Take six minutes of your time and watch Bill Whittle explain why Barack Obama is intentionally making the sequester hurt as much as possible.
BTW:
Here are two ideas to immediately save lots of money:
1. Release every federal prisoner doing time for non-violent drug offenses. Obama could do that unilaterally by commuting their sentences.
2. Stop arresting and prosecuting people for federal marijuana offenses. Not one dime for enforcement. Let the states handle it, and if they legalize or decriminalize pot that’s up to them.
Does anybody else have any ideas where we could immediately and painlessly cut the federal budget?
The Crawdad Hole 
The revenge of Sarah Palin:
One of the comments at Salon beat me to it:
“I can see failure from my house”
–Tina Fey
I’ve never watched “30 Rock” because I don’t like to give Baldwin any support, and Tina Fey never did anything to override those feelings. Since that show has been cancelled, and her movie career seems to lack luster, maybe the words “washed-up ” and “irrelevant” apply here.
I tuned in to one episode once to see what the fuss was about. I don’t think I made it to the first commercial break.
I also tuned in to one episode. (click) :lol;
I never tuned in either, for pretty much the same reasons, elliesmom.
Yes, 30 Rock, praised lovingly by Hollywood. Nobody I knew ever watched it.
In answering the question this morning we really could all give ideas and examine where all the money goes if Obama had actually done what he promised by providing a transparent government that showed expenditures and government plans on the internet. But he now knows that we are not smart enough or capable enough to handle that transparency thing. He’s still on a learning curve himself you know.
Here’s an interesting little expenditure most are unaware of as Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac go on as if nothing had happened in 2006-2008 since we’re pumping tax revenue that continues to balloon and is estimated to reach 200 BILLION dollars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/business/fannie-mae-freddie-mac-and-the-same-old-song.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
How about we get rid of some of the many many MANY vacant buildings the Fed owns? And it would increase the local tax base if sold to someone in the private sector! Twofor!
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/taxpayer-owned-crumbling-vacant-government-buildings/story?id=10198415#.UVA4FBezfQw
honk
What does he go home for? Isn’t the VP provided with some pretty nice digs?
I sincerely hope she’s just pushing self promotional propaganda here. Otherwise she’s seriously delusional. OK, who am I kidding, she probably actually believes that.
It’s good to be discussing these things, but a drunk 15 yr old cannot give consent, so this was rape. People still have a tendency to put all of the responsibility on girls, including girls themselves. What are 17 and 19 yr old boys doing getting a 15 yr old drunk and abusing her? If you turn it around, I absolutely would be committing a crime if I got a 15 yr old boy drunk and had sex with him, even if he appeared to be giving consent. It would be exploitive. Clearly I have more experience and awareness then a 15 yr old boy and probably could manipulate him quite easily.
We do however, need to teach girls that they have the power to say no, to control their sexual experiences more than they believe. Girls, women, do walk right into things they will later regret.
There’s some discussion in the comments about whether others have the right to call this rape when she doesn’t. Legally, it was clearly rape. Even “Romeo and Juliet” laws have a limit about how much older one participant can be. I had this conversation with high school seniors who were 19 when I saw they were dating freshmen who were 13 or 14. The girl may not feel she was being raped, but her parents might. I understand why the author of the article wants to claim agency, but she also says she was the victim of sexual abuse. She doesn’t clarify whether it came before or after the “bad sex” in the park, but I would guess it came before.
Most of the laws define the limit at a minimum of 15 years old, and can have sex with up to 4 years older. At 15, 17, and 19, this would not have been statutory rape under most laws.
The age of consent in MA is 16, as it is in a lot of other states. If the author was in the Boston Public Gardens, she was raped if the perpetrator was 3 years older than she was, which one of the guys was. I taught in a school that was grades 8-12. We had this discussion with the senior boys too frequently.
elliesmom, you are likely correct about MA specifically. But as regards the broader moral point, as opposed to statutory ones, I don’t think a 17 year old and a 15 year old is always rape.
There are states that still have 18 as the age of consent. If an 18 yr old girl has sex with a 19 year old boy, is it rape? Perhaps legally. But in reality, no. And in that situation, I wouldn’t encourage 18 year old women to decide to use that statute as a bludgeon for situations they went into willingly, consented to, and only later regretted.
There is rape that is obviously so. Then there are the grayer areas where there may/may not have been consent involved, or impairment and immaturity all around – not merely on the woman’s part. Gray areas are tough, because yes, they can be used to poopoo actual rape. They can also be used as a psychological out for young women who don’t want to face that THEY made a very bad decision, or who wish to punish a jerkwad cad that they found out wasn’t prince charming after the fact.
It would be much neater if we could just declare ALL gray areas to be in favor of the woman, or in favor of the man. Unfortunately, human beings (especially teenagers) are more complex than that. Both genders, given the inducement, can be manipulative as fuck if it’s in their self-interest to be so.
One problem with these cases is getting the facts straight. Most cases come down to he said/she said on the critical points, and the Roshomon Rule says that two people will perceive the same event differently.
Only after we reach agreement on what actually happened can we discuss whether that conduct was criminal. There is a lot at stake because a conviction marks the guy as a sex offender for life. Just an accusation can haunt him and ruin his reputation.
OTOH we want to rid society of sexual predators.
I have two sons and one daughter. I want society to protect my daughter from sexual predators but I also want society to protect my sons from false allegations.
Actually, it’s not that gray, folks. Don’t have sex with an underage kid and don’t have sex with a drunk person. And if someone tells you to stop, stop.
Sorry, but no, it’s not automatically rape. Can it be? Yes. Absolutely. But not always. If the young man was drunk as well, does that mean anything? Is a 17 year old boy 100% responsible for his drunken actions, but a 15 or 16 year old girl has no agency whatsover if drunk? They “got her drunk”? What if she got HERSELF drunk? Girls get roaring drunk all by their own selves, by THEIR choice, all the time. That is entirely possible, you know. Most teenage girls I know are not the passive creatures you describe.
And is there REALLY that much difference in the maturity of a 17 year old boy and a 15 year old girl? Always? I don’t think so. I’ve known many a 15 year old girl with much more maturity than many a 17 year old boy.
Are you saying that a 15 year old girl is NEVER capable of willingly having sex? Because if she is capable, then she is also capable of willingly having sex she probably shouldn’t be having, in situations that in retrospect might be bad for her, or that she might regret when she sobers up.
I am all in favor of going after true date rape (deliberately and coldly incapacitating a girl to have sex totally unawares), and rape in general. But calling every situation where the woman was drunk and had an unpleasant awakening “rape” muddies the waters. I don’t think we do women any favors by insisting that if you get drunk and realize later that you slept with a real asshole whom you probably shouldn’t have slept with, that that is rape.
Bad, ill-advised, or stupid sex is not the same thing as rape. Not even if the guy turns out to have been an asshole.
Two cases from California:
1. Two seventeen year olds are caught having drunken sex in a park. He gets charged with statutory rape, she gets released. SCOTUS says that’s okay cuz girls get pregnant.
2. Two adults are having consensual sex when she changes her mind. She tells him to stop but he doesn’t stop right away. Cal. Supremes say that’s rape.
Lesson, even if she says yes, it can be rape. No, that’s not tricky at all for teenage boys.
Yep. Women really do need to accept the truth that with freedom comes responsibility. What some feminists seem to want is all of the protections/allowances for the fairer, weaker sex that existed in the Victorian era, along with all the freedom to do whatever the hell they want at the same time.
If you want agency and equality and independence, then being completely responsible for your own actions comes with that. When two people, especially adults, wind up in bed together, then it’s really likely that both did things that got them there. Am I excusing a man continuing if the woman changes her mind, at ANY point? Nope. Not at all. If she is vociferously protesting that she wants OUT, and he deliberately continues, that’s one thing. But if the drunk guy that YOU started having sex with doesn’t have the presence of mind to cease his heated fumblings in 2 seconds flat, the moment you voice a “maybe I shouldn’t”, it’s not rape. It’s a failed consensual sexual encounter that both need to extricate themselves from without too much animosity. “He didn’t jump ten feet to the other side of the room the very split second I said boo” is a ridiculous and unrealistic standard. The human brain in the midst of passion just doesn’t respond that quickly, even if he’s a basically decