Tag Archives: Virginia

Gun Control Gone Crazy

Guns

Reasonable restrictions on guns isn’t wrong.

Unreasonable restrictions on guns is:

SUFFOLK, Va. — Two Suffolk second graders have been suspended for making shooting noises while pointing pencils at each other.

Media outlets report the 7-year-old boys were suspended for two days for a violation of the Suffolk school system’s zero-tolerance policy on weapons. They were playing with one another in class Friday at Driver Elementary.

“When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Well I was being a Marine and the other guy was being a bad guy,’” said Paul Marshall, one of the boys’ fathers. “It’s as simple as that.”

Conflict is part of us; part of who we are.  Teaching kids about the best ways to resolve conflict is fine.

This zero tolerance is a policy driven out of management fear.

There Are No Journalists Anymore: Version 12,567

AP

I’m sure there are example on both sides of the ideology spectrum; right and left.

But this one’s a doozy:

RICHMOND, Va. –  Gov. Bob McDonnell has signed legislation into law that will require voters to carry photo identification with them to the polls, starting next year in Virginia.

Virginia joins four other states that have strict photo ID requirements in place for elections, an action Democrats decried as a Jim Crow-era tactic to suppress the votes of the elderly, minorities and the underprivileged.

“This is merely a continuation of attempts by Republicans to suppress the vote of individuals who are not likely to support their right-wing agenda. I guess it’s true that if you can’t win elections the right way, cheat,” said Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton and chairman of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus.

Republican majorities in the Virginia House and Senate pushed the bill to passage one year after a more modest GOP-sponsored voter identification law failed to prevent President Barack Obama from winning Virginia for the second presidential election in a row and a Democratic U.S. Senate victory.

Serious.

I think it is entirely fair to point out that one side, one team, feels the republicans are pushing this law through for the exact reasons mentioned above.  I have no issue with that.  And, in fact, that point was made by inserting the quote from Locke.  And further in the article, next paragraph, the reporter points out that republicans have their reasons for passing the law.

But the editorial section is totally out of line.

Barack Obama: Giving Something Back

At that small little firehouse in Virginia, Mr. Obama gave us a very real look into his philosophy.  Key among that is how success is built.  Let’s look at his words more carefully:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back.  They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.  (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

So, from his words we see that Obama feels that our success is not ours alone:

They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on your own.

So, why are we successful?

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.

And that help was?

There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.

And because of all this help, what are we expecting the successful among us to do?

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back.

But I’m struck….how did all that help get there in the first place?  I’ll leave that to Thomas Sowell via Mark Perry:

All the high-flown talk about how people who are successful in business should “give back” to the community that created the things that facilitated their success is, again, something that sounds plausible to people who do not stop and think through what is being said. After years of dumbed-down education, that apparently includes a lot of people.

Take Obama’s example of the business that benefits from being able to ship their products on roads that the government built. How does that create a need to “give back”? Did the taxpayers, including business taxpayers, not pay for that road when it was built? Why should they have to pay for it twice?

What about the workers that businesses hire, whose education is usually created in government-financed schools? The government doesn’t have any wealth of its own, except what it takes from taxpayers, whether individuals or businesses. They have already paid for that education. It is not a gift that they have to “give back” by letting politicians take more of their money and freedom.

When businesses hire highly educated people, such as chemists or engineers, competition in the labor market forces them to pay higher salaries for people with longer years of valuable education. That education is not a government gift to the employers. It is paid for while it is being created in schools and universities, and it is paid for in higher salaries when highly educated people are hired.

One of the tricks of professional magicians is to distract the audience’s attention from what they are doing while they are creating an illusion of magic. Pious talk about “giving back” distracts our attention from the cold fact that politicians are taking away more and more of our money and our freedom.

Why should they have to pay for it twice?  Indeed.

Gingrich And Perry Fail To Appear On Virginia Primary Ballot

It’s beginning to look like the GOP wants Barack Obama to win the next election:

Newt Gingrich will not appear on the Virginia presidential primary ballot, state Republican Party officials announced Saturday, after he failed to submit the required number of valid signatures to qualify.

The announcement was made on the Virginia Republican Party’s Twitter account. On Friday evening, the Republican Party of Virginia made a similar announcement for Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.

Ten thousand signatures are needed to get on the ballot for the Virginia primary, which is March 6, known as Super Tuesday. The Perry campaign says it submitted 11,911 signatures, according to The Washington Post. But at 6:30 p.m. the Virginia Republican Party posted on its Twitter account that after verification, it was determined that Mr. Perry did not submit the requisite amount.

Mr. Gingrich submitted 11,050 signatures, but after verification, the state party said it determined that he had not submitted enough signatures.

The deadline for signatures was 5 p.m. Thursday. Mitt Romney and Ron Paul obtained the needed signatures to qualify.

Jon M. Huntsman Jr., Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann, the other Republican candidates, did not submit signatures in Virginia and therefore did not qualify.

If they can’t manage a signature campaign, how on earth are they gonna run a Presidential campaign?

The Sun Rises in the East Because: Global Warming!

I was getting the kids a haircut today.  While waiting I came across one of the most incredible stories I’ve ever seen.

See, a reporter got a “scoop”, or whatever it it’s called when an idea for a story pops into your head, went down to investigate the same story, gathered facts, typed up a report and then MADE UP A CONCLUSION.

Serious.

The whole story talks about the facts of the situation and the reporter, Leslie Kaufman, simply made up her own conclusions.  And this is the NY Times.

Continue reading

Arizona Lawsuit Backlash

There can only be one reason why Obama is suing Arizona:  To win votes in upcoming elections.

The law is wildly popular.  It mirrors Federal law except when it comes to profiling.  Arizona restricts it.  The Feds don’t.

But whatever the reason, it’s becoming increasingly clear to Americans that Obama is more concerned with his image than he is with fixing the problems facing the nation.

Continue reading

From Sea to Shining Sea

It started in Virginia and moved to New Jersey.  After that, the momentum swept to Massechusetts [heh heh – dumb bitch misspelled her own state!].  But beyond that, the writing has been on the wall for some time now:

“We didn’t like the Republicans but this, THIS, is NOT what we had in mind!

Continue reading