Where Are My Keys?

Screwed up priorities..

So your teenage daughter isn't smart enough to make her own choices when it comes to what size soda she drinks, but she is smart enough to make decisions on terminating a pregnancy.

Got it.

As an aside, will the Pharmacist or cashier ask for ID from the purchaser?

Probably not, because we know that asking for ID is tantamount to racism, as minorities don't have ID (which I have been told over and over and over by Democrats). 

What if the girl in question is 14 years, and 50 weeks old?  If the Pharmacist allows her to buy the pill, he is presumably breaking the law (as is she).  If he doesn't, he's now punished the girl (in the words of the President) with a baby that could have been prevented, had it not been for her age.

Where exactly does a 15-year old get an ID, anyway?  Too young to drive a car, and since school ID's don't typically say the child'sage/birthdate, how will the Pharmacist know how old she is?

What happens if a 17-year old buys the pills, and then gives them to a 13-year old?  If that happened with cigarettes or beer, there are legal ramifications.  Will there be similar laws for this?  If not, why not?

Lots of questions, and those are just the first ones that rolled off the top of my brain.  I'm sure there are additional ones that will come with more thought.

Why is WGN lying about gun violence in Chicago?

Since guns are illegal in Barack Obama's hometown, and we all know criminals follow the law to the "t", why does WGN insist that there were almost a dozen people shot in the City on Tuesday?

You know what is a good measure of how things are going in your Country?

I'd probably start with how many of your households are on food stamps.  Stands to reason, doesn't it?  If you have a lot of folks on food stamps, things probably aren't going very well.  So how many in the good old US of A are being fed by the White House these days?

More than 23,000,000 households you say?  And that's a record, you say?  And it increased by almost 900,000 since the same year?

Nice economy, Mr. Obama.

Priorities..

Yesterday, an NBA player came out of the closet, and by the end of the day, the President of the United States had personally called him to applaud his "courage".

 

This morning, the President of the United States heard for the first time (based on his remarks to the reporter who had asked the question) that whistle-blowers were being prevented from testifying.  To me, the allegations of witness tampering by officials in the State Department (and/or the Administration) would be something I would want cleared up ASAP, if I were in charge. 

As of 245 pm MST, no word from the White House on what the President has learned, or even a statement from him saying that he wants these folks to come forward as soon as possible, to clear things up.

Good think he got out in front of the gay basketball player.  True leadership.

Presumably yesterday, the President turned to one of his advisors and said "Find me Jason Collin's contact information, and set up a call:, and someone did.  He could have just as easily said to that same person(s) this morning, "Find out which of the folks that were in the embassy in Benghazi want to testify, and notify the Congressional Committee handling the investigation that they will be available for questions ASAP."

But he didn't, did he?  I wonder why.

Nope, no need for entitlement reform in this Country..

The Bomber Brothers and their families received $100,000 in benefits:

The Tsarnaev family, including the suspected terrorists and their parents, benefited from more than $100,000 in taxpayer-funded assistance — a bonanza ranging from cash and food stamps to Section 8 housing from 2002 to 2012, the Herald has learned.

“The breadth of the benefits the family was receiving was stunning,” said a person with knowledge of documents handed over to a legislative committee today.

The state has handed over more than 500 documents to the 11-member House Post Audit and Oversight Committee, which today met for the first time and plans to call in officials from the Department of Transitional Assistance to testify.

Look, I get that it's pretty hard to look at each and every application for benefits to spot the bad eggs, and prevent them from getting taxpayer funds.  Could we at least cross-match names against no-fly lists, terrorist watch lists, and maybe folks with extensive criminal records?

Maybe that would be an easy place to start.

Remember how Candidate Obama preached about caring for our Veterans?

It's almost like he used them as props to help get elected, and now doesn't need them anymore:

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are getting frustrated about President Obama’s apparent lack of urgency in speeding up the claims process for veterans waiting nearly a year on average to get processed by the VA.

Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) today sent Obama a letter asking the president to take “direct action and involvement” in ending the backlog in which more than 600,000 veterans are stuck.

Sixty-five other senators joined on to the plea for the president to get things moving.

Some vets have been forced to wait more than 1,000 days. More than half of the total backlog consists of Vietnam and Gulf War veterans.

Over Obama’s first term, the Department of Veterans Affairs budget increased 40 percent but the number of claims pending for more than a year jumped by more than 2,000 percent.

“As a reminder, during this same time period, Congress has given VA everything it has asked for in terms of more funding and more employees; however, this has not eliminated the backlog of claims,” the senators wrote. “Solving this problem is critical for veterans of all generations. We need direct and public involvement from you to establish a clear plan to end the backlog once and for all.”

“This country must be grateful for the safe homecoming of every single man and woman who has served in harm’s way. Our joy at their return must be reflected in our commitment to helping all who have served.”

Toomey said the VA’s two regional offices in his home state are mired in more than 23,000 unprocessed claims.

While the average wait time for first-time disability claims currently ranges between 316 and 327 days, veterans in certain parts of the country are waiting even longer – 681 days in Reno, 642 in New York, 625 in Pittsburgh, 619 in Los Angeles, 612 in Indianapolis, 586 in Houston, and 510 in Philadelphia, the senators noted.

I can't think of anything that has garned this kind of bipartisan support over the last five years. 

Yet the President does nothing.

I take that back.  He did have time to comment on an NBA player coming out of the closet yesterday.

Cops are the only folks we should trust with guns, right?

Because they are so responsible with guns, and would never use them improperly, right?

A Beaver County blogger who keeps tabs on local government testified through tears Monday that Beaver County Sheriff George David drew his service revolver and threatened to kill him during a profane rant at his office last April.

