating back to 1854, the Victorian era objet d’art never elicited a second thought, until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service showed up to issue dire threats about Johanna’s violation of federal law. Eager to make a lasting impression, the feds spouted the usual dark threats about seizing the bird and throwing Johanna into the slammer for breaking a federal law. Alarmed, Johanna contacted U.S. Senator Olympia Snow and told her the strange story, making doubly sure to point out that the avian art object was perpetrated in 1854 and purchased 20 years ago. Since both events predated the federal law, she wondered why the feds were busting her chops. After mulling this feather brained issue, Senator Snow brokered a deal that is destined to drive you to drink:
Undoubtedly relieved, and invariably amazed that this boneheaded bureaucratic antics, Johanna will thank the museum by throwing a "sea gull party" to raise money for the museum. We’re pleased that this story has a happy ending, but, like our friends at Fark, we’re compelled to ask: how much did all this happy face-saving federal horse crap cost the U.S. taxpayer? All things considered, a simple "no harm, no foul" would have gotten the job done much more efficiency. Salt Lake City (Utah) In the eyes of the law, however, their ages land them in a twisted outpost of the judicial Twilight Zone where the 13 year old girl is charged with engaging in a sexual act with someone under the age of 14. As fun as that is, it gets better because the same law that pinned a sexual perpetrator label on her, also pins a "victim" label on her for the same hormonal outburst because her 12 year old passion partner also engaged in a sexual act with someone under the age of 14. That’s right PIGsters, there was only one act of passion, but thanks to these legal eagle lamebrains the girl is the perpetrator of a crime AND a victim of a crime for one roll in the hay. Eat your heart out, Catch-22. We’d like to tell you that this epic has a happy ending, but we can’t. So far, no rational adult has stepped up to the plate to stop the madness. That explains why this terminally weird outburst of jaundiced justice scaled the judicial food chain to the Utah Supreme Court. This just in! In Utah, common sense is as dead as Michael Richards’ entertainment career. Film at eleven! NOVEMBER 2006
Nanny State Nitwit Nonsense Source: PIG New Wire [11/30/06] England
One district alone, Hertfordshire, is installing 30 cameras at rubbish dumps, allowing the Trash Gestapo to check and record vehicle license plates. This new spycam at rubbish dumps comes on the heels of news reports about local tyrants planting "electronic bugs" inside ‘hundreds of thousands of household wheelie bins’ (Daily Mail). If you live in Britain, be afraid, be very damn afraid, because your local Elected Tormentors are out of goddamn control. Portland (Maine) That must sound thrilling to the usual suspects. But, at least one small potatoes capitalist, Matthew Curtis whose Cadillac Mountain Sports is a fixture in the area, has "issues" with the edict:
Matthew Curtis’s enthusiasm for staying in downtown Portland is tempered by the fact that he’s ‘thisclose’ to being a dastardly "chain" store wrangler himself with 8 stores in his fledgling adventure in capitalism. Due to the likely impacts of this asinine edict, Matthew Curtis is seriously contemplating pulling up stakes and leaving downtown Portland. Washington, D.C. Music industry twerps whine that this digital radio to MP3practice will put them out of business, since nobody will buy CDs from them anymore. Musicians, they claim, would be forced out of the business. Luckily for them, the Elephant Clan majority might have just enough time left in their tenure to ram this lunacy through. Setting aside the salient fact that digital radio listeners pay for the service, I’ll focus on the music industry whiners instead. Why not dump this caterwauling like a bad habit and hop on the 21st technology express, instead. Why not bring in some new blood, new ideas and find a way to get your piece of the action by selling you music directly, over the Internet? It’s a much more viable solution than fighting a losing battle to stop the advance of entertainment technology. Horrifying Border Security Ineptitude World Net Daily produced some alarming data from a variety of reliable sources including a report by the Inspector General’s Office in the Department of Homeland Security:
Based on a 1 out of every 4 border jumping scumbag invaders gets nabbed in the act ratio, WND extrapolated these numbers to show that, quite likely, 350,000 potential terrorists from "high risk nations" got through our porous borders, undetected. Using the same 1 out of every 4 ratio, that would mean 400,000 criminals entered our country during the same period. In April 2005, the Government Accountability Office released a report on a study of 55,322 illegal aliens incarcerated in federal, state, and local facilities during 2003. It found the following:
Vicente W Bush’s steadfast refusal to do his sworn duty to safeguard American citizens by securing our borders is a recipe for a bloodbath. The lives lost to these border jumping scumbag invaders are on his head. We deserve better than this. We deserve a lot better than this. Mind-Numbing Bureaucratic Stupidity The meat wrangling capitalists running the Black Mountain Smokery did a header into the dumbest group of Elected Tormentor rat bastards in the known universe this week. The bone of contention is a Black Mountain Smokery sausage that they named "Welsh Dragon". The name is meant to invoke Wales and its notorious fondness for the mythical dragon. That explanation might satisfy a rational adult but it didn’t make a dent in the granite crania at the Powys County Council (Wales). The name "Welsh Dragon" must be changed because - DUH - the product doesn’t contain any "DRAGON" meat. Stupid? Oh hell yes, but par for the course with these petty U.K. tyrants. Despite the fact that, to date, nobody has filed a single complaint over this name, the council cretins warn that failure to comply will result in prosecution. This probably isn’t the time to tell the Powys County Council that "Gatorade" doesn’t - gasp - contain a single smidgen of a certain Florida-dwelling toothy reptile. We better not tell them that "Animal Crackers" don’t contain any trace of critter, either. Nanny State Nitwits, Near and Far England Jolly Old England, continues its headlong plunge into cradle to grave tyranny this week with another, utterly incomprehensible Nanny State Nitwit notion. Determined to find some way to eliminate the YOB (Brit speak for juvenile delinquents) population, Brit hacks are seeking ways to correct the problem in the cradle. Under a new edict proposed by a Brit hackette, Children’s Minister Beverly Hughes, Brit parents would be required to sing to their children and read them nursery rhymes. According to this insane bitch, a "parenting workforce" - the Nursery Rhyme Gestapo - would be trained and deployed to track down non-compliant parents and "support" them. The Daily Mail shared these fetid facts about this Draconian Nanny State scheme:
The Nursery Rhyme Gestapo? Holy Crap! Washington D.C. Ms. Majoras also predicts that her warnings about the deleterious impacts of such a law will be ignored. Price gouging laws have one predictable impact: they restrict and/or reduce the quantity of the item being regulated. A price-gouging law would, in other words, make gasoline scarcer here in the USA. Despite her public and private warnings to Congress, Ms. Majoras opines that a price-gouging law is already a done deal. Mind-Numbing Brit Lunacy A Brit capitalist is still in shock after doing a header into mind numbing Nanny State lunacy. Steve Morton began his descent into Nanny State hell when the pinheads at the Wakefield District Council’s environmental cabal wrote to him. The missive alarmed Steve with prose about an "odour from the extract ventilation system". Fearing a serious problem with his drainage system, Steve rang them up and was floored when he learned that the politically incorrect aroma being investigated was the scent of - drum roll - fish and chips. There are times - like this one - when "well, duh" is grossly inadequate. Why? Because Steve Morton runs a fish and chips shop. Now, he’s being told that the local Elected Tormentors might black flag him for having fish and chips smells at his fish and chips shop. This is Nanny State lunacy on steroids and Steve knows it:
Steve is right about the aroma of fish and chips, not that it matters. Somebody needs to launch a priority investigation of the water supply at the Wakefield Council, because there’s damn sure something in the water. Mind-Boggling Nanny State Myopia In many respects, Upper Arlington (Ohio) denizen Joe Randolph has a lot in common with other divorced dads. He works hard to provide for his kids and does his best to scrape together the $1,300 a month to for the child support payments the divorce settlement conferred on his ex-wife. But, Joe’s adventure in child support isn’t your garden variety epic. Joe wonders - and so do we - why he must pay child support payments to a woman who died last April? Why is he paying child support payments - payments that go into an escrow account - when he’s now the custodial parent for his three children? He needs that $1,300 for its primary purpose, taking care of his children but the state’s bureaucrats are still collecting it and sitting on it. Joe keeps asking these, and other pertinent questions but the answers are not forthcoming.
The Licking County Child Support Enforcement Agency gives lip service to resolving the situation, but they insist that their hands are tied. They can’t change the court’s ruling without another court ruling and, due to the impressive backlog of cases, that could take months, perhaps much, much longer. Joe Randolph is not a deadbeat dad, so why can’t the Nanny State cut through the red tape and give him a break? Joe Randolph seems to be one of the good guys and he deserves better than this. Colorado’s Smoke Nazi Antics Citing the First Amendment’s free speech protections, some Colorado thespians mounted a court challenge against the state’s Smoke Nazi edict. Smoking, they claim, is an essential factor in certain productions and should be treated as speech, not a violation of the anti-smoking edict. Denver District Judge Michael Martinez was singularly unimpressed by this argument, ruling that lighting up as part of a performance is not "expressive behavior", so it’s not covered by the First Amendment. That ruling thrills the socks off the Colorado’s Smoke Nazis but it’s downright alarming to the state’s thespians. Here are some thespian responses from this Denver Post item:
If, as seems to be the case, these theaters are private property, why is it any of the Nanny State’s damn business if some actors light up a cancer stick as part of their role? How, I ask you, could you portray FDR or Winston Churchill in a production without their trademark smokes? You can’t, and that’s a damn fact. OCTOBER 2006
Nanny State Lunacy in The U.K. Source: PIG’s Brit Correspondent Andrew [10/27/06] Alarmed by teenage binge drinking, the Brit Secretary of Health, Patricia Hewitt is ready, willing and eager to slam dunk a monumental tax increase on adult beverages. She’s convinced that it will eradicate this drinking binge because these teenage binge drinkers won’t be able to pay the artificially inflated prices. The problem, she blithers, is deadly serious and calls for drastic measures:
If you’re waiting for this pagan scribbler to launch one of his memorable tirades against this brute force social engineering, learn to live with your disappointment. Our Brit Correspondent Andrew has it covered with this prose:
Game, set, match. Fighting To Save the USA Some political players are finally getting organized to mount a spirited defense of American sovereignty against a European Union class, border erasing blight called the ‘North American Union’. In addition to the word wranglers at World Net Daily who continue to sound the alarm, other noteworthy political "players" are joining the fight: Conservative Caucus Chairman Howard Phillips, Phyllis Schlafly, author Jerome Corsi, plus Congressmen Tom Tancredo, Walter Jones, Virgil Good Jr and Ron Paul. The first shot in this fight to preserve America’s national identity is a proposed congressional resolution. Here are some pertinent elements of the resolution as presented in World Net Daily:
Since this congressional resolution - H.Con.Res487 - has been sent to committee, the pertinent question is an obvious one. Is there a snowball’s chance in hell that this resolution will rouse congress from its "open borders are cool" slumber? Ask me again, after the congressional elections. For now, the best answer I can give is "don’t hold your breath". Le Grande Nanny State A French court thrilled the berets off Surrender Monkey capitalists who own hotels, bars and restaurants when it decreed that the nation’s prevailing 35 hour work week applied to them, too. This overturns a deal struck with the French government in 2004 that allowed "hospitality workers" to toil 39 hours a week instead of 35. Instead of overtime, the arrangement meant that workers could earn an extra week of vacation that could be cashed in, at the employee’s request. The new ruling "throws the industry into chaos", according to these hospitality capitalists. It means that the employees will be working fewer hours. It might also mean that bars and restaurants shorten their hours to accommodate the new work week mandate. The ruling could cost these hospitality capitalists big bucks:
According to the union that pulled this off, this will mean "more jobs". Dream on, union punks. Dream on. The nasty dose of reality buried in this story is the fact that Surrender Monkey capitalists seem to willingly accept the fact that the French Nanny State is allowed to dictate how a business will operate in great specificity. The real outrage isn’t a change from 39 hours a week to 35 hours a week. The real outrage is that the Nanny State is setting this hours limit in the first place. Terrors of Technology That bane of Brit motorists’ existence, the ubiquitous speed camera, has a pesky flaw. It’s a flaw that makes it damn simple for that lead-footed Brit driver to escape one of those "gotcha" images that cost them money and points off their license. For reasons I probably don’t want to know, the Brit Home Office admitted that this flaw exists in the hi-tech ‘SPECS’ cameras. A Daily Mail item describes the flaw and how to capitalize on it this way:
If you’re blazing along a Brit road and trip that first camera, all you need to do is change lanes before you hit the second one and the system won’t nail you for your speeding infraction. Big, big fun, but the avoidance tactic isn’t without its inherent risks. All that high speed lane changing could lead to accidents and that fun fact is, allegedly, keeping Brit officials up all night. I seriously doubt that this speed camera heartburn is due to the possibility of more accidents. I’m guessing that they’re worried sick that their high tech speed traps won’t be generating sufficient revenue. PIG is always amused when the Nanny State shoots itself in the foot with its own edicts - "Home Office ‘type approval’ rules" in this case. Left floundering due to their own clownish antics, these Nanny State nitwits are forced to say "Yes, there is a fatal flaw in the SPECs camera scheme, but please don’t take advantage of it. That’s a good chap." Oh hell yes, that should do it. Tea anybody? Nanny State Nitwits Caracas (Venezuela) Unlike the anal retentive Uncle Sam, Venezuela allows beer trucks to roam the nation’s highways and byways selling beer direction to a thirsty public without going through a taxed to death middleman. It is, in our humble opinion, a terminally civilized idea. That might explain why the Skipper wants to put an end to this practice:
Fear not, adult beverage afficionados, thirsty Venezuelans can still get a brewskie at licensed liquor emporiums, but the days of sending little Juanita down to the curb to grab a few brewskies for dear old dad are over. Pardon me while I take a brief time out. This tragic tale of woe has me all choked up. (Sniffle, sniffle.) England The good news - such as it is - is that this edict won’t take effect until 2010 at the earliest. That gives the U.K.’s rational adults a tad over 3 years to find some way out of this "for your own good" bovine excrement. Nanny State Nonsense Cornwall (England) Debbie had returned from the store and put the trash bin back where it belonged, long before she heard that knock on her front door. The cop seemed apologetic enough, but he told her that he made the 20 mile round trip to Debbie’s home to admonish her for "blocking the road" (a bogus charge since the bin was by the curb, between two other parked cars) with her trash bin. If she did it again, she’d be fined by some humor-challenged Brit bureaucrat. We applaud Debbie for her ingenuity and agree with her that life must be spiffy if the Newquay cops can send someone on a 20 mile jaunt because of a trash bin. Chicago (Illinois) Essex (England) SEPTEMBER 2006
Another Jersey Switcheroo? Source: AP [09/29/06] After Jon Corzine abandoned his Senate seat to take the reins of New Jersey’s government in a special gubernatorial election, one of his first tasks was to name his replacement in the U.S. Senate. His choice, Robert Menendez, seemed like a good one, at the time. Fast forward to the present and Senator Menendez is in a dogfight with a pesky Elephant Clan candidate named Tom Kean, Jr. to keep his Senate seat. Big, big, fun. A dark cloud of ethical accusations hanging over Senator Menendez’s head is making this election much closer than it should be in a state that hasn’t elected an Elephant Clan senator in more then 30 years. Painfully aware of Donkey Clan trickery, the Elephant Clan is worried - quite rightly - that New Jersey’s Donkey Clan punks will pull another Jersey Switcheroo like they did in 2002 when Senator Robert Torricelli was trailing badly in the polls mere weeks before the election. Unwilling to take that loss, New Jersey’s Donkey Clan yanked Torricelli and replaced him with Frank Lautenberg, two weeks after the law-mandated deadline for candidate switches had expired. We all remember how an eager to please New Jersey Supreme Court gave its blessing to this Jersey Switcheroo, thus salvaging a Donkey Clan Senate seat. The question uppermost in Elephant Clan minds is this: will the Donkey Clan pull another Jersey Switcheroo in 2006? The Donkey Clan hacks steadfastly deny any Jersey Switcheroo plans, but their protests are falling on deaf Elephant Clan ears. Why? It’s all about a ‘pledge’:
Is there another Jersey Switcheroo in the offing? You better believe it, Sparky. The instant Menendez starts trailing in the voter preference polls, he’ll be gone in a heartbeat. You can bet the proverbial agricultural endeavor that the rat bastards on the Jersey Supreme Court will rubber stamp this blatant violation of the state’s election laws, again. The names might have changed, but Jersey politics still reeks like an open sewer. Big Apple Fat Nazi Mind-Blower We’re pleased to report that the Big Apple has resolved all those pesky issues that make living in New York City an on-going adventure. Traffic? No problem. We’re sure the streets are wide open for your use and that parking is so plentiful that meter maids are offering valet parking services. Crime? Doesn’t exist anymore, now that all those muggers, drug dealers, hooker and other miscreants have shed their antisocial ways. The Educrap system? It’s so spiffy that 6 year old’s are speaking like PHD’s. How do we know all this? Why haven’t you heard it elsewhere? As usual, we have the answer. With all the foregoing problems, and others too numerous to mention solved, Big Apple hacks are borrowing a page from the Windy City’s playbook and tinkering with the food Big Apple denizens are allowed eat. The Food Nazis in the Big Apple’s public health bureaucracy proposed a regulation that would ban the city’s eateries from cooking with oils or margarines that contain trans fats. Failure to switch to a city approved cooking oil would earn those dastardly food wranglers a fine that is a proposed $200 to $2,000 per incident. A second proposed regulation would require that "some major chains such as Starbucks, Subway and McDonald’s list the calories for items on the menus or menu board". Big, big fun, but utterly moronic. Listing calories is, these days, a bragging rights game. Great zot, Burger King is bragging about it’s new "coronary on a bun" burger - four patties, four slices of cheese, eight slices of bacon and much more - that clocks in at 1,000 calories minimum. If these Big Apple Health Nazis think listing calories will scare off customers, they’re tragically delusional. Tampa’s Digital Sign Jihad "We feel that [digital signs are] distracting. When you see these signs, you tend to want to look at them. We don't want it to look like Times Square." (One of Tampa’s sign Jihadikazes) Based on a preponderance of the evidence, property rights are as dead as the dodo bird in Tampa, thanks to the city’s code enforcement bureaucrats. An excellent example is an ordinance that limits ways a capitalist can use his digital sign to advertise his wares. Spouting drivel about enhancing public safety, Tampa’s code enforcement cretins perpetrated this liberty-infringing gem:
As fun as this sounds, it gets better, because these non-negotiable rules only apply to capitalists. Government and quasi-government entities like the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center are given an exemption from the digital signs edict. Apparently, the bureaucrats who penned this edict are convinced the government digital signs won’t cause a motorist to get distracted but a car selling capitalist’s sign will. Bold new concept. Tampa’s primaeval sign edict eradicates advances in billboard technology that allows several capitalist firms to share a sign that can change its message/advertisement every 6 seconds. This technology allows someone to change the advertising on the sign with a few key strokes instead of sending out Hank and Zeke to paste up some new paper. While the rest of the world has entered the computer age, Tampa and its code enforcement twerps are mired in the stone age. It’s shocking that Tampa’s twerps can’t wrap their synapses around a simple concept like "my property, my sign, butt the hell out, Nanny State Sparky". Nanny State Nonsense DLC In IRS Bull’s-Eye Nanny State Fishing Expedition When a rational adult says, "I don’t think so, Big Brother is watching Sparky", the predictable Nanny State nitwit response is "Why should you care if you’ve got nothing to hide." Despite the fact that I have nothing to hide, where I go on the Internet, the books I choose to read, the movies I like to watch is none of the Nanny States goddamn business. All Play and No Work Once upon a time in a differently-ethical realm called New Jersey, there was a work-seeking man named Wayne. Wayne had a job but decided to do a bit of moonlighting to fill those idle hours and keep him off the streets. In the fullness of time, Wayne landed a spiffy job with an Ivory Tower named the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. For reasons that will soon become clear, the Eggheads decided that Wayne was uniquely qualified for a certain job that paid $35,000 per year for 3 hours "work" every Tuesday. The job was, without putting too fine a point on it, a lobbyist position. Wayne got $35,000 a year to persuade the New Jersey legislature in general and the Senate Budget Committee in particular to send more of those stolen tax dollars the university's way. Big fun, but it gets much better. Wayne was very successful, since during his lobbyist stint he helped increase the university's cut of the stolen loot from $2.8 million per year to $12.8 million per year over a 3-year period. Most amazing of all, Wayne managed this by showing up at the school for three hours every Tuesday to read his newspaper. Confused? Don't be. You see, PIGsters, Wayne is New Jersey State Senator Wayne Bryant, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. In other words, the university paid him $35,000 a year to lobby himself and it was, in their eyes, money well spent. He's getting $35,000 a year, for three hours work a week? He's getting paid to talk to himself? Where the hell do I sign up? Outsourcing Strikes Again If you've tried to purchase a Sudafed or any other similar medication that contains pseudoephedrine, you're painfully aware that it's a painful process riddled with unnecessary bureaucrat-imposed bovine excrement. We're forced to endure this unrelenting crap because our Elected Tormentors are determined to make it much, much harder for America's meth making entrepreneurs to make this illicit drug by limiting their access to the essential chemical ingredients: pseudoephedrine and ephedrine. Did they succeed? Yes, and no. The good news is that the number of American meth labs is decreasing. The bad news is that instead of taking meth off street, they simply outsourced meth production to Mexico. MSNBC shared this spiffy War On Drugs reality check:
While we're forced to beg, plead and grovel for one goddam box of Sudafed, the drug cartels to whom the Feds outsourced meth product are, as MSNBC reports "using chemicals diverted by the ton from pharmaceutical companies in Asia. Big, big fun. Let's review this tribute to Nanny State outsourcing: Uncle Sam makes it damn near impossible for me to buy a damn Sudafed. He goes flat out to shut down domestic meth labs. International drug cartels move quickly to fill the void. Meth availability skyrockets, prices drop, quality increases but that's okay because Billy-Bob can't buy the Sudafed he needs to make a batch of meth in his basement. Holy law of unintended consequences, Batman. Legislative Monkeywrench of the Week The more I learn about the way our Elected Tormentors work, the more amazed I am than any damn thing ever gets done. By now, we are all painfully aware of a legislative speed bump called the filibuster, which is, in essence, an endless debate the requires a daunting 60 votes to put it out of our misery. There is, another, much less publicized monkeywrench that is a nifty bill killer that only requires one senator to get the job done. This parliamentary pain in the butt is called a "hold". On the face of it, the damn thing sounds harmless enough. It starts - and often ends - with a message from a given senator to his party leader that he, she, heshe or it wants to be notified when a certain bill comes up for consideration. Since the senate, routinely, employs "unanimous consent" on a variety of pesky parliamentary details to keep things rolling, a single recalcitrant senator can jam the gears of government. According to veteran Elephant Clan senator Trent Lott, putting a hold on a bill is "the same as shooting it in the head with a bullet". The dirty little secret about holds is that it's hard for a rational, civilian, adult to find out who put a hold on a given bill. There are, however, ways to get around this pesky problem. In fact, it was done quite recently with astounding success:
PIGish kudos are conferred on those Internet bloggers who showed us that as powerful as it is, the hold, can't stand up to a citizens ultimate weapon against Elected Tormentors: public exposure. Kinky's Platform Independent candidate for governor of Mexas, Kinky Friedman is thrilling the socks off Lone Star State chad punchers with his political views. Just for the fun of it, we'll run a few of his notions up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes them. Marijuana Death Penalty Hiring More Cops in Houston So far Governor Perry is ahead in the polls, but, according to an AP scribe, Perry "isn't running away with it". All things considered, we still think a Governor Kinky Friedman would be big time fun. Bristol’s Nanny State Nitwits We’re pleased to report that Bristol (England) has cleared up all the city’s major problems. Poverty, crime and infrastructure are so completely mastered they’re free to deal with certain "annoyances". How, you ask, can we prove that all of Bristol’s major issues are under control? The answer to that question is contained in this letter from the Bristol city council:
That’s right, PIGsters, Bristol’s number one with a bullet issue is door mats. According to this Bristol edict, the lucky recipients of this door mat letter have until September 18th to remove those dastardly door mats. Those who refuse to comply will have their unsafe at any speed door mat removed by a duly appointed Bristol minion. Asinine? You better damn believe it, Nanny State Nitwit Sparky. "Strange Bedfellows" in Minnesota The venerable term "strange bedfellows" is especially apt when it comes to Minnesota’s State Senator Paul Koering (Elephant Clan). Coming as he does from a socially conservative district in central Minnesota, Paul seemed made to order with his views: abortion opponent, supports gun rights, staunch believer in property rights, a vocal advocate for veterans. His supporters were stunned, last year, when Paul was the only Elephant Clan legicrat who voted with the Donkey Clan to black flag a floor vote on gay marriage. That move got tongues wagging and as a result Paul confessed his differently-heterosexual credentials. The political food fight that surrounds Paul’s re-election bid breaks down along the usual fault lines. The Log Cabin Republicans are invoking the "big tent" metaphor when they urge the Elephant Clan to cut Paul some political slack on his GLAAD BAAGism. Paul’s Elephant Clan opponent, Kevin Goedker, is sympathetic, but sounds this clarion call:
Is he right or will Paul’s incumbent status prevail? Update: The votes are tabulated and Paul proved his opponent wrong. The Elephant Clan chad punchers in his district voted 3,956-3,270 to let Paul stay inside the big tent. Bold new concept. ACLU In the Cross-Hairs Thanks to prevailing federal law, whenever the ACLU mounts one of its lawsuits against the government - at any level - a judge can - an invariably does - force the government (taxpayers) - to pay the ACLU’s attorney’s fees. It’s a very enriching process that fills ACLU coffers at your expense. It’s also a very powerful cudgel that helps the ACLU use this "we’re going to kill you with our attorney’s fees" threat to force their target of the moment to backdown without a costly court fight. That big time fun might change, if Indiana Congressman John Hostettler gets his way. His bill which just emerged from the House Judiciary Committee is called the ‘Public Expression of Religion Act and would, if enacted into law, cut the money pipeline that funds the ACLU with all those attorney’s fees in Establishment Clause cases. His bill’s chances with the full house are unknown, but he’s probably encouraged by the fact that Senator Sam Brownback has a similar bill making its way through the Senate. As much as we’d love to get the ACLU out of our wallet, we’re not willing to salute Hostettler’s bill until we get a chance to peruse those devilish details. Yer Outta Here, Skinny Minnie With all their major problems solved, the Madrid regional government went Nanny State bonkers in their zeal to rescue young Spanish girls from getting what the NO NADs call an "unhealthy body image". How? They just painted a Spanish lingo bull’s-eye on high fashion models that are "excessively skinny":
This just in! "It’s for the children" is alive and well in Madrid. Kilt-Wearing Nanny State Nitwits We’re amazed, but far from amused, to report that the Aberdeenshire Council squanders the taxpayers hard earned money on a full-time "trampolining development officer". That’s right, PIGsters, they pay a shameless twit named John Wills to visit schools and youth clubs to lecture them on the proper way to jump on a trampoline. We had no idea that there was a trampoline injury epidemic in Aberdeenshire. Undaunted by the richly deserved brickbats coming his way, John ‘Trampoline Twit’ Wills is determined to save those innocent tykes from a trampoline-induced boo-boo: "I’m passionate about trampolining, but I'm also passionate about children’s safety." PIG News feels confident that this Trampoline Twit twaddle will elevate the Aberdeenshire Council to the Nanny State money squandering hall of shame. An Up and Coming "Public Policy Issue"? As a public service, PIG News wants to warn its readers about what appears to be a new public policy issue in the making. The dreaded malady is hearing loss and the deep pockets in the bull’s-eye are the manufacturers of your MP3 player and you’re Ipod. According to Pam Mason, director of Audiology Professional Practices with the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, prolonged - hours at a time - use of these and similar high tech toys are damaging the users hearing at an accelerated rate. For now, Pam is content to collect data and "study" the problem, but she is already thisclose to invoking the public policy issue trigger word:
That’s right PIGsters. She’s getting ready to unleash the Nanny State’s favorite excuse "It’s for the children." PIG is willing to go the extra mile and dispense the relevant, hearing-saving advice, free of charge: "I you want to save your hearing, turn down the damn volume, moron." AUGUST 2006
More Political Fun and Games Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer [08/31/06] Rhode Island Dastardly prose example 1 opines that "GLAAD BAAGs are inherently unhappy":
Dastardly prose example 2 frets that pop music is turning American listeners into "sissies". He goes on to paint a "what’s up with this" bull’s-eye on Boy George:
Does Steve-o regret the "sophomoric political satire" he penned during his college days? We’ll let him answer that one:
Since we haven’t seen the full text of Steve-o’s college-era prose, we’ll reserve judgement on its allegedly humorous qualities. For now, his political fate rests with Rhode Island’s chad punchers. So be it. Brit Nanny State Nitwit Double Whammy Ageism Bonkers Large firms with a trained personnel department probably won’t find this new edict too oppressive, since some clever human resources twerp will find a way to elicit the relevant information on the sly. They have their ways, and everyone knows about them. Small, mom and pop firms, on the other hand could be in for a rude "employment tribunal" awakening, because they aren’t highly trained hiring specialists who are experts in avoiding bureaucratic trip wires. A core capitalist concept - a willing employer and a willing worker striking a bargain - is deader than the legendary Dodo bird in the U.K. Unnatural Selection Brit Prime Minister Blair borrowed a page from the Huxley’s "Brave New World" with a Nanny State scheme that could, if it’s taken to its Draconian extreme, have the Nanny State dictating which individuals may procreate. The pesky problem that put Blair on this liberty-suffocating path involves hooligans who make life miserable for every-damn-body. The Brit government has, so far, been unable to bring these "Yobs" under control. Now, Blair seems intent on doing the next best thing, by preventing them from being born in the first place. How? By identifying those individuals likely to produce a hooligan and coercing them into compliance. If they won’t "accept" Nanny State "assistance", uh, voluntarily, pressure will be applied until the breeders do the right thing, for society as a whole. [PIG’s Brit correspondent Andrew, files this report on Tony Blair’s latest Nanny State Nitwit notion.] He wants to use profiling to detect the kind of parents who are likely to bring children into this world who may become anti social [lots of 'maybe's' and 'likely's' in his reasoning]. ASBO's (anti social behaviour orders) were introduced a few years ago in the UK. They don't seem to be working too well. Notwithstanding the fact they are largely ineffective against those whom the law was created for in the first place, does not stop New Labour. Prenatal ASBO's bold new concept.. Nothing like being profiled from the moment of conception eh? What's next? Enforced sterility for those 'not making the grade'? I'm all for identifying troublemakers and having them dealt with, but the basis of law is that you first have to commit a crime and then be found guilty for it. Crime prevention is a complicated subject to do with many factors. This one stop [let's make assumptions] solution optimises the nonsensical cure-all approach to all of societies troubles by New Labour. It sort of clashes with the government's reluctance to use profiling to identify criminals such as - oooh, errr - terrorists. Laughable. Political Fun And Games Tennessee The Elephant Clan admitted to the cops that they tried to disrupt the filming with laser pointers, but insisted that the targeted the camera, not the individuals. According to these laser pointer wranglers, the implement in question makes a video camera go out of focus. The cops nodded thoughtfully, then warned the laser pointer wranglers about "the legal ramifications if a person’s eyesight was damaged by the lasers". For now, legally speaking, this incident is "no harm, no foul", but you can bet the proverbial agricultural endeavor that the Donkey Clan whining over it will be deafening. Mexas For those who obsess on such trivia, here’s a heads-up on biodiesel and Kinky Friedman’s energy plan for Mexas:
Putting Willie Nelson in charge of the energy department is a promising start, but only a start. PIG thinks that Kinky should follow up by appointing differently-sober Anna Nicole Smith to head the state’s out of control Booze Nazi Brigade. When it comes to adult beverage, nobody comes close to Anna Nicole. Washington Due to the way districts are drawn, the overwhelming advantage enjoyed by incumbents, and the high cost of running for office in 2006, many legislative races are over before they start. Faced with that bitter reality, why even bother fielding a candidate? Is this unopposed candidate scam a big deal? Not according to the Donkey Clan’s Party Chairman, Dwight Pelz:
The state’s vastly outnumbered rational adults see the problem of unopposed races very clearly:
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the meatheads running this rain soaked outpost of unrelenting liberalism to make any meaningful electoral changes any time soon. They like things just the way they are, since nobody has a snowball’s chance in hell of dislodging them from power. Donkey Clan Steps In It The pinheads running the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) probably hoped that the usual, chronically offended suspects wouldn’t notice an ad on their Web site. What ad? Don’t bother going to the cyberspace pitstop in question because this gem is long gone. The Moonies running the Washington Times describe it this way:
Outrage came thick and fast, much of it aimed at everyone’s favorite Senatorial Scumbag, Chucky Schumer, the clown who spearheads the DSCC:
If that’s not enough to thrill Chucky spitless, there’s this fun fact: Garry Birnberg, chairman of the Harris County (Mexas) Donkey Clan cabal called for an end to donations to Chucky Schumer’s DSCC. Big, big, fun. If Chucky wanted to "energize" the base, his plan worked like gang-busters, but not the way he intended. Nice move, Senator Sparky. Nanny State Nitwits Foreign and Domestic Minnesota (USA) A massage therapist whom we will, for now, call "LaRae" doesn't deny that she plied her trade on Kirk Fjellman from October 2000 to May 2002. Furthermore, she doesn't deny that she began dating Kirk in July 2002 and, eventually, got horizontal and squishy with him a few months later. What puts this story on the Golden Oinks 2006 radar is the fact that Kirk is LaRae Lundeen Fjellman's husband. That's right, PIGsters, under this asinine edict a massage therapist who marries one of her clients can lose her license for boinking him. Edinburgh (Scotland) Would allowing Mel to light up during his portrayal of Winston Churchill destroy life in Scotland? Nope, but don't try to explain that to Scotland's Smoke Nazis, because their alleged brains aren't wired for 'logic'. Invoking the Nanny State, Again The differently-capitalist dweebs infesting a Great Northwest Nitwit cabal called "Take Back Your Time" are shocked and dismayed that American capitalists aren't giving their workers sufficient vacation time. Why, they whine, can't we be more like Europe where employers are forced by the Nanny State to give each employee a given period of paid vacation? Why not indeed, asks another Left Coast cabal that's also differently-capitalist. It won't shock you to learn that "Work to Live" has its headquarters in Soviet Monica, Mexifornia. Neither of these cabals dares to take a step back and ask themselves the salient question. Why is this any of the Nanny State's damn business? Vacation time is a matter that, quite properly, must be a matter that's negotiated between an employer and his employee. The Nanny State's only legitimate role is butting the hell out. Another Northwest Nitwit Assault on Capitalism A Washington bowling alley named Kenmore Lanes - and it's adjunct, the 11th Frame Casino - were already open and operating in unincorporated Kings County (Washington) but that all changed in 2003. That's when some local pinheads decided to create the city of Kenmore, political hijinks that put Kenmore Lanes in their clutches. The real trouble started almost immediately, when the city passed an ordinance that banned cardrooms, including the 11th Frame Casino. Big, big fun. The capitialists running Kenmore Lanes got lawyered up and took the city to court, but what passes for justice in this liberal enclave didn't give them any relief. This week, Kenmore Lanes lost its case in a U.S. District Court, an event that seems to doom the bowling alley's primary source of revenue, the card room. The city thinks it would be spiffy if Kenmore Lanes would simply close the card room, but keep the bowling alley and restaurant open for business. Kenmore Lane's owners shot the idea down, explaining to the liberal scumbags running the city of Kenmore that without the card room revenue, they were out of business. File this sad story in your growing stack of "proof that capitalism is dead in Washington state" epics. Nanny State Nitwit Antics Denver (Colorado) If you enjoy playing Tour De Denver in the park at speeds greater than 15mph, the cops can't wait to "discuss" it with you. Why? The cops cite the fact that faster than a speeding bullet bike riders are a hazard to navigation for those Denver denizens who like to stroll through the park with the tykes and/or Fido. Do everyone a favor, Sporty. Slow down and try not to run over that bipolar mutt, because he's just ornery enough to ruin your whole day. Loveland (Colorado) Tame or not, some of the locals want it moved to a park while others are hammering the city council to overrule Loveland's art cabal and get rid of the sculpture completely. Is it, as many say blatantly sexual, or is it tasteful nudity? That's not our call to make, so we'll provide you with a link and let you decide for yourself. (Link: Triangle) JULY 2006
Chicago Goes for Nanny State Nitwit Top Slot Source: PIG News Wire [07/27/06] The Windy City is widening its lead in the race to be named PIG's number one Nanny State Nitwit city. Leaving their rivals far behind, Windy City hacks are advancing on several "none of your damn business Nanny State punk" fronts. For the good of "society as a whole" members of the city council are determined to protect rational adults from the following alleged evils:
It's an impressive list, and one that's certain to grow longer as time passes. At least one elected official, Mayor Richard M. Daley, has a clear view of these city council antics:"We have children getting killed by gang leaders and dope dealers. We have real issues here in this city. And we're dealing with foie gras? Let's get some priorities." Are you going to let Chicago's hacks steal this coveted PIG prize without a fight? If you think your town has the right Nanny State Nitwit stuff, send us all the gruesome details. Nanny State Nitwit News Washington
Under the existing state laws, some capitalists get nailed for state taxes when they spend a mere 2 days a month in a state. This tax scheme is most prevalent in states like Washington which don't impose corporate business taxes. Alarmed by the bill, the Great Northwest Nitwits sounded dire warnings of fiscal collapse and the ability of out of state businesses to achieve an unfair advantage on home grown businesses. The rational adults supporting the legicrap in question point out that only those firms that use state and local government's protections and benefits should be taxed to pay for them. Since Washington state gets at least 18% of its stolen money from business and occupation taxes, brace yourself for unrelenting caterwauling. Michigan Fast forward to the present and a private explorer named Steve Libert insists that he found the missing ship in its watery grave. So far, he's being very cagey about its location because the hacks running Michigan insist that they own the lake bottom in question so the wreck is, rightfully, theirs. Furthermore, the state's attorney general is making menacing noises about criminal charges against Mr. Libert if he brings up anything from the wrecked ship. As expected, Mr. Libert has his own ideas on the issue. His argument begins with the fact that the ship belonged to France and, since he is acting on the French government's behalf, the Wolverine State punks should butt the hell out. He continues by insisting that his only desire is to liberate whatever he can from the Griffon and see that it is properly displayed in a museum. Kansas • It applies to children who are ages 4 to 7, are shorter than 4 feet, 9 inches tall and weigh less than 80 pounds. Well intentioned? Yup. None of the Nanny State's goddamn business? You better believe it, give me liberty or give me death Sparky. Great Northwest Nitwit Adventures Stripper Club War in Seattle
The smoking gun, as far as Mayor Nickels is concerned is a 2003 episode during which papa and junior Colacurcio pumped some serious bucks into the campaign coffers of three city council members. Despite Mayor Nickels hyperbole, the illegal campaign contribution charges were dropped in February when a judge said state law banned criminal charges on such matters. The primary bone of contention between the mayor and the city's strip club owners involves a referendum on this year's ballot. If the item passes, it would overturn the Draconian strip club restrictions rammed through by Seattle's Northwest Nitwit mayor and his home boys on the city council. Governor Sends Feds Bill For Illegals Nanny State House Call
You'll be underwhelmed to learn that this goodie is funded by a grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If you live in Kansas or Arkansas, your state is gearing up for a similar federally-funded campaign. Nanny State Nitwits In Action Las Cruces (New Mexico)
Under this regulation, a bar owner would be on the hook for a patron, even if the dude got tanked up elsewhere after leaving his establishment. For example, some boozer comes in more or less sober then has a couple beers. Shortly after leaving your establishment, he grabs a case of brewskies from home, or a friend and gets gunned to the gills. If, within two hours of leaving your establishment, he's busted for DUI, the state liquor bureaucrats will blame you, not the drunk. If this passes 'he wasn't drunk when he arrived; he wasn't drunk when he left; he got drunk afterwards, elsewhere' won't cut it. Anybody who sits down for a drink in your place is your responsibility for two hours after he leaves, no matter how much he boozes it up after he leaves your place. St. Paul (Minnesota) Since the city racked up a nifty $3.6 million from traffic and parking fines in 2005, this new Parking Nazi quota isn't chump change. If Chief Harrington is so damn eager to fill those city coffers, he should stop bloviating, grab a ticket book, and try his hand at writing 55 parking tickets a day. Nanny State News New Jersey Update: Florida PIG News salutes the Florida Supreme Court for getting this one right. We're especially pleased since the only ones likely to get rich off the original $145 billion dollar award were the shyster bastards who perpetrated it. Quote of the Week Donkey Clan Senator Joe Biden is, we willingly admit, not our favorite political hack. In fact - and this might shock you - he's not even on our top 10,000,000 political hacks list. Try to imagine our amazement when we hear him spewing politically incorrect prose worthy of a PIG staffer:
Giving credit where it's due, we salute Joe's slip of the tongue as our InKorrect Quote of the Week. JUNE 2006
Nanny State Tidbits Source: PIG News Wire [06/28/06] Washington D.C.
Critics of the bill warn that the term "sex trade" is so broadly defined it could be applied to your local booty club. Give it up, Chucky, better men than you have tried, repeatedly, to stamp out horizontal entertainment purveyors. It's not called "the world's oldest profession" frivolously. Chicago (Illinois)
Somebody needs to tell Alderman Burke's keepers that he's off his medication again. Boston (Massachusetts) Jarrett started to see the light when boom box hosts and News Nitwits featured his antics prominently in a series of "what the hell is he smoking" stories. His travails got worse - and much closer to home - when another lawmaker, State Representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein, threatened to launch legicrap making the fluffnutter the state's official sandwich. She vowed - we're not making this up - to "fight to the death for Fluff". Eventually, Jarrett ran up the white flag and dumped his proposed amendment to a pending school nutrition bill. That move had Jarrett in the hunt for girlieman of the week ignobility, but he was aced out at the wire by this week's selection. Eminent Domain, 1 Year after Kelo Ruling One year after the U.S. Supreme Court flushed our property rights down the crapper, the fight over eminent domain is still raging from sea to shining sea. World Net Daily cites these examples:
These are just a few of the eminent domain outrages spawned by the Kelo ruling. As bad as it is - and it majorly sucks - there are signs that sovereign individuals are starting to fight back:
Does this means you can relax? Nope. A friend of mine from Mexifornia tells me about the citizen action that stopped his city from a massive land stealing scheme. After the city's citizens saw the way the city seized the property of numerous homeowners and businesses that were in the town for decades, they grabbed the initiative. First, they gathered enough voter signatures to force the city council to shut down their redevelopment scheme. Then, the same citizens put a measure on the ballot that would force a vote of the city's residents whenever the city tried to impose a new development on them by implementing a major change in the city's long range development plan. Despite a massive, big money campaign funded by developers, the measure passed. Now, my friend reports that the same outraged citizens are working to recall the entire city council. Can this kind of citizen action work in your town? You better damn believe it. When it comes to protecting your property, you - not the feds, the state, the mayor, the city council - are the first line of defense. When your city mounts a land stealing scheme, get organized, get the voters riled up enough to bitch-slap the land stealing punks back in their place. Senator Inhofe Takes On Global Warming The myth: It's called the hockey stick study and it was perpetrated by a Global Warming zealot named Dr. Michael Mann. His hockey stick graph alleges that global temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere remained constant for 900 years then spiked up in the 20th century. Reality: A recent NAS report "Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2000 Years" punctures this myth noting: "relatively warm conditions centered around A.D. 1000 (identified by some as the ‘Medieval Warm Period') and a relatively cold period (or ‘Little Ice Age') centered around 1700." (News Max) Senator James Inhofe, R-Okla. took these facts and ran with them:
Kudos to Senator Inhofe for soundly kicking Al Gore's butt. Northwest Nitwit Tax Whammy Twofer Temporary Tax Increase? The city's elected tormentors have their own notions on the energy surcharge:
By now you shouldn't need PIG help with this elected tormentor blithering. But, for those who didn't get that second cup of coffee before reading PIG News, here's the bottom line on a reduction in the energy surcharge: "Don't hold your breath". Empty Property Tax Reform Promises When you read between the lines, you learn that any property tax limit the governor promotes, probably won't be a budget-trimming 1%. Since the old rate was 6%, it's safe to assume she'll try to finesse the issue with something above 1% and below 6%. That way, she gets to impose a tax increase on Washington's property owners while, erroneously claiming that she went to the mat to cut property taxes. For those pesky "give me the damn details" readers, here's a suitable quote from Governor Gregoire:
Translation: I'm going to tax you until your ears bleed, but try to keep it just below "You're out of here, wench" levels. Comrade Hillary Spouts Off About Privacy Each individual is born with a full complement of rights. The government can't give you new rights; it can only take the ones you already have. (PIG Doctrine) Comrade Hillary is off on another of her "I really, really deserve to be president" tangents this week. This time out, she's spouting drivel about the need for a "Privacy Bill of Rights" to protect, whomever, from government snooping. She was generous with the big picture, but predictably stingy about what, exactly, would be included in this privacy bill of rights. Far from finished, she launched another privacy-related trial balloon. This one involves setting up a "Privacy Czar" inside the White House. Big, big fun. If Comrade Hillary thinks any rational adult would trust her to protect their privacy, she's much more delusional than any of us realized. Whenever a militantly Marxist wench like Hillary starts spouting off about a "(fill in the blank) bill of rights" it's a lefty warning shot across every single sovereign individual's bow. In other words, when a fringe dwelling lefty talks about setting up a new bill of rights it means they're locked and loaded to give some poor bastard a royal shafting. Utah's Self-Inflicted Wound Faces are a tad red in the Utah governor's office this week, after the state was forced to pull down an online information site. The site in question offered 10 pages of info on taxes, health services, driver licenses and work force services, none of which should kick up a political food fight. Oh, did we forget to mention that this site offered all this information in Spanish? That's right, Spanish. Annoying? Yup. But why pull it down? The site got yanked because several Utah residents complained that this Spanish lingo information site violated a state law passed in 2000 that makes English the state's official language. D'oh! That fast, the site got yanked, but its legality, or the lack thereof, is being hotly debated. Utah Interactive, the firm that maintains the disputed state Web site insists that its Spanish lingo efforts are street legal because the site isn't funded by the taxpayer. Legal or not, this political firestorm is heating up at the worse possible time: in the months leading up to the mid-term election cycle. Houston Mayor's Bold New Concept The idea came to Houston Mayor Bill White during a Global Petroleum Show, after he heard Alberta (Canada) officials fretting about a looming labor shortage. Throwing away the vaunted elected tormentor playbook, Mayor White hit upon a plan that would solve his city's problem and resolve Alberta's labor shortage in one stunning stroke. Mayor White started by noting that 100,000 hurricane Katrina refugees living in Houston needed work. Why not export these hungry mouths to Canada where they could be gainfully employed? He described the prospective employees with this stellar prose:
File this epic under "a win-win solution" in your PIG prose archives. Shaming The Clown Posse Taking dead aim at the Clown Posse's delusions of adequacy, a retired Big Apple cop named Bruce DeCell decided to humiliate the homeland stupidity stoneheads on their home ground. Armed with a blatantly bogus "Matricula Consular" card that listed his place of birth as "Tijuana, B.C." and his address as "123 Fraud Blvd., Staton Island, N.Y., Bruce headed for a meeting with DHS officials at the DHS's own building. Despite the fact that, according to the Clown Posse's own rules, a Matricula Consular card is not valid ID at a government building - too dense to spot the deliberate spelling mistakes and overlooking "Fraud Blvd." - the gatekeeper at DHS stared at the card for a moment or two then passed Bruce through without asking for street legal ID. Making this matter that much more thrilling, the Matricula Consular card Bruce carries is - deliberately - an older version that even the Mexican government considers insecure. In fact, the Mexican government no longer considers these older Matricula Consular cards valid for any purposes. If that's not enough to thrill you, there's more:
PIG salutes Bruce DeCell for his telling demonstration of DHS's infamous ineptitude. Buckeye State Punks Go Nanny State Bonkers In an 8-1 vote, the Euclid (Ohio) city council boldly went where it has no goddamn business going. Determined to elevate the city's image, these public "servant" pinheads passed an edict that dictates, in ridiculous specificity, what a home owner may use for window curtains. Utterly clueless about a venerable American concept that warns "it's my property, elected tormentor Sparky so butt the hell out", these Buckeye State commissars crossed the property line, big damn time. The banned window covering items include, but are not limited to: blankets, garbage bags, newspaper and anything some city minon deems "unsightly". Sheets are acceptable, if, and only if, they are sewn to look like drapes. Furthermore, shades miniblinds and all other "conventional" window coverings must be hung properly and be in proper working order. Failure to comply will bring the city's Window Nazi's down on you and could set you back $1,000 plus 6 months in jail. This just in! Property rights are deader than the Jimmy Hoffa in a Buckeye State blight named Euclid. Nanny State Gambling Edict This week, thanks to some legicrap passed by Washington's elected tormentors, playing poker online is a Class C felony. According to the "Card Player" web site, this new crime can inflict a $10,000 fine and up to 5 years in prison for playing Texas Hold 'em on line. To put this in perspective, you need to see how an online gambling rap compares to other crimes:
For now, state authorities admit that it's unlikely that a Great Northwest Nitwit will get busted for playing online poker, but that might change thanks to something called a multi-state Internet gambling task force. Representatives from Indiana, Mexifornia, Missouri, Louisiana, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and U.S. Virgin Islands are part of this Nanny State assault on your inalienable individual liberty. One of their primary tasks is to devise ways to track down sovereign individuals who engage in Internet gambling and throw them into a graybar hotel. And why, you ask, are these Nanny State asshats trying to make Internet gamblers slammer bait? Because, when you gamble in cyberspace instead of a state sanctioned gambling den, they don't get their cut. And now, you really do know the rest of the story. Nanny State News Briefs Washington D.C. I
File this under "pathetic political ploys" in your PIG News archives. Washington D.C. II Denver (Colorado)
Far from finished, Peter Boyles took his radio show to a rally that featured Congressman Tom Tancredo and Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist. Peter is also the top dude at Billboards Colorado an organization that is raising money for a third billboard. If you live in Colorado, lend Pete a hand in his quest to spread the word about the border jumping scumbag invasion. Columbia (South Carolina) MAY 2006
Boy Scouts Dodge Another Judicial Bullet Source: AP [05/30/06] This week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by an atheist who wanted to black flag the Boy Scouts when it came to "recruiting" at government cess-schools. His contention is that Boy Scouts' discriminate by insisting that its members swear allegiance to a deity with the familiar words "do my duty to my God and my country". The nation's highest court gave its tacit okey dokey to a Michigan Court ruling that noted how cess-schools allowed numerous groups with their own agenda to use school facilities. The Michigan Court ruled that the Boy Scouts have as much right to use Mt. Pleasant's school facilities as other organizations: a hospital group, an Indian tribe, a Baptist Toll Booth and a hockey association. So be it. Missouri's Morality Mutants When Olivia Shelltrack, Fondray Loving and their 3 tykes moved into the home they purchased in Black Jack (Missouri) they got a nasty shock. The "occupancy permit" they interpreted as some kind of safety inspection had little to do with the abode and everything to do with the fact that Olivia and Fondray aren't married. They got that message loud and clear when the city inspector asked them for the kids' birth certificates and the couple's marriage license. The rubber hit the road when the unmarried parents were informed that a city ordinance requires that any time 3 or more people live in a single dwelling them must be related by "blood, marriage or adoption". Since the couple in question and their 3 children don't fit that description, they are facing a fine for living in their own home without the city's written permission. The liberty-hating punks running Black Jack deserve to be bitch-slapped for using the government's monopoly on the use of force to micro-manage a sovereign individual's life. A homeowner's martial status is, quite frankly, none of the Nanny State's goddamn business. Black Jack's hacks should be thrashed with the proverbial blunt instrument whose name their town bears until they "get it". The Scottsdale Panty Twister Perhaps we've led a very sheltered life, but we had no idea that "Pink Taco" denoted anything more ominous than a strangely colored Sombrero Stomper food staple. Perhaps, if we'd spend more quality time in Las Vegas, we'd know that the Pink Taco is also the name of an eatery located inside the Hard Rock Café & Casino. Unlike Scottsdale (Arizona) Mayor Mary Manross, we didn't realize that, in certain 'too fun for words' circles, "pink taco" denotes a female's nads. That fun fact spurred Scottsdale's mayor - egged on by several of the town's whiners - to demand that the restaurant change its name. The unspoken "or else" is tied to the eatery's application for a liquor license. If "Pink Taco" is the biggest issue on Mayor Manross's agenda, life is good, so we suggest that she "man up", stop whining and get on with it. Don't make us come over there. Boulder's Hate Hotline If you've never been to Boulder (Colorado), you'll need to know that those rational adults in the know describe it as "25 square miles surrounded by reality". That telling description might explain why the Boulder City Council decided to help fund a forthcoming "Hate Hotline" with $16,000 of the taxpayers' money. And what, you ask, is the hate hotline? It's a "rat out your politically incorrect neighbor" endeavor that invites hypersensitive Boulder denizens to call in and rat out anyone who says something insensitive. In theory, the complaints should involve the usual laundry list of racist, sexist, and/or homophobic prose, but in practice, it will probably devolve into the tragically familiar pissing contest that self-described "victims" love so damn much. The usual suspects describe this classically "Boulder" idea this way:
One of Boulder's endangered rational adults nailed it by calling it a snitch hotline. He continued with this admonition:
We're compelled to inform you that this "rational" Boulder adult is Judd Golden, chairman of the Boulder chapter of the ACLU. That's right, the head of Boulder's ACLU is what passes for rationality in compulsively-Korrect Boulder. No doubt, Judd is as unimpressed as we are with the city's assurances that no personal data will be gathered on the "alleged" hate spreaders. Nanny State News Oklahoma For those who care, here is some of the Nanny State fine print that's included in the new tattoo legicrap:
As usual, this pagan scribbler dares to ask why a tattoo seeking adult and a tattoo wrangling capitalist need the Nanny State's permission to seal the deal. Apparently "butt the hell out" doesn't translate into whatever language the Sooner State's hacks spew. Honolulu (Hawaii)
When you read between the lines, the motive behind this 'suspend the price control scheme' is obvious. The last thing these legicrats want in an election year is a "gas price" bull's-eye pinned on them. If the price controls are suspended the blame gets shifted to the oil companies. Far from finished, the legicrats tweaked the formula for the price control scheme to achieve a more desirable result.
Price control advocates plan to post their artificially lowered prices to show state voters how much they "could have saved" if price controls were, uh, fixed. Smoke and mirrors is alive and well in paradise. Bold new concept. Austin (Mexas) Kinky Friedman for Governor of Mexas? Why the hell not? Minnesota elected a professional wrestler and Mexifornia elected a...Terminator. A singing Jewish cowboy governor is an idea whose time has come. The only way this gets any better would involve Kinky ending up in runoff election with the queen of differently-sober trailer trash, Anna Nicole Smith. PIG's prevailing political philosophy is this: Since politics has failed miserably at its primary function - running this nation as the Constitution dictates - it might as well be entertaining. Nanny State News Nuggets Louisiana Ault (Colorado) While they tried to sort out the facts, the cops decided to have Mayor Jim play Breathalyzer bingo. Mayor Jim was so loaded he pegged the Breathalyzer. That's right PIGsters, he broke the damn thing. The needle rocketed past 0.4% and was still climbing, when the machine shut down from booze overload. Mayor Jim got a ride to the local graybar on charges of 'third degree assault, domestic violence and child abuse. He's still there, because his bride - who denies that Jimmy hit her - wants to leave him in the graybar until he sobers up. That likely to take a while, so if you've been looking for a way to break into politics, Ault might be made to order. Litchfield (Connecticut) This week Christopher struck a deal with the prosecutors: he serves 3 years probation, performs 300 hours community service, must refrain from possessing or using illegal drugs, must never paint Cannabis leaves on his house, ever again. PIG is outraged that these lowly Winsted Philistines are desecrating a work of art. They're the kind of dead heads who would paint over the smile on the Mona Lisa, claiming that her smile was produced by ingesting banned substances. APRIL 2006
Border Jumping Scumbag News Source: PIG New Wire [04/28/06] Mexicans Call Americans Racist If you answer "yes" to any of the following questions, these whining Mexicans will say you're a racist, enforce our borders right damn now, Sparky:
The whining Mexican parasites who participated in this poll can call me any damn thing that thrills them spitless, because I don't really give a rat's ass what they think. If they want to reduce Mexico's 40% poverty level, let them do it on their side of the goddamn border. Enough is enough. Orrin Hatch In The Angry American Bull's-Eye And how, you ask, did Peter Carr get dragged into this campaign? John and Ken told their legion of listeners to bypass contacting the Senators directly and concentrate instead, on each Senator's press secretary. Knowing that the Senate Judiciary Committee is the driving force behind this amnesty on steroids bovine excrement, this combative radio duo targeted them for special attention. Funding Border Enforcement PIG News salutes Senator Greg for stepping up to the border enforcement plate with additional, badly needed, funding. This is far from a done deal, but it's a valiant effort that deserves our support. Self Inflicted Wounds If it ever gets finished, Miami International Airport's (MIA) new North Terminal will be spectacularly spiffy. A key feature of the design minimizes the dead space inside the terminal, to maximize the area outside, where the planes are parked. That was accomplished by making the 1.3 mile long terminal very skinny, then easing passenger travel by putting some special trains "so-called people movers" on the roof of the terminal. A train, on the roof, in Hurricane Alley? As fun as that sounds it gets better. The trains were ordered from a Japanese company and due for delivery in 2005, but, that date came and went, but no trains were delivered. The trains are finished, but there's no place to put them, because the new North Terminal is far from completed and falling farther behind each day. Since the trains will go to crap is left unused, Miami-Dade pays the Japanese manufacturer $54,000 a month to exercise the trains on a specially designed $600,000 track. Miami-Dade just ponied up $2 million dollars to exercise the trains for 2 more years, despite the fact that the terminal won't be done until 2010. They can't sell the trains because: the automated cars were designed for MIA. "D'Oh" is officially in play. Nanny State News Tennessee And why, you ask, did these legicrats shoot down the idea? In addition to the usual displays that comprise a museum, Jack Daniels wanted to sell "commemorative bottles of whiskey and offer tastings [of their product] to visitors" (The Tennessean). This worries the legicrats because it requires exemption from a state law that bans liquor manufacturers from selling directly to customers, except at the manufacturing plant. When you cut through all the political bovine excrement, you find out that the legicrats are worried that some-damn-how, letting Jack Daniels give out samples and sell "commemorative bottles" would cost them tax revenue. In other words, fewer steps in the taxable chain from manufacturer to consumer reduces the opportunity to pile on taxes that can be squandered. Would it be hopelessly cynical of us to ask which of the dissenting members of this senate committee didn't get his annual campaign contribution from Jack Daniels? Probably, but we'll ask the question anyway. Washington D. C.
"English only language discrimination"! Which part of "bite me, bureaucrat breath" don't these job for life asshats understand? Columbia (South Carolina) Feds Still At War With Jack Anderson Despite the fact that Jack Anderson is has achieved room temperature, the FBI is still fighting to "recover" the classified U.S. documents that might be lurking, some-damn-where in his papers. Of course, if these classified documents don't exist, the feds won't kick up a fuss if they're allowed to peruse Jack Anderson's private papers for any other information they might deem useful. Among other things, the feds might like to know the names of those confidential sources who kept Jack Anderson so well informed during his long, stellar career in journalism. Jack Anderson's son flatly refused the FBI's request, insisting that to allow them access would be a betrayal of his father's principles.
The George Washington University library, where the Jack Anderson archive is housed, also objects to this FBI fishing expedition. Nanny State News Washington
If those requirements don't drive strip clubs from Seattle, it's a slam dunk that the city's hacks will dream up new, more restrictive regulations that will finally get the job done. New Jersey The second assault on the bar and restaurant bottom line is Jersey Governor Corzine's proposed tax increases. Corzine wants to boost the state's sales tax, plus, he want's to pile new taxes on adult beverages. Both taxes, when coupled with the smoking ban, spell disaster, according to the News Jersey Restaurant Association. PIG wishes these Garden State capitalists good luck because it looks like they're going to need it. Tennessee Mexas Colorado If this historic abode is so goddamn important to Boulder officials, then let them buy the damn thing and play bureaucratic roulette themselves, instead of torturing the property's rightful owner. New Jersey The state's chief executive called this edict: "A significant and positive step for New Jersey's mothers, newborns and families". PIG News calls it none of the Nanny State's damn business. Nanny State News New York (New York) For those who enjoy wallowing in bureaucratic muck, here are the Cliff Notes on this infringement of inalienable individual liberty:
Social dancing? Will somebody tell me why this is any of the Nanny State's business? These bureaucratic busybodies need to butt the hell out because consenting adults - the dancers and the cabaret owner - who want to trip the light fantastic with some social dancing are none of their damn business. Washington D.C. These Beltway boneheads are determined to save American individuals from themselves with not one, but three, doses of legicrap:
PIG is fed up with these congressional clowns who, routinely, stray so far from their limited, Constitutionally-defined duties. How much longer will we allow this intolerable infringement of a sovereign individual's inalienable liberty? If we allow them to blame online gambling for everything from international terrorism to the shocking under-representation of Albanian Albinos in the NBA, we're setting ourselves up for more - even bigger - Nanny State atrocities. Enough is enough! MARCH 2006
Plumbers Raise a Stink Source: AP [03/31/06] Philadelphia's quest for fame and glory as the city with 'America's tallest environmentally friendly building' hit a speed bump this week, when the plumbers union complained about the use of "waterless urinals". According to the developer of the Comcast Center, Liberty Property Trust, the building's 116 waterless urinals will save 1.6 million gallons of water a year. That's spiffy, the plumbers union replies, now take the damn things out, because the old fashioned kind use more plumbing and that means our members get to post the "bathroom closed for repairs" signs much more often. Big, big, fun. What looks like a no brainer to a rational adult is a major headache for the bureaucrats in union-ravaged Philadelphia. The job for life paper wranglers in the city's licensing board "haven't reached a decision yet", bureaucrat-speak for "we're hoping some elected official takes this hot spud off our hands". The mayor's office would like to save the waterless urinals, but they don't relish the notion of having every bathroom in city hall closed for repairs, permanently. Channeling their inner Solomon, the mayor's minions are pointing out that the new waterless urinals still have lots of pipes and stuff for the plumbers to molest. Is the plumbers union buying this "silver lining behind the dark, waterless urinal cloud"? Not for one second, unionized Sparky. The new Comcast Center will bring Philadelphia "bragging rights", but not the way they planned. They'll garner their well earned infamy as the most union ravaged city in the USA. That's right PIGsters, we're predicting that the city will black flag the waterless urinals because nobody in city hall has the nads to tell the plumbers union to "Bite me". You Can't Fix Stupid Palm Beach County, ground zero for Florida's 2000 presidential election debacle, still can't figure out this vote counting thing. That's right PIGsters, the same Florida fatheads who added "hanging chad", "dimpled chad" and "pregnant chad" to America's political lexicon are doing what comes naturally, but on a much smaller scale. This time out, the adventure in democracy concerns some runoff elections in a pair of microscopic Florida towns. Palm Beach County's ballot counting travails came to light when Magnolia Park's city clerk, Sherry Albury, checked out the results on election night. Magically, Palm Beach County's election bright bulbs tallied 253 votes in an election where only 122 Magnolia Park denizens signed in to vote at the city's one polling place. When Sherry challenged the vote, Palm Beach County's chad wranglers tracked down their problem. They "accidentally" added 109 ballots from Pahokee (another Florida burg) to Magnolia Parks' when they ran them through the vote tallying machine. Palm Beach County went high tech bonkers in their zeal to make their elections spiffy. Despite their nifty machines, they still employ chad wrangers who can bungle an election in which only 122 ballots were cast. The moral of this story is that high tech solutions can't fix stupid. South Dakota's Monkeywrench Wrangler South Dakota's ban on abortion has the pro and anti abortion groups gearing up for a pitched legal battle over the new law. The battle lines for the two sides seemed set in stone, and unlikely to move, until the matter crawls its way up the justice system ladder. That, at least, was the state of things until this week, when a new player strolled into the pitched abortion battle. Cecelia Fire Thunder, Oglala Sioux Tribe President, announced that the clinic on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation "could provide abortions if South Dakota's abortion ban goes into effect". The state's Attorney General points out that crimes on reservations committed by non-Indians fall under state law. But, an expert in Indian law opined that if the abortion is performed by an Indian doctor, he's outside the state's jurisdiction. Everyone agrees that Cecelia's idea further complicates the South Dakota abortion ban landscape. By using her tribe's status as a "sovereign nation" Cecelia Fire Thunder managed to disrupt the state's carefully laid plans to overturn Roe vs Wade. You don't need Nostradamus to predict that she thrilled South Dakota's hacks by jamming the Nanny State's abortion banning gears with this tribal monkeywrench. In addition to saluting Cecelia's monkeywrench wrangling expertise, PIG gives her bonus points for having the coolest name we've encountered in a very long time. "Cecelia Fire Thunder" is a slam dunk for Nifty Name of the Year. Nanny State News Roundup Concord [New Hampshire] Rockford [Illinois] Rockford's Fire Chief William Robertson insists: "It cost what it cost. Whether we go across the street or whether we go five miles, you have the same care in the back of the ambulance." Ken Ward retorts: "I probably could have walked it. If I had known it would be that much, I literally would have crawled across the street." The fun fact here is that Ken got nailed for twice the usual charge because he resides outside Rockford's city limits. Ken vows he's going to take this fight straight to the Rockford city council. Will Ken beat the odds in his fight against city hall? When we know, you'll know. Olympia [Washington] This week, Superior Court Judge James Allendoefer brought the judicial gavel down on these legicrat antics when he ruled that the state must get voter approval before it can continue to collect all the taxes they increased without voter approval. Swimming against the Great Northwest Nitwit tide, Judge Allendoefer stood head and shoulders above the rest when he ruled in favor of the state's besieged taxpayers. That's the kind of judicial activism we can support. Kudos, Judge. Another Great Northwest Nitwit Epic For those who haven't got a clue about "teak surfing", it's a potentially lethal pastime wherein a human gene pool improvement volunteer hangs onto the back of a speeding motorboat. The bill banning these antics reached critical mass due to the activities of two sets of parents whose daughters - both in their early 20's - died "teak surfing". Teak Surfing speeds up the surfer's demise when they inhale the boat's lethal carbon monoxide-rich exhaust. Alarmed, Washington's legicrats feared that thinning the Great Northwest Nitwit herd might deplete this rain-soaked liberal Eden of the intellectual flatliners who keep electing the state's terminally-liberal legicrat majority.
We, foolishly, thought our opinion of Olympia's legicrats couldn't get any lower, but we were wrong. Banning something as blatantly stupid as "Teak Surfing" is a stunning new low, even for pond scum of their ilk. Smoke Nazi Tidbits Calabasas [Mexifornia] Is this the last we'll hear of Margo? I doubt it. She might move from town to town like a Smoke Nazi version of Typhoid Mary, leaving Draconian decrees in her wake. Or, she might stay in Calabasas, but expand her "this gives me a headache" list to include the aroma of french fries, thus engendering a fast food ban because "secondhand fat" is endangering Margo's health. Somebody needs to bitch-slap Margo until she gets over herself, and stops being a hypersensitive caterwauling crybaby. The world does not revolve around you, Margo, so shut your goddamn pie hole. Don't make us come out there. Denver [Colorado] Dolyestown Township [Pennslyvania]
On the enforcement side, Barbara borrowed a page from the Calabasas playbook. In addition to the local justice system officials, the townships citizenry is enlisted into the Dolyeston Township Smokes Butt vigilante cadre. Any citizen will be empowered to rat out his butt littering neighbor, for the greater glory of Dolyeston Township. Will Barbara Lyons entice vigilante participation with a "rat out your local butt flipper bounty"? Probably. It's only a matter of time. Boston [Massachusetts] More
Calabas-Ass Crap-Ola If you haven't taken the time to read the Calabasas Smoking Ordinance you should take the time to do it now: - Read Ordinance . It's alleged science is screwed and that's a fact, but for our purposes, we'll pretend that the studies they cite so eagerly aren't full of crap. We'll pretend that smoking and breathing second hand smoke are as dangerous as they claim. If, for the sake of argument, we accept the city's inflated numbers and 440,000 American smokers die every year, that's not as alarming as it seems. According to some post-2000 Census data, America has about 280,000,000 denizens. If we divide the smokers who die each year by the total population we deduce that, at most, 0.15% of Americans are dying from smoking related causes each year. That means your odds are over 500 to 1 against dying from smoking. When did it become the Nanny State's job to save individuals from their own bad habits? If for the sake of argument we accept the city's 52,000 Americans die from secondhand smoke a year [these numbers are vehemently refuted by rational, scientific adults] that's a microscopic 0.018% of America's population that's "allegedly" croaking from secondhand smoke. That's a tad over 5000 to 1 odds that you'll die from secondhand smoke. When did it become the Nanny State's job to save individuals from imaginary, scientifically-challenged (alleged) dangers. FACTS & FIGURES: The leading causes of death in 2000 were: • Tobacco - 435,000 deaths; 18.1% of total US deaths. There's no denying that smoking is unhealthy, but continue on down the list and you'll see some other unhealthy lifestyle choices that could be next on the list. • Poor diet and physical inactivity (400,000 deaths; 16.6%), • Alcohol consumption (85,000 deaths; 3.5%). • Other actual causes of death were: • Microbial agents (75,000), • Toxic agents (55,000), • Motor vehicle crashes (43,000), • Incidents involving firearms (29,000), • Sexual behaviors (20,000), • Illicit use of drugs (17,000). Source: Journal of the American Medical Association, Jan. 19, 2005, Vol. 293, No. 3, p. 298. Nanny State News Nuggets Trenton (New Jersey) It all started as planned, when, without fanfare, the bill was introduced in January. Cyberspace civility careened off the rails the instant a local, weekly fishwrap published an item about it. In a New York minute, it hit cyberspace and the word spread far and wide. After it landed on the Drudge Report the calls came thick and fast from as far away as Portland, Oregon. Believe it or not, some Canadian broadcasters roused themselves from their Winter slumber to interrogate our pal Pete.
Stunned by the reaction to what one blogger called "the stupidest legislation in memory", Pete is waiting for a rational adult to tell him that his bill is egregiously unconstitutional. Consider your officially informed, Nanny State punk. Don't make us come over there. Winnetka (Illinois) We're sorely tempted to blame the voices in this fool's head for his headlong plunge into Nanny State on steroids lunacy, but we can't go there. Police Chief DeLopez, obviously, got dumber than a box of rocks all by himself. New Castle (Pennsylvania) What happened next is straight out of the Twilight Zone:
Our road warrior hero will be pleased to note that, in bygone years, Keystone State courts have deemed "the finger" street legal, under certain conditions. It's not, in and of itself, "disorderly conduct", unless the non verbal communicator spices it up with some sexual innuendo. Cape Elizabeth (Maine) The most amusing part of this story is the spiffy fact that, to date - aside from these donut wranglers - no other fast food chain has shown the slightest interest in setting up shop in Cape Elizabeth. This is due, in part, to the city's demographics, plus Cape Elizabeth's Draconian standards for building designs - including a no drive-thru windows - edict. Denver (Colorado) Donkey Clan's Gutless Response to Censure Resolution "Resolved that the United States Senate does hereby censure George W. Bush, president of the United States, and does condemn his unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans within the United States without obtaining the court orders required." (Partial prose from Senator Russ Feingold's censure resolution) The D.C. Donkey Clan hacks indulge in bellicose chest beating over W's domestic spying and assorted other War on Terror tripe, daily. But, this week, when one of their own - Senator Russ Feingold - gave them a chance to go on the record with their objections to W's domestic spying, they acted like Feingold's measure to censure President Bush was tainted with the avian flu. When Senator Feingold introduced the measure, he didn't get support from a single Donkey Clan senator. As fun as that sounds, it gets better. The real fun started when the News Nitwit horde swarmed down on the Donkey Clan hacks as they tried to enter a lunchtime meeting:
According to various News Nitwit accounts, the top Donkey Clan congressional leadership wanted no part of Feingold's censure resolution. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi - speaking through a minion - spouted drivel about "understanding Senator Feingold's frustration" then suggested that "the House and Senate must fully investigate". Yeah, right. Investigate until the whole issue blows over so you can pretend it never happened. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid 'looked downright ill when [Senate Majority Leader] Frist came forward and essentially dared his Democrat counterpart to get a [censure] vote through' (American Spectator). You know you're a gutless scumbag when a jello spined wimp like Bill Frist manages to intimidate you. For all their bluff and bluster, the Donkey Clan hacks blinked when they had a chance to censure a sitting president whose pathetic poll numbers make him especially vulnerable. Apparently, during this election cycle, the Donkey Clan's plan of attack is to avoid going on the record about any-damn-thing. As pathetic as that sounds, it's highly likely that this gutless scheme could put them in the majority of one - or both - chambers of congress. Names
In The News Ray Nagin
We're pleased to report that Ray's race card wrangling didn't thrill everyone in the audience:
We'd like to assure you that Ray's re-election bid is DOA, but we can't. Today, I endured a race card wrangling rant on CSPAN by the NAACP's fearless leader. He thinks the April mayoral election is "too soon". He's also alarmed that the absentee ballots that should guarantee Ray another term aren't going to find Ray's Melanin-Enriched constituents who have been spread far and wide. The vital question remains unanswered: Can all the race card forces and all the race card forces' men put Ray's Melanin-Enriched constituency together again? Arlen Spector Thanks to Arlen, MS-13 will be fast-tracked to legal status. Thanks to Arlen, every state and local government from sea to shining sea will be swimming in the red ink generated by these border jumping scumbag leeches who come here un-damn-invited to gorge themselves on taxpayer funded freebies. Thanks to Arlen, the 12-20 million border jumping invaders already here will be joined by the rest of South and Central America, plus invaders from Asia, and every other pissant third world country. Senator Spector needs to pull his head out of his butt and remember his oath of office. He's supposed to be working for American citizens, not laying out a red carpet for the foreign born invaders who infest this great nation. He needs to remember than he's being paid by John and Jane Q. Public, not those campaign-funding capitalists who want to destroy this country with cheap, 50 cents a week labor. Since Senator Spector has his head so far up his Capitol Hill dwelling butt, we fervently hope that this rat goddamn bastard is put out of the nation's misery on the Capitol steps by a truck loaded with Gold Card packing border jumping scumbags. Who Said Elections Can't Be Fun? "Just like we have laws against murder, we have laws against stealing, we have laws against taking drugs – we should have laws against immoral conduct." (Merrill Keiser) An Ohio man, Merrill Keiser, Jr., is running to become Ohio's next U.S. Senator. His top campaign issue is making homosexuality a capital offense punishable by the death penalty but's he has a lot more than that on his alleged mind. He's alarmed by godless heathens on the nations courts, likes the 2nd Amendment, hates, the U.N and abortion, thinks global warming is crap, and wants to make forcing the Islamikazes to convert to Cross Cultism part of the war on terror. Merrill is, like many true believers, determined to evict evolution from cess-school classrooms, but he goes the extra mile by opining that "the teaching of evolution works against the liberties we have in the United States". Far from finished, Merrill states that anyone who believes in evolution "has no rights". What sets Merrill apart from countless other VRWC [Vast Right-Wingnut Conspiracy, and shame on you for not knowing it by now] hacks? Merrill Keiser makes PIG's day by espousing the foregoing political sludge while running for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat! One self-defined "liberal blogger" is so thrilled with Merrill that she accused him of being "a Republican plant". You should be so lucky, darlin. Merrill is all yours. Homeland Stupidity Walter and Deana Soehnge strayed into the Homeland Security Twilight Zone when they decided that their J.C. Penny credit card tab - $6,522 - was much too high. Understandably motivated, they amassed the necessary money and sent J.C. Penny a check for $6,522. After a suitable period passed, the couple checked their J.C. Penny account to see if the check arrived safely. They were stunned to find that, although their check had cleared their bank, their Penny's account total was stuck at $6,522. When they checked with Penny's credit department, they got the thrilling news:
It's an outrage that these utter and complete Homeland Stupidity imbeciles have time to torture law-abiding, fiscally-responsible citizens like the Soehnges, but they're utterly unwilling/unable to go after the real terrorists in our midst. They can't be bothered with the terrorists who stroll into our country via our undefended borders, but they have ample time and resources to investigate a couple who paid off their credit card bill? That's stupidity on steroids PIGsters. Liquor License Lunacy in D.C. When a Northwest D.C. eatery named Vegetate filed for a liquor license, a local Toll Booth - Shiloh Baptist Church - torpedoed the idea, citing a local regulation that bans liquor sales within 400 feet of a cess-school. Taking this epic into the Twilight Zone is the fun fact that there are not one, but two liquor stores located closer to the school than this eatery. If that's not thrilling enough for you, consider this Washington Times prose:
Does any of this cut any ice with Shiloh Baptist and it's believers? Not really, because their primary beef isn't with liquor sales near a school. What has their holy roller panties in a wad is the fact that Vegetate would be selling adult beverage on a Sunday. Local hacks are sympathetic, but it sounds like they're not ready to go toe to toe with this Toll Booth over the fate of one restaurant. Korrectness on Steroids in Denver Mike Gray is one of those hard-working individuals who combines his official job - heavy equipment operator for Arapahoe County Road and Bridge Department - with a small capitalist endeavor of his own, a law service business. Sensing a legitimate customer need, Mike lets everybody know he's a proud American with the markings on his lawn care service trailer:
His trailer decor, along with a "U.S. Border Patrol" cap that is a gift from his son, landed Mike in shark-infested bureaucratic waters. Mike's his new boss, Monty Sedlak, - a dude whom Mike describes as "a politically correct bleeding heart liberal" - was so outraged by Mike's blatant patriotism that he ordered Mike to loose the hat and cover up the sign on his trailer when he takes it to work with him:
After 16 years in the Arapahoe County Road and Bridge Department, Mike is thisclose to losing his job, because he's proud to be an "English Speaking American". It sucks, and that's a fact. When, exactly, did Arapahoe County repeal Mike Gray's First Amendment right to free speech? FEBRUARY 2006
White House Invasion Planned Source: World Net Daily [02/28/06] "We are taking over the White House until they leave. It is our duty and the duty of the United Nations to rescue the people of the world from the U.S. dictators. Murder for occupation and theft of land is illegal. Murder of journalists is criminal. Remove the traitors who have stolen the U.S. budget and used it to commit international crimes against humanity. If we were being bombed and our journalists were being murdered here in the U.S. by a foreign country's military, we would hope that the people of that country would stop what they are doing and go to their president's office and demand that it was stopped. If we were the ones burying thousands and thousands of our family members and watching the destruction of the homes, schools, churches and offices that we had worked for decades to build, we would hope that someone, somewhere would care enough to do something for us. We must stop the criminals in our government NOW." (A press release titled "Take the White House By Storm", posted on the United for Peace and Justice web site) The Ides of March - March 15, 2006 - promises to be a thrilling day at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, if the peace punks in 'United for Peace and Justice' follow through with their plan to take the White House by storm. Spouting drivel about "representing 1,300 local and national anti-war organizations" this peace punk cabal's web site has a page devoted to this forthcoming invasion. Deeming the invasion of W's D.C. digs "a peaceful event", these peace punks describe their plot with these immortal last words:
Predictably, when confronted with this scheme to take over the White House, the spokesdolts for this peacenik cabal tried to shift the blame to one of their member organizations. It's not an official United for Peace and Justice event, but they'll look into, their spokesdolt, Leslie Cagan promised. Yeah, right, darlin. You're not the least bit troubled that some of your peace punks are prepared to storm the White House and occupy it until W leaves town. The only thing on your alleged mind is diverting the blame for this scheme. Don't bother on our account, Leslie, because PIG wants to thank, whomever, for offering us this glorious, made to order, story on a silver peacepunk platter. Nanny State News Briefs Big Brother Makes Landfall in The Windy City
Admittedly, Big Brother Daley is following this well-traveled "it's a public safety issue" trail accompanied by the hacks from other American cities. Milwaukee is thisclose to passing an ordinance that would require spy cams in stores that summoned the cops three or more times in a given year. Baltimore wants to put spy cams in shopping mall parking lots, due to a murder in one, last year. What sets Big Brother Daley apart is his zeal for installing spy cams. If Big Brother Daley gets his way, Chicago denizens will know the answer to the burning question. When asked "Is Big Brother watching?", they can respond with a resounding, "Hell yes!". McCain Serves Up His Own Pork? We'll refrain from nailing Senator John "I wanna be president, damn it" McCain as a hypocrite. But, we do have one pesky question. If John thinks a center dedicated to Chief Justice Rehnquist is such a nifty notion, why is he forcing me to pay for it? Why not pass the hat and raise the necessary boodle from private sources? We hear that shysters are rolling in dough, so that's a perfect place to start. File this epic under "not on my dime, Sparky". Tennessee's "Driving Certificates" for Border Jumping Scumbags Debacle A rational adult would see the proverbial handwriting on the wall and dump the program, but the Volunteer State's Governor, Phil Bredesen, isn't willing to go that far, yet. Instead, he's put a temporary halt to the program, so the relevant state bureaucrats can "fix it". At press time, more than 55,000 driving certificates were issued. There's no way to determine how many of them were issued to out of state border jumping scumbag invaders. But, one fact is beyond dispute, ever damn one of those 55,000 driving certificate recipients is a border jumping scumbag who needs to be tracked down and kicked out of the USA, right damn now. Illinois Hookers Want Nanny State Perks Now that she's old enough to know better, 46 year old Helen Smith regrets her youthful foray into prostitution. Determined to get her "due" from her former pimp, Helen is twisting arms in the Illinois state legislature to get a bill passed that would allow hookers to sue their pimps "for emotional, physical and psychological damages in civil court". At least three other states - Florida, Minnesota and Hawaii - have similar laws but the proposed Illinois legicrap is breaking new ground. Under the Illinois statute, the hooker won't be required to prove that he, she, heshe or it was forced into the world's oldest profession:
As expected, battle lines are drawn along familiar lines. Womyn's studies majors, bleeding heart lefties and NO-NADS love the idea. The Illinois chapter of the vast right-wingnut conspiracy thinks the idea sucks. An idea whose time has come? When we know, you'll know. Hawaii's Bold Adventure in Price Controls Last September, determined to impose a Nanny State solution on the state's stratospheric gasoline prices, Hawaii's state legislature passed a bill that allows the Public Utilities Commission to impose limits on gas prices. Fast forward to the present and Hawaiian motorists are paying the highest per-gallon prices in the USA. Last week, the average pump price was $3.39, compared to a national average of $2.24. The following excerpt from a WND piece tells you the thrilling, post price control facts:
Are Hawaiian legicrats seeing the errors of their ways? Yes, and no. Some Legicrats want to repeal the price controls. Others want, at minimum, to suspend the controls, but the prime movers behind this price control lunacy are determined to perpetuate the Nanny State's disastrous intrusion into the marketplace. Two legicrats who want to "go down with the sinking price control ship" are State Rep. Marcus Oshiro, and State Senator Ron Menor. They persist in smelling a "big oil" plot instead of the fetid aroma of a monumental Nanny State failure. If they get their way, another layer of bureaucracy will be added to this price control scheme, a notion that will increase the gas pump price pain for Hawaiian motorists. Nanny State News Briefs Florida The Wiccan cabal's opponents include the Liberty Counsel - a Cross Cult shyster cabal, that, seems to show up any time the differently-Christian take a run at the God Squad in court. The Liberty Counsel insists that the Wiccans are all wet - among other things - because the disputed Florida law also gives a sales tax break to non-religious items like 'educational publications, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, promotional materials and works of art sold to or used by educational institutions' (WND). Indiana
The alleged thinking behind this bill involves making it damn near impossible for those combination gas stations and convenience stores to sell adult beverages. One anti drunk driving activist opines that allowing gas and booze to be sold at the same location is an invitation to driving drunk. Is she tragically delusional, or does MADD's Marilyn Peffley have some top secret info that shows no drunk driver has ever bought his, her, hisher, or its booze at a liquor store, grocery store, or in a bar/tavern before getting behind the wheel of that ride? Learn something new every damn day. Alaska
Before they can declare victory, "marriage is for one man and one woman" culture warriors need to surmount a few hurdles: it must pass both houses of the state legislature with a two-thirds majority, then win voter approval in November. This one is too close to call, so stay tuned. Washington I Why, you ask, do labor lobby punks in general and the United Food and Commercial Workers union in particular hate Wal-Mart? Because Wal-Mart, the largest employer in the USA, responded to all efforts to unionize Wal-Mart workers with a non-negotiable "Bite me". Washington II We can't be the only ones who think the state should legalize weed growing, then apply the tax ensuing receipts to the ocean of red ink that dominates the state's balance sheets. Maine's Socialized Medicine Adventure Flounders The mantra that accompanied Maine's bold foray into state-funded healthcare hell trumpeted the coffers-friendly savings the plan claimed that it would bestow on Pine Tree State taxpayers. It's called "Dirigo Health" and the sales pitch spotlights the savings incurred when 130,000 uninsured Maine denizens sign up for the plan. The numbers game assumed that 31,000 would jump on the socialized medicine express in the first year. After 9 months, the plan has attracted a paltry 1,600 uninsured Maine-iacs. Additionally, 6,000 cheapskates dumped their "I'm paying for this" private health plan and signed up for this Nanny State freebie. Demonstrating classic Twilight Zone economics, Dirigo bureaucrats boldly announced a whopping $137 million dollars in savings (that's $85,625 for each formerly uninsured individual). When rational adults challenged the number, the Dirigo-promoting pinheads got out the crayons, scribbled for a while, then revised the savings down to a mere $44 million ($27,500 per individual). That number is holding, although the real savings in uncompensated health care services is, in realty, $3 million ($1,875 per uninsured individual). As fun as this is, it gets better. The Governor and his socialized medicine minions just announced a new tax (it's called a Savings Offset Payment, SOP) to balance Dirigo Heath's books. The reason? The tab for deploying this state healthcare cabal greatly exceeds the alleged "savings" accrued. To make this much more thrilling for everyone concerned, Governor Baldacci and his Donkey Clan homeboys in the state legislature are ramming through a bill that would make it illegal for insurance companies to pass along the SOP to it's customers. If that doesn't drive a stake through the heart of private health insurance in Maine, nothing will. Assorted Nanny State News Nuggets A la Carte Cable Programming The primary complaints against this plan include increasing costs, added equipment, and a loss of revenue by those cable programmers who are dumped by decency-demented viewers. There's still no reasonable reply for the added gear and loss of revenue, but this week, the FCC opined that, it's possible that a family could save money via a la carte programming. Could, but there's a catch that nobody wants to discuss. The projected 3 to 13 percent cost savings assumes that the family will sign up for 20 channels or less. The unstated, but obvious, painful truth is that anyone who wants to view more than 20 cable channels should be prepared for a nasty sticker shock. If the FCC, Congress, whomever, wants to do something to give cable customers more choices at a lower price, the answer is obvious: eliminate government-imposed monopoly that exempts most cable providers from meaningful competition. It's this monopoly status, together with the government regulations that sustain it, that make cable programming such a costly pain in the butt for every rational adult. Uncle Sam, Nanny State hacks at all levels, need to butt the hell out and let the marketplace do what comes naturally. Spending Bill Typo
Since the house vote was 216-214 and the Senate vote a dead heat that required V.P. Dick Cheney's tie breaking vote, revisiting this contentious issue is the last thing the bill's proponents want. At press time, nobody has decided what, if anything, to do about this inconvenient typo. Another Arizona Initiative?
