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

Last March, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi boldly told the public that the Affordable Care Act needed to be passed before we could find out what was in it. The bill was soon passed and signed into law, and one year later, we are still peeling back the layers on the onion that is Obamacare.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) originally didn’t support President Obama’s health care initiative, but for a different reason than his Republicans counterparts. Where Republicans on the Hill voted against a massive intrusion of government into 1/6 of the economy, Rep. Weiner wasn’t fond of Obamacare because he didn’t believe it went far enough. The congressman sponsored an amendment to implement universal coverage – Medicare for all.

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Here’s the thing about humans: We’re not necessarily good people. In fact some pretty evil Homo sapiens have walked the planet over the years. Did anyone see The Last King of Scotland? That Idi Amin guy was not exactly good for the Ugandans. Other super bad dudes have included Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Attila the Hun.

Because I’m an equal opportunist, I feel compelled to also add Jezebel, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, and Andrea Yates to the list. It’s apparent that evil comes packaged in either gender.

There’s been an evil dude in power in Libya for more than 41 years.Muammar Gaddafi has been the totalitarian ruler of the middle-eastern state since a military overthrow in 1969. Life is not kind to the average citizen under Gaddafi’s rule (it never usually is when one lives under a dictatorship), and recently Libyans have protested the oppressive government regime.

Gaddafi’s response was to call the protesters “cockroaches” and claim they were “serving the devil.” Oh, and he had his minions kill anyone they found opposing him. After the funeral service for those massacred by Gaddafi, the tyrant ordered his peeps to use artillery, swords, or even hammers to attack the mourners. In other words: Crush any and all dissent.

Not cool, evil dictator dude, not cool.

Read the rest at The Stir.

I just filled up my gas tank and I didn’t want to cry — I actually did cry. At $4 per gallon, it cost me nearly a c-note to fill up my mid-size SUV. That’s not for the fancy high-octane stuff either; we’re talking regular unleaded.

We don’t have room in our budget to increase the amount of money we spend on gas, so this means we’ll be doing a lot less driving. Fewer trips to visit friends in neighboring cities, no running back to the store for that one thing we forgot, and definitely no drives through the countryside.

I’ve had to do a lot of economizing in the kitchen too, as the price of food has been going up and up. The First Lady likes to tout the benefits of organic rabbit food (which, by the way, children would rather throw away than eat), but she’s not the one trying to pay for it on a modest salary.

Organic farming is much more expensive than farming with pesticides. Without pesticides, there’s nothing to kill the hungry bugs in the fields, which means that actual people need to be employed to keep the produce from being chomped to the vine by the creepy-crawlers. Employing people to care for the plants in organic farms is much more expensive than hiring a crop-duster once or twice a season.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the cost of organic food, but all food that has climbed in recent months and years. In fact, food prices rose more last month than they have in 36 years.

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People have been breaking rules since God said, “Enjoy the garden … just don’t eat that fruit off that tree.” The first rule in existence and the first humans couldn’t be bothered to follow it.

Let’s face it: Rules are rarely any fun or easy to follow. That’s why there are sayings like, “Rules were meant to be broken,” or my favorite from one of those pirate movies, “They’re more like guidelines anyway.”

Some of the bigger rules are relatively easy for most of us to follow. Thou shalt not murder is one of those that I’m fairly certain most Americans don’t struggle to keep on a daily basis. But what about speed limits? Anti-piracy laws? Tucking the price tags in on an expensive outfit, wearing it to a fancy party, and then returning it to the store for a full refund?

Rules can suck, but like it or not, they’re necessary for order and civility. Reckless driving is dangerous, and kills people every day. Illegally downloading software off the Internet is the same as walking into a store and stealing a boxed computer program. Returning worn clothes to a store as new is dishonest to both the store and the eventual end purchaser.

The wonderful thing about the way our government is set up is that it’s full of rules to protect us against tyranny. We have three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial … someone should remind Senator Schumer of that, by the way) that provide a unique system of checks and balances to keep any one person or group from getting too much power.

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President Obama’s 2012 budget was released on Valentine’s Day, just in time to break conservative hearts everywhere. How many times do we have to say that we want less spending before he’ll listen to us? It’s more frustrating than trying to make a phone call using AT&T Wireless.

The President’s self-proclaimed ‘responsible’ budget will double the national debt from $13.56 trillion to $26.3 trillion by the end of 2021. Keep in mind that neither contractors nor the government ever comes in under budget.

