"Food Apartheid"

Mary Katharine Ham has the latest on the growing Grub Gestapo movement, who wants to use the sword of government to dictate how, where and what you eat, this time in South Central LA.  Some dumbass authoritarian councilwoman named Jan Perry wants to ban new fast food joints from opening up in South Central because she thinks that the lack of hipster douchebag health food found in more affluent parts of LA makes for a "Food Apartheid" or some damn thing.  I'm not sure she beats Janice Hahn's subsidized gangstas for dumbest legislative idea, but a good effort. 

Perry claims there is nothing but junk food available to people in South Central.  MKH easily smacks down that lie, and correctly notes most (nearly all really) of the major fast food franchises have significant portions of their menus devoted to healthier choices, people are choosing the greasy stuff. 

This is an issue of choice, not of availability, the fact that South Central residents are choosing Big Macs over McSalads is what Perry is attacking.  You ignorant proles in South Central aren't doing what Commissar Perry wants, and she's gonna make you pay by sucking a little joy out of your life, and possibly more...

Isn't a restaurant, a fast food joint (either as a franchise or an individual startup) in particular a popular choice for people looking to start small businesses?  As I understand it, Big Burger joints tend to try and offer franchise opportunities to people who would never otherwise be able to access them on their own in economically depressed areas like South Central. 

This Nanny ban would probably crush any opportunity for that to happen.  Of course, said Nanny Ban would may likely destroy any individual efforts to start up restaurants as well, things like small family run restaurants.  Perry must know this, yet her desire to feed her authoritarian impulses overrides the need for opportunities found in feeding South Central LA.

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England Now Immune to Mockery

Direct to you from the "What the fuck?" department:

Britain's High Court has ruled that Pringles are not a potato snack, and thus are not subject to value-added tax.

Friday's ruling by Justice Nicholas Warren is expected to save millions for the manufacturer, Procter & Gamble Co.

Warren overruled a VAT Tribunal decision that Pringles should be subject to the 17.5-percent tax because it met the definition of "potato crisps, potato sticks, potato puffs and similar products made from the potato, or from potato flour, or from potato starch."

If I were to sum up my (l)ibertarian philosophy in one anectode it might be insisting that the phrase "potato crisps, potato sticks, potato puffs and similar products made from the potato" not appear in any government document.

Anyway, scary fact of the article:

The judge found that Pringles were only 42 percent potato, and thus exempt.

Okay, what the fuck are pringles made of? I demand a fucking answer.

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Stabbings becoming major problem in Britain

I don't get it, they banned guns over there, all this mindless killing is supposed to stop, right?  As it turns out, not so much, it appears that thugs in Britain are content with stabbing their victims to death now, and are doing so more frequently.  So what's the next move, Britain? Gonna ban kitchen knives, make everyone eat Gerber and pudding cups from here on out?  Or are you finally going to admit that authoritarianism doesn't work and self-defense is a natural human right?

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What the Government Is Really Saying...

... when they pass laws to "help" you:

The recent "hands-free" cell phone law that passed in California reminded me of the basis of all of these idiotic laws. You're too stupid to use your phone while you drive. You're too stupid to manage your retirement. You're too stupid to raise your kids. You're too stupid to own a firearm. You're too stupid to teach your children. You're too stupid to eat healthy.

He goes on for long enough that I almost turned anarchist.

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Mockery Now Impossible - Bloggers, Radio Hosts Hardest Hit

I don't think I could have invented a story more absurd.

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Dicks says no to ass crack

Really?  You're going to focus police resources in friggin' Flint, Michigan on people with saggy pants?

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Dueling dumbasses

Vintage had a nice writeup on the Chicago Tribune's idiotic and fascist call to repeal the Second Amendment, but not to be outdone, Patterico's punching bag of choice offered up their own brand of weapons-grade stupidity when it comes to the Second Amendment. 

Gun manufacturers insist that these deaths are not their fault, preferring to pin the blame on criminals and irresponsible dealers. They have fiercely resisted even minimal restrictions on sales and have simultaneously washed their hands of responsibility for this "collateral damage."

Possibly because it is the fault of criminals and shady dealers?  Most guns that are used in crime are stolen or bought by a straw purchaser, there's no way to stop straw purchases unless you're planning on creating a police sta...oh, I see.  Nah, we're not buying.  Anyway, here's the half-baked scheme the LA Times columnists have cooked up,

We propose a new way to prod gun makers to reduce gun deaths, one that would be unlikely to put them out of business or to prevent law-abiding citizens from obtaining guns. By using a strategy known as "performance-based regulation," we would deputize private actors -- the gun makers -- to deal with the negative effects of their products in ways that promote the public good.

