Another week, another round of Obamacare waivers. One has to wonder at this point if the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act applies to anyone anymore. It certainly doesn’t seem to apply to friends of President Obama.

They’re all getting waivers.

The Obama administration granted 204 new waivers nationwide in April, and almost 20 percent of them went to fancy restaurants and hotels in San Francisco. It’s probably a coincidence that San Francisco is former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s district. Ms. Pelosi, along with her Senatorial counterpart Harry Reid, was one of the biggest pushers of Obamacare when the president was trying to get it passed.

The other 80 percent of the waivers went to the usual recipients:labor unions, large corporations, financial firms, and local governments. How nice it must be to be in bed with big government. Sarah Palin had a succinct response to the Pelosi waiver revelation:

“Unflippingbelievable! No, wait, it is believable,” Palin said in an email to TheDC (The Daily Caller). “Seriously, this is corrupt. And anyone who still supports the Pelosi-Reid-Obama agenda of centralized government takeovers of the free market and the corresponding crony capitalism is, in my book, complicit.”

Read the rest at The Stir

With Arizona’s controversial immigration lawpotentially headed for the Supreme Court, the state has decided to take safety precautions against drug runners, kidnappers, andmurderers into its own hands. SB 1070 lost an appeal last month to reverse a lower court’s order preventing key provisions of the immigration law from being enforced.

The federal government won’t do its job of cracking down on illegal immigration in Arizona, so Arizona tried to tackle the problem itself. Then, like a nanny scolding a toddler for getting too big for his britches, Uncle Sam wagged his finger and shook his head before gorging on bonbons paid for by the taxpayers (aka working people).

Sorry, Arizona, you’re SOL.

Not Arizona! Oh no. Arizonians have had enough phooeying around, and are probably pretty sick of being called racists because they want to keep criminals from tromping through their backyards. They’re probably also sick of the litter. That stuff’s gross, and it’s expensive to clean up.

Read the rest at The Stir

One of the aspects of Obamacare that has gotten a lot of attention for being unconstitutional is the individual mandate. This is the section of the Affordable Care Act that requires all citizens to purchase health insurance, regardless of their need, desire, or financial ability to pay for it.

In a perfect world, no one would ever get sick and require medical attention. In a fantasy world, doctors would work for free, and no one would ever have to worry about their ability to purchase health insurance. Since it’s a fantasy world, mechanics, plumbers, estheticians, babysitters, and housekeepers would also work for free.

Much to my chagrin, this is not a perfect world, and fantasy is not reality. Medical care is neither a right nor a privilege — it is a service, and as such, it must be paid for or donated.

Since health care is a service, Americans should have the ability to choose whether or not they want to spend their money on it. It’s not really anyone’s business as to how another person spends their money on their health.

Read the rest at The Stir

A 12-year-old Staten Island boy has been charged with assault as ahate crime for taunting, beating up on, and attempting to rip the headscarf off of a female classmate. Osman Daramy and an unnamed accomplice demanded to know if the girl was Muslim, and when she told them to leave her alone, he punched and kicked her.

The attacks continued for months, until the girl had enough and reported the abuse to the assistant principal of her school, who then reported it to the police. The underage troublemaker is being held without bail for a third-degree assault as a hate crime. In addition to his abuse of this girl, Osman apparently enjoyed treating his peers like garbage — he’s already been suspended three times this year, and just this week cut a chunk of hair off another female classmate’s head.

Osman’s father, Frank Davies, claims his son is a victim, and that ‘they’ are out to get him because he himself is a Muslim and African-American. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the kid’s malicious and hateful treatment of his peers.

The adolescent hooligan is being held without bail, and due to his juvenile status, the case will be handled in Family Court.

Read the rest at The Stir

John and Melissa McCafferty are parents and residents of Radnor Green, Delaware, a quiet suburban neighborhood. In their front yard was a basketball pole and hoop that had been there for 60 years.

Last fall the McCaffertys received a letter from DelDOT(Delaware Department of Transportation) informing them that the placement of the pole was in violation of state law by being within seven feet of the public street, and that the pole had to be removed. They were working with DE State Rep. Bryon Short to contest the removal of the pole due to alleged traffic violations.

Before the matter was resolved, a truck came rambling through the neighborhood yanking poles out of yards. Melissa McCafferty beat the truck to her house, where she parked in front of her family’s hoop and climbed atop the pole in her fuzzy slippers to keep the killjoys from ripping her private property off of her private property.

Read the rest at The Stir

Here’s the gist of it in Egypt:

• President Hosni Mubarak has been in power for 30 years.
• The people of Egypt don’t want Mubarak to be president anymore.
• It’s illegal in Egypt to protest the government.
• The Egyptians protested anyway, using social media like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to coordinate their efforts.
• The Egyptian government promptly shut off all Internet and cell service in the country, shutting its citizens off from the world and each other.

I am not going to speculate on whether or not the Egyptians have a right to protest, or even if they should protest. I have no opinions to offer about the relationship between the United States and Egypt, because I’m not fully educated on the subject. A great writer once said, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

I do know that Egypt is supposedly one of our allies in the Middle East. Mostly because our mutual distrust of Iran unites us. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, or something like that.

The people of Egypt probably aren’t too keen on the United States right now, since their government is trying to end their protests partly with tear gas made in the USA. Ah, nothing like using American-made products to quell protesting citizens. No one better give Barney Frank any ideas, mmmkay?

I don’t know exactly what the end goal for the Egyptian protesters is. I get that they don’t like the current regime. But what’s their ultimate goal? Remember the Bolsheviks? They violently overthrew a corrupt government ‘for the people of Russia.’ That didn’t turn out so well … Remember Stalin? Super evil dude.

On the other hand, the Boston Tea Party led to the American Revolution, from which emerged a new nation that became the greatest and freest country in all of history.

I don’t know if the Egyptians are Bolsheviks or Patriots, and I would be an idiot to speculate. Of course I hope they want a truly free society, instead of replacing one oppressive government with their own oppressive government, but hope is not truth, and to blindly assume that the people of Egypt are purely good while the government is purely bad is naïve.

What I can speculate on is the power of social media and networking, and the danger of letting government regulate it. Whether or not these protesters are protesting for actually democracy or just another regime change is irrelevant to this point. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are basic human rights (we in America have legal rights to them as well, but the rest of world isn’t necessarily as lucky), and protesting one’s government falls under the whole ‘pursuit of happiness’ thing.

The people of Egypt used Twitter, Facebook, emails, texts, and more to coordinate their efforts. The initial manpower didn’t have to be huge. They didn’t need to send people out to knock on doors and share the information. They did it from home, blasting it to hundreds and thousands of others, who joined their ranks. They worked together, quickly and efficiently, to get the protests organized and to rally the people. Every person in the chain of communication felt like part of something; they might be just one link, but that chain needs them.

This is what we’ve seen over the past few years in our own country. A sense of camaraderie and partnership formed over the interwebs that was near impossible even just a decade ago. We have a free-flow of information and dialogue; first-hand accounts of events live-tweeted, speculated on, compared with other accounts, related to the past, and used to make predictions about the future.

Social media has been an integral component of the conservative uprising we’ve seen in America. We are no longer isolated – we have found each other and realized that there are more of us than the mainstream media wanted us to believe. We have organized rallies, we have cheered one another on, and we consoled each other when Jerry Brown was reelected Governor of California.

Watching the Egyptian government take away its people’s ability to communicate rapidly and efficiently makes me grateful to live in America. And fearful to ever let the authorities have any power to regulate our online access. The government should fear its people, not control them.

Raising our kids is probably the most important thing we moms will ever do in our lives. One of the biggest decisions we will ever make for our children is how they will beeducated.