"I was witness to the ravings of a madman," said John Paul Vranesevich, who runs the Beaver Countian website. "He was not in control of himself."

After a marathon preliminary hearing, retired District Judge Michael Gerheim, brought in from Armstrong County to hear the case, ordered the sheriff held on the majority of the 11 misdemeanor counts brought by state police in connection with that incident and an earlier one involving a campaign volunteer, Daniel Fleischman.

...

Mr. Fleischman, a county jail guard, said that when he went to shake the sheriff's hand at a campaign event, the sheriff called him a profane name and threatened to cut off his hands and eat them, apparently believing that Mr. Fleischman had been talking negatively about him behind his back. He said he didn't report the incident because he feared for his job and the sheriff is president of the county prison board.

Under cross-examination, he said the sheriff called him on Election Day to apologize and said he had received "bad information" that Mr. Fleischman had been talking badly about him.

During his testimony, Mr. Vranesevich said the sheriff launched into a tirade, pulling his pistol and waving it around during a meeting he had with the sheriff in the presence of two deputies, Thomas Ochs and Michael Tibolet.

"I can't explain his behavior," he said. "I don't know what is wrong with him."

Mr. Vranesevich was researching a story for his blog about a uniform contract for the sheriff's office after he said several deputies had tipped him that the sheriff was circumventing the low-bid process. He said Sheriff David, upset at the reporting on his office by J.D. Prose of the Beaver County Times, drew the gun in rage and warned that Mr. Vranesevich had better not report negatively on his office as he said Mr. Prose had done.

At one point, he said, the sheriff threatened to use the gun to blow Mr. Prose's brains out.

"If you start reporting [expletive] like this, I'm going to blow your [expletive] brains out, too," Mr. Vranesevich said the sheriff screamed at him.

City Workers finally having to contribute like the rest of Us..

Cities around the Country are waking up to financial reality, and *gasp* asking new hires to pay their portion of retirement expenses.  You know, like we do:

Pension costs have caused several recent high-profile municipal bankruptcies recently, so other cities are trying to avoid suffering similar disasters by asking employees to begin paying part of their pension costs.

In Sacramento, Calif., City Manager John Shirey said today he will hire 58 new police officers only if current officers agree to pay the employee share of their pension payments. The police union is one of few groups of employees in the city who don’t pay any of their own pension costs,  according to the Sacramento Bee.

Most public pension plans are set up with a set contribution for employers and employees, but employee unions often negotiate for employers to pay both the employer share and some or all of the employee share, which makes pension payments a large chunk of many cities’ budgets. Bankrupt Stockton, Calif., for instance, owes the California Public Employees Retirement System $900 million.

It's not just Sacramento seeing the light:

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake introduced a bill today that would require city employees to pay part of their share to address $681 million in unfunded pension liabilities, according to the Baltimore Sun. The bill would require employees to put 5 percent of their salaries into the pension fund by 2018. Rawlings-Blake’s office estimates it would save $53 million over nine years, according to the Sun. “The costs of outdated benefits have crippled our ability to pay workers what they truly deserve in their paychecks,” the mayor said in a statement. “We must make tough choices to rebalance the way we compensate our hard-working employees by reforming unsustainable benefits and instead invest in better wages up-front.”

Look for more and more this to happen in cities near you.

Remember, something that can't go on forever, won't.

Who would have thought?

So when taxes go up, Consumer spending goes down?

Spending by U.S. consumers cooled in March after the strongest gain in five months, showing the biggest part of the economy lost momentum as the first quarter drew to a close.

Purchases advanced 0.2 percent, more than projected and reflecting a surge in outlays for utilities and other services that is unlikely to be repeated, after a 0.7 percent increase the prior month, Commerce Department figures showed. Another report showed more Americans than forecast signed contracts to purchase previously owned homes in March.

Higher payroll taxes that took effect in January may be starting to take a bigger toll on the American worker, chipping away at the consumer spending that accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. With growth projected to ease this quarter and inflation subdued, Federal Reserve policy makers meeting this week will probably keep pursuing the record monetary stimulus that’s helped breathe life into the housing recovery.

“Consumers won’t be able to sustain the current pace if income growth continues to disappoint,” said Millan Mulraine, an economist for TD Securities USA LLC in New York, who accurately projected the gain in spending. “The weak inflation backdrop is likely to cause the Fed to at least keep purchasing” securities.

I wonder what would happen to Consumer spending if taxes went down. 

Does this really come as much of a surprise?

College grads are lousy in job interviews:

Newly minted college graduates soon entering the job market could be facing another hurdle besides high unemployment and a sluggish economy. Hiring managers say many perform poorly—sometimes even bizarrely—in job interviews.

Human resource professionals say they've seen recent college grads text or take calls in interviews, dress inappropriately, use slang or overly casual language, and exhibit other oddball behavior.

"It's behavior that may be completely appropriate outside the interview," says Jaime Fall, vice president of the HR Policy Association. "The interview is still a traditional environment."

Fall and other HR executives say such quirks have become more commonplace the past three years or so, and are displayed by about one in five recent grads. They're prompting recruiters to rule out otherwise qualified candidates for entry-level positions and delay hiring decisions.

The trend reflects a generation of Millennials—ranging in age from 18 to 34—who grew up texting and using smartphones and social media, says Mara Swan, executive vice president of staffing firm Manpower.

"Life has gotten more casual," Swan says. "They don't realize (the interview) is a sales event."

When you grow up in an environment that lets you do whatever you want, whenever you want, that behavior doesn't stop when you are in a job interview.  Makes me think of a Louis C.K. bit: