When the nanny state steps on its own foot

Here is the state of our union.

Some 44.2 million Americans -- one in seven -- receive food stamps.

Nearly 2 million of them are in New York City.

In New York City, more than one out of every two adults is obese.

Let's act!

National/NYC Nanny in Chief Michael Bloomberg decided that recipients in his town shouldn't be allowed to buy soda and other sugary drinks with food stamps.

Food stamp

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My brilliant new career

Me and my new life. All aboard!
Associate Administrator for Administration. It's a real job.

And you're going to pay me up to $179,700.00 each and every year til I get bored or die!

The job is in the Department of Transportation, so I'll have to move to Washington, where it gets hot a lot, but who cares -- housing prices are holding up there. I don't think they're having riots yet.

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It's Humpty Dumpty time!

A Washington pol at work.
Roger Kimball at Pajamas Media ponders a big number: two-point-four trillion ...... which is the number of dollars our Masters in Washington just decided to add to your backs and the backs of your children and their children. That’s what, in Washington, they call “cutting the debt”: you decide to add a mere seven trillion dollars to the national tab instead of the ten

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At home with insanity

I'd rather be out in the garden, but our politicians in Washington are playing with our money and our republic this weekend, so here goes.

The Financial Times calls it a "theater of the absurd."

Let me see if I can get this straight. The President of the United States of America and leader of the free world is tweeting (as, on Twitter) that the Republicans are wasting "precious days." Forty

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Out of the mouths of babes

Boys and girls, if you're in school studying American history or civics, you might learn something from the rhetoric in Washington today Let's see, the Democrats control the presidency and the Senate. Let's check in to see what our leaders are saying.

"What we’re trying to do is save the world from the Republican budget. We’re trying to save life on this planet as we know it today.” -- House

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We're mad as hell

You gotta listen to this guy:



(American Digest)

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Our leaders at work

Movin' fast as I can.
Halfway through the year, the Senate is on pace for its least productive legislative session since records were first kept, and the House is also operating at a clip well below normal. Through June 30, the upper chamber had passed the fewest bills since the Congressional Record started keeping monthly data in 1947. The Senate had also amassed the second-fewest total number

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Everybody feeling safer?

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."-- Benjamin Franklin


Stick 'em up, Grandma!
We now have 45,000 "transportation security officers" at 450 airports looking at naked people on a screen, patting down grandmothers and little children, and groping people of their choice.

Not bad work if you can get it. The only

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Is anybody home?

The white coats are coming.
Nancy Pelosi, the august leader of the democrats in the House of Representatives answers the question: should we be spending more on mental healthcare?
“I myself am almost too busy to continue listening to some of the things that are going on in that room,” said Pelosi. “So I know [Obama] must be very busy. But he has treated everyone there with great dignity. The

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Let us pray

Do as I say.
With the national debt taking up most of Congress’s summer efforts, Congressman Charlie Rangel made a special plea to his colleagues that made all the Sunday morning news shows — telling fellow Congressman that in voting on whether to raise the debt ceiling, they should consider: “What would Jesus do this weekend?”
Former presidential hopeful, Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist

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It works like that in my house, too

So Goodwyfe comes home with several boxes of shoes and exclaims how much we've saved because they were on sale.

Have you heard the one about the politician who went to the shoe store? Economist Larry Kudlow, who once worked in the Office of Management and Budget in Washington, has.
Here’s some friendly fiscal advice: Any time some Washington big shot like Ben Bernanke or Tim Geithner claims that

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Feeling our pain

Hi there, suckers.
The White House released its annual salary report last week on a Friday before a holiday weekend, so nobody would notice. And as usual, it's nice to work for Barack Obama: Most staffers who were there for more than a year got a salary bump. A bigger one than you did. An astonishing 75% of continuing staffers got raises from 2009 to 2010—a huge number given the fact that,

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And Wednesday falls on a weekend

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner defended the decision by industrialized nations to release emergency oil reserves into global energy markets, saying on Friday that it was not a political move.
"Things are gradually getting better," Geithner said, adding that the U.S. economy is still growing "a little slower" than had been expected.

READ MORE - And Wednesday falls on a weekend

Mr. Kelly goes to Washington

(Maggie's Farm)

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How to understand the Congress

Secretary of Dreamland Security
People who cheated in an experiment had slept an average of 22.39 minutes less the night before than noncheaters, according to research led by Christopher M. Barnes of Virginia Tech. The study, in which cheaters overreported their scores on a test in order to gain financial advantage, shows that low levels of sleep are associated with unethical behavior.

That

READ MORE - How to understand the Congress

Our leaders at work

Lonely life of a leader.
In April, the Economic Development Administration gave a $2 million grant to build a "culinary amphitheater," wine tasting room, and gift shop in Richland, Wash. In January, it spent $1 million on an "innovation conference center" in Arkansas to promote "cultural enrichment." In 2008, Senate Maority Leader Harry Reid hand-delivered a $2 million EDA check to the

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Our leaders at work

Good government necessity.
More than 77,000 federal government employees throughout the country — including computer operators, more than 5,000 air traffic controllers, 22 librarians and one interior designer — earned more than the governors of the states in which they work.

Back-of-the-envelope math puts the total number of Senate offices at close to 700 for its 100 members. And those 460

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Are we being played again?

You just know that President Obama is opposed to drilling for oil here in the United States. He has a vision of wind power coming to our rescue.

But didn't he just announce that we're going to allow more drilling? It's the election season, silly. Conn Carroll of the Washington Examiner calls it a fake plan:
First he promised to open up the Atlantic to exploration. Then he reneged. Then he said

READ MORE - Are we being played again?

Watch your wallet

That would be you.

Our spendthrift leaders in Washington will need to find more money to continue buying votes (no, I'm not cynical) and if you think they'll find it under the mattresses of the rich, as many of them assert, then you'll believe anything, and I've got a bridge I want to sell you.
One place they will surely look is the money you've been saving for retirement. Megan McArdle, the

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Do mimes play accordians?

Heartless Republicans have their sights set on the mimes and accordionists of the world, National Reviw reports:
A Republican lawmaker grilled the chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts over grants to San Francisco mimes and an international accordion festival. "How can we justify these types of grants?” Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) asked. NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman responded that many of

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