The Ohio Supreme Court this morning unanimously rejected an attempt to block an issue from the November ballot that would attempt to opt-out Ohio from the new federal requirements that everyone obtain health insurance.

Good news, as expected. The Health Care Freedom Amendment does what it says, providing Ohioans with an opportunity to fight leftist attempts at centralized government medicine. Complainant ProgressOhio uses this platform as they use all platforms, spinning harebrained Progressive nonsense:

“Ohioans will now have a choice — to return to the days when children were denied insurance coverage over pre-existing conditions; return to the days when seniors have to choose between prescription drugs and groceries; return to the days when young adults can’t stay on their parents insurance and return to the days when small businesses did not get tax breaks for providing insurance.

“This fall “no” will be a beautiful word.”

Where is the option for magically affordable coverage for everyone? Somehow ProgressOhio has missed the past year’s worth of news about what a budget-busting, care-rationing disaster Obamacare will be if it’s not disassembled.

If you live in this dimension’s Ohio, where things aren’t free just because socialists think they can force The Rich to pay for them, vote Yes on Issue 3!

Cross-posted at Columbus Tea Party and Third Base Politics.

The amendment, championed by the Ohio Liberty Council and other conservative groups, has found support among Ohio’s GOP establishment – which is finally recognizing the old Democrat-lite agenda as a dead end. In addition to being unaffordable, guaranteeing rationed care, and limiting Ohioans’ health care choices, Obamacare is plainly unconstitutional. Unless you believe (as Sherrod Brown does) that “interstate commerce” means “Washington can decide what you do or do not buy; when, where, and from whom.”

But those reasons don’t explain Republican support for The Healthcare Freedom Amendment! No, according to the Dispatch, “The measure was supported by the state Republican Party as a possible GOP counterweight to the Democrat-backed referendum on Senate Bill 5.”

Ok… let’s go down that road. Progress Ohio and the usual array of mathematically-impaired leftists insist Obamacare is good and necessary legislation, while Senate Bill 5 is the work of hateful extremists. Need proof? Just look at the campaigns behind the two ballot issues:

• Socialized medicine is a long-time goal of Progressives, therefore opposition to Obamacare is evil. Senate Bill 5 changes a law passed by Democrats in 1983, therefore Senate Bill 5 is evil.
• The Health Care Freedom Amendment has support extending beyond Ohio: astroturf! All government unions march to a nationally financed and centrally-organized drum: solidarity!
• Wealthy people sometimes donate to tea party groups – those capitalist swine! Union bosses pay themselves six figures in member dues – those martyrs for workers’ rights!
• Obamacare was written by a few Democrats and lobbyists before being rammed through using flagrant bribes, as all legislation guiding the lives of 308,000,000 people should be. Senate Bill 5 was passed with GOP maneuvering, which is obviously far worse.

Shall we start a collection for train tickets so the InnoProgPolicy Ohio scholars can depart our cloud of backwardness when The Healthcare Freedom Amendment passes and the SB 5 referendum fails?

Cross-posted at Columbus Tea Party and Third Base Politics.

The study finds that, “Overall, 30 percent of employers will definitely or probably stop offering ESI [employer-sponsored insurance] in the years after 2014… Among employers with a high awareness of reform, this proportion increases to more than 50 percent.”

You didn’t actually believe President Obama when he promised you could keep your current coverage, did you? This particular mandate, of course, isn’t mandatory for government medicine’s loudest proponents, as summarized fiendishly by Karl Rove’s minions at Crossroads GPS -

Cato Institute writer Michael F. Cannon opines about one of Obamacare’s central cost-saving schemes, and why it’s destined for failure:

Inefficient providers have effectively killed nearly every pilot program that previous administrations promised would make Medicare more efficient. Suppliers of wheelchairs and other medical equipment have blocked efforts to reduce the inflated prices Medicare pays them. The industry has killed or sabotaged at least four federal agencies dedicated to researching which medical treatments don’t work.

Cutting costs is sort of a big deal, with unfunded Medicare obligations already totaling $24.8 trillion before Obamacare’s shady accounting and expanded entitlements kick in. Another Obamacare stick, Comparative Effectiveness Research, might reduce the cost of health care… while gravely damaging its effectiveness:

CER can be beneficial if used solely to inform doctors and patients to guide decision-making. However, the new law lays the groundwork for bureaucrats to use CER in Medicare to make coverage decisions and otherwise compel physicians to treat patients not according to what is best for the individual but according to what the evidence shows is best in most cases.

Back at The Weekly Standard, numbers from a Rasmussen poll of likely voters don’t look good for fans of socialized medicine.

By a margin of more than 2 to 1 (48 to 20 percent), likely voters think Obamacare would reduce, rather than improve, the quality of health care. By a margin of more than 3 to 1 (53 to 15 percent), they think it would raise, rather than lower, health costs. By a margin of 4 to 1 (56 to 14 percent), they think it would raise, rather than lower, deficits.

To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi’s immortal words: the more that we find out what’s in Obamacare, the more appalled we are that you passed it.

Bigger, more expensive, more intrusive government is not the answer to big government’s past and current failures in the health care industry. As responses to Paul Ryan’s budget remind us, Washington leftists have no connection to fiscal reality, no interest in personal freedom, and certainly no concern for the will of the voters.

Have you signed a petition supporting the Health Care Freedom Amendment yet?

“These lower wages and benefits are going to have an impact on our communities. In order to have a healthy community, you’ve got to have good jobs.” – Bruce Wyngaard, Associate Executive Director, AFSCME Local 11

Public union boss Bruce Wyngaard has a good job – to the tune of $94,337 in 2009. Lots of other American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 11 staffers have good jobs, too: the union paid its employees over $5.8 million in 2009. Taken from 30,870 members, that’s the equivalent of nearly $190 per member.

This guy was paid $94,337 in 2009, and wants your taxes increased.

AFSCME Council 8 President John Lyall will testify against Senate Bill 5 on Thursday. Lyall was paid $155,482 in 2009. Think he’ll mention that while he’s railing about spending cuts? Excluding payments to officers such as Lyall – and $148,265 for First VP Robert Mitchell – AFSCME Council 8 employees were paid more than $5.7 million in 2009. Annual disbursements to union employees equaled more than $155 per member.

Left: $155k in 2009. Right: $148k in 2009. Both: Want your taxes increased.

For context, the unions spent less than half as much on benefits – pensions, medical insurance, etc. – as on union pay in 2009. AFSCME Local 11 spent a little over $2.5 million on benefits; AFSCME Council 8 spent less than $2 million. Is it unreasonable to conclude the primary service provided by government unions is the enrichment of union bosses?

No wonder “leaders” like Bruce Wyngaard and John Lyall insist that without unions, government employees would endure random firings, no benefits, and a steady diet of discount cheese! Anything to keep pressure on the enemy (“the taxpayer”) and off the characters earning six figures on member dues.

Leftists have proven time and again that getting rich on the backs of others doesn’t preclude you from preaching economic redistribution and decrying personal freedom. AFSCME officials will complain till their complainers are sore about Republican attacks on government employees. Fact is, public union reps are chiefly concerned about public union reps.

Cross-posted at Third Base Politics, The Buckeye Institute, and Columbus Tea Party.

The hate-filled rhetoric [...] was cruel, lunatic, and illogical — and helped demonize President Bush as some sort of monster rather than the center-right moderate who had pressed for No Child Left Behind and the Medicare prescription-drug benefit, called for religious tolerance, warned against anti-Muslim violence after 9/11, won two bipartisan congressional authorizations for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and implemented the largest medical-relief plan for Africa in U.S. history.

The history of American politics is chock-full of incivility, and Dubya is a prime example of the double standard at play. Obviously leftists get a pass on President Bush, because Progressivism is the vibrant, passionate antithesis to all the terrible things George W. Bush represents. Never mind that he represented those things because of the left’s unwavering belief in its own rhetoric. Today’s pleas for civility are an effort to silence opposition, plain and simple.

VDH’s mention of Bush and the leftist bile he endured reminded me of the only time I sent a letter to the school paper while I was at Miami. It was a couple weeks before the 2004 election, President Bush’s daughters had just visited campus for a campaign event, and the College Republicans were bringing Ann Coulter to Oxford.

Witty Op-Ed	Mean Conservative Response
The Miami Student, 10-22-2004, page 13 (Click to zoom; drag image to scroll)	The Miami Student, 10-26-2004, page 10 (Click to zoom; drag image to scroll)

Who’s more “civil” – the hatemonger conservative, or the hipster journalism minor? A trivial example, sure. But even though Miami is a relatively conservative campus, The Miami Student‘s editors saw fit to print a sex fantasy attacking a conservative pundit and, for good measure, objectifying the president’s daughters. Imagine if we pulled a few autumn 2004 editorials from the student papers at Berkeley, Columbia, or NYU!

This is one of the great things about freedom of speech. Give a complete jackass ten minutes or a slot on the Opinion page, and he’ll say something closely resembling, “I am a complete jackass.”

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski now has the three votes needed for approval, despite firm opposition from the two Republicans on the five-member commission. Genachowski’s two fellow Democrats said Monday they will vote for the rules, even though they consider them too weak.

After a federal court ruled that his Federal Communications Commission could not regulate the internet, Julius Genachowski did what a good Obama appointee does: regulate it anyway.

Yet many supporters of network neutrality are disappointed. Clyburn and the other Democrat, Michael Copps, both said the rules are not as strong as they would like, even after Genachowski made some changes to address their concerns.

You don’t have to be a kook like Michael Copps to worry about providers throttling specific types of content, or charging for services in a way specifically designed to screw customers over. I’ll be the first to say that Time Warner sucks, and though I’m content with Verizon I hardly love ‘em. But let’s think about this whole “Net Neutrality” scam for more than fifteen seconds. Time Warner’s monopoly in Oxford was infuriating, so I’m now a happy Wide Open West customer. If I get sick of Verizon, I can dump them for AT&T, or T-Mobile, or Sprint. If the FCC regulates the tubes stupidly, guess what – we’re all stuck with those stupid regulations.

Companies sometimes do bad things. This is a fact that is well established. In some unfortunate circumstances, people have limited options for their home or mobile broadband service. If the FCC could predict trends, regulate wisely, and do more good than harm, that would be one thing. But where’s the evidence that the federal government is competent enough to regulate the industry? Genachowski wants all data to be delivered at the same rate, regardless of the content or how little the customer might be willing to pay for its delivery.

When I think of the government and I think of delivering stuff, I don’t get more optimistic.

• The United States Postal Service has a government monopoly on first-class mail
• The United States Postal Service lost $8.5 billion in fiscal 2010

Contrast packets of data with items delivered by mail: the USPS conducts business that’s not wildly different from when letters were carried by a dude on a horse. The internet is a global network of networks, supporting the creation of new technologies and businesses every day. The carriers selling access to this web of digital goods and services are continuously developing new ways to provide said access, from varying devices and at a wide range of price points.

Delivering letters is too complicated a process for the federal government. Think they’ll do a better job of regulating the internet? Maybe the USPS is an unfair example. After all, the last time Washington decided to take over a sixth of the economy, it went really well. When bureaucrats decide Americans have a “right” to a product, woe to the industry that produces it!

“You know, the streets are packed,” said Mohamud, a tall, thin student at Oregon State University in Corvallis, about 80 miles south of Portland. When one of the men responded that “a lot of children” would attend, according to an FBI affidavit, he replied, “Yeah, I mean that’s what I’m looking for.”

Mohamud shrugged off concerns about security at the event. “They don’t see it as a place where anything will happen…. It’s on the West Coast, it’s in Oregon, and Oregon’s like you know, nobody ever thinks about it,” he explained.

He’s right, and that’s frightening. But think about this for a minute: Mohamed’s a Somalian. He’s not exactly an Oregon State student as the LA Times reports, but has a high school diploma and is a naturalized citizen of one of history’s greatest nations. Somalia blows, thanks in no small part to radical Islam… and Mo wants to celebrate his freedom from that dump by blowing up American civilians.

Thank God for the FBI, but we can’t expect them to catch every jihadist idiot in the early phases of his plotting. Some percentage of these deranged Wile E. Coyote attacks will continue to succeed, and when they do there will be appalling bureaucrats like Janet Napolitano happy to get deeper into our bits and our business. For now, I’m grateful to our troops offering convenient overseas locations where jihadists may die at the hands of The Great Satan. Longer term, we need to drill more of our own oil, find viable alternatives to fossil fuels, or give the Saudis a good swift kick.

Goooo science!

Matt Hurley at Weapons of Mass Discussion is all over the TSA “get scanned or get groped” insanity, and has been hounding Ohio politicians for what (if anything) they plan to do about it.

My position, as I commented on Ricochet:

Since the TSA loves Security Theater, I have a serious proposal: in every boarding area, a sign that in multiple languages reads “Each flight which departs this terminal is safeguarded by no less than one armed plainclothes agent. Attempts at violence will be met with appropriate force.” Factor in screening time saved, and I guarantee guards would be cheaper than these damnable scanners.

Update: See this Ricochet discussion about Israeli airport security. Questioning, bomb-sniffing dogs, metal detectors – yes to all three. Leave it to Washington bureaucrats to find the intersection of “most intrusive” and “least effective” when Israel has methods that actually work.

The Christian Science Monitor also featured a useful summary yesterday, but closed with the repetition of a favorite anti-war meme:

The BBC also quotes former CIA officer Robert Baer as saying the plot may be “a reprisal from the [Taliban-allied] Haqqani network against the United States and Britain for the stepped-up aerial campaign in the tribal areas of Pakistan.” If such were true, it would imply a dangerous cycle where militants are constantly plotting revenge attacks on the West, while the West is constantly plotting attacks on militants to thwart their plans.

If America ceased Predator strikes against known terrorists in Pakistan, would Islamists cease planning terrorist attacks? That might be a serious question to consider – and reason for a more hesitant response to Islamist violence – if the world had been created yesterday.

Given the benefit of history, warnings of a “dangerous cycle” are hardly worth the pixels they occupy. Absent Predator strikes, Islamists would be “constantly plotting revenge” for:

• The Crusades
• The unspeakable hate crime of being Jewish
• The imprisonment of fellow Islamists (or, being Jewish)
• Cartoons printed by privately owned newspapers or drawn by private citizens
• Israel refusing to sit quietly while Hezbollah and Hamas murder her people
• The awful insensitivity of Christians being Christian

When the representatives of classically liberal nations start equivocating our actions against terrorists with the attacks of terrorists on civilians, it’s time to stop and think about how much self-loathing is too much.

On the Mall, an overwhelmingly white crowd of tens of thousands stood quietly during an opening prayer, the silence broken only by an occasional “amen.” The dense assembly , which contained few young people, stretched from the Lincoln Memorial, past the reflecting pool, to the World War II Memorial and spilled onto the grounds of the Washington Monument.

The crowd, consisting of many from the Midwest and the South, was not visibly angry. Rather, they said they had come to express their fear that the country was at a perilous moment.

Emphasis mine. The crowd’s not primarily or predominantly white, but overwhelmingly so. And the hillbillies aren’t visibly angry – should we expect them to be? – but they are afraid. This endless focus on the race and fear of Tea Party types represents a naked attempt by the “mainstream” media to paint anyone who agrees with Beck, Palin, et al. as a bigoted yokel. It also helps explain why Beck and other Fox News programming generally pulls more viewers than the three top competitors combined.

I’m a News Corp. shareholder, but I watch almost no TV news because I tire quickly of all the networks’ theatrics. For millions of Americans, however, Fox News provides a distinct option in a sea of leftward slanted reporting. That the other fish use every opportunity to whine about the racism and ignorance of anyone who disagrees with them reflects poorly on somebody… and that “somebody” is not Glenn Beck. Charles Krauthammer sums it up perfectly.

As for concerns about Beck co-opting the time and place of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, these seem completely misplaced. Red or yellow, black or white, it’d be difficult to find worse representatives of King’s dream than the professional victims who get away with acting in his name simply because of the color of their skin. I’ll take a speech about what makes America great over a speech about how much we owe the Al Sharptons of the world any day, even if the audience is “overwhelmingly white.”

In response to an ambush question on a Washington sidewalk, an elected representative of the United States slaps the camera out of a citizen’s hand, grabs his wrist and holds it despite repeated pleas to let go, and briefly pulls the guy around by the neck. No, a quick verbal brush-off or annoyed silence doesn’t suit Rep. Etheridge – only asking, “Who are you” like a drunken, entitled old record player while physically attacking his questioner will suffice. Treat a professed terrorist that way, and you’ll have the ACLU all over your junk. It’s okay if it’s a conservative, though, because those guys are asking for it.

Etheridge responded soon after the video was posted at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government. Despite his weak apology and the undeniable draw of a congressman attacking someone on film, there’s hardly been an outcry from the brave, self-important press corps that rabidly dissects far less serious mistakes made by Republicans. Representative Etheridge was caught on camera committing criminal assault against a nobody whose offense was daring to address a congressman in an unacceptable tone… and the Washington media’s response is to shrug.

Nonetheless, it’s a campaign year and Etheridge’s opponent has a few months to come up with a snappy tag line she can play on top of that video. In the interest of fairness (Democrats like “fairness,” right?), I’ve put together some materials that will help the Etheridge team with damage control:

Bob Etheridge is one entitled old coot.

This is a totally reasonable response to a simple question.

Bob Etheridge learnin' a young American some character.

[Update: Thanks for the link, Harvey! IMAO readers may also enjoy my brilliant box art for an Islam-based Mario knockoff or the classic Fun With the Ayatollah.]

President Obama on Saturday offered a glimpse of a new national security doctrine that distances his administration from George W. Bush’s policy of preemptive war, emphasizing global institutions and America’s role in promoting democratic values.

That’s the first paragraph of the Post summary, and already it’s clear Obama’s national security doctrine stretches no further than whatever was programmed into the teleprompter yesterday. How has America promoted democratic values on Obama’s watch? By waiting months before even paying lip service to Iranian dissidents dying in the streets? By criticizing Arizona to the hapless Mexican president, the Communist government in China, and anyone else who will listen? By betraying the Poles, Czechs, and Israelis at every opportunity?

“Yes, we are clear-eyed about the shortfalls of our international system. But America has not succeeded by stepping outside the currents of international cooperation,” he said. “We have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice — so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities, and face consequences when they don’t.”

This is, to apply my favorite British phrase, bollocks on stilts. The currents of international cooperation are flowing nicely for anyone President Obama fears may not support toothless UN sanctions against Iran. If you’re wondering what sort of consequences nations face for failing to meet their responsibilities, just ask the Iranian mullahs.

And yet, as he calls for global cooperation, Obama has intensified the U.S. war in Afghanistan. And his administration has repeatedly confronted the dangers of Islamic terrorism on U.S. soil, including unsuccessful attempts to down a Detroit-bound airliner and explode a car bomb in New York’s Times Square.

Emphasis mine. The Obama administration has done everything in its power to avoid confronting the danger of Islamic terrorism. The Attorney General is scarcely willing to utter the phrase “radical Islam.” Based on the Post’s summary, Obama’s West Point speech was an exercise in revisionist history and empty rhetoric.

Turning to the full transcript, one sentence in particular stands out:

“But more than any other nation, the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades — a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, and markets open, and billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress and advancing frontiers of human liberty.”

This is absolutely true, and incredibly important. And President Obama, whose domestic goals guarantee America will no longer be able to afford anywhere near the military might necessary to assist allies and deter enemies, does not care.

With employment and the economy in general down for the past year and a half, I wanted to see how the smallest of government big-shots were rewarding themselves relative to 2007 and 2008. Despite widespread populist railing against private industry salaries and bonuses, I expected to see pay increases for the insulated local bureaucrats our tax dollars keep employed. Given some of the things I’ve read recently, I was pleasantly surprised by the data.

A helpful CPA in the Franklin County Auditor’s office responded to my public records request promptly, with salary data on all Franklin County employees from 2007-2010. Download the Excel file if you’d like to check my numbers or do some analysis of your own. I’ll list hourly rates instead of annual salaries, as 2009 contained 27 pay periods instead of the usual 26. Let’s start with the highest branch on the Franklin County tree, shall we?

Commissioner’s Office

Commendably, the two highest-paid administrators in the Commissioner’s office received no pay raises this year. That makes 2008′s 6% increases in their six-figure salaries a little easier to swallow.

Department of Job and Family Services

Job and Family Services (which you’ll notice is under the Commissioner’s office on the county org chart) is more complicated because of new hires, departures, and title changes. I should also note that David Migliore, who was Chief Deputy in the Clerk of Courts office while I was employed there from 2005-2007, is hardly my favorite person. I spent my last 6 months – as a Programmer Analyst 1 doing Programmer Analyst 2 work – waiting to hear back about a pay raise request that Migliore ignored literally until the day I resigned.

⁽¹⁾ – Drop in Director’s pay from 2008-2009 reflects a change from Douglas E. Lumpkin to David E. Migliore. I don’t know who decided Migliore should be making around $130,000, but it’s nice that he started at a lower salary than the outgoing Director and didn’t get a raise in 2010.

⁽²⁾ – In 2008 the Department of Job & Family Services added a new Assistant Director, Anthony S. Trotman. The 2009 data list Trotman as a second Director, salaried at $62.37 – equivalent to a 27.86% raise. Trotman isn’t listed at all for 2010, but the additional Assistant Director position remains.

As I said, this is more complicated than the Commissioner’s Office, where the two highest-paid employees were the same guys with the same titles from 2007-2010. I won’t pretend to understand why a second Assistant Director was added to the Department of Job and Family Services in 2008, but I’ll assume Trotman served as some sort of Interim Director in 2009.

Clerk of Courts

⁽³⁾ – In 2008, Maryellen O’Shaughnessy was elected Clerk of Courts. When David Migliore departed for the Department of Job and Family Services, O’Shaughnessy brought in Mary Austin Palmer – and immediately gave her a huge raise in a poor economy. Either Mary Austin Palmer is some kind of management wiz, or Maryellen O’Shaughnessy doesn’t think much of the taxpayers’ money. See (4).

⁽⁴⁾ – Yes, I skipped down the list of Clerk’s office employees; this observation is too ridiculous to exclude. In 2007, before he departed for Columbus City Council, Hearcel Craig was paid $25.49 an hour as the Clerk’s Director of Customer Service. The position remained unfilled (to no ill effect, so far as I could tell) until David E. Black was hired. In 2009, Black’s salary as Director of Customer Service was $24.96. In 2010, Black’s title changed to Director of Business Operations and his salary increased by nearly 50%. Why, all of a sudden, is it necessary for the Franklin County Clerk of Courts to employ a Director of Business Operations? Isn’t that what the Chief Deputy is for? How does O’Shaughnessy justify creating a $77,625.60 business operations role while also paying her Chief Deputy $95,409.60?

Skimming through the other Franklin County salary information, it looks like our highly-paid bureaucrats are at least politically intelligent enough not to give themselves raises when unemployment in the Columbus metro area is somewhere between 9 and 10 percent. Except for the Clerk of Courts office, which seems to have suffered from John O’Grady’s move to the Commissioner’s office.

Happy Tax Freedom Day!

[Update: Additional follow-up on the Clerk of Courts available here and here.]

“We need to become the party of liberty and freedom,” Ryan argues. “We’re not doing enough. We can do better, and we will — because we have no choice. If we’re going to offer the country a completely different vision, we can’t be Democratic-lite or resign ourselves to be slightly more efficient managers and tax-collectors for the welfare state. We have to break with that and give people a clear and distinct difference.”

Hope and change as defined by President Obama are exactly what all of us wild-eyed conservatives said they’d be – schlocky advertising and accelerated government growth. That’s clearer today than at any other point this past year. Obama has demonstrated no interest in transparency, no patient bipartisanship, no meaningful variation from the leftist playbook of demonizing private employers while promising unsustainable entitlements to “the middle class.”

Congressman Ryan has been at the forefront of the GOP for months, suggesting solutions to America’s domestic problems that don’t require more spending, more IRS agents, more regulation and taxation. The Democrats’ solution to every domestic problem is to throw more of our money at it, which fits perfectly with a foreign policy of shrinking defense spending as yet another way to show our enemies how cuddly and disinterested we are.

Ryan’s speech yesterday on the House floor is an important summary of what the entire Republican Party ought to stand for:

In November we’re going to have very clearly defined options – I hope Ryan means what he says, and I hope he finds no shortage of trustworthy allies in D.C. over the coming months and years.

The six-member California Division of Occupational Safety and Health standards board voted unanimously on the advice of staff to create an advisory committee to report back on whether to change state law to require safe-sex protections for adult-film actors and actresses.

This is an article from the LA Times, not The Onion. I’m sure. I double-checked.

Should porn “actors” use protection when “performing” their “acts?” Probably, unless they’re in the mood for some sexually transmitted diseases. This is obvious even to a science-hatin’ Christian with a running total of zero “partners.” But, the sort of thing that’s clear to a loser in Ohio is cause for a new advisory committee in California, where unionized state workers have run the government into the ground even without a committee to study whether it’s wise to have copious amounts of unprotected sex.

“We believe the state of California has a responsibility to regulate these workplaces as they do every other workplace,” AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein told the board.

The state of California has a responsibility to regulate everything, as far as the state of California is concerned. Small wonder the vote to form a committee was unanimous. Imagine being asked this question: Should we form a new committee that will help justify the existence of your cushy job? Not many people would answer “No,” which is why the size of government trends in only one direction.

A former porn star points out that they don’t go into this business due to an abundance of brains:

“You think you’re safe but you’re not; in between scenes, you don’t know what other actors are doing,” James told the board.

While filming a porno, it’s difficult to be sure whether the people you’re having promiscuous sex with for money might be making unhealthy decisions off camera. The nanny-staters want you to know your concerns will be tended to, and as they venture into uncharted regulatory waters it’s clear that even a stupid law like mandated STD testing for the porn industry means a convoluted, money-burning process.

The Senate health bill creates dozens of federal boards, councils, and committees. Think these will be staffed entirely by health care and insurance professionals who know what’s best? Certainly only rational, fiscally sound decisions will be made by these new government employees. Decisions like the rational, fiscally sound decisions Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid make on a daily basis.

Congressman Boehner shared a graph last November displaying the mess of bureaucracy created by the House version of the bill as it stood at the time. Add one, subtract one, change a name here and there – this is what the leftist elites running Washington want. Countless new boards with the power to form committees with the power to impose regulations. All of their salaries coming out of our paychecks. Few of them producing anything of value.

Call. Your. Representatives.

Ricochet’s a great listen if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s the perfect accompaniment to a game of Filler 2 on Kongregate.com! Or to a commute, if you have one of those Empee-three Players and a car that knows how to talk to it…

It is certain that Tehran will get its nukes, and very soon. This is the biggest abdication of responsibility by the Western powers since the 1930s. It is far worse than Pakistan going nuclear, which, after all, was just another thing the CIA failed to see coming. In this case, the slow-motion nuclearization conducted in full view and through years of tortuous diplomatic charades and endlessly rescheduled looming deadlines is not just a victory for Iran but a decisive defeat for the United States. It confirms the Islamo-Sino-Russo-everybody-else diagnosis of Washington as a hollow superpower that no longer has the will or sense of purpose to enforce the global order.