President Obama claims that his budget reduces spending. Someone needs to tell him that two plus two does not equal three. It’s true that Obama’s budget reduces discretionary spending. It does this byredefining Pell grants (government- sponsored college scholarships for poor kids) and surface transportation spending as mandatory spending. The budget also reduces spending in Iraq and Afghanistan by $38.2 billion in 2012.

Obama’s 2012 budget increases spending, and it increases taxes on job creators. Probably not the best idea in an economic climate where Americans believe that unemployment is the number one issue to be tackled. Remember, a boss has to pay his taxes from somewhere. She might have to let an employee or two go to foot the bill.

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In a post I wrote regarding Michelle Obama and her plans to parent our children for us, I remarked about her $495 Tory Burch gardening boots. A few of the comments wondered why I brought them up, and why, as acapitalist, would I have a problem with pricey shoes?

The boots were mentioned to remind readers of how out of touch with reality the First Lady is. The average American mama doesn’t have a single pair of shoes in her closet that cost that much, let alone gardening boots. When I’m inclined to work outdoors, I put on a pair of three-year-old sneakers that are practically falling apart.

Referring to the self-appointed mom-in-chief’s aloofness when it comes to relating to us regular moms was useful to drive home the point that she is not qualified to make our parenting decisions for us. Only the best for the Obamas, whether it’s boots, school, vacation, vacation, vacation, or vacation. The rest of us can eat cake. Or carrot sticks.

Read the rest at The Stir

First Lady Michelle Obama has a problem with fat kids. More specifically, she doesn’t like childhood obesity. Last year she launched the Let’s Move campaign, with the goal of ending childhood obesity in a generation. After all, it is a national security risk (insert eye roll here).

Lady Michelle promoted legislation to overhaul school lunches, which her husband signed into law at the risk of sleeping on the couch. She’s constantly on my TV when my kids are watching their shows, encouraging young viewers to get active. She even slips into her$495 Tory Burch boots to do some organic gardening at the White House.

Most recently, Mrs. Obama has been talking with the National Restaurant Association about providing smaller portions andhealthier options on the kids’ menu. She must know better than restaurateurs how to run their businesses.

Read the rest at The Stir

The State of the Union address is tonight, and in an effort to promote sacred unity, some Republicans and Democrats will sit together, instead of on their own sides of the aisle.

Kumbaya, my Lord Mother Gaia, kumbaya.

Democrats have been calling for greater bipartisanship since they got creamed last November, but they really ratcheted it up a few weeks ago during the Giffords massacre in Arizona. After the media got done blaming Sarah Palin (which, by the way, they still have not apologized for), a new tone for Congress was called for. Because, you know, using the term ‘Obamacare’ to describe Obama’s health care mandates might incite violence.

Days later, Democrat Representative Steve Cohen likened the GOP to both baby murderer Goebbels and the Nazis. He must have missed the ‘new tone’ memo.

Moving forward with this new tone/civility/bipartisanship stuff, some of our lawmakers are eschewing almost 100 years of traditional separate seating to join hands (figuratively speaking … I hope) in solidarity.

The time for looking beyond the partisan divide was January 8, when our nation should have joined together to mourn the deadly actions of an insane man. Instead, liberals pointed fingers at the right. Now they want to play ‘peace and love’? It doesn’t jive.

Read the rest at The Stir

Chinese President Hu Jintao visited the White House last week. He probably wanted to inspect the country to make sure we’ll be able to pay back the $900 billion or so that we owe China.

On January 19, there was a big fancy-schmancy dinner to honor the visiting delegates. As part of the entertainment, Chinese pianist Lang Lang played anti-American propaganda song.

Let me repeat that: As part of the entertainment at a White House state dinner to honor the President of China, a well known, anti-American song was played.

At the White House State dinner on Jan. 19, about six minutes into his set, Lang Lang began tapping out a famous anti-American propaganda melody from the Korean War: the theme song to the movie “Battle on Shangganling Mountain.”

The movie and the tune are widely known among Chinese, and the song has been a leading piece of anti-American propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades. CCP propaganda has always referred to the Korean War as the “movement to resist America and help [North] Korea.” The message of the propaganda is that the United States is an enemy—in fighting in the Korean War the United States’ real goal was said to be to invade and conquer China.

The rest of the world is laughing in our faces and all our president can do is bow to them.