Next Up fom the Enumerated Taxation Power --

Makes sense to me.

*sigh*

Apparently Moogie Was Preoccupied

See the follow up posted later for the City Council video. Stupid Blogger.



So, there appears to be a little more to the story that I didn't know about when I did the Occupy NOLA post yesterday.  And, it appears that I didn't imagine the swollen ranks of cops in and around City Hall -- they really intended to be prepared for an onslaught of community-organized  protesters.

Today's Times-Picayune reports that a dozen or so Occupants did make it into the Council Chamber.  I guess they came in behind me and decided not to be rowdy at precisely that moment.  Come to think of it, at least one lady in the video below looks familiar -- I remember seeing her enter the room with a rather surprised expression on her face.  Perhaps her expression can be attributed to the following from the article:

"About a dozen protesters entered New Orleans City Hall late Thursday morning to find themselves far outnumbered by uniformed and plainclothes police officers on hand to keep an eye on them.

When they got to the City Council chamber, where they had proclaimed they would hold a sit-in, they discovered it was nearly filled with uniformed military personnel on hand for the council's annual salute to the armed forces and the economic importance of local military bases.

The protesters sat quietly for the rest of the 'Military Day' program, including the playing of all five armed services' official hymns or songs . . . ."

Methinks the protesters made the right decision at the time -- there were more than a hundred men and women dressed in the uniforms of all of the services seated in the chamber, plus an armed joint color guard.  Except, maybe the Merchant Marine wasn't represented.  I'm sure they noticed.

Apparently, however, after all the military-type folk left the building, even though they abandoned the sit-in project, the Occududes found a slot on the consent agenda where one of them could sign up to address the Council.  Pretty impressive stuff (says Moogie as she tries to extract her tongue from her cheek). 

After the commercial and the Responsive Litany of Occufolk in the Council Chamber, you can see the several hundred who marched from somewhere around the Superdome to Lee Circle, snarling traffic and making at least one good point: the Fed needs to go.  Do you suppose they're aware that dissolving the Fed is one of the Tea Party's hot issues?  Nah -- I doubt it.


At least they had some pretty good musicians. 

I'm ready for them to go home now.

Do You Suppose They Were Preoccupied?

Weren't the Occupy dudes supposed to have some big, hands-across-America-ish, nationwide demonstrations today? 

Apparently, the New Orleans chapter either never received, or ignored, the memo.  (Okay, it wasn't a memo, it was an email from MoveOn.org -- yes I'm still undercover!)

I was at City Hall this morning to speak to the Council and Mayor on Military Day about ESGR. City Hall is right across the street from Duncan Plaza where the Occupy folks (and their homeless chums who were run out of Duncan Plaza a few years ago, but seem to have found their way back on the coattails of the Occupy Cognoscenti) have pitched their tents (and the city, being ever-prepared for parades and parties, has set out several PortaPotties).  There were a bunch of extra cops both in the entry area of City Hall and the Council Chamber, as if they expected a bunch of Occupiers to storm the seat of city government. 

When I arrived and saw all the cops I actually grew a little apprehensive about being able to get out and to my car after the session without encountering a mob of foolish, fragrant people -- our session with the Council began at 9:30 and was supposed to last until about 11:30; the Occupy Show of Force was supposed to crank up at 11:00 near a sign erected on the sidewalk across the street.  As I prepared to leave, I could see a sea of television news trucks through the front windows.  Hmmmm, I thought.

Then, I walked outside.  And saw this:

I think the news folk outnumbered the Occupy folk.  Here are the PortaPotties.

This whole Occupy thing is starting to get a little amusing to us irrelevant people who live in flyover country.  You know a thing has jumped the shark when The Daily Show starts gigging it:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

But, I think my very favorite jab at the Occupants so far is this:

Go ahead, Occupunks, make his day.

History Repeating . . . ?

I wish I had received the email earlier this month that today sent me searching for something I found at PatriotThoughts.com.

We commemorated the 66th anniversary of Victory in the Pacific and the end of WWII earlier this month.  August 6th or 10th would probably have been more appropriate dates to ruminate on the decision to use nuclear weapons against a civilian population in order to save that civilian population.

The photographs and narrative on Patriot Thoughts are indeed thought provoking.  The Enola Gay, Bockscar, Little Boy and Fat Man; Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Saipan and the Banzai Cliff. 

The incomprehensible mindset of the Japanese people of the mid-Twentieth Century.

Tiny Tinian Island, is described as "a flat green dot in the vastness of Pacific blue."  The very idea that a place that today looks like this:

was the starting block for this:

and this:

is, in itself, a stunning notion that sends the mind into a self-examining do-loop.

