Category Archives: Uncategorized

aSide Order

A brief movie matinee.

  1. A John Boy and Billy video. If animals could talk.
  2. Here’s a ‘striptease’ video. You’ll have to keep hitting the ‘play’ button to finish it. Really. But I’d rate it PG.
  3. And a little Red State Update.  There’s a couple F-bombs in this one. You’ve been warned. Jackie and Dunlap on the crisis in Japan, the NPR footage, and, what the hell, a little Charlie Sheen.

endofstory

HERE’S THE PLAN

A. . Back off and let those men who want to marry men, marry men.

B. . Allow those women who want to marry women, marry women.

C. . Allow those folks who want to abort their babies, abort their babies.

D. . In three generations, there will be no Democrats!…

Man – I love it when a plan comes together!

Obama joke of the Year.

One day in the future, Barack Obama has a heart-attack and dies.

He immediately goes to hell, where the devil is waiting for him.

“I don’t know what to do here,” says the devil. “You are on my list, but I have no room for you. You definitely have to stay here, so I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ve got a couple of folks here who weren’t quite as bad as you. I’ll let one of them go, but you have to take their place. I’ll even let YOU decide who leaves.”

Obama thought that sounded pretty good, so the devil opened the door to the first room.

In it was Ted Kennedy and a large pool of water. Ted kept diving in, and surfacing, empty handed. Over, and over, and over he dived in and surfaced with nothing. Such was his fate in hell.

“No,” Obama said. “I don’t think so. I’m not a good swimmer, and I don’t think I could do that all day long.”

The devil led him to the door of the next room.

In it was Al Gore with a sledgehammer and a room full of rocks. All he did was swing that hammer, time after time after time.

“No, this is no good; I’ve got this problem with my shoulder. I would be in constant agony if all I could do was break rocks all day,” commented Obama.

The devil opened a third door. Through it, Obama saw Bill Clinton, lying on the bed, his arms tied over his head, and his legs restrained in a spread-eagle pose. Bent over him was Monica Lewinsky, doing what she does best.

Obama looked at this in shocked disbelief, and finally said, “Yeah man, I can handle this.”

The devil smiled and said …..

 

 

 

(This is priceless…)

 

 

 

“OK, Monica, you’re free to go.”

 

On Obamacare, Let Justice Prevail

The media hasn’t been doing well lately. Try as they might to tie the goings on in Egypt to a Obama foreign policy success, they failed. However, the events in Egypt did take the heat off of the administration for judge Vinson’s recent ruling that Obamacare is unconstitutional in its entirety. It’s time to revisit this ruling and where this case is headed.

Where the U.S. Constitution is concerned, there are two views. One is that it serves as our blueprint for governance as intended by our founding fathers who wrote it. The other point of view is that the constitution is old, outdated, and is useful only as a guideline to be adjusted up or down as needed.

President Obama holds the second view. In this radio interview, speaking to the issue of civil rights and the Warren court, then Senator Obama said . . .

The Warren court wasn’t that radical.  It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the constitution. Generally, the constitution is a charter of negative liberties. . . . It doesn’t say what the federal government must do on your behalf.

And that is on purpose. Anything else is left up to the states. In light of his attitude of the constitution, it begs the question that has yet to be asked of the president. What does it mean to you ‘to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?’

This loose, if not contemptuous, attitude of the constitution is more common among Liberals, Progressives, and the political Left. It is also the belief of another constitutional lawyer Lawrence H. Tribe of Gore v Bush fame. Tribe’s book, The Invisible Constitution, purports that

what is not written in the Constitution plays a key role in its interpretation. Indeed some of the most contentious Constitutional debates of our time hinge on the extent to which it can admit of divergent readings.

Well DUH! That’s why we have a Supreme Court.

Tribe wrote an opinion piece about Obamacare last week in the New York Times which is found below in its entirety, with comments.

On Health Care, Justice Will Prevail

By LAURENCE H. TRIBE

Cambridge, Mass.

THE lawsuits challenging the individual mandate in the health care law, including one in which a federal district judge last week called the law unconstitutional, will ultimately be resolved by the Supreme Court, and pundits are already making bets on how the justices will vote.

But the predictions of a partisan 5-4 split rest on a misunderstanding of the court and the Constitution. The constitutionality of the health care law is not one of those novel, one-off issues, like the outcome of the 2000 presidential election, that have at times created the impression of Supreme Court justices as political actors rather than legal analysts.

{You lost that one Larry. Sorry.}

Since the New Deal, the court has consistently held that Congress has broad constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. This includes authority over not just goods moving across state lines, but also the economic choices of individuals within states {where?} that have significant effects on interstate markets. By that standard, {new standard} this law’s constitutionality is open and shut. Does anyone doubt that the multitrillion-dollar health insurance industry is an interstate market that Congress has the power to regulate? {Judge Vinson is dealing with the part that regulates people Larry, not the insurance industry.}

Many new provisions in the law, like the ban on discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, are also undeniably permissible. But they would be undermined if healthy or risk-prone individuals could opt out of insurance, which could lead to unacceptably high premiums for those remaining in the pool. For the system to work, all individuals — healthy and sick, risk-prone and risk-averse — must participate to the extent of their economic ability. {Yeah right. So kill all the hundreds of waivers, mostly to unions.}

In this regard, the health care law is little different from Social Security. The court unanimously recognized in 1982 that it would be “difficult, if not impossible” to maintain the financial soundness of a Social Security system from which people could opt out. {Make that ‘impossible,’ and that’s not because of the system, it’s because congress has been spending it on entitlement programs for the last 50 years.} The same analysis holds here: by restricting certain economic choices of individuals, {it is ‘requiring’ choices, not restricting choices} we ensure the vitality of a regulatory regime clearly within Congress’s power to establish. {clear in your mind perhaps}

The justices aren’t likely to be misled by the reasoning that prompted two of the four federal courts that have ruled on this legislation to invalidate it on the theory that Congress is entitled to regulate only economic “activity,” not “inactivity,” like the decision not to purchase insurance. This distinction is illusory. Individuals who don’t purchase insurance they can afford have made a choice to take a free ride on the health care system. They know that if they need emergency-room care that they can’t pay for, the public will pick up the tab. {And under Obamacare, they can buy their insurance after they get sick and be covered. Effectively killing private sector health insurance.} This conscious choice carries serious economic consequences for the national health care market, which makes it a proper subject for federal regulation.

Even if the interstate commerce clause did not suffice to uphold mandatory insurance, the even broader power of Congress to impose taxes would surely do so. After all, the individual mandate is enforced through taxation, even if supporters have been reluctant to point that out. {You mean like proponents were reluctant to call it a tax when trying to sell it to the American people. They said it was not a tax, but a penalty. Only since going to court are they now calling it a tax. Can you say Bait and Switch?}

Given the clear case for the law’s constitutionality {in your mind}, it’s distressing that many assume its fate will be decided by a partisan, closely divided Supreme Court. {Like Bush v Gore?} Justice Antonin Scalia, whom some count as a certain vote against the law, upheld in 2005 Congress’s power to punish those growing marijuana for their own medical use; a ban on homegrown marijuana, he reasoned, might be deemed “necessary and proper” to effectively enforce broader federal regulation of nationwide drug markets. To imagine Justice Scalia would abandon that fundamental understanding of the Constitution’s necessary and proper clause because he was appointed by a Republican president is to insult both his intellect and his integrity.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, whom many unfairly caricature as the “swing vote,” deserves better as well. Yes, his opinion in the 5-4 decision invalidating the federal ban on possession of guns near schools is frequently cited by opponents of the health care law. But that decision in 1995 drew a bright line between commercial choices, all of which Congress has presumptive power to regulate, and conduct like gun possession that is not in itself “commercial” or “economic,” however likely it might be to set off a cascade of economic effects. The decision about how to pay for health care is a quintessentially commercial choice in itself, not merely a decision that might have economic consequences. {And not one for the federal government to make.}

Only a crude prediction that justices will vote based on politics rather than principle would lead anybody to imagine that Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Samuel Alito would agree with the judges in Florida and Virginia who have ruled against the health care law. Those judges made the confused assertion that what is at stake here is a matter of personal liberty — the right not to purchase what one wishes not to purchase — rather than the reach of national legislative power in a world where no man is an island. {The confusion lies in your understanding of the federal government’s enumerated powers.}

It would be asking a lot to expect conservative jurists to smuggle into the commerce clause an unenumerated federal “right” to opt out of the social contract. If Justice Clarence Thomas can be counted a nearly sure vote against the health care law, the only reason is that he alone has publicly and repeatedly stressed his principled disagreement with the whole line of post-1937 cases that interpret Congress’s commerce power broadly. {And correctly so, imho.}

There is every reason to believe that a strong, nonpartisan majority of justices will do their constitutional duty, set aside how they might have voted had they been members of Congress and treat this constitutional challenge for what it is — a political objection in legal garb. {So the setup is, if you lose this one, it will have been a political rather than constitutional. Just like Gore v Bush. It’s like being a sore loser in advance.}

Laurence H. Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School, is the author of “The Invisible Constitution.”

Swiss Vote To Keep Their Guns

Here’s a heart warming story from Switzerland. They like their guns and protect their rights to keep them. “Switzerland is different,” said Dora Andres, president of the country’s sport shooting association.

Weapons Monopoly for Criminals? No

“In many countries the government doesn’t trust its citizens and feels it has to protect them. In Switzerland, because we have a system of popular referendums, the state has to have faith in its citizens.”

You go girl. Good to see they have ‘bitter clingers’ there too! Swiss Miss, Switzerland’s version of Tea Partiers.

Link: Given the choice, Swiss vote to keep their guns

What Liberals Don’t Know About Guns

Fresh off of blaming Jared Loughner’s killing spree in the Tucson mall on Sarah Palin, liberals are now blaming it on high-capacity magazines. They might as well imprison everyone named “Jared” to prevent a crime like this from ever happening again.

During the presidential campaign, Obama said: “I don’t know of any self-respecting hunter that needs 19 rounds of anything. You don’t shoot 19 rounds at a deer, and if you do, you shouldn’t be hunting.” It would have been more accurate for him to end that sentence after the word “hunter.”

It’s so adorable when people who wouldn’t know a high-capacity magazine from Vanity Fair start telling gun owners what they should want and need.

Continue reading What Liberals Don’t Know About Guns

Your Comment ‘Feature’

There have been times with this blog software when comment features have been turned off. Not by myself, but some quirk in the software that the WP people don’t seem to acknowledge. I just went back to check the comment settings again, only to find that the stink’in box that says ‘commenters must be signed in to comment’ was checked. That means that no one can comment since you are not signed in.

That is not the way I intend to run The Lunch Counter. THIS IS.

But it does explain why there hasn’t been a comment entered in quite awhile. That checkbox is now unchecked. Again.

The comment feature is supposed to be set so you can comment on your first visit without having to go through any sort of registration BS.

Sorry for any inconvenience this ‘feature’ may have caused you. If you find that the problem has resurfaced, I’d appreciate your letting me know using the email form on the ABOUT page.

Tastykake In Trouble, Etc.

A lot has happened since my previous post last week. Everything that can be said and was expected to be said over the Arizona shooting last week has been said. It’s just too bad that a legal carrying citizen wasn’t around to minimize the killing that that nutjob did. I know our prayers are with the survivors and families affected.

That said, The queen and I did some R&R in the Smokey Mountains in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, TN. Make that the snowy Smokey Mountains. Which is why the blog took a rest. We enjoyed our time away immensely even though so many eateries we wanted to hit were closed due to the 6 inches of snow on the ground. They really are not equipped to handle snow there.

Returning, the bad news is that the Tastykake Baking Co., the makers of those delicious little cakes and pies, is in a financial jam. They’re already late loan payment is due today. Anyone want to buy a little gold mine? Run right that is. Not in its present form.

Tasty last week said fourth-quarter earnings were below expectations, partly because production efficiencies at its new Navy Yard plant hadn’t materialized.

That ‘production efficiencies’ hadn’t materialized is an understatement. Their move to the Navy Yard made their already awkward production system even worse.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed (fast Eddie) Rendell said that the state would loan them $1 million if they needed it. I know his heart is in the right place on this offer. This offer was not made as a back door government takeover. But rather as a bridge to better days if they can fix their problems. After all, Tastykake has been in business since 1914. Every person in the tri-state area grew up loving Tastykakes. Especially the butterscotch krimpets. Mmmmm

Here’s hoping they can find an investor.

Link: Deadline For Tastykake

UPDATE: Tasty Baking wins reprieve, new debt financing

UPDATE 11/17/2012: That ‘production efficiencies’ did not materialize at the new facility in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, as I said above, is an understatement. But I was way off as to the reason. Press reports at the time failed to mention that there was a successful union takeover five months earlier. More on this later.

2011 Mummers On Air And Online

I got your Mummers RIGHT HERE!

WPHL-TV 17 has been broadcasting the Mummers Parade for years. That’s good if you live in the Philadelphia TV market area. But there are a few other markets outside of Philly that will also be broadcasting the parade.

From their website . . .

The 2011 Philadelphia Mummers Parade will broadcast in the following markets/channels;

Philadelphia:  WPHL  9a – 5p & 8p – 10p

New York:  WPIX – will carry 2.5 hrs hours on THIS TV (Channel 11.3)  1p – 3:30p

Maryland, Washington, D.C.:  WDCW – will carry the parade on their primary station (Channel 50)  2p – 5p

York, Lebanon, Lancaster, Harrisburg:  WPMT – will air the full parade on 43.2  10a-5p

Web Video:

For those outside those markets, web video of the entire Mummers Parade will be available on an hour delay at the following url:

http://www.myphl17.com/community/mummers/video/

Liberals More Generous, With Your Money

But of course they are. What do you think the whole redistribution of wealth thing is about? In her column this week, Ann Coulter did some research into the giving habits of some prominent democrats and republicans. In her usual witty way, she hits another home run.

LIBERALS GIVE ‘TIL IT HURTS (YOU)
by Ann Coulter
December 29, 2010

Liberals never tire of discussing their own generosity, particularly when demanding that the government take your money by force to fund shiftless government employees overseeing counterproductive government programs.

They seem to have replaced “God” with “Government” in scriptural phrases such as “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37)

This week, we’ll take a peek at the charitable giving of these champions of the poor.

In 2009, the Obamas gave 5.9 percent of their income to charity, about the same as they gave in 2006 and 2007. In the eight years before he became president, Obama gave an average of 3.5 percent of his income to charity, upping that to 6.5 percent in 2008.

The Obamas’ charitable giving is equally divided between “hope” and “change.”

George W. Bush gave away more than 10 percent of his income each year he was president, as he did before becoming president.

Thus, in 2005, Obama gave about the same dollar amount to charity as President George Bush did, on an income of $1.7 million — more than twice as much as President Bush’s $735,180. Again in 2006, Bush gave more to charity than Obama on an income one-third smaller than Obama’s.

In the decade before Joe Biden became vice president, the Bidens gave a total — all 10 years combined — of $3,690 to charity, or 0.2 percent of their income. They gave in a decade what most Americans in their tax bracket give in an average year, or about one row of hair plugs.

Of course, even in Biden’s stingiest years, he gave more to charity than Sen. John Kerry did in 1995, which was a big fat goose egg. Kerry did, however, spend half a million dollars on a 17th-century Dutch seascape painting that year, as Peter Schweizer reports in his 2008 book, “Makers and Takers.”

To be fair, 1995 was an off-year for Kerry’s charitable giving. The year before, he gave $2,039 to charity, and the year before that a staggering $175.

He also dropped a $5 bill in the Salvation Army pail and almost didn’t ask for change.

In 1998, Al Gore gave $353 to charity — about a day’s take for a lemonade stand in his neighborhood. That was 10 percent of the national average for charitable giving by people in the $100,000-$200,000 income bracket. Gore was at the very top of that bracket, with an income of $197,729.

When Sen. Ted Kennedy released his tax returns to run for president in the ’70s, they showed that Kennedy gave a bare 1 percent of his income to charity — or, as Schweizer says, “about as much as Kennedy claimed as a write-off on his 50-foot sailing sloop Curragh.” (Cash tips to bartenders and cocktail waitresses are not considered charitable donations.)

The Democratic base gives to charity as their betters do. At the same income, a single mother on welfare is seven times less likely to give to charity than a working poor family that attends religious services.

In 2006 and 2007, John McCain, who files separately from his rich wife, gave 27.3 percent and 28.6 percent of his income to charity.

In 2005, Vice President Cheney gave 77 percent of his income to charity. He also shot a lawyer in the face, which I think should count for something.

In a single year, Schweizer reports, Rush Limbaugh “gave $109,716 to ‘various individuals in need of assistance mainly due to family illnesses,’ $52,898 to ‘children’s case management organizations,’ including ‘various programs to benefit families in need,’ $35,100 for ‘Alzheimer’s community care — day care for families in need,’ and $40,951 for air conditioning units and heaters delivered to troops in Iraq.”

(Rush also once gave $50 to Maxine Waters after mistaking her for a homeless person.)

The only way to pry a liberal from his money is to hold tickertape parades for him, allowing him to boast about his charity in magazines and on TV.

Isn’t that what Jesus instructed in the Sermon on the Mount?

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do … But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:2-4)

In my Bible, that passage is illustrated with a photo of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

At least the hypocrites in the Bible, Redmond, Wash., and Omaha, Neb., who incessantly brag about their charity actually do pony up the money.

Elected Democrats crow about how much they love the poor by demanding overburdened taxpayers fund government redistribution schemes, but can never seem to open their own wallets.

The only evidence we have that Democrats love the poor is that they consistently back policies that will create more of them.