We have a lot more options these days than our own parents did. Charter schools are popping up all over the country, and homeschooling is now seen as a viableeducation option. Of course, there are always private schools, but many parents can’t afford the expensive price tag that comes along with them.

This week is National School Choice Week, so there’s been a lot of talk in the blogosphere about different educational paths for our kids. Unfortunately, there still aren’t a ton of viable options out there for parents to choose from. Waiting lists for charter schools (if they’re even available) are notoriously long, private school may be financially out of reach, and homeschooling simply isn’t an option for some families. These limitations leave most kids at whatever public school they’re zoned for, no matter how crappy it is.

We’ve all known kids that have gotten transfers to different schools, and if your town was anything like my town growing up, there were a number of people that used a friend’s or relative’s address to claim residency in a better school district than their own.

One such Ohio woman was convicted of grand theft and sent to jail for using her father’s address toclaim residency in a top school district.

[Kelley] Williams-Bolar decided four years ago to send her daughters to a highly ranked school in neighboring Copley-Fairlawn School District.

But it wasn’t her Akron district of residence, so her children were ineligible to attend school there, even though her father lived within the district’s boundaries.

While her children are no longer attending schools in the Copley-Fairlawn District, school officials said she was cheating because her daughters received a quality education without paying taxes to fund it.

I was under the impression that schools were mostly funded by the state, so I didn’t really understand the ‘cheating’ aspect of it. Wouldn’t the school get extra money due to the kids’ attendance? Why then, would they complain?

Read the rest at The Stir

The vitriol spewed by many ‘news’ sources after the mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona, last Saturday has been pointless, political, and extremely uncalled for. A congresswoman was shot through the headand will probably never fully recover. Six people died, including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl.

The Left came out swinging against their favorite target Sarah Palin, claiming that she has blood on her hands and that she caused the massacre. Apparently guns don’t kill people, metaphors do.

It wasn’t just Palin that the left accosted, but the Tea Party movementin general. Because, you know, Tea Partiers are so violent. That’s why there are always so many arrests at tea party rallies. (That was sarcasm, by the way. Tea Partiers may be crazy about Glenn Beck, but they’re not violent.)

Read the rest at The Stir

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spent his last moment in office Monday morning grabbing a cigar and wishing luck to returningGovernor Jerry Brown. Before he lit up in a pubic building in one of the most anti-smoking states in the Union, the Governator reduced the sentence of the punk son of one of his political cronies.

Esteban Nunez (now 21), the son of former California State Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, was serving 16 years in prison formanslaughter, which he pleaded guilty to. In the fall of 2008, young Nunez and three of his hooligan friends went drinking in San Diego and tried to crash a frat party. They got tossed out, so they did what all sensible young men do when their feelings are hurt: They went looking for trouble.

The group of miscreants eventually found Luis Santos and his friends and challenged them to a knife fight. The fight ended with Santos’s death. Sharp metal pointy things thrust through the heart do have a tendency to kill people. (As a side note, maybe we should ban all knives in order to make the world a safer place … that would work, right?)

Read more at The Stir

I think it’s annoying that most people in the news continue to refer toArizona’s SB1070 as the “controversial” anti-immigration bill. First off, how can it be controversial when it’s supported by 70 percent of the population? Second, it’s not anti-immigration at all. It’s anti-illegal immigration.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Arizona law, but it’s not because I think it’s discriminatory toward Mexicans. I don’t like it because I don’t think there should be a reason for it. Deportation of illegal immigrants should be the federal government’s domain.

Unfortunately, the process of becoming a legal citizen of the United States has become so arduous that many hard-working people bypass the impossible system while the feds look the other way.

While the feds are looking the other way, some really bad guys come in too. Drug mules, slave drivers, kidnappers … shall I continue? Phoenix has the second highest kidnapping rate in the world. OnlyMexico City witnesses more kidnappings than the Arizona capital.

Most of the kidnappings and other violent crimes are attributed to Mexican drug cartels.

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