Essentially, they want the government to try and somehow force gun companies themselves to lower the murder rate, then I think they demand a unicorn. 

I think I see the game plan here.  They want to punish gun companies that see their guns used in crime more frequently, and we all know, common firearms (the ones the Nanny Staters swear they don't want to take away) are the ones used the most in crime. 

When the inevitable penalties come down, the price of basic firearm companies like Remington, Mossberg, Ruger, Smith&Wesson and any other traditional firearms manufacturer skyrocket and the companies will suffer immensely.  Fewer people would be able to buy firearms, particularly younger people interested in shooting sports or hunting.  Makers of budget firearms would quickly fold as well.  Criminals would then inevitably go to eeeevil assault weapons, and those manufacturers suffer, and lose new shooters to the skyrocketing costs.

This plan would ultimately leave any manufacturer for common folks destroyed.  It would ultimately be done through the combination of federal penalties and making gun ownership such an expensive, miserable hassle it makes it prohibitive to new shooters and in the long term destroys American gun culture.

Further, they propose a cap and trade scheme, which would allow gun manufacturers to sell I guess what you could call chalk outline credits, which would have a similar effect as the penalties would.  Again, the costs would go to the buyer, and costs would skyrocket, which would again keep younger people away from taking up shooting sports or hunting.

They reveal themselves here, this is all fascist gun control by other means,

How would gun companies go about reducing gun deaths? The main thing to emphasize is that this approach relies on the nimbleness, innovation and experimentation that come from private competition -- rather than on the heavy-handed power of governmental regulation. Gun makers might decide to add trigger locks to their guns, or to work only with dealers who meet certain standards of responsibility. They might withdraw their semiautomatic weapons from the consumer market, or even work hand in hand with local officials to fight gangs and increase youth employment opportunities. Surely they will think up new strategies once they have a legal obligation and financial incentive to take responsibility for the harm their products cause.

Translation:  We can't impose fascist bans and regulation on the public, but we can force you gunmakers to do it for us! 

This dance never ends. 

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Profile of Nanny Bloomberg

Via Hotair, an excellent piece on Nanny Bloomberg, read the whole thing.  What is amazing is how this guy has managed to buy his potential critics silence in the city.

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InstaBunk! Town Gets Rid Of Traffic Signals (video)

Have you heard of a certain blogger's crusade against his perennial municipal nemesis?

Others worry about safety. Red-light cameras are supposed to make us safer by discouraging people from running red lights. The trouble is that they work too well. Numerous studies have found that when these cameras are put in place, rear-end collisions increase dramatically. Drivers who once might have stretched the light a bit now slam on their brakes for fear of getting a ticket, with predictable results. A study of red-light cameras in Washington, D.C., by The Washington Post found that despite producing more than 500,000 tickets (and generating over $32 million in revenues), red-light cameras didn't reduce injuries or collisions. In fact, the number of accidents increased at the camera-equipped intersections.

Well, the town in this video got rid of red lights, stop signs, yield signs, one-way signs, do-not-enter signs, crosswalks, and all other manifestations of proper traffic authority. And where is this magical land of disobedient scofflaws? Why, that famous hotbed of freewheeling rule-breakers ... Germany. 

Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Reynolds: 

 

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Leave Us Alone

I was recently in an argument with a liberal about all things politics and he said, "It is sad that the Republicans don't do anything for the working class people that vote for them." 

Of course, this statement perfectly explains what the Democrats don't get about the working class and why we keep voting for Republicans.

That's what we fucking want!  We don't want the government to 'do anything' for us.  Nothing.  Leave us the fuck alone. 

What is sad is that my opponent couldn't even imagine wanting that from the government, hence his inability to understand why people vote for Republicans.

It's precisely because they don't do anything for us.  Well, they do a lot more than we want but a lot less than the Democrats would prefer.

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EU've got to be kidding

Nice batch of kiwi you've got there. Too bad they're 1mm too small to meet EU standards:

A market trader has been banned from selling a batch of kiwi fruits because they are 1mm smaller than EU rules allow.

Inspectors told 53-year- old Tim Down he is forbidden even to give away the fruits, which are perfectly healthy.

The father of three will now have to bin the 5,000 kiwis, costing him £1,000 in lost sales.

Speaking yesterday from the stall in Bristol he has owned for 20 years, Mr Down said: 'It's total nonsense. I work hard enough to make a living without all these bureaucrats telling us what we can and can't sell.

'They're saying I'm a criminal for selling this fruit, but the real crime is that all this fruit will go to waste - all because it's 1mm too small.

I don't know that I even have words for how absurd this is. Of course, I think banning trans fat is only slightly less insane.

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Second Amendment an individual right!

Suck it down, Nanny Staters! 

