Government waste - "You can't make this stuff up" department

USPS to Destroy ‘Just Move’ Stamp Series Over Safety Concerns

"the USPS will be destroying the entire press run after receiving concerns from the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition over alleged “unsafe” acts depicted on three of the stamps (cannonball dive, skateboarding without kneepads and a headstand without a helmet)."

Headstand without a helmet? Who the heck wears a helmet to do a headstand? What the heck are these people doing to this country? If that is an issue, why no complaints about skipping rope without a safety harness?

Is New York City the new California?

"ban-happy busybodies" is putting it kindly...

This is a nation wide phenomenon and it only seems to be getting worse. Don't worry though, it is all done to "protect" us, oh and "for the children".

More do as I say, not as I do; Texas Style

This is more of that "do as I say" stuff that government at all levels can not help but do cause you know, they do know best.

State governments outlaw gambling but promote lotteries. They pass laws to restrict cigarettes cause they are bad for you but they won't outlaw them and will tax the crap out of them to raise money. They restrict alcohol cause it is bad for you but they won't outlaw it and they tax the crap out of it to raise money. Here in Florida you are required to wear a seat belt while driving a car but you can ride a motorcycle without a helmet. Teenagers are not allowed to buy cigarettes or alcohol because they don't have the capacity to make "adult" decisions on their use but it is perfectly OK for teenage girls to get on-demand abortions without parental consent in many parts of the country.

And now they are busting down the door at the local VFW cause they have no other more pressing crimes to investigate or put a stop to, like drug dealing and such. Welcome to more of the nanny state.

Oh just grow up!

This opening paragraph hits it out of the park, nice start!

It is interesting to note the seeming contradiction when schools find it necessary to teach all the best ways to have “safe” sex to minors who cannot legally consent to have sex in the first place and yet also find it necessary to suspend students for legal handholding or hugging. The same contradiction is observed in schools allowing profane t-shirts as “freedom of expression” but suspending a student who used the word “noose” as a racial slur.

The entire thing is worth a read but you have to love the closing...

We expect silliness of babies and small children. It’s disturbing when seen in ostensible adults and it is alarming when it is promulgated as public policy.

Santa is TOO FAT and must conform

cause you know, it is for the children...

So not even Santa Clause is safe from the march of the progressives. In the UK he is just too fat for modern times and must slim down or go down. Now that Santa has been put in his place, I guess the next item on the list will be to get everyone to give out vegetables for Halloween.

Nanny State

Soon coming to a state near you...

Sicko-Sicko

The first survey of Britons opting for treatment overseas shows that fears of hospital infections and frustration of often waiting months for operations are fuelling the increasing trend.

Almost all of those who had received treatment abroad said they would do the same again, with patients pointing out that some hospitals in India had screening policies for the superbug MRSA that have yet to be introduced in this country.

Of course, none of this will stop the push for socialized medicine in the US, because if there’s one thing progressives excel at it is convincing themselves that any failure of ideology is attributable to the failure of the person or persons leading it — and that all that is required for Utopian policy to prove truly viable is the right kind of leaders: confident and brilliant (by their own lights) elitist bureaucrats who will resist the corrupting influences that “free market types” are always arguing are inherent to such systems.

Besides: it is better to have tried and failed — and in the process, kill or endanger the health and wellbeing of millions — than never to have tried and failed at all.

Not Their Fault

This is quite the amusing piece of literature and has a number of quotables to include:

Legend has it that, when he was a young boy, Richard Mellon Scaife's father would take him for ice cream cones, but before he handed a cone to young Richard he would take a large bite out of it. "That," he would exclaim, "is what taxes are!" No wonder the young Scaife grew up hating taxes. His boyhood experiences with ice cream cones taught him that taxes were stealing something from him, without returning any benefits.

and this one is a hoot:

This may come as shocking news for those of you in the upper 5 percent, but many middle class families can no longer afford health insurance, nor can they afford to pay their medical bills out of their own pockets. And this is NOT THEIR FAULT.

The first passage is fairly true. Now a days, taxes are what the government takes out of my pay without returning equivalent benefits. The current level of government spending is out of control with no end in sight. Government programs are breeding like rabbits and their budgets are growing. You would be hard pressed to find any government programs that have been disbanded. It don't happen. They just continue to grow and spread.

The second passage is telling as well. I would wager that this glut of middle class families that can't afford health insurance have plenty of color TVs, cars, homes, pools, boats, vacations, X-Boxes, computers, cable boxes, etc. Hell, look at the published standard of living for the "official poor" in America. Most of them live better than I did when I was a kid and we were considered middle-class (lower but still in there). This is just more of the "no consequences" attitude that permeates much of society today. Give me what I want, now and I should not have to give up anything to get it.

They don't want to give anyone, no matter how needy, a bite of their ice cream cone.

There is a big difference between offering someone a bite and having someone take it at knife point which is what taxes are, generosity at the point of a gun. It is one thing to help support the basic functioning of society and quite another to in affect reward poor planing and poor life choices with handouts and bailouts. This all goes back to life choices. You generally get the life you earn. If you can not afford health insurance, what are you willing to personally give up to get it, fewer nights out at the movies, cable TV, delivered pizza, what? It seems that for a lot of people, the answer is nothing.

Think about this for a moment.

Posted as received via email...

Denver Post:

This text is from a county emergency manager out in the central part of Colorado after last month's snowstorm.

WEATHER BULLETIN

Up here, in the Northern Plains, we just recovered from a Historic event--- may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions" --- with a historic blizzard of up to 44" inches of snow and winds to 90 MPH that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10's of thousands.

FYI:

George Bush did not come.

FEMA did nothing.

No one howled for the government.

No one blamed the government.

No one even uttered an expletive on TV .

Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit.

Our Mayor did not blame Bush or anyone else.

Our Governor did not blame Bush or anyone else, either.

CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX or NBC did not visit - or report on this category 5 snowstorm. Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.

No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.

No one looted.

Nobody - I mean Nobody demanded the government do something.

Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.

No Larry King, No Bill O'Rielly, No Oprah, No Chris Mathews and No Geraldo Rivera.

No Shaun Penn, No Barbara Striesand, No Hollywood types to be found.

Nope, we just melted the snow for water.

Sent out caravans of SUV's to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.

The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn't ask for a penny.

Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments delivered it to the snowbound families. Families took in the stranded people - total strangers.

We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns.

We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is "Work or Die".

We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sittin at home' checks.

Even though a Category "5" blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.

"In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world's social problems evaporate." It does seem that way, at least to me.

I hope this gets passed on.

Maybe SOME people will get the message. The world does Not owe you a living.

Healthcare can be good, fast, or cheap, and you get to choose two. Just like most every other engineering problems.

That is a balls-on accurate statement in one of the comments to the initial posting. My choice for the two out of three are good and fast. I can usually live with good and cheap but want the first option available when needed.

Stem cell veto

President Bush has dusted off his veto pen and used it to deny federal funds for stem cell research. Based on the response from the media and the medical community, you would have thought that he had personally condemned every ill person in the country to death. GWB did not outlaw stem sell research. He simply said that federal funds can not be used for it. It is still legal and available as long as federal funds are not used. Private enterprise is free to spend as much money on stem cell research as they want. If it is as promising as the “experts” say, companies should not have any problem spending R&D funds on it. The Gates Foundation just gave over 250 million dollars for development of an AIDS vaccination. Private funds will go to stem cell research too, if it is worth it.

My question is why did it take him so long to get around to using his veto pen and is this really the only thing he could think to use it on? He should let me borrow it for a while. Does it take standard refills?

Rights

This column contains one of the best descriptions of a real “rights” that I have run across recently:

…a right is something that exists simultaneously among people and imposes no obligation on another. For example, the right to free speech, or freedom to travel, is something we all simultaneously possess. My right to free speech or freedom to travel imposes no obligation upon another except that of non-interference. In other words, my exercising my right to speech or travel requires absolutely nothing from you and in no way diminishes any of your rights.

ABSOLUTELY 100% CORRECT! Thank you so very much! Coming across this column and this passage was like finding an oasis in the desert. I am just so very tired if hearing every single special interest group in the world prattling on about this or that so-called right. The right to a place to live, a living wage (what ever that is), medical care, food, Internet access, WiFi access, ad nauseam. It is like grand sale day at John’s Bargain Store with all the claims for these rights.

I FEEL that everyone should have all of these things but I also FEEL that they should have them as a result of their own EFFORTS, not as a result of a third-party agency (i.e. the government) taking something away from one person to give to another, that the other already has equal access to (just not the means to buy it). For example, the prescription drug benefit that is getting all kinds of attention right now. It is decried as not doing enough to help old folks with their medicine. I am sorry but why is it a mandatory requirement for me to help someone else pay for their medicine? I have insurance that helps pay for mine. I have insurance because I have a job. I do a good enough service for a company that they continue to employee me and pay me money every week. I use this money that I earned to pay for things I want and need. I also set money aside for when I am old and/or out of work. This is called planning for the future. I do all of these things because I am a responsible person and wish to make decisions for myself and take care of myself. If I don’t happen to have enough money for all the things I want or need then I have to make choices, set some priorities and live with the consequences of those choices.

Because not everyone is like me and actively taking responsibility for today and tomorrow, the government takes some of the money that I earn and gives it to others that are less prepared for today and the future. The government does other things to help the country to operate but it seems to spend less and less time, effort and MY money doing what it was originally designed to do and instead is spending more and more time, effort and MY money trying to be grandma to everyone.

The only real right everyone in this country actually has is the right to FAIL. The right to try to make a life for yourself and your family and to fall flat on your face in that effort. You also have the right to pick yourself up, dust your self off and try again. You do not have a right to expect anyone to help you or for the government to give you anything because you don’t think something is fair. Life is not fair but generally speaking, it is what you make of it.

Up in smoke

Very interesting OpEd on the affects and side-affects of anti-smoking laws.

I don't smoke. My wife used to. My dad smoked for over 40 years and my mother never smoked. I am of the opinion that if most folks practiced a little common courtesy and that the issue of whether you are or are not allowed to smoke somewhere were governed by the owner of the place, this would be a non-issue. If a place allows smoking and you don't like it, don't go there. Either enough folks will be like minded to cause the owner to change his mind or another business will pop up to cater to your needs.

I can see though that there may need to be some specific no smoking areas, like airplanes, where everyone is packed into a small space with no fresh air but that too can or could be managed by the business.

Too many folks forget that you should only make rules/laws on the minimum necessary and they should be as general as possible. The best set of 'laws' ever written are the 10 commandments. Religion has nothing to do with it. Read them. They cover all behavior in just 10 rules. Nearly anything that you can do today can be fit into these 10. Everything else is just thinner slices of the same bread.