

6th Annual Leather and Lace Celebration





• $83 billion in welfare payments (the earned income credit for people who don't pay income tax)And the President wants to cut out 10% of the DoD's budget, but spend more on keeping reliable voters on the dole? The Democrats strategy of patriot economics doesn't add up. Nice try though.
• $81 billion for Medicaid
• $66 billion on "education", more than the entire Department of Education required just ten years ago
• $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits
• $20 billion for food stamps
• $8 billion on "renewable energy" projects, which have a low or negative return
• $7 billion for "modernizing federal buildings and facilities"
• $6 billion on urban transit systems, dominated by unions and which, almost universally, lose money
• $2.4 billion for "carbon-capture demonstration projects"
• $2 billion for child-care subsidies
• $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that's run in the red for 40 years
• $650 million for "digital TV conversion coupons" (on top of billions already spent)
• $600 million on new cars for government (added to the $3 billion already spent each year)
• $400 million for "global-warming research"
• $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
Millions of Iraqis passed through security checkpoints and razor wire cordons today to vote in provincial elections considered to be a crucial test of the nation's stability.We should be reminded of what General Odierno said two weeks ago. From McClatchy:
Polls opened shortly after dawn after a step-by-step security clampdown across the country, including traffic bans in central Baghdad and other major cities and a closure of border crossings and airports.
By the time polls closed at 3pm GMT there were no reports of serious violence.
Gen. Ray Odierno , the commanding U.S. general in Iraq , said that if the country held peaceful elections this year, the relative calm that had settled on Iraq would be "irreversible."There's still national elections for Iraq later in the year, but the fact that U.S. forces are leaving a smaller footprint in Iraq is an encouraging sign that the Iraqi Security Forces are capable of taking care of business.
HB 1606: The Nanny State Doesn't Want You to Shit on the BusIf homeless people can't drop a deuce on the bus or in the library, where the hell are they supposed to go?!?
Believe it or not, taking a dump on the bus is not explicitly prohibited by state law. But if Representative Geoff Simpson (D-47) has his way, the halcyon days when you could poop on public transit to your heart's content may be coming to an end. What's worse: Simpson's bill also makes the not-yet-open light-rail line a poo-free zone.
Labor, riding high after quick wins with President Barack Obama, faces the harsh reality that the Democratic-controlled Congress will not find it easy to push more fiercely contested legislation to improve the status of workers or the unions trying to organize them.I don't really have anything against the concept of unions, lest we have some Upton Sinclair-like dystopia for American workers. But the unions became too powerful and too greedy following WWII. Notoriously slow to adapt to new technology in the manufacturing sector (e.g. the UAW was extremely hostile to automation in automotive assembly plants in the 70s), getting mixed up with organized crime (like when the Teamsters let the mob use its pension fund as a bank), and demanding such costly benefits that it caused the many once-great American industries to get eaten alive by foreign competition.
Obama on Friday issued executive orders that union officials say will undo Bush administration policies favoring employers. Among the orders, federal contractors would be required to offer jobs to current workers when contracts change, and they would be prevented from receiving reimbursement for expenses meant to influence worker decisions on joining unions or engaging in collective bargaining.
Rahm Emanuel once advised that crisis means opportunity, and the Democrats have taken that message to heart. They’ve exploited the sense of economic crisis in order to build a Trojan Horse stimulus bill that encompasses all of their legislative goals — and they’re trying to stampede people into supporting it out of panic. Hope and Change? More like Fear and Loathing.Powerline has the details of how Medicaid is going to be made available to damn near everyone if the stimulus package becomes law. Also, CATO took out a full page ad in the NYT to warn America that the stimulus was going to be a bust. Some might say the Cloward-Piven strategy of orchestrating mass chaos in society to usher in a new regime is a bit conspiratorial. But it certainly seems to be going that way.
What this does has nothing to do with stimulating the economy. Worse, it exponentially increases the difficulty in reforming entitlements, and Medicare already was the one program most in need of reform. It’s heading into insolvency even without the additional load of ten million new and unplanned subscribers in three weeks. Now, we will have even more subscribers to throw into the reform grinder, making it more painful than ever to effect the necessary changes to bring the program back into solvency.
The Associated Press reports that Power will serve as senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council. This may make for some awkwardness: In her new capacity, Power will be in close contact and may have to travel with Clinton, the new Secretary of State.Haha, to please Hillary Powers probably had to kiss her ring like some 14th-century penitent in the Vatican. Photos of Samantha Powers in the stockade outside Foggy Bottom will be posted once they become available.
Since the media firestorm that greeted her comments, Power has been inching back into a more public role in the Obama fold. She reached out to Clinton and was on transition teams for the State Department and the U.S. mission to the United Nations.
Officials close to the transition told the Associated Press that Power's gestures of apology have been well-received by Clinton. The two have met privately since the election. Both Clinton and Power appeared at the recent announcement of Obama's special envoys to South Asia and the Middle East, where they exchanged brief remarks.
Transportation officials in Texas are scrambling to prevent hackers from changing messages on digital road signs after one sign in Austin was altered to read, "Zombies Ahead."ABWF tips us off with video footage from Austin, but there were no zombies filmed feasting on brains. They must be still slogging their way back from the coronation in D.C. last week.
Chris Lippincott, director of media relations for the Texas Department of Transportation, confirmed that a portable traffic sign at Lamar Boulevard and West 15th Street, near the University of Texas at Austin, was hacked into during the early hours of Jan. 19.
With over 14,400 candidates vying for 440 council seats, there are a lot of people looking for air time for their messages. I was watching an Iraqi channel on TV a little while ago and saw non-stop political ads. I mean non-stop: there wasn't any scheduled programming! Just ads for this candidate or that, with a bunch of "rock-the-vote" style ads in between.If "too many candidates" is the biggest problem facing Iraqi elections, I'd wager that's pretty good. This is in comparison to 2005 where the Sunnis all boycotted and violence went through the roof. Sure, Iraq still has a lot of problems with poverty, refugees, and corruption, but as far as our military is concerned..."Mission Accomplished". Yeah, I said it, and I'm not even wearing a flight suit with a cod piece. Hopefully our forces can leave Iraq without a lot of problems, because the writing is on the wall that Afghanistan is ramping up.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich was convicted at his impeachment trial and thrown out of office Thursday, ending a nearly two-month crisis that erupted with his arrest on charges he tried to sell Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat.Blago is pretty much the embodiment of every politician: self-absorbed, super sleazy, and always prattling on about how they "help" poor or working families. We will all miss his shenanigans.
Blagojevich becomes the first U.S. governor in more than 20 years to be removed by impeachment.
After a four-day trial, the Illinois Senate voted 59-0 to convict him on the broad charge of abuse of power, then again to disqualify him from ever again holding office in Illinois.