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Brady Campaign fascists admit major defeat

Aww, our little Sturmabteilung-in-training, Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign admits they're probably gonna get their asses handed to them in the upcoming Heller decision. 

The fascist vermin of the Brady Campaign joined DC as a "friend of other fascist vermin" brief in the case.  Says Helmke,

"We've lost the battle on what the Second Amendment means," campaign president Paul Helmke told ABC News. "Seventy-five percent of the public thinks it's an individual right. Why are we arguing a theory anymore? We are concerned about what we can do practically."

In other words, we're going to try and push bans, push for abusive regulations, and take those as far as we can go, and hope that doing so makes shooting uninteresting or tie people up in enough bureaucratic red tape that it guts American gun culture, particularly among da yoot.  We know your game, but you know what?  You'll lose, more and more people see what a dangerous lie your vision is.  The gun control movement will become the prohibitionists of the 21st century.  You'll have some victories, win some big battles, but you'll lose the war, and your movement will be nothing but a relic in our history.


The Brady fascists are hoping that this decision makes people lazy about defending their gun rights, so that they can take an incremental approach to undermining your essential rights,

If the Supreme Court strikes down the D.C. gun ban, the Brady Campaign is hoping that it will reorient gun control groups around more limited measures that will be harder to cast as infringements of the Second Amendment.

"The NRA [National Rifle Association] won't have this fear factor," Helmke said.

But they aren't completely done trying for Hail Mary type schemes at destroying our rights,

The Chicago law may also survive because a decision in the D.C. case will likely not resolve the issue of whether the Second Amendment applies to the states and other cities that are not federal enclaves.

The good news is, if Justice Kennedy flips his coin heads up this time, it is pretty likely that the anti-2nd policies of the Soviet of Chicago(where some are more equal than others) will be challenged next, and I can't see the above line of bullshit working to stop the us from winning that either.  So get ready Chicagoans, we may be liberating you next!

Oh one more thing, the Brady fascists loooove McCain's stubborn fixation on the nonexistent "gun show loophole."  *sigh* Dammit McCain, why do you have to be such an intemperate, thickheaded, stubborn jackass?


And yet, he's still leagues better than our Marxist Messiah...

(H/T)

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Academic thinks you have too much liberty, part deux

Caught a story at KURU Lounge, a prominent American legal scholar argues in favor of restricting first Amendment rights in the New York Times article about the Steyn/Maclean's trial today. Between that article and this one from Canada the other day, I find myself asking:  What is it about academics that make them so hellbent on seeking authoritarian rule?  It almost never turns out well for them, yet they keep chasing it.

Some legal scholars think that regulatory speech codes in the fashion of ones in Europe and Canada are acceptable restrictions of American liberty, says one legal scholar,

“It is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken,” Jeremy Waldron, a legal philosopher, wrote in The New York Review of Books last month, “when they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against certain forms of vicious attack.”

Amazing how eager some people are to give and take our liberties away, and a legal scholar no less.  One question, why doesn't this tool move to Europe or Canada where they're happy to restrict all the liberties he could ever want them to restrict?  He'd be so much happier there, and we'd be so much happier here. Maybe that we Americans are happy in our liberty is what makes him unhappy.

Speaking of others seeking to restrict our liberties...

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Don't Do It, Ireland!

Tomorrow Ireland is holding a referendum to decide if they will ratify the EU's Lisbon Treaty and basically cede all sovereignty to the European mainland:

If the new treaty is adopted by all European Union members, it would create a president of the European Council, the institution where heads of government meet, and a new, more powerful foreign policy chief. And it would reduce national veto powers.

I can't imagine how a nation so opposed to foriegn domination could even contemplate agreeing to this. Not only that but why would you tie one of the most vibrant economies in the old world to so much socialist dead weight?

I think you know what you need to do, Irish.

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Obama: My fascism, let me show you it

Via See-Dub, James Taranto has probably given the best of the "lesser of two evils" argument I've seen, whether that was his intent or not.  Taranto links to Volokh, who has the story on Obama's proposal to ban any gun shops or sales within five miles of a school or park when he was a state Senator!   That fascist measure would effectively ban most gun shops in America, and restrict them to the most remote areas of the nation.   Really, if Our Lord and Savior wanted to, it wouldn't be hard to use eminent domain to seize small tracts of land and declare them parks in order to effectively hunt down and ban the rest. 

Now, I'm sure he'd backtrack if confronted on it, but between that and his other fascist anti-Second proposals, you can't trust that the will of the people would restrain him if he takes the presidency.  But that our Jesus in Jackboots could even seriously suggest something so authoritarian and inhumane, even as an obscure politician in Chicago, then be able to mount a serious campaign to become the president of this nation should send a chill down your spine.

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you're miserable because you have too much liberty

According to some study for the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Vancouver, people in western democracies are either not becoming happier or are even becoming less happy.  According to some tool named William Gorton, we're just too free for our own good in the West,

William Gorton, author of the paper, "Too Much of a Good Thing: Freedom, Individualism, Autonomy and the Decline of Happiness in Liberal Democracies," postulated that "the causes of this stagnation or decline may be attributable, directly or indirectly, to core values of liberalism -- namely freedom of choice, autonomy and individualism."

Sounds like we need some Hope and Change!  Moar from our guy who has a hard-on for authoritarianism,

"There's the assumption that human beings make the best choices for how to lead a happy life," noted the professor from Alma College in Michigan. And yet, "we haven't seen increases in happiness that you would expect to see. There's been a big spike in depression in all the Western liberal democracies over the last 50 years --and this is while gross domestic product per capita has been increasing.

"An abundance of choice may actually make people unhappy."

Because standing in bread lines for 10 hours a day is my idea of happiness...idiot. 

But the columnist here made me smile, seriously, read this whole thing, it's an excellent article.  He points out that there are many people who are social conservatives and liberals who would agree with this tool, with social conservatives wanting to restrict certain behavior, and liberals wanting to restrict affluence and certain behaviors.  He gets it,

Both groups (and Prof. Gorton, too), make a common misconception, though: They equate choice with freedom. The two are not one and the same.

He then goes on to skewer the "obscene spectacle" that is the Canadian Human Rights Council's Mark Steyn/Maclean's show trial, and rails against the expansion of the government power and restrictions of Canadian liberties.  A lot of the things he faces in Canada, we face, or we may soon face in the US.  Good luck to all those Canadians who value their liberty, you've got a tougher fight than us. 

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Can't Wait for More Government Intervention in Your Life?

Here's what you have to look forward to:

China is sending medics to offer reverse sterilisation operations to parents who lost their only children in last month's quake, state media says.

The family planning authorities say the team will provide counselling, surgery and in-vitro fertilisation treatment.

Under China's one-child policy, parents who lose a child or have one with disabilities are allowed a second baby.

Those communist dictators sure are fucking generous!  It may seem absurd and far away but giving our government control over health care will allow them to make just these types of decisions for us.

George Will described the difference between conservatives and liberals by how they prioritize equality of results versus freedom.  If we keep giving the government more power to 'level the playing field' we'll lose the freedom to decide how we play the game. 

And we'll deserve it.

{doubleplusundead}  Welcome to doubleplusundead, Hotair readers, be sure to check out the rest of the site, and feel free to comment. More fun with human rights violations from Marxist regimes.

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England Bans Teenagers*

Or something like that. Look, I didn't fucking read this but I know it has to do with teenagers and knives and England increasing what should be illegal search and seizure:

Gordon Brown has called for under-18s caught carrying knives to be prosecuted in the wake of a series of attacks.

Ahead of a meeting with police chiefs at Downing Street, he said carrying knives was "unacceptable" and pledged extra stop and search powers.

Current police guidance in England and Wales is to prosecute adults caught with a knife, but caution under-18s.

On Monday Arsema Dawit, 15, was stabbed to death, the 16th teenager to die after an attack in London this year.

England's approach to minimizing violence reminds me of this.
The obvious solution is reintroducing firearms into the populace. Instead they find every ridiculous method by which to reduce violence on the condition that it isn't that.

* - Barring arming the population I think banning teenagers might work.  Well, YOUEE, anyway.

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Why We Don't Need Government Intervention: Reason #388,283,389

Michael Moore celebrates GM closings by putting weiners in his mouth.

I hear the long-haired ablutophobiacs shouting in the streets about ending the Hateriarchy and getting rid of our SUVs. Think of the fucking children, they tell me. If only the government would reach its filthy hands down into our lives and force us at gunpoint to drive officially sanctioned vehicles!

Even if I agreed that it was necessary to mandate our personal choices and that it would be acceptable for the state to do it, I'd still be against government intervention. Know why? It isn't fucking necessary:

General Motors is closing four truck and SUV plants in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, affecting 10,000 workers, as surging fuel prices hasten a dramatic shift to smaller vehicles. CEO Rick Wagoner said Tuesday before the automaker's annual meeting in Delaware the plants to be idled are in Oshawa, Ontario; Moraine, Ohio; Janesville, Wis.; and Toluca, Mexico. He also said the iconic Hummer brand will be reviewed and potentially sold or revamped.

Holy fuck, it's like magic, ain't it hippies?

Almost like there's some type of mystical invisible hand at work in our market ecomony that automagically provides us the goods and services we need at prices we're willing to pay. Who woulda thunk it?

Sorry to blow your fucking minds. I blame the acid.

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