What the science of History has been able to extrapolate from an unbiased, dispassionate distance is this: the utter and total destruction of Japan's major cities led to the metamorphosis of her culture; led to a nation that today is capable of creating this:

We've seen the rise and fall of great peoples -- and great cities -- throughout human recollection.  Even recently, and very close to home. 

When New Orleans drowned, her rotten-to-the-core, inadequate public education system crumbled along with her.  Today, that education system is among the fastest-improving systems in the state.  Perhaps, wiping the slate clean and having little to build upon save that which is buried beneath our feet, is what gives rise to legitimate human progress.  Civilizations are built upon civilizations.

What does that truth suggest about our Nation during the first term of Barack Hussein Obama?  Are we crumbling as a people, looking to rise from our own ashes?  Will it take that to get us back on track to being the world's Superpower?  Or, are we sliding toward a penniless and wretched decline as just another cog in the global machine?  Is that really what the Progressive movement desires?  Can it possibly be?

Perhaps August 21st is just as good a day as the 6th or 10th to wax philosophical on the destruction of a once great nation -- whether, as Rome, caused by rotting from within like a gangrene, or as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by nuclear holocaust.  

Would that I had some answers.

Fool Them Once . . .

Judging by the enraptured expressions at the Young President's latest campaign tour speeches, this should be the new logo employed by the *CREEP folk --

Has no one told him that the election's not for another 18 months and we're already tired of the rhetoric?!?!  Would it make any difference?

(* with apologies to Nixon's Committee to RE-Elect the President.)

Venezuela Kills Off Its Next-to-Last Functioning Brain Cell

Today I have offered up a genuine prayer of thanksgiving.  I am truly thankful that I do not live in Venezuela.

What are they thinking?!?!  Who among the Venezuelan citizenry cannot appreciate that by giving him another decree power the Congress has set Chavez up as a despot -- a dictator with royalty envy -- before the opposition gains a foothold in January.  And who in his right mind could possibly want to achieve such a thing?!?! 

Next they'll change his title to Emperor.  We'll just have to call him Napoleon "Dynamite" Chavez.

Seriously.  He has declared the banking industry to be a "public service," has expropriated private property without compensation, and is now turning his eye toward regulation of the internet.  AP reports:

The law to grant Chavez decree powers, the fourth such legislation of his nearly 12-year presidenccy [sic], also will allow him to unilaterally enact measures involving telecommunications, the banking system, information technology, the military, rural and urban land use, and the country's "socio-economic system."




Among the planned decrees already announced, Chavez intends to increase the value-added tax, now 12 percent, to raise funds for coping with the disaster caused by weeks of heavy rains. The government is erecting tents to house thousands left homeless and is accelerating public housing construction.

But, NappyDyn doesn't view this latest power grab as setting himself up as a Cuban-style dictator.  He just wants benevolent control of Venezuela's entire "socio-economic system."  More details at Fausta's Blog.

I guess the denizens of the Star Wars saga didn't see it that way at first, either.

We'd better watch our backs until 2012.  I can think of someone else who might like to add a laurel wreath headpiece to his Nobel medal via appropriation of the banking industry, the energy industry, the healthcare system, the . . . .

Oops.

Twelve Days of Christmas, er, Winter

If this weren't so darn true, it'd be funny.  As it is . . .


. . . we just had better teach our children well.

Stolen at Chicks on the Right.

The Tax Debate is Hazardous to My Health

I've avoided it long enough.

It's time for Moogie to weigh in on the tax debate spinning around Washington in a freakin' LAME DUCK Congress!  The chicken sh*ts facing re-election wouldn't even stand up for their "middle class values" in public and hunkered down until after they had been routed at the polls, so now they really feel the need to stick it to us.

Caveat -- Moogie offers her thoughts and opinions at the risk of bringing on apoplexy.

Perhaps it is a character flaw, or greed, or some other misfire in my make-up, but I cannot find a way even to comprehend the liberal view that some people are more equal than others.  The liberal view appears to favor low income folks over those who have higher incomes or pricier possessions.  Some low-income folks are not required to share their stuff with others at all while the more "fortunate" are expected to fork over nearly half of what they work to produce, or more.  Even after they're dead!

Let me tell you -- Pepper came from dirt poor to nicely comfortable not through some nebulous cosmic good fortune or roll of the dice, but rather by the sweat of his brow and backbreaking work and stressful dedication.  And, I might add, I did my part, too, since I was about 13 working in my parents' small family business, working my way through law school as a bartender and cocktail waitress, all the way through practicing law and then teaching it, and even doing another part-time retail stint, all while maintaining a pretty nice home life and raising some pretty good kids.  Neither of us ever worked fewer hours than people making minimum wage -- we probably worked longer hours since we weren't subject to overtime ramifications -- yet we are expected to contribute considerably more of our income to the public weal than minimum wagers.  WTF?!?!

And what about those people who work "for cash?"  They pay nothing in, yet send their children to public schools and accept the services of first responders and use the public roadways.  Yet another WTF.  But, some might say, those work-for-cashers do so in exchange for receiving no social security benefits upon retirement.  To that argument I say, WTF?!?!  Social security was never intended to be a total retirement income; it was sold by FDR as simply a supplement to one's own savings or pension to keep the wolf off the front stoop of really old  65-year-old folks (life expectancy in 1935 was roughly 61 years.).  But today, it has become a giant cache of cash that can be accessed by those who know how to game the system.

So, in essence, liberals in Congress, under the guise of "helping those less fortunate" are stealing from the producers and giving it to heaven only knows who.  Estate taxes are nothing less than a confiscation of private property without compensation and have no place in modern society; they're nothing less than an effort to prevent the endowment of an American privileged "class."  Well, folks, I'm here to tell you that there are several "privileged" classes in this country -- finding them only takes a tweaking of the definition of the adjective "privileged" and I'm pretty fed up with being the source of their endowments.

So, soon to be ex-Speaker Pelosi has marshaled her troops for one last ultra-liberal, communist hoorah to fight an extension of the current tax rates for everyone (while still retaining the very worst marriage penalty in eons) and to gig anyone for having the gall to die with accumulated wealth of over five million dollars (and that would not be Moogie or Pepper, if anyone's curious, so I don't have an actual dog in this hunt.  But it surely could be small business owners or family farms, and I do eat!).  I say it's time to put the "Speaker" in suspended animation until the next Congress convenes.  She and her minions are nothing more than anachronistic hold-over hippies, dreaming of an impossible idyllic communal life, and they need to heed the voters who recently told them to STFU.

I am sooooo ready for 2012.

Pardon my rather salty language today.  I had to do something to let off steam and hold apoplexy in abeyance.

On the bright side, I had a very good six-month follow-up screening yesterday and am good to go until June!  Woo hoo!

My Ears Are Bleeding! So VOTE!!

Sound familiar?



Remember this tomorrow.  And Vote!!!

It's Election Day Eve!!! Practice Voting!!!

Tomorrow night, we will know.

Tomorrow night, we will learn whether there is still a chance to recover as a nation before the subtle effects of Obamacare and EPA regulations and the IRS-as-health-insurance-Monitors and re-institution of estate taxes and failure to extend the Bush tax rate cuts start us down the track to hell on an express train.

I don't care whom you actually vote against; just DO NOT VOTE FOR ANYONE WHO HAS EVEN ONE LIBERAL BONE IN HIS BODY!!!  (and I use the word "his" in its traditional, generic sense that includes both genders as a reference to humankind, not as a reference to someone who has external plumbing, so don't vote for women with liberal leanings either.)

Moogie is very, very serious about this.

Just think about the potential ramifications when the libs lose control of Congress -- Pelosi loses the Speaker's chair, and speculation has it that she might retire when that good turn of events transpires!  Unable to return to the ranks of commoner Congressmen, she'll retire and go home to San Francisco!  Maybe even in Coach!  I promise to offer to buy a Coach Class ticket for her from Reagan National to SFO as a lovely parting gift.

So, even if it's raining cats and dogs, make yourself get out and vote.  Just tell yourself that your vote can help send Nancy home in Coach.  Then, go do it!

New Orleans has an 80% chance of thunderstorms tomorrow.  We're hoping that the rain will keep the Libs at home.  Or, at least, melt them before they reach the polls.

Go!  Go warm up your fingers and start practicing pushing those buttons!

From the Mouths of Babes

Stolen from a Facebook friend:

I recently asked my friend's little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day.


Both of her parents, being liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were the President, what would be the first thing you would do?"

She said, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people."

Her parents beamed with pride.

"What a worthy goal," I told her. "But you don't have to wait until you're the President to help the homeless. You can come over to my house and mow my lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard. I'll pay you $50.00, and then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50.00 to use toward food and a new house."

She thought that over for a few seconds, and then looked me straight in the eye and said, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work? You can just pay him the $50.00."

Her parents still aren't speaking to me.

Reminds me of the first time our daughters looked at the deductions on their paychecks for parttime jobs when they were teenagers and immediately got furious with Uncle Sam, the Governor, and Mssrs. FICA and Medicare. 

I think the guys who would do away with payroll deductions and require individual taxpayers to cut a check to the various government entities each month -- or, better yet, quarterly -- have a good idea.  The reality of how much we "contribute" to government and all its "programs" might become a little more clear.