We're #1! We're #1!

States, cities, and regions are known to promote things for which they are predominant. Idaho potatoes. Maryland crabs. New Orleans' Bourbon St. attractions. Chicago Style pizza. Memphis blues. New England chowders.

Notwithstanding that trend, there's a very low likelihood that the greater DC region will be proclaiming their number one status in this area.

Bad, but perhaps unsurprising news for area commuters: A new report indicates drivers in the Washington region lead the country in time, money and gas wasted in traffic.

D.C. drivers spend about 70 hours every year in road congestion, according to the 2010 Urban Mobility Report, considered the authority on traffic rankings.

This is the worst delay in the country.

We're #1! We're #1! Ah, crap!

By the way, this is the second time in the past three years DC has achieved #1 status.

As someone who has endured this hell on Earth for over 23 years, I have say that Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia are absolutely guilty of economic malfeasance in their inattention to regional highway construction.

"Vulture! Highways are expensive!" So is gridlock. How many billions of dollars are lost to this region every year because of our grossly inadequate highway system?

"You should take mass transit!" Really? Mass transit in this reason is designed under the paradigm of traffic filtering into the District in the morning and out to Maryland and Virginia in the evening. So how, exactly, does that help someone like me, who lives in Maryland but works in Virginia? I'll tell you how: not at all!

This is NOT a region where mass transit can be the only solution to the problem. There are too may consultants, contractors, and other non-traditional employment types for that to work.

But it's not going to the change. Highways will never be a high priority in People's Republics like Maryland and the District of Columbia. And Richmond absolutely HATES Northern Virginia, considering its citizens to be yankees. Getting money out of Richmond for NoVa is like getting child support from a rapper. It COULD happen. It's just not likely.

But hey! It's nice for DC to be famous for something besides government waste and corruption, right?

He was pushed

When Sgt. Gregory Prickett (pictured at left), hereinafter referred to as The Prickette, left his position as campus cop at UNT-Dallas, no one could say for sure if he jumped or was pushed.  Now, the as the Modern Pharisee first reported, the UNT student newspaper has provided the answer to that question: he was pushed.

A veteran UNT police officer has filed an appeal after he was fired in December on accusations that he violated the university’s computer-use policy.

UNT Dallas Police Coordinator Gregory J. Prickett, a 20-year member of the department, was placed on administrative leave in October while investigators looked into complaints that he had blogged and edited Wikipedia articles at work.

Fired. Now it's out. Now we know.

My first reaction to this is that my fellow bloggers and allied persons have been vindicated. The Prickette IS the vile TxBluesMan. The Prickette DID use university computers for his campaign of slanderous hatred.

As Hugh noted in his post, "They don't fire you for blogging from work when you've been there for 20 years." That would lead one to believe that The Prickette went well beyond blogging to activities that quite possibly put the university at risk, or at least violated the university's code of ethics. There's more to his dismissal than just blogging at work. I, for one, am left with the hanging question: what ELSE did The Prickette do using university computers and other resources? I would like answers. (YOU WANT ANSWERS? I WANT THE TRUTH!!! YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!!)

Sorry.  Got a little carried away there.

Never look a gift horse('s ass) in the mouth, that's what I say. I can't say that I'm pleased that The Prickette lost his job. But I am pleased that his vile internet presence has been quashed, hopefully for good.

Yer finished, Prickette! Time to take your sorry, tired act and head home to wherever subhumans like you live.

Meet the new boss

Most Republicans were extremely pleased when RINO Michael Steele was unable to retain his position as RNC Chairman. Steele was unpopular with the Team Elephant elites. He was even more unpopular with the Tea Party.

But is the new RNC Chairman, Reince Priebus, any better? Eh, not so much.

While Priebus boasted, during his campaign for RNC chairman, of his good relations with Wisconsin tea party groups, the leaders of those groups give his tenure mixed reviews, with some accusing him of giving only lip service to the movement while stacking the deck against its candidates, shutting them out of the process or working to absorb them into the GOP.

“Priebus will do whatever it takes to co-opt the tea party movement,” said Mike Murphy, chairman of a tea party-allied 527 group called The Republican Liberty Caucus of Wisconsin, founded in late 2009.

In the midterm elections, Murphy’s group supported tea party candidates, including some who were undercut by the state GOP, which largely ignored long-shot tea party candidates and endorsed the primary rivals of others at its May convention — months before the primary election.

As The Who famously sang, "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss."

I wrote yesterday that the Tea Party made a gargantuan mistake by not forming a third party or joining forces with one of the existing third parties. Their movement was co-opted by Team Elephant, just as I said it would be. The new Chairman is further proof that I'm right.

But Mike Murphy isn't going to just roll over and let the elitists roll the Tea Party. He's starting to see things my way.

“He didn’t allow for conservative voices that didn’t jibe with the establishment view and if he charges down that course (at the RNC), the tea party people will wake up and it may very well split up the Republican Party” coalition that powered the GOP’s 2010 landslide, said Murphy.

Let's hope for the future viability of the Tea Party that he's right.

Il Duce sets a trap

Il Duce gave his State of the Union speech last night. Deadeye watched the speech. I went to bed - 4:30 AM comes early, ya know. She said Il Duce did a good job. Good for him. [/sarcasm]

I read the transcript. It's the best way with these kinds of speeches. It's just so easy to get caught up in the applause lines and rhetorical flourishes otherwise.

The speech was actually quite good. Give credit where credit is due. But he also set a trap for the Republicans, a trap they'd be wise to avoid.

Now, I have heard rumors that a few of you still have concerns about our new health care law. (Laughter.) So let me be the first to say that anything can be improved. If you have ideas about how to improve this law by making care better or more affordable, I am eager to work with you. We can start right now by correcting a flaw in the legislation that has placed an unnecessary bookkeeping burden on small businesses. (Applause.)

What I'm not willing to do — what I'm not willing to do is go back to the days when insurance companies could deny someone coverage because of a preexisting condition. (Applause.)

I'm not willing to tell James Howard, a brain cancer patient from Texas, that his treatment might not be covered. I'm not willing to tell Jim Houser, a small business man from Oregon, that he has to go back to paying $5,000 more to cover his employees. As we speak, this law is making prescription drugs cheaper for seniors and giving uninsured students a chance to stay on their patients' — parents' coverage. (Applause.)

So I say to this chamber tonight, instead of re-fighting the battles of the last two years, let's fix what needs fixing and let's move forward. (Applause.)

Let's fix what needs fixing and let's move forward. Yeah.....

If Team Elephant's so-called leadership falls for this "please don't throw me in the brier patch!" tactic, they deserve the electoral slaughter they'll incur in 2012.

Il Duce is trying to set up a situation where the abortion that is Obamacare becomes associated with Republicans as well as Democrats. If he gives a little here and there but keeps the essential structure of Obamacare intact, he reasons, when people face the nightmare that health care will become, their ire will be bipartisan.

Of course, the RINO leadership in Congress is just stupid enough to fall for this transparent ruse.

I said some time ago that the Tea Party made a gargantuan mistake by not forming a third party or joining forces with one of the existing third parties. When I'm right, I'm right.

Epic Karma

Karma: action, seen as bringing upon oneself inevitable results, good or bad, either in this life or in a reincarnation.
from Dictionary.com

As a Christian, I don't believe in Karma per se. That is, I don't believe in it the way the Buddhists do.  I do believe that our actions have consequences.  The Bible says, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A person reaps what he sows." (Gal. 6:7)

So call it what you will. Karma. Payback. Just desserts. What goes around comes around. It's all the same thing. And for a schadenfreude junkie like me, it's like crack, baby. Especially when it happens to Limousine Liberals like Alec Baldwin.

Actor Alec Baldwin has joined a list of elite New Yorkers targeted by tax collectors who think they're fibbing about where they really live to dodge New York City income taxes.

In recent years, auditors have confronted hundreds of super-wealthy New Yorkers over the residency rules - including star Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter.

Facing shrinking revenues, the state has ramped up its pursuit of suspected tax dodgers, hiring 189 new auditors and - for the first time - making filers swear under oath on tax forms as to how many days they "spend in New York City."

If it's more than 183 days and the filer has a residence in the city, the tax bill goes up.

Baldwin, star of NBC's "30 Rock," owns a three-bedroom co-op on Central Park West, a house in the Hamptons and a pad near his daughter in Los Angeles.

He spends lots of time in the city doing the show, but claims the Hamptons as home base. That made him one of hundreds of people slapped with an audit in 2009.

"The moment you start working regularly [in the city], the city finance people come after you," Baldwin recently told an audience at City College.

Hmmmm. How 'bout that? If you work and achieve success in New York, the fruits of your success are subject to confiscation [/sarcasm].

How did such a thing ever come to pass? Follow along with me.

Limousine Liberals like Alec Baldwin demand government solutions to problems. Limousine Liberals like Alec Baldwin raise a ruckus about the rich "paying their fair share". And then, Limousine Liberals like Alec Baldwin skip off to the Hamptons to avoid the high taxes they've inflicted on everyone else!

By their fruits you shall know them. Alec Baldwin, like all Limousine Liberals, is a big, fat phony.

---

On the subject of karma, I think I've get some coming my way for my rather mean post in which I postulated that a police officer had died "in hot pursuit of a dozen donuts".

It turns out the the officer in question was an undercover cop who was killed by...wait for it...the police.  Yeah, you read that right. By the police.

Police say he was shot and killed by other officers who responded to the scene to break up a fight.

I'd like to know how the "internal investigation" turns out. It's fairly obvious when the cops kill a mundane* that it the "investigation" will determine that the cops did nothing wrong.  But when it's one of them, you can't be so sure.

In any regard, I apologize to the family of the fallen officer for my unkindness.

*Will Grigg's term for those of us who aren't part of the political elite or the police state apparatus.

The Looter Czar

Il Duce, the Amerikan President, likes czars.  He's appointed so may of them that I honestly can't even hazard an estimate as to how many there actually are.  While Chairmanship of the President's Council on Jobs and Competiveness doesn't technically qualify as a "czarship", the new Chairman of that Council certainly merits some sort of Czar-like title.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you - Jeffery Immelt.

President Obama today will name General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt chairman of the new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, the White House announced overnight.

Why is this any more noteworthy than any other Il Duce appointment?  Because General Electric is the #1 looter corporation, and GE Chairman Jeffery Imelt is The King of Looters.

When Democrats said President Obama was “pro-business,” we didn’t know they meant one business in particular.

There are a few companies on the Obama corporate A List – Democratic patrons Google and Goldman Sachs both turn up again and again at White House functions and for special recognition – but no company seems to get the VIP treatment that General Electric receives.
[...]

Whether it is pushing the president’s plan for global warming fees in order to create demand for his “Ecomagination” line of windmills, solar panels, etc., boosting the president’s national health-care law as part of an effort to sell more medical equipment, or enthusing over the Obama strategy of making loans available for industrial exporters, Immelt has been an Obama stalwart all along. Immelt has also consistently argued to shareholders that there is big money to be made in advancing the Democratic agenda.

The fact is that no company has more riding on AGW than GE, and no company is more involved in lobbying for crap legislation to lock out its competition than GE. The bill that outlawed incandescent light bulbs? GE was behind that. All the crap legislation making our nation's "energy policy" completely reliant on wind, sun, and unicorn farts? GE was behind that.  GE is crony capitalism at its worst.

Il Duce is all about rewarding his supporters and punishing those who oppose him.  This is a bald-faced example of unmerited political payback.

But then, "unmerited" is a looter's middle name.