Call us names if you must, but we're feeling warm and fuzzy about this one. Business Owner Defies Smoking Ban A Bellingham (Washington) capitalist named Abel Jordan is going toe to toe with Great Northwestern Nitwit Smoke Nazi's over the Evergreen State's spiffy new smoking ban. Abel's sin against progressive thinking involves the radical notion that he should be allowed to run his business as he sees fit, without Nanny State interference. That's why he, willfully defies the new anti smoking edict by allowing the patrons who visit his Casa Que Pasa eatery to smoke 'em if they've got 'em. Outraged by this willful disregard of their anti-smoking edict, the proper authorities are asking a court to allow them to fine Abel $100 for each smoking violation. For his heroic - potentially costly - stand, Abel is getting support from his customers. In fact, many patrons have offered to fork over the necessary folding green to pay any fines he might incur. Will Abel stand firm, or will he be pummeled into submission by the Nanny State's monopoly on the use of force? It's too close to call, but, we suspect that, given its brute strength, the Nanny State will prevail, in the long run. JANUARY 2006
Terrors Of Technology Source: PIG News Wire [01/31/06] Determined to save sovereign individuals from their impulse to exceed the posted speed limit, certain Canadian bureaucrats are pioneering a bold new regulatory concept. Inspired by their zeal to save citizens from themselves, they're road testing a new speed limit enforcement concept that uses GPS technology to, automatically, make it impossible for a driver to exceed the posted limit:
If the trial is successful, the next regulatory step would be to use Nanny State coercion to force car manufacturers to add this speed nanny technology to all cars sold in Canada. The Nanny State on steroids? You better believe it, Big Brother is watching, Sparky. Eminent Domain Tussle in Florida The fur began to fly when five outraged St. Pete Beach citizens decided to fight city hall with a petition demanding that the city's redevelopment plans be put to a vote. Determined to put an immediate stop to this citizens revolt, city officials got lawyered up and plundered the city's coffers to sue these rebellious taxpayers:
"Bad" is having city hall trying to nuke your right to vote on a redevelopment plan. "Worse" is using your stolen tax dollars to pummel you in court. That might be somebody's idea of "a nation conceived in liberty" but it's damn sure not mine. Eminent Domain Daily Double Olathe (Kansas) The excuse for stealing Olathe City Councilman Bob Montgomery's property is the usual "for the greater good of society" drivel. They're - allegedly - torn between using it for a parking lot and building a new courthouse on the site. In other words, they have no idea what - if anything - they plan to do with it, but they're determined to steal it anyway. Why? Because, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, they can, and there's nothing anybody, including Councilman Montgomery, can do to stop them. That might be your idea of inalienable individual liberty, but it's damn sure not mine. North Carolina
BB&K isn't your basic mom and pop bank. On the contrary, they operate more than 1,400 branches and have $109.2 billion dollars in assets. PIG salutes BB&K for their steadfast support for our besieged property rights. Painting a Bull's-Eye On Pork Barrel Spending Senator Tom Coburn has declared war on "earmarks" - hack speak for those pork barrel projects like the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. He, along with Senator John "I'm running for President" McCain, declared his plan to make it much harder to ram this pork through congress undetected:
Senator Coburn illustrated pork barrel earmarks' explosive growth with some sobering data. Since the Elephant Clan took charge of congress in 1994, pork barrel earmarks went from 4,126 items in 1994 to 15,268 2005. Senator Coburn knows he's fighting an uphill battle, but he strikes us as a man with the nads to stay in this battle until a victory is achieved. If ever there was a dude who can be described as a man with "the right stuff", it's Tom Coburn. Seattle's Garbage Gestapo Believe it or not, Seattle's Public Utilities Commission has people inspecting garbage before they'll pick it up. It's not a complete shock that the Great Northwest Nitwits went recycling bonkers with a law that makes it a crime for Seattle denizens to put more than 10 percent recycled materials in a garbage can. It's the fact that specially designated workers are paid to snoop in garbage cans to catch those dastardly, unpatriotic criminals who aren't recycling that makes this PIG-worthy. When a garbage can is deemed in violation, it is tagged with an 11 X 14 strip of bright yellow paper, a flag that prevents the garbage collectors from picking it up. Three violations by the same individual or business will cost the recycling refusenik a $50 fine. Given what passes for critical thinking in this rain-soaked liberal Eden, this crap shouldn't shock anybody. That's why we call them the Great Northwester Nitwits. Be that as it may, this Garbage Gestapo scam - paying city employees to snoop in garbage cans - achieves a new low. Can these pinheads plunge deeper into stampeding stupidity? You better believe it, Great Northwestern Nitwit Sparky. Supreme Court Report Assisted Suicide
According to the usual suspects, this ruling doesn't end the matter completely. It simply states that the way the feds tried to stop assisted suicide in Oregon didn't pass legal muster. That still leaves room for some clever Nanny State shyster to dream up another reason to boldly go where the government damn sure does not belong. Campaign Finance Reform Nanny State News Nuggets Empire State
Finally, there's our favorite reason to ban wind farms.
Nobody, it seems, has the nads to cite the primary reason to oppose this Nanny State funded boondoggle. Windmill farms are profitable primarily, because the local, state and federal government subsidize them so heavily. Otherwise, a windmill farm's profitability depends on the cost of the land on which they're erected. I sympathize with those who don't want the damn things next door, but that's primarily a property rights matter. Unless the state is "donating" the land in question directly, or via eminent domain, the property owner should have the right to use his, her, hisher or its land as they see fit. If the loyal windmill farm opposition wants to stop this scheme, the need to buy the land themselves, first. Mexifornia
For a modest investment - a paltry $17,600 - Cisco will reap a multi-million dollar bonanza. All they needed to do was "rent" the right political hacks. Somebody needs to explain how this rent a political punk scam differs from the way things are done in those third world countries we malign for their pay-for-play politics. Any takers? We didn't think so. Afterthoughts: Washington D. C.
The alleged targets of this federal stinker are "cyberstalkers", but we all know that the Nanny State has a long track record of boldly taking a law where it was never intended to go. The Nanny State pinheads are, quite understandably, terrified by the fact that the Internet is the last place in Amerika where unrestricted free speech can still be practiced. They won't tolerate that and will do whatever it takes to seize control of the information superhighway. You can call us all the names you want, "You PIG punks are crying 'wolf' again" Sparky, but don't come whining to us when we turn out to be right. In The Bull's-Eye The fight to defend our nation's borders is thisclose to becoming much more dangerous, thanks to the border jumping scumbags from Vicente Fox's blight on the globe. According to a memo from our Homeland Security pinheads, smugglers are recruiting members of an infamous, border jumping scumbag street gang named MS-13 - Mara Salvatruchas - to use our border patrol agents for target practice. Why the hell are we still playing with these south of the border pissants? Nuking Mexico until it glows is sounding better and better. It's time for Uncle Sam to take off the gloves and kick some border jumping scumbag butt. An Arresting Mexifornia Fact Regular readers of PIG News might remember the two liquor store attacks in Oakland (Mexifornia) last November. During these attacks, some black Muslims in their spiffiest attire walked into a couple liquor stores, trashed the place then warned the owners to stop selling booze to Muslims. In addition to these attacks, one store was, subsequently, burned down and a store owner was kidnaped, then released. All that is old news, since the attackers have been identified and arrested. There was one new fact in this Seattle fishwrap's coverage that came as a nasty revelation:
How the hell can a nation "conceived in liberty" allow the Nanny State nitwits set a limit on the number of adult beverage purveyors may exist in a given area? It's bad enough that the Nanny State extorts money from a business owner before that aspiring capitalist is allowed to ply his, her, hisher, or its trade, without this crap. As bad as this limit on booze shops is, it gets better. Mexifornia's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control is empowered to determine that a given area is "blighted". Once an area is "blighted, the state's booze bureaucracy can revoke any store's liquor license. Am I the only person who remembers the Founding Fathers' veneration of an individual's property rights? Apparently, and that's a very frightening realization. Will Mayor Williams Veto D.C.'s Smoking Ban? Painfully aware that the city's new smoking ban could cost city badly needed sales tax revenue, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams is thisclose to nuking it with his mayoral veto. For those who obsess on such trivia, here are the smoking ban Cliff Notes:
Mayor Williams points out that, unless there's an area-wide smoking ban, smokers will simply take a five-to-ten minute trip to neighboring areas where smoking is still permitted. This will impoverish D.C. capitalists, and decrease tax revenue in the process. In a rational world, Mayor Williams would veto this marketplace intrusion because it infringes the right of a business owner to run his adventure in capitalism as he, she, heshe or it sees fit. In a differently-rational realm like D.C., Mayor Williams' reasons for vetoing the smoking ban are the best we can expect. So be it. Tyke On TSA's "No Fly" List Continental Airlines ticket agents in Houston's Bush International Airport black flagged a ticketed airline passenger because his name appears on the TSA's "no fly" list. Despite the fact that existing TSA rules "do not require ID for children because there are no children on the [no fly] list" (Bee), Continental Airlines agents steadfastly refused to allow 4 year old Edward Allen to board the plane. Eventually, after Edward's parents' relentless protests wore them down, the ticket agents made the relevant calls to a higher - presumably more rational - authority and Edward was allowed to get on that plane so he could go visit his grandma. When, exactly, did common sense cease to be a prime hiring requirement at Continental Airlines? Chicago Mull's Gun Control The Windy City's Mayor Daley is testing the political winds and finds them favorable to his plot to ram through a city-wide gun control edict. He's been down this road before - at regular intervals over a 17 year period - but this time his chances are better, due to political changes at the state level. His edict is the usual Second Amendment infringement: an assault weapon ban, mandatory trigger locks, gun dealer licensing and, limiting each individual to one hand gun purchase per month. The NRA has it's own ideas on this subject. They're gearing up to introduce state legicrap that would exact a price for Mayor Daley's gun control edict:
A NRA spokeshole claims that they're thisclose to having a veto-nuking super majority in the state legislature. This political tug of war over the right to keep and bear arms is just heating up, so stay tuned, PIGsters. When In Doubt, Punish the Innocent Baltimore's elected tormentors are up to 'here' with the violence inflicted on the city by drug dealing scumbags. However, unable - or unwilling - to nail the violence prone drug dealers who infest certain parts of their city, Baltimore's city council decided to attack the problem from an unexpected angle. Did they organize a "nail the drug dealer" strike force? Nope. Did they team up with the feds to dislodge the drug peddlers from their city? Nope. Instead, these political hacks proposed an edict that would target convenience stores in certain neighborhoods. Why? Drug dealers lurk near them while plying their trade. If a capitalist can't convince the city's hacks that he, she, heshe or it risked life and limb to chase off these drug peddlers, the city will impose a strict curfew on the business. In addition to $1,000 fine and 30 days in the slammer, store owners face severely restricted business hours for up to 120 days in a 6 month period. Instead of doing their own dirty work, Baltimore's drug warriors have outsourced the task to law abiding civilians whose only qualification is owning a store where drug dealing scumbags ply their trade. Instead of placing the blame for drug-related violence where it belongs, the city is criminalizing store owners, instead. Unwilling to attack the source of the problem, Baltimore's 'heroic' hacks are attacking a symptom. Look up "gutless political punks" in your dictionary and you'll find the Baltimore city council's mug shots. DECEMBER 2005
Your Government In Action Source: CNN [12/30] In 2004, annual proceeds from cyber crime were, according to the Treasury Department, a whopping $105 billion. That makes it more lucrative than illegal drugs. Despite the fact that cyber crime impacts millions of Amerikans, Uncle Sam insists on wearing his drug war blinders. So how much is Uncle Sam spending to fight this new number one public menace? $16 million, and that's down 7% from the previous budget year. Bureaucrats Reach for The Stars If you think that you can escape the death grip of Nanny State bureaucracy by conducting your business off planet, you're tragically delusional. Determined to exterminate a new travel industry before it even gets started, the bureaucrats in Uncle Sam's Federal Aviation Administration just pooped out 123 pages of regulations for the non-existent space tourism industry. They perpetrated their proposed regulations despite the fact that legislation signed by President Bush last year, specifically "prohibits the Federal Aviation Administration from issuing safety regulations for passengers and crew for eight years" (AP). Are the FAA bureaucrats thrilled spitless about this blatant "hands off, bureaucrat punk" restriction? Not exactly:
Among other things, these D.C. job for life pinheads want to impose the following rules of space tourism engagement:
If these job for life pinheads were in business early in the 20th Century, they would have grounded the Wright Brothers and killed off America's participation in the age of flight before it got started. Given their way, they'd protect us so thoroughly that we'd be living in caves and scratching out a meager living growing just enough food to feed ourselves. Edison's electric light and all the rest? Too dangerous to be allowed by the suffocating Nanny State. Henry Ford's efforts to make the automobile affordable to everyone? Unsafe at any speed and DOA thanks to Nanny State interference. If I'm dumb enough to climb into Jim-Bob's Spiffy Spaceship, that's my goddamn problem, not the damn Nanny State's. If a space tourism industry ever reaches escape velocity, it will be in spite of, not due to, the relentless interference by the Nanny State. Which part of "Butt The Hell Out, job for life punks" don't these pinheads understand? All of it, obviously. Border Enforcement Smoke and Mirrors? "Securing our nation's borders from a potential terrorist threat and from the illegal entry of people, weapons and drugs is absolutely paramount. Through Operation Streamline II, we are able to target a federal government offensive in the Del Rio area intended to dramatically reduce illegal activity and deter future activity." (U.S. Border Patrol Chief David V. Aguilar) "ICE is committed to a seamless partnership with federal, state and local entities to ensure there are consequences for those who violate our nation's immigration laws. We will prioritize our resources to ensure those who enter illegally are removed expeditiously. Operation Streamline II recognizes the critical importance of detention and immediate removal as deterrence to future illegal migration." (John P. Torres, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Office of Detention and Removal Operations.) The bureaucrats running the U.S. Border Control call it "Operation Streamline II", but PIG News suspects that "Operation Smoke And Mirrors" would be a more appropriate title. On the off chance that this isn't what it appears to be - a publicity stunt to convince potential voters that W and his Elephant Clan homeboys are tough on illegal immigration - we'll give you a heads up on this scheme. Operation Streamline II zeros in on certain high-traffic smuggling corridors along a 205 mile stretch of the border where the Rio Grande divides the USA from Mexico. Border Patrol bureaucrats call this area "the Del Rio sector".
It all sounds spiffy and we hope that the U.S. Border Patrol's top bureaucrat, David Aguilar, actually intends to tighten up our borders. On the other hand, PIG News finds it suspicious, in the extreme, that this "focused effort" is happening now, when congress is poised to put meaningful border enforcement on the front burner. We smell a publicity stunt in south Mexas and that's why we'll continue to call this bureaucratic slight of hand, "Operation Smoke and Mirrors". PIG News would be thrilled spitless to be proved wrong on Operation Streamline II, but we'll need to see more than press releases and bureaucratic hot air, before we, publically, admit the errors of our ways. Big Brother Goes High Tech Using your tax dollars, the job for life bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of Transportation are bribing your state DMV to mandate GPS trackers for every ride in Amerika. The uses of these intrusive Big Brother-esque devices include, but are not limited to: automatically measuring our speed and issuing speeding citations by remote control; assessing a fee for every mile you drive; tracking your travel patterns, destinations, daily activities. Suitably paranoid, the U.S. Transportation Department pinheads are working on ways to make this Big Brother technology tamper proof. If you mess with it, your ride won't work. When they get all the kinks out - and they're working feverishly - this GPS snoop would be a mandatory item on all new cars and all newly registered cars. These D.C. clowns have way too much time on their goddamn hands, if they think that this is an idea whose "time has come". How else can you explain their zeal for blatantly taking a dump on our inalienable liberty with this Orwellian intrusion into our lives? This Draconian assault on our liberty by these Department of Transportation rat bastards is further proof -as if any rational adult needed it - that George Orwell was an optimist. San Francisco At It Again "We have to have more sensitivity to the rest of the beings we share this planet with. They are my friends, and I see what happens to them throughout the day. They don't have anybody to speak for them. That's why I'm here." (Mark Bittner, tree hugging pinhead and alleged documentary film maker) The Gulag's board of supervisors is poised to approve an edict that will thrill the Gulag's property owner's spitless. The good news is that the property is still yours, especially when the tax man cometh to extort your hard earned money. The bad news is that if you've got trees on your property, from now on, you might need the Gulag's approval to cut the damn things down.
Are you thrilled spitless yet? Don't worry, there's more:
If you've got this big, old, butt ugly tree in your yard that's such an eyesore half the town uses it as a landmark when they give directions, don't even think about cutting it down. Why? It's big, it's old, it's a prominent feature of the city's landscape. Okay, let's suppose your tree isn't big, old, or an eyesore. Let's just suppose you hate the damn thing for some damn reason. If some feather covered menace takes a shine to it you're stuck with the damn thing. Why? It's no longer your tree; it's a damn habitat. We don't call it the Gulag because it's a bastion of inalienable individual liberty, better them than me, Sparky. Seattle's Bold New Concept For years, the bleeding hearts running Seattle tortured themselves over the chronic boozers who infest the city's streets. Unwilling to let Mother Nature take its course, these Seattle softies spend - by their inflated estimate - a whopping $100,000 (per drunk) in stolen taxpayer loot drying out, jailing and treating certain chronic, incurable street dwelling boozers. What's a Northwest Nitwit to do? You better sit down for this one, PIGsters, because it's bleeding heart liberalism on steroids. The following quotes tell you the whole, bleeding heart, Great Northwestern Nitwit story:
The city acquired the exclusive use of a 75-unit apartment house where they will offer the city's 75 most notorious street-dwelling boozers free accommodations. Best of all, the drunks will be allowed to booze to their heart's content on the premises. We know what you're thinking, but it's all under control. The boozers will "sign pledges of appropriate behavior", so there. Oh, did I mention that these boozers will be free to come and go as they please? That fun fact has the apartment's whole neighborhood thrilled spitless. Why are these bleeding hearts wasting time on these half measures? If Bill Hobson is so determined to save these chronic boozers from themselves, why doesn't he invite one or more to live with him, in his own home? The same goes for Mr. Dwyer-O'Connell. It these bleeding hearts want to save the unsalvageable...If they want to prolong the days of the incurable, invite several home to live with you, then browbeat your lefty pals to do the same. Why inflict all that fun on an the innocent residents who just lost 50% of their assessed property value thanks to this scheme? You're the asshats who think that getting them off the streets is nifty, so you should start by putting your money, your homes, your families, your property value on the line for it. The only salient question about this grand scheme is what to do afterwards. Will a simple burning down of the utterly destroyed by rampaging drunks apartment building suffice, or will it take a tactical nuclear strike to expunge the damage done by this bleeding hearts on steroids insanity. "Those doomed, by their own choices, for early obsolescence should be allowed to achieve room temperature, as soon as possible." (Stealth Wisdom) The Great Winooski Gamble Raid Vermont's liquor control storm troopers suspended the liquor license for McKee's Pub (Winooski, Vermont) for two weeks, because this booze wrangling capitalist engaged in illegal gambling. Those of you envisioning a back room filled with slot machines, craps tables and the like need to chill out. This isn't that kind of illegal gambling. It's not even the all too familiar assault on Texas Hold 'em. Nope, McKee's crime involves charging patrons the princely sum of one dollar to play Yahtzee. That's right, Yahtzee! "Gambling" the storm troopers thundered, rushing in with Eliot Ness-like fervor. "None of your damn business", PIG bellows back, with table pounding indignity. It's far from shocking that Vermont, the state that inflicted Howard Dean on us, could make an illegal gambling mountain out of a dollar to play Yahtzee molehill. If they still want to secede from the union, they can leave right damn now and good riddance. Nanny State Bonkers in The Bay State In a perfect world, a bill in the Bay State legislature would have been inspired by a rational adult who is alarmed that his, her, hisher or its soccer playing tyke might get his bell rung and start spouting liberal claptrap. Suffice it to say, that's not the reason Massachusetts' State Rep. Deborah Blumer sponsored a bill that would make wearing a helmet while playing soccer mandatory throughout the state.
Ms. Blumer admits that her bill is probably doomed to bitter defeat, but she's hoping it will sufficiently alarm the state's lunatic liberal fringe that something will be done, somehow. PIG News will keep an eye out for more breaking news from Nanny State Nitwit ground zero, just in case something fun happens. Afterthought: Southern Fried Obesity Drama Some Tar Heel State Fat Nazis - Capel Hill based Be Active North Carolina - are trying to drum up support for a Nanny State 'solution' to the state's expanding waistlines. The primary tool in their arsenal is a study whose carefully-crafted, spin-doctored numbers paint a grim picture of an alarming public policy crisis. Spouting drivel about Medicaid costs, workers compensation claims and lost productivity, these Fat Nazis insist that all that Southern Fried lard the state's denizens are packing costs the state billions in dead presidents each year. Just in case that doesn't get Tar Heel taxpayers alarmed, this cabal trots out the do-gooder trump card - the grim fate facing North Carolina's plus size tykes:
The only reason this 'crisis' imposes costs on the Nanny State, is because the Nanny State keeps sticking its collectivist nose where it doesn't belong. If there's a financial crisis here, it's caused, in large part by the Great Amerikan Welfare State. If Big Brother would butt the hell out, then those who shoulder these added health costs - like the employers who take a hit on their health insurance premiums - could take the necessary steps to field a fitter work force. Once the marketplace places a premium on fit employees, the hippos in human form will be properly motivated to shed that tonnage. If you live in North Carolina, it's time to padlock your wallet, because your state's elected tormentors are getting ready to make you miserable with a frontal Nanny State assault on obesity. Slots Street Legal in Broward County "It's not going to feel good. I just don't think this is right for our state. ... The fact that there's going to be a bunch of slot machines in Broward County doesn't warm my heart." (Florida Governor Jeb Bush) Holding his nose and spouting the aforementioned prose to give him political covering fire, Florida's chief executive, Governor Jeb Bush, signed the legislation that gives Broward County voters the slot machines they sanctioned via a hotly contested ballot initiative. Under this edict - one that limits each site to 1,500 machines - a quartet of Fort Lauderdale betting sites will now have the Nanny State's permission to put slot machines on their own property. What's the catch? The four sites in question - Gulfstream Park, Dania Jai-Alai, Pompano Park harness racing and Hollywood Greyhound Track - must fork over an extortionary 50 % tax on the slot machine profits to the Nanny State. The Nanny State's strong arm tactics are expected to pull in a hefty $200,000,000 to $300,000,000 per year, but fear not it's for the Tax Nazi's usual 'good cause': the states government cess-school system. If you live in the Sunshine State, it's your patriotic duty to visit Fort Lauderdale and play those slots until it hurts. Nashville Strip Club Law Nashville's Draconian strip club regulations hit a judicial speed bump when Davidson County Circuit Judge granted a local booty palace - the Brass Stables - a temporary restraining order. The club - quite rightly - protested that the law's newly mandated 3 feet separation between the strippers and the customer is, in the Brass Stables' instance, physically impossible. Here are the Cliff Notes:
Attorney Barrett points out that enforcing the ordinance would put his Brass Stable clients out of business. If that happens, he demands that the city fork over the booty palace's market value, including the money it rakes in every year. The final point isn't exactly chump change since the club 'reported gross revenues of more then $500,000 a year for more than five years' (Tennessean). Will property rights get off life support in Nashville? It's too close to call, so stay tuned. Volunteer State Censorship Spring Hill's (Tennessee) decency-demented whiners started caterwauling the instant hair wrangler Cindy Landis of "Studio 4 Hair and More" put up an electronic signed that touted a "Sexy" brand of hair care products. The ensuing yowl from outraged, hypersensitive pinheads prompted Spring Hill's Nanny State punks to black flag the "Sexy" sign. They just won't have that kind of thing in their special circle of Volunteer State hell. Spring Hill's political punks might not be bothered by their blatant frontal assault on the First Amendment's free speech protections, but it bugs the hell out of us. If these hypersensitive whiners can't handle a benign word like "Sexy" then they should do everybody a favor and shoot themselves. If that's too damn difficult for them, we're ready willing and able to dispatch Spike the Wonder Tyke to give them a reality check. Don't make him come over there, Spring Hill dipsticks. |
|
©
Copyright 1993-2006 PIG - The Politically Incorrect Gazette
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
