HIPPIES!

the TSA Gangstaz

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution opinion page..

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

A legislative session that for Republicans had all the makings of disaster turned suddenly last week — demonstrating once again why nobody should bet on elections that are more than a few days away.

A week ago Friday, rank-and-file House Republicans were in a deep funk about the fall elections.

Democrats in one afternoon lifted them out of it. Bloodbath averted. Obama surge neutralized.

I’d have to hogtie you to force you to sit still long enough to hear the full explanation of why Georgia House Democrats — minus seven — voted last week to deny tax relief to 93 percent of Georgians who own cars, trucks and motorcycles. But they did.

Some votes can be explained to neighbors who don’t pay much attention to the games politicians play in Atlanta and Washington. Some, including this one, can’t.

Rank-and-file Republicans were disturbed because House Speaker Glenn Richardson was still insisting he’d make them vote on a tax shift proposal — a new tax on groceries and services to generate money for property tax relief — that would have walked incumbents into a bloodbath in the primary and in the general election.

Gleeful Democrats were beside themselves at the prospect of running against Republicans who could be accused of supporting 175 new taxes. Had Richardson pushed that tax bill onto the floor, it would have been the end of his speakership.

But he didn’t.

He dropped the proposed tax on groceries and services His tax bill was morphed instead into a proposal by Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter of Alpharetta to end the “birthday tax,” the ad valorem tax that Georgians pay on their birthdays to renew their car tags. It would have saved owners of almost 7 million personal vehicles $637 million, the sum counties collected in 2007.

This is genuine tax relief. Not a swap. It is the real deal, getting Republicans back to what should have been their roots.

The proposed constitutional amendment on the floor Wednesday would also have frozen property assessments at 2008 levels and limited them to 2 percent per year for homes and 3 percent for other property.

Overall, property tax collections by local governments would be limited to new construction, plus the rate of inflation in government’s cost of goods and services. That rate would have averaged 5.05 percent over the past five years, Richardson said. The cap would not apply to revenues from other sources.

The proposed cap could have been raised by voters in a referendum. The ballot question would have to be phrased: “Shall property taxes be increased …?”

That cap was a primary reason Democrats gave for voting against a tax break for owners of 530,362 vehicles in Cobb, 586,995 in Gwinnett, 527,555 in Fulton and 436,997 in DeKalb.

Dumb. Seriously dumb. Pick any barber shop in Georgia. Walk in and explain that you didn’t oppose giving patrons a major tax break on their cars but voted against it because the proposed amendment would have limited the increase that cities and counties could impose on their homes. And, for good measure, throw in some gibberish about the state “owing” local school systems some back funding — and that’s why you voted against a tax break for almost every family in the state.

Good luck.

Four of the seven Democrats who broke ranks — Bobby Parham of Milledgeville, Alan Powell of Hartwell, Jay Shaw of Lakeland and Ellis Black of Valdosta — represent areas where Democrats have lost ground for most of the past decade. The other three were Bob Bryant of Garden City, Kevin Levitas of Atlanta and Amy Carter of Valdosta.

The proposed amendment lost 110-62, with 120 needed. One Republican, Tom Dickson of Cohutta, voted no.

Had it passed and been approved by voters in November, Georgians would have gotten $672 million in tax relief, the sum projected for the 2011 fiscal year. That’s money politicians would not have been tempted to spend.

Republicans were headed to an election-year disaster. And then came the Democrats.

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Hard to imagine that Democratic presidential politics could get any more bizarre, but party leaders are now suggesting a Florida re-vote with the primary being conducted by the U.S. Postal Service.

A mail-in primary is “actually a very good process,” said DNC Chairman Howard Dean on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Every voter gets a ballot in the mail. It’s comprehensive. You get to vote if you’re in Iraq or in a nursing home. It’s not a bad way to do this.”

The party is desperate, of course, to get out of the box it’s in. Hillary won Florida, and Michigan too for that matter, and has a legitimate claim to the 313 delegates. The national party withheld delegates because the two states elected to vote earlier than the national party wanted. Barack Obama chose not to have his name listed on the Michigan ballot. The choice there was either Hillary or uncommitted. Hillary won — but not by a landslide.

Who pays for a re-do, which would cost an estimated $6 million? The party, for sure, with money Dean says it needs for the fall campaign against John McCain. Republican Gov. Charlie Crist has made it plain that the state won’t bail out the Dems.

Michigan’s Democratic Sen. Carl Levin noted Sunday that “There’s some real problems” with a mail-in ballot. “Not just cost, but the security issue. How do you make sure that hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million or more ballots can be properly counted and that duplicate ballots can be avoided?”

Hanging chads, hanging mailman, here we come. Republicans really should not get too down about their prospects in November. Watching Democrats in Congress and in politics offers some reassurance that the party will over-play or misplay every advantage.

Moses.........say 'high'

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.
Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

"The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic phenomenon," he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see music."

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil's Amazon forest in 1991. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

Flori duh strikes again

This just in :Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean urged Florida and Michigan party officials to come up with plans to repeat their presidential nominating contests so that their delegates can be counted.

"All they have to do is come before us with rules that fit into what they agreed to a year and a half ago, and then they'll be seated," Dean said during a round of interviews Thursday on network and cable TV news programs.

The two state parties will have to find the funds to pay for new contests without help from the national party, Dean said.

"We can't afford to do that. That's not our problem. We need our money to win the presidential race," he said. The DNC offered to pay for an alternative contest in Florida last summer but was turned down, officials at the party say.

Officials in Michigan and Florida are showing renewed interest in holding repeat presidential nominating contests so that their votes will count in the epic Democratic campaign.




awwww....ain't that sweet?! Give the crybabies a 'do over'.

All this yet again from .........the birthplace of the dangling chad!

Ckeck out this quote from fladems :

http://www.fladems.com/page/content/makeitcount-faqs/#q4

"The Rules say you had to try to stop the primary move, but Democrats voted for the law. What gives?"

Initially, before a specific date had been decided upon by the Republicans, some Democrats did actively support the idea of moving earlier in the calendar year.

Here's the kicker:

"The primary bill, which at this point had been rolled into a larger legislation train, went to a vote in both houses. It passed almost unanimously. The final bill contained a whole host of elections legislation, much of which Democrats did not support. However, in legislative bodies, the majority party can shove bad omnibus legislation down the minority’s throats by attaching a couple of things that made the whole bill very difficult, if not impossible, to vote against. This is what the Republicans did in Florida, including a vital provision to require a paper trail for Florida elections. There was no way that any Florida Democratic Party official or Democratic legislative leader could ask our Democratic members, especially those in the Florida Legislative Black Caucus, to vote against a paper trail for our elections."






So, as I see it, either the GOP outfoxed the Dems and attached a 'paper trail' rider that guaranteed it's passage, which means the Dem party down there are pretty stupid.

Or, these guys voted to make themselves 'more important' in determining the primary outcome early, and cost themselves the delegates, which roughly translated means ' they are pretty stupid'.

Do I have that right? And isn't the reason we now need a 'paper trail' is due to these idiots inability to use the old butterfly ballot, which brought us the evil E-voting?

And Howard Dean. Way to show leadership and intelligence and try to avoid this nightmare. Good work, Doc!

Just hilarious:-)


With apologies to Aesop:

A donkey with an apple in its mouth once walked across a bridge. In the pond below, it thought it saw another donkey with a bigger, redder apple. The donkey reached down for the reflection of its apple, and dropped the real apple instead.

Moral: that’s what happens when jackasses overreach.

John Galt has arrived....It's Stossel!

http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080305130253.aspx



Do journalists have axes to grind with business and capitalism? ABC ‘20/20’ co-anchor John Stossel says so.



Stossel spoke before an audience at the Heartland Institute’s 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 4 in New York. He called the media “socialist” and warned things weren’t likely to change.



“The socialist media – maybe they will just never get it,” Stossel said. “Their world view is anti-capitalist. [Ludwig] von Mises wrote about it in 1972 and it’s just very hard to change. I would also argue the scientific community is as well.”



The ABC “20/20” host based that notion on his experience from being a consumer reporter. Stossel has worked for the network since 1981.



“[A]s I’ve done my consumer reporting, just to elaborate on that, I think what’s fueling a lot of this is a general hatred of capitalism,” Stossel said.



Stossel, author of Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel - Why Everything You Know is Wrong, likened being a conservative in New York City to being as unpopular as a child molester. He said he even encountered some hatred personally.



“[I]’m trying to figure out what’s the hatred,” Stossel said. “It’s because I’m a consumer reporter defending business and people hate business. So, I’m trying to understand why do they hate business so much. I thought – some people have said ‘the envy of the wealth.’ Some people want so much more and they figure it’s a zero-sum game.”



He tied this ill-will about business and capitalism to global warming by saying the alarmism fed off of this sentiment.



“In our intuitive understanding of this zero-sum game – you made a profit off of me and I must have lost,” Stossel said. “That economic ignorance makes people hate business and I think this global warming movement feeds on it.”



This “economic ignorance” causes people to not be fully aware of how successful a capitalist economy has been, by having its track record ignored.



“Capitalism delivered more people out of the mud and misery than any system ever and continues to do that,” Stossel added.



Stossel mentioned ABC’s Bill Blakemore, one of his colleagues. Stossel said Blakemore was undeterred by any global warming skepticism and was convinced it is happening and is caused by man. Blakemore, in attendance, identified himself when Stossel brought his name up during the speech.



Blakemore has been critical of any global warming skepticism. In September 2007, he called footage from a Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) commercial a “disinformation campaign.”

here we go again....

Oh Boy.. Florida voters are complaining about being 'disenfranchised' in the primary process...Now, if you listen closely to the Hillarites, they will all claim " The GOP Legislature moved the primary date! And now Howard Dean wont let them seat delegates! Since that will hurt our girl's chances....Why....WERE DISENFRANCHISED!!


Awwww shaddup.

It was not only the GOP that voted to move up the date, it was many democrats as well. And Jeremy Ring, a Democratic state senator from Broward County wrote the damn thing!

Even the LA Times saw this one coming a mile away
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-florida20may20,0,5268295.story?coll=la-home-center

"If the choice is Florida is relevant and has no delegates versus being irrelevant and having delegates, I'd choose being relevant with no delegates," Ring said. "We did this so 18 million Floridians could take part in the presidential primaries, not so a few hundred people can go to a party in Denver."


Okay, so now mensa candidate Howard Dean issued a smackdown. No votes for you!

So let me get this straight. These dolts move up thier primary, get punished, then cry about it. And now, they ( and Hillary, of course ) want a 'redo'?!

Riiiiiiighhht.

Good times......

The New York Times struggles.....

to make sense of 'global cooling'.Between this and the Democratic Primary, who needs the writers? Please, go back on strike. Plus, the last 2 SNL's sucked. Big Time.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/science/02cold.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Jesus H Christ!