Joe Six-pack will have to pay a lot more to get his buzz on if Assemblyman Jim Beall has his way.
The San Jose Democrat on Thursday proposed raising the beer tax by $1.80 per six-pack, or 30 cents per can or bottle. The current tax is 2 cents per can. That's an increase of about 1,500 percent.
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama, an Illinois senator, said."And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," he said.
By now you regulars readers know the question.A 19-year-old Green Township mother is in the Hamilton County jail after Cincinnati police charged her with taking her newborn child along while she broke into a candy store.
Christine Ruther and three others are accused of breaking into Peter Minges & Son candy store, 138 W. Court St., downtown, shortly before 1 a.m. and swiping about $500 in candy, police said.
The group was arrested a few blocks away at Fourth and Race streets when police caught up with them by following a trail of candy and candy wrappers.
A few days ago, New York’s State Senate passed a bill making it illegal to recruit someone into a street gang.Wow! we no longer have to worry about gangs again. Our elected officials actually doing something effective.
In the never-ending fight by city officials and legislators to combat gangs, this is one of the latest efforts to outmaneuver gang members. Other similar initiatives have included: city ordinances that limit two or more gang members from hanging out in public space; school codes that ban the use of hats, clothing, and colors that signify gang membership; and public housing authorities that evict leaseholders who allow gang members (or any other so-called “criminal”) to live inside the housing unit.
These laws rarely lead to reductions in gang membership, gang violence, or gang crime. In fact, police officers I know find these ordinances and statutes a waste of time. Cops would much rather “control and contain” gang activity. Most officers who work in inner cities understand that you cannot eliminate gang activity entirely — arrest two gang members and you will find a dozen others waiting in line to take their places. Police know that gang members have great knowledge about local crimes, so they rely on a trade off: keep gangs isolated to particular areas, don’t let their criminal activities spill over into other spaces, and use high-ranking gang members for information.
The top mortgage lenders spend $185 million lobbying Congress, and we wonder why Washington looked the other way when they were tricking families into buying homes they couldn't afford.Were the Obama's some of these people? Or did Rezko grease some skids to get them their mortgage? Why is no one in the main stream media asking these questions?
Okay, I'll say it: Barack Obama makes me nervous.I've tried to keep from writing anything here on presidential politics, but at this point, as more and more information comes out about Senator Obama's links to various people and organizations that are arguably a danger to American security, I think it's time to ask some questions – and it's time the Senator provide some answers. This isn't about "Is Barack Obama a secret Muslim?"; he's not, and even if he were, who cares? But Muslim or not, he surrounds himself with sworn enemies of the state, from William Ayers, the former Weather Underground member, to Jeremiah Wright, to others who have collaborated with Saddam Hussein (no, this is not conspiracy theory. Read on). Why does he choose such people? And how does that jibe with his wife's lack of pride in the USA? More important – what does it tell us about his judgment – that "judgment" he touts as his greatest quality, the reason he should be given the office of the presidency – and entrusted not just with America's safety and security, but with its integrity and standing in the world?
Individually, these questions may not mean very much. Together, I think they point to patterns voters will need to think about very carefully before they cast their ballots, either now or in November:
There's a reason why the vast majority of people serving in our military vote Republican. These people understand who is on their side and who is not. They understand that Democrats hold them in near-contempt. They understand that Democrats would much rather spend money on vote-buying programs than on beefing up our military.
When Aaron Jones walks Gozer, his Rottweiler-hound mix, people cross the street to avoid them. Mothers scoop up their children. A lost motorist once rolled up the windows and drove off after spotting the dog. One woman screamed.I wonder how Obama's grandmother felt about those dogs."He's the nicest dog I know," said Jones, 33, of Oakland, Calif. "It's hard to understand all the fear."
Gozer isn't aggressive and doesn't look mean or bark, Jones insists _ people are afraid of the dog purely because it's big and black. As a puppy, Gozer was passed over for at least a month before Jones took him home.
According to animal shelter officials, big, black dogs like Gozer have more trouble finding a happy home than do other dogs. Some shelters even have a name for it: "Big black dog syndrome."
Nobody tracks the problem nationally, and local shelters often keep only limited data on the sizes, breeds and colors of the dogs that are adopted or put down, according to the Humane Society and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
"But anecdotally," said Stephen Musso, executive vice president of the ASPCA, "that's what we hear from shelter after shelter: Big, black dogs just don't get adopted."
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| Obama calls for talks with Iran over Iraq | |
A Barack Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention was "ticketed for calling her neighbor's African-American children 'monkeys,' " reports the Chicago Sun-Times. (We didn't realize this was against the law, but the Chicago Tribune explains that the charge was disorderly conduct.) Here is what happened, according to the Sun-Times:[Linda] Ramirez-Sliwinski "came outside and told the children to quit playing in the tree like monkeys. The tree was not on Ramirez-Sliwinski's property," Carpentersville Police Commander Michael Kilbourne said.Ramirez-Sliwinski admitted she used the word "monkeys," but said she did not intend racism. She said she was only trying to protect them from falling out of the tree."Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski said she saw the kids playing in the tree and didn't want them falling out of the tree and getting hurt. She said she calls her own grandchildren 'monkeys,' " Kilbourne said. The mother of one of the children did not see it that way, noting she and Ramirez-Sliwinski have clashed before."She felt it was racist because of the fact the children were African-American," Kilbourne said.Told of the incident Monday by the Sun-Times, Obama's campaign called Ramirez-Sliwinski and persuaded her to step aside as a delegate because the campaign felt her remarks were "divisive and unacceptable."
There's a big mystery at the heart of Barack Obama's Dreams For My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. What was Barack Obama doing seeking out Marxist professors in college? Why did Obama choose a Communist Party USA member as his socio- political counselor in high school? Why was he spending his time studying neocolonialism and the writings of Frantz Fanon, the pro-violence author of "the Communist Manifesto of neocolonialsm", in college? Why did he take time out from his studies at Columbia to attend socialist conferences at Cooper Union?
And there is more mystery in the book. Why does Obama consider working in a consulting house for international business like being "a spy behind enemy lines?" Why does he repeatedly find it so hard to explain his political views to others? Why was he driven to become a left-aligned political organizer? It's a question Obama again and again can't seem to answer to the satisfaction of the interlocutors in his own memoir.
If there is a mystery at the heart of Barack Obama's Dreams For My Father, one thing is not left a mystery, the fact that Barack Obama organized his life on the ideals given to him by his Kenyan father. Obama tells us, "All of my life, I carried a single image of my father, one that I .. tried to take as my own." (p. 220) And what was that image? It was "the father of my dreams, the man in my mother's stories, full of high-blown ideals .." (p. 278) What is more, Obama tells us that, "It was into my father's image .. that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." And also that, "I did feel that there was something to prove .. to my father" in his efforts at political organizing. (p. 230)
The [real] higher good is serving our customers....That kind of service is a higher service than the way our government looks at it, which is, ‘You elect me, I take over, I go to the big house, I get the driver and the big airplane, and then I tell you what's good and if you don't like it then I force it on you.’
Barack Obama wants to make something clear: He loves America.
After a series of incidents that prompted questions about his patriotism, the Democratic presidential candidate is peppering speeches with explicit statements on his love of country.
"I love this country not because it's perfect but because we've always been able to move it closer to perfection," he told an audience in North Dakota.
Just out of curiosity, why would he find a need to tell us he loved his country? Why would anyone question whether he love his country?
