No sympathy for “non-violent” drug offenders

By way of Tom Maguire, I found this article by John Tierney, the best writer at the NY Times.  Tierney is decrying the effects of mandatory sentencing on “non-violent offenders.”  I find myself entirely unmoved.

Let’s be clear here: I would be ecstatic to support ending the war on drugs, killing the FDA, and telling people: It’s your body, do whatever you want to it (just don’t expect us to pay for it).  But that’s not on the agenda.  What’s on the agenda is cutting the punishment of “non-violent offenders.”  And I’m opposed, because when it comes to drugs, there aren’t any “non-violent offenders.”

Those Mexican drug cartels that are murdering people and corrupting Mexican society?  They exist because, and only because, of those “non-violent offenders.”  Those teenage and twenty+ year old boys shooting each other (and the occasional innocent bystander) over “turf” for selling drugs?  Again, without the buyers pumping all that money into the system, those shootings wouldn’t be happening. So don’t tell me how sad it is that their life’s been “ruined”, because they are the ones ruining everyone else’s lives.

End the trade.  Make it all legal, sell heroine through drug stores, slash the prices so there’s nothing to fight over.  Great, got no problem with that.

But so long as those people are paying (and working, in the case of the “mules”) to destroy the US inner city, Mexico, Columbia, etc., they deserve the misery that mandatory sentencing brings them.

SEALs denied, and dead

The picture says it all.  We desperately need to get rid of this failure.

Why Akin must go

This started out as a comment over at Vodkapundit.  I’ve cleaned it up and posted it here (too), because I got positive feedback on it, and because I think it needs to be said.

Dear Akin supporter / defender / excuser.

I’m going to simply focus on why Akin’s words were completely out of line, and need to be condemned by everyone, and why he needs to get out of the race, now.

1: His words demonstrated extreme moral cowardice.
Akin opposes abortion in cases of rape. Unless you wish to claim that ZERO women each year get impregnated by rape, if you wish to hold Akin’s position you must be ready, willing, and able to answer the question “why should a women who’s been raped be forced to carry the child to term?” Saying “gosh, it doesn’t happen very often” is a worthless cop out. You still think she should have to carry to term when it DOES happen. If you can’t make that argument, drop your opposition to abortion in cases of rape.  Because if you really believe the number of such cases is too small for people to worry about them, then demonstrate taht fact by not worrying about them yourself.

2: His claim was and is total bullshit.
A woman who has already ovulated can be impregnated by rape just as easily as by consensual sex. Stress may very well make her less likely to ovulate. It’s not going to make the egg sudden break open once it’s already out.

3: “Legitimate rape” has got to be one of the stupidest ways around to phrase it.
If your issue is with women dishonestly claiming rape just to get an abortion, save it for when Roe and Casey are no longer the law of the land.
If you’re trying to differentiate between forcible rape, and date rape?  Don’t.  Just don’t.

4: His response proved that he’s not ready for prime time, and running for the Senate is Prime Time.
Look, if Akin’s didn’t realize this question was going to be asked, then he is not qualified to be running for office, because he’s a blithering idiot.

If he did realize such a question would be asked, but wasn’t willing to sit down and practice until he had a good answer ready to go, he’s too damn lazy of a campaigner to be playing with the big kids.

If he knew it was going to be asked, practiced his answer, and this was the answer he put together, then he’s way too f’ing incompetent to be representing the Republican Party at any level.

If he knew it was going to be asked, prepped for it, and then just flubbed his answer, then given the situation, he’s obviously not competent to campaign in the big leagues, and it’s clear that he only won the primary because of Democrat support.

I can not see ANY reason why a real Republican would want to get behind the Democrats’ favorite candidate. Dump him, and get someone better.

Finally, if your sole objection to the “rape exclusion” is that women will use it to get around anti-abortion laws, then act like you have a functional brain, and SAVE IT FOR WHEN ROE V WADE HAS BEEN OVERTURNED. Seriously? At a time when the Supreme Court has a near “abortion uber ales” policy, you want to turn off potential voters by arguing about the hardest cases? WTF?

Christ on a crutch! If we can get Roe / Casey overturned, then we can worry about throwing in rules that say you can only use the rape exception if you reported the rape within 24 hours of it happening. This isn’t brain surgery people.  But let’s get a President who will appoint Justices who will overturn Roe, and Senators who will vote confirm those Justices, first.

Cart.  Horse.  Some assembly required.

If you’re not willing to make the argument that “we don’t kill rapists, why should it be OK to kill an innocent child created by rape?” then just STFU about rape and abortion, OK?

Akin isn’t going down because the Democrats are twisting what he said, he’s going down because what he said was totally indefensible. Republicans aren’t jumping down his throat because of the Democrats hyperventilating, we’re jumping down his throat because he’s proved that he’s an incompetent ass, and he’s going to cost us a Senate race that was a gimme before he screwed up.

And we (I) hate and revile him because he is putting his personal desires / ego / whatever in front of the good of the country. He needs to get out of the race, and needs to do it now. If that hurts him, tough shit. Getting control of the Senate, defeating Obama, and repealing ObamaCare are all infinitely more important than he is.

Any “Republican” who disagrees with that set of priorities is a real RINO.

Obama’s spending and lying w/ numbers

Over at a place called “Pragmatic Capitalist”, they’ve got a “Chart of the Day” purporting to show that President Obama isn’t a big spender.  Like all the dishonest hack pushing that meme, they do this by blaming 2009 spending on Bush.  I left the following comment:

I’d spend time responding to you, but the fundamental dishonesty you show by assigning 2009 spending to Bush shows there’s no point.

Who signed the 2009 budget?  Obama.  Who passed the 2009 budget?  A Democrat controlled Congress.

Did you include the 2009 Democrat “stimulus” in with that 2009 “Bush spending”?

Did you include TARP in the Bush spending?  Did you add that one time only expenditure to the “Obama baseline”?  Did you subtract TARP repayments from Obama’s spending, or from Bush’s spending?

Did you add the Iraq military spending to Bush’s total?  Did you credit Obama with “cutting spending” for the (planned by Bush) decrease in military spending in Iraq?

Do you have the slightest shred of honor or decency, or are you just a left-wing propagandist?

Victims of Communism day

Today is Victims of Communism day.  While the Chinese Communists under Mao murdered more people than anyone else, today is the day to remember all the victims, not just those of Mao, Stalin, and Castro.

The quality of the Obama Adminstration “Senior Staffers”

Michelle Obama took her daughters to Africa for a safari, at a cost to the taxpayers of over $400,000.  She listed her daughters as “senior staffers” in the paperwork for the trip.

Part of this is about the appalling sense of entitlement possessed by those on the Left.  But to me the more amusing part is the juxtaposition with President Obama’s dog eating.  When Senator McCain joked about it on Twitter, and when others have joked about it, the Democrats response has been “how dare you pick on a 6 – 10 year old?”  Now, silly me, I thought President Obama was in his late 40s / early 50s, and in his 40s when it wrote the book talking about his dog eating.  But this is the Obama Administration, where the children are “senior staffers”, and the President is a “child”.

The Individual Mandate and Welfare drug testing

There’s been a lot of arguing recently about whether or not the Federal Government should have the power to force individuals to buy health “insurance” policies they don’t want, and don’t need (I don’t need a $5,000 / year “comprehensive health insurance” policy if I’m a 25 year old male with no health problems. Catastrophic coverage, maybe, “comprehensive” coverage? No). The Left is in favor, the right is opposed.

From Tom McGuire I just learned about a different fight.  In this one, the State of Florida has decided that it doesn’t want to give cash assistance to drug users, and so is requiring drug tests from anyone who wants to get cash assistance (it pays for the drug test, if you pass it).  The Left is outraged at this.

I’m trying to wrap my mind around the mentality that approves of the first, but not the second.  The best I can come up with is that, to the Left, all money, everywhere, is theirs.  Not the government’s, most certainly not the property of the individual who made it, all money belongs to the Left.  Don’t want to spend your own money buying an unneeded “health insurance” policy?  Tough.  They want to cut costs for people they care about more than they care about you, so you have to pay.  Don’t want to give cash to drug users?  Tough.  They like drug users, esp. ones who’ve so screwed up their lives that they can’t survive without outside help, so the drug users get your money.

 

Any other justifications?

Gov Walker kills “Equal Pay Enforcement Act”

Ann Althouse wrote “I’d like to know more about the repeal of the 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act, which I referred to a couple posts ago.”

Since her Capcha system never lets me though, I’ll respond here:

What’s to know?  it’s a bad law.  You want “equal pay for equal work”?  Great.  Do equal work.

You want to get paid as much as a cop?  be a cop.  You want to get paid as much as a garbage man?  Great.  Be one (or a garbage woman).

No bureaucrat, no court, no lawyer is qualified to judge whether or not two jobs are “equal”.  That is the job of the market, and the job of the individuals who make up the market.  You don’t like the pay for your job of choice?  Find a different one.

Two jobs require the same educational attainment, but one gets paid more than the other?  Sounds like more people want to do the lower paying job, and fewer want to do the higher paying one, so the higher paying one has to pay more to get people.

Good for Gov. Walker, and the Republican controlled Legislature,  for killing it.

What happens to Obama’s Re-election campaign if ObamaCare loses?

As Democrats start to come to grips with the idea that the Individual Mandate might be ruled unconstitutional, the next bit of spin comes to the fore “if the Supreme Court strikes down ObamaCare, this will just motivate liberals to get out there and vote for Obama.”

I disagree.

When the Democrats were carrying out their unprecedented filibusters of President Bush’s judicial nominees, there were 55 Republican Senators, and most Republican supporting voters couldn’t figure out why the Republicans were letting the Democrat minority run the show like that.  Then the Republican Senate leadership threatened to “go nuclear”, and all was right with the world.  Then John McCain organized the Gang of 14 to block the nuclear option, and reward the Democrats for having changed the rules of the game.  This ripped the heart out of many Republican supporters.  He we’d gotten a 55 seat majority, and those idiots in Washington still screwed it up!

Then came the 2006 Elections, and the Republicans no longer had their useless majority.

If the Supreme Court tosses out ObamaCare (and I think they should, because it’s unconstitutional), I think the Democrats will face a similar response.  They had the White House, 240+ Democrats in the House, and 60 Democrats in the Senate.  What’d they do with it?  They passed a “stimulus” law that didn’t help the economy, and an unconstitutional and unpopular “health care reform” law.

Tell me again why these guys deserve power?

It’s the mushy middle who decide elections.  And when they give you power, they expect you to accomplish something with it.  If you don’t, they’re going to give it to the other side.

With ObamaCare gone, record high gas prices, and a crappy economy, what did Obama and the Democrats do with the power the people gave them in 2008?  Unless they can answer that, all the scary stories about the Republicans, and all the promises of future benefits, aren’t going to be enough.

The beginning of the End for the Euro

Bundesbank has announced that it’s killing the Euro.  No, they didn’t put it that way, they said the following:

The central bank of Germany will no longer accept bank bonds backed by Ireland, Greece and Portugal as collateral, becoming the first euro-zone central bank to exercise a new privilege to protect its balance sheet from the region’s debt crisis. The decision signals the determination of the Deutsche Bundesbank to limit risks from the nonstandard measures the European Central Bank has taken to combat market stress during the crisis.

the reason why Germany has been trying to keep Greece et. al from crashing is because German banks hold a lot of Greek, Spanish, etc. bonds.  This move by the Bundesbank makes no sense unless it’s only the start (or maybe even the middle).  Expect to see German banks doing their best to get rid of their exposure to “Club Med” bonds, because if they’re not good enough for the Bundesbank, clearly they’re not good enough for German banks that aren’t backed by the taxpayers.

Possibility 1: German banks significantly reduce their exposure to Club Med debt: At which point Germany tells the Greeks to stuff it, and either the Greeks get booted out of the Euro, or German leaves (sorry, but the idea that the Greeks will actually get their house in order is too silly to consider).

Possibility 2: This causes a run on Club Med debt, as everyone else decides that if it’s not good enough for the Bundesbank, it’s not good enough for them.  At which point the cost of new debt goes so high for the Greeks and other Club Med countries that they can no longer roll over their existing debt, let alone continue running their normal deficits.  At which point, the Club med countries get kicked out of the Euro, or else Germany goes back on the Deutsche Mark.

In any event, the German political class has accepted that their voters won’t let them subsidize the Euro any more.  Now that they’ve accepted that, the Euro in its present form is toast.

I wonder how much this has to do with Sarkozy’s upcoming defeat in the French elections?  My guess is “a lot”.  I think the German political class thought that with Sarkozy, they could get a deal that the German voters would accept.  With the Socialist, they know this isn’t the case, so now it’s time to mend fences with the German voters (who’ve been nothing but pissed about the bailouts), and let the rest of Europe go hang.

WWII is now over.  The Germans no longer feel guilty enough about it to pay to keep the Euro going.

Wait for commentary by William Russel Mead in 3 … 2 … 1 …

Obama Reneged when Negotiating w/ Boehner, WaPo

The Washington Post has a very revealing article about the failed debt negotiations last year:

Obama, nervous about how to defend the emerging agreement to his own Democratic base, upped the ante in a way that made it more difficult for Boehner — already facing long odds — to sell it to his party. Eventually, the president tried to put the original framework back in play, but by then it was too late. The moment of making history had passed.

In other words, they had a deal, then Obama tried to unilaterally change it in his favor, and killed the whole process by his bad faith.  What a shock.

The Healthy Eating Act of 2013

Over at Volokh, Randy Barnet posted a link to his 2010 article on why the Individual Mandate is unconstitutional, and then commented upon it.  The response by ObamaCare defenders has been quite interesting.  Essentially, they seem to be claiming the following:

1. Congress has the power to regulate the health insurance industry, therefore
2. Congress has the right to order the industry to do anything that Congress wishes to order, and therefore
3. It is within Congress’ Constitutional powers to give the rest of us any order that Congress chooses, so long as that order is necessary in order to make the regulation work

Now, assuming 1 to be true, I think that 2 follows.  But I strongly disagree with 3.

If Congress had tried to pass ObamaCare with Community Rating and no exclusions for pre-existing conditions, it would have been a bad law, and it would have destroyed the health insurance industry, but it would not have been unconstitutional (at least, it would have been within Congress’ recognized Commerce Clause powers).

Or, Congress could have done the above, and included funding for the insurance companies to make sure they didn’t go bankrupt because of those rules.  That would also have been constitutional.

However, neither was politically possible.  So the ObamaCare supporters are forced to claim that Congress is free to chose any means that it wants to back up its regulatory schemes, and that any choice Congress makes is therefore “Necessary and Proper”.

Call it the “(politically) Necessary (is therefore) Proper” theory of the Constitution.

Following in their footsteps, I now propose the “Healthy Eating Act of 2013″ (as proposed by Michelle Obama, once her husband doesn’t have to worry about getting re-elected):

1. Congress hereby orders every person growing food (your private garden is, after all, part of interstate commerce via Wickard) to devote at least 50% of their growing space to Broccoli (we’ll call it the Healthy Eating Act of 2013).
2. Because all the farmers will go bankrupt growing that much Broccoli, Congress therefore also orders every American to spend at least 40% of their food budget on Broccoli (they’re not being forced to eat it, they’re just being forced to buy it).

Given the claims by ObamaCare supporters, I don’t see how it could fail to pass muster.

Words to live by

Megan McArdle wrote the following when discussing the fake Heartland memo:

After you have convinced people that you fervently believe your cause to be more important than telling the truth, you’ve lost the power to convince them of anything else.

Precisely.  That would be my primary filter when choosing who to listen to, and who to associate with.  If you believe it’s ok to lie to advance your cause, then nothing you say, do, believe, or think will ever have any positive value.

She also wrote

in truth, it’s hard to feel too sorry for Heartland, given how gleefully they embraced the ClimateGate leaks.

That is mostly true.  The ClimateGate leakers were decent human beings, so they xxx’ed out personal information before posting the emails.  Peter Gleick and the 15 people he sent the information to, OTOH, didn’t do that.  Because, after all, instead of being decent human beings, they’re righteous warriors for the truth of global warming climate change, and those who disagree with them, or work for someone who disagrees with them, don’t deserve privacy or basic human respect.

Walker’s ObamaCare

A lot of lefties have been babbling about how the Republicans supposedly overreached in WI, and this will be Walker’s “ObamaCare” (a legislative act that pisses off teh public , and sparks a tremendous backlash).

While it’s a lovely fantasy for them, it misses out on reality.

1: ObamaCare harms most voters.  If you like your health savings account, if you like your current insurance, if you liked your Medicare Advantage, if you don’t want the government screwing up health care even more than it already is, then you are directly, personally, negatively affected by ObamaCare, and the harm will simply get worse as time goes on.

2: Repealing Government Union collective bargaining, and cutting off union access to workers paychecks, harms very few people, and hte vast majority of hte people it harms were consistent Democrat voters anyway.

Who’s harmed by the WI Republicans move?

1. The unions that got to take money from the workers and spend it on Democrat campaigns have definitely been harmed.  However, these were enemies of the Republicans anyway, so it’s not like this is going to encourage them to be more anti-Republican.  And the law immediately costs them money, so they will have fewer resources to care out their anti-Republican jihads.
2. The Democrat politicians who were on teh Union gravy train are harmed.  But it’s not like this will make them more eager to win elections.
3. Union members will probably be getting worse deals now that they don’t have the union there.

So, we’ve got one group of people who are harmed by the Republican law, some of whom in the past have probably voted Republican.

However, those same union members now no long have the union taking $1,000+ out of their paychecks every year, and now get to re-certify the union every year, which means if the union isn’t responsive to their needs, they can get rid of it.

So, how many votes will this actually cost the Republicans?  Consider the characteristics of the voters they will lose:

1. Strongly pro union (not necessarily a gov’t union worker), or a gov’t union member who feels like the changes in bargaining will hurt her or him
2. Someone who routinely voted for Republicans in the past (if they were an automatic Democrat vote, there’s nothing they can change), or else didn’t vote at all
3. Someone who values the union more than they value the money the union will no longer be able to take from them

How many votes is that?  My gues is “not many”.  And when you look at the cost to the Democrats of all those forced union dues they’re losing, I think that this will turn out to be a net positive for the Republicans.

Here’s the lazy man’s no science needed guide to why the anthropogenic global warming crowd is not worth listening to

Ken at PopeHat wrote the following:

As a result of my laziness, I am willfully ignorant — practically innumerate and scientifically demi-literate. Thus, when I evaluate the scientific issues of the day — from global warming to evolution — I am, on some level, succumbing to an argument from authority. Which people spouting science I barely grasp, using methodology I can’t follow past the Sunday-supplement level, do I believe?

As it happens, I find the evidence (as I understand it) of evolution to be very substantially more convincing than the criticisms levied against it. Similarly, I find the evidence of a global warming trend more convincing than the evidence and arguments to the contrary. The weight of consensus on one side or the other is one factor, though by no means a deciding factor. The whys and wherefores of that are far beyond the scope of this post.

I offered the following comment, reproduced here in case it gets lost in moderation:

Here’s the lazy man’s unscientific guide to why the anthropogenic global warming (human caused global warming) crowd is not worth listening to.

1: If the people who claimed they believe in it actually did believe in it, it would affect their actions, and their lives.

Al Gore, nevertheless, had a house in Nashville TN that used 20x the average amount of energy. Further, he had a swimming pool, and did not have a solar heater for teh swimming pool, even though solar heaters are cost effective. Would he act that way if he actually thought there was a problem?

Or, consider this. As a logical matter it is simply not possible to believe all four of the following things. Nevertheless, those trumpeting that “we must do something” tend to hold all four beliefs:

A: The world is warming up
B: This warming is caused by human activity
C: This warming is a bad thing, will lead to disaster, it’s a serious crisis, we must cut down on carbon emissions right now!
D: We should not make it easier, cheaper, and faster to build nuclear power plants, despite the fact that replacing coal, oil, and gas fired power plants with nuclear plants would lead to a significant and near immediate decrease in carbon emissions.

2: ClimateGate. Real science is reproducible. If you publish a paper claiming that you got certain results, and no one else can get those same results doing what you said you did, the immediate assumption in scientific circles is that you have committed fraud. This is why, when you publish a scientific paper, you have to give pretty much anyone who asks everything they need to re-create your work.

This is non-negotiable in pretty much every area of science (and pretty much every area of research. Remember Michael Bellesiles and Arming America”? His fraud was discovered when those who disagreed with him tried to replicate his research, and couldn’t).

Except for Climate “Science”. ClimateGate happened because the people at CRU fought tooth and nail to avoid having to release the data, tools, and methods behind their published papers. Post release, they’ve admitted that they can not replicate the data behind their papers.

None of the “scientific” groups that claim to release historical temperature records have ever given a full release of the data, tools, and methods behind their claims. None of them have ever said “here’s the data we used, here’s what we did to clean up and organize the data, here’s the programs (with source code) we used to do it.”

If they were not perpetrating fraud, they would have done that. It’s what any real scientist would do after publishing a paper based on a data set that they’d worked on. But if they did that, then people who do understand the science would be able to examine their assumptions. Would be able to point out how other, perfectly reasonable, ways of adjusting the data would lead to results that totally contradict the “scientists” preferred results.

How do I know that’s true? Because if it wasn’t true, there would be no reason not to release the data.

3: When last I checked the numbers, there was a heating trend of 1 degree C from 1900 to 1950, a cooling trend of 0.5 degrees C from 1950 to 1970, a warming trend of 0.3 degrees C from 1970 to 1998, and a flat to cooling trend since then. Going from that to “Human industrial activity is warming the planet, oh woe is us” requires a great ability to ignore any data that contradicts your preferred fantasy.

Kudos to DougJ for drawing the line just right so he could ignore all the inconvenient data.

State worker pay and the value of a college education

By way of the MinuteMan I came across this article in the NY Times comparing the pay of State workers to private sector workers.  Key grafs:

The clearest pattern to emerge is an educational divide: workers without college degrees tend to do better on state payrolls, while workers with college degrees tend to do worse. That divide has grown more pronounced in recent decades. Since 1990, the median wage of state workers without college degrees has come to surpass that of workers in the private sector. During the same period, though, college-educated state workers have seen their median pay lag further behind their peers in the private sector.

…

At the local level, the phenomenon is similar: the median wage for college-educated workers trails that of their private-sector counterparts by about 20 percent, while local workers without college degrees earn 10 percent more than their private-sector peers.

This is a clear example of “people unclear on the concept” (and I’m sad to say Tom appears to have missed this as well).  Allow me to break some new for the NY Times:

All college degrees are not equal.

Consider the folowing fields of “study”:

Sociology, Ethnic studies, Queer studies, History, Literature, Education, History of Consciousness, Political Science, Women’s Studies

What percentage of government employees have degrees in those fields?  What is the actual, real world value of the “education” received while attaining those degrees?  0?  Something negative?

higher education bubble, meet overpaid government workers.

Because while the private sector certainly suffers from too much credentialitis, it’s not nearly as bad there as it is in government, where people often get raises based solely on the fact that they’ve received a degree, no matter what that degree is.

You want to compare public and private sector?  Great, compare apples to apples.  Compare public school teacher salaries to private school teacher salaries.  Leave out the seniority, and whether they have an advanced degree, because that is irrelevant.  The only thing that is relevant is “how good is the teacher at teaching her / his students?”  And the “Teacher’s Unions” fight tooth and nail against any attempt to figure that out, let alone reward people based on it.

“Because the public sector is much more likely to be highly educated, we would fully expect them to earn more on average because of that, just like we would expect somebody with a master’s degree to earn more than somebody with a high school education,” said Keith A. Bender, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who has studied compensation in the public and private sectors.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.  I would hope and expect that the average mechanic makes far more than does the average person with a Racist or Sexists Studies degree, be it BA, MA, or PH. D.  Certainly the mechanic has learned far more of value, and provides far more value, than does anyone with such a degree.

What would actually be interesting, valuable, and never actually happen, is a comparison of degrees.  Federal / State / Local Government Employees / Private sector workers v. actual degrees attained (Field and whether it’s a BA / BS / MA / MS / Ph. D.).  It will never happen, because the results would show that the “college educated” goverment “workers”, by and large, have a much higher percentage of joke degress than do people in the private sector.

Which would quite adequately explain why they “make less”.

Al Gore’s “massage”

Our favorite tree, former Vice President Al “Forrest” Gore is in the news, as a Portland Oregon massage therapist has accused him of soliciting sex during his massage.  (Note, I’ve been getting a lot of my information on this from Tom Maguire, and posted part of this as a comment on his site.)  In our latest twist, Gore’s defenders have admitted that he paid $540 (including a 20% tip) for a massage while at the Hotel Lucia.

This, IMHO, is a “game over” admission.

A $540 bill with a 20% gratuity is $450 for the massage, and a $90 tip.

This was at the Hotel Lucia, which has an associated spa, the Portland Spa and Boutique.

Looking at their price list, the most expensive massage they offer is $140 (90 minutes of either “warm stone” or “Table Thai” massage). Al paid over 3x that, plus a 20% tip.

Now, if you have someone coming to your room to give you a massage, you should expect to pay more than you would pay to go to their place.  But you don’t expect to pay an extra $310.

So, there are a couple of possibilities here:

1. The Hotel told him that’s how much it would be.  In that case, the Hotel was pimping out the massage therapist, because for that kind of money, you’re expecting a medium to high class prostitute, not  massage therapist.  (It would be great for some enterprising reporter to try to find out if that is the price the Hotel routinely give to its customers.)  But, if Gore asked for a “massage” at that price, he was looking for a prostitute, not a massage therapist.
2. The Hotel quoted a lower price, Gore paid more as hush money, or because they really did have sex.  If that’s the case, I do wonder why she submitted the bill through the Hotel, rather than just getting cash from Gore.

In either event, unless it was a four hour massage, there’s no way that Gore paid that much for just a massage.

I don’t know whether or not former Vice President Al Gore had sex with a massage therapist in Portland Oregon.  But I do know that that is what he intended to have happen.  Nothing else justifies the amount he paid for his “massage”.

TSA to stop abusing us?

President Obama let loose this brain-dead statement today:

“We can’t turn law-abiding American citizens, and law-abiding immigrants, into subjects of suspicion and abuse.”

Hey, Mr. President, dealt with the TSA recently?  Had to take off your shoes, your belt, while shuffling through a line?  Had to walk through a full body scanner that will let a TSA employee practically see you naked?

No?

Then don’t talk to us about “turning American citizens into subjects of suspicion and abuse”, because it happens to us every time we try to fly commercial.

Barack Obama, enemy of the environment

Got to love this bit of news

During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records.

Barack Obama, handmaiden of the destroyers of the Gulf Coast.

What is the First Amendment For?

Stanley Fish, and left wing law professor and NY Times columnist, writes a column today that attempts to give a principled justification for the votes of the four left wing “Justices” in the “Citizens United” free speech case (that’s the one where the government claimed it could block companies from publishing books that advocated for or against a political candidate).  In his article, he claimed that Stevens (the author of the losing side) was engaging in “consequentialist” reasoning

Stevens also values robust intellectual commerce, but he believes that allowing corporate voices to have their full and unregulated say “can distort the ‘free trade in ideas’ crucial to candidate elections.” In his view free trade doesn’t take care of itself, but must be engineered by the kind of restrictions the majority strikes down. The marketplace of ideas can become congealed and frozen; the free flow can be impeded, and when that happens the only way to preserve free speech values is to curtail or restrict some forms of speech, just as you might remove noxious weeds so that your garden can begin to grow again. Prohibitions on speech, Stevens says, can operate “to facilitate First Amendment values,” and he openly scorns the majority’s insistence that enlightened self-government “can arise only in the absence of regulation.”

The idea that you may have to regulate speech in order to preserve its First Amendment value is called consequentialism. For a consequentialist like Stevens, freedom of speech is not a stand-alone value to be cherished for its own sake, but a policy that is adhered to because of the benign consequences it is thought to produce, consequences that are catalogued in the usual answers to the question, what is the First Amendment for?

What Fish ignores, because it would completely destroy his point, is that the same left wingers who are perfectly happy having the government block political speech that they don’t like, are utterly opposed to letting the government ban books, or movies, or nude dancing, that others dislike, but that the lefties are ok with.

The idea that there are strong public policy reasons to keep Boston from banning pornographic books or magazines, but there are also strong public policy reasons to allow Congress to ban political speech by people who’ve joined together into a corporation for teh purpose of getting their political views out, is an idea so wrethedly lame that not even an “intellectual” could be stupid enough to believe it.

Stevens didn’t vote the way he did out of principle.  He voted that way because he has no principles.  Because the only thing that matters to him is getting what he wants, and the Constitution, the law, and reason can all go to hell if they get in the way of that.

ht: Tom Maguire