Sure, there are people who insist the Iranian mullahs are saving their oil for later in order to focus a huge portion of their crappy economy on nuclear power. This is based, apparently, on little other than the cute way Iran follows every insane Ahmadinejad rant about nuclear enrichment with a speech by some diplomat about their peaceful intentions.

Oh, right, like the guy in a $4,00-dollar suit is gonna nuke anyone. COME ON!

So long as there are a few isolationist libertarians and pantywaist liberals insisting Iran’s just trying to keep up with the Joneses and not trying to incinerate the Joneses, Obama and the State Department seem content to mix the occasional harsh word in with their flowery diplomatic rhetoric. That would be totally fine, if dictatorships always meant the peaceful things they said and were only kidding about the violent stuff.

But when you’ve authorized successful mob hits on Salman Rushdie’s publishers and translators, when you’ve blown up Jewish community centers in Buenos Aires, when you’ve acted extraterritorially to the full extent of your abilities for 30 years, it seems prudent for the rest of us to assume that when your abilities go nuclear, you’ll be acting to an even fuller extent.

Read the full Steyn article, and remember that President Obama is busy trying to resurrect a leftist health insurance plan that a majority of Americans don’t want and zero Americans can afford. Foreign policy? He’s already not George W. Bush; what do you people want?!

It seems like the Progressives running our country are on a perpetual acid trip, reliving the hippie glory days of the ’60s and ’70s and oblivious to the world around them. Harry! We’re really sorry, but if you want to be sprayed by a fire hose or repressed by the government, you may have to move to Iran. You could burn your bra and chant “Hell no, we won’t go!” while smoking pot with some of the president’s Weather Underground crew… but gosh, that would be almost as crazy as what you’re actually doing on a regular basis.

Hope, change, and bipartisan fun times were promised by the Obama campaign, and anyone who saw through that b.s. probably supported slavery. Now the slavery-supporting, lady-hating freedom-ruiners lurking around the U.S. of A. are trying to stop Harry Reid from giving all Americans (legal or otherwise) the free health care and taxpayer subsidized abortions they’ve always wanted. We might as well be living in caves, treating women like property, and slaughtering anyone different from ourselves! But then, regions of Africa and the Middle East already have that stuff nailed down.

In other news, Israeli intelligence reports the Iranians are now capable of producing a nuclear bomb. But I’m sure they won’t! It’s not as if George W. Bush is in charge of the United States anymore.

But don’t worry! The Pelosi plan will guarantee the prompt, effective health care of over 300,000,000 people without adding to the deficit or limiting choice! We should not rule out the possibility that some of those two thousand pages are blueprints for medical robots that cost nothing to build, cost nothing to operate, and cost nothing to maintain.

Democrats easily voted down Republicans’ attempt to pass their own bill, which would have more narrowly expanded health insurance and cost $61 billion over a decade.

A $61 billion dollar overhaul is not nearly a big enough overhaul. The GOP is the “party of no” ambition! Republicans simply lack the dedication of Democrats who know how to run every damn thing on earth better than the industry professionals who do so for a living.

Democrats portrayed their legislation as a moral imperative that would achieve a goal sought by presidents since Theodore Roosevelt. They argued it would fix the worst aspects of the medical system by preventing insurers from denying coverage to the sick and protecting consumers from financial ruin caused by medical bills.

At long last, the United States can be free from the tyranny of risk and reward! Every man, woman, and child shall have their own Aflac duck to pay for all their needs with someone else’s money. Next up: cause and effect. Cause and effect are assholes, and it’s morally incumbent on Congress to use pretend dollars to make them go away.

“It is testimony to how we care for our fellow citizens,” said John Larson (D., Conn.). “It is at the very core of all that America stands for, and why we came here to serve.”

Bankrupting America is at the very core of all that America stands for. Or did I miss the Paul Krugman essay on how $1,500,000,000,000 is no big deal? The fight’s not over yet, but it looks like there are plenty of House Democrats willing to flush their careers for this insane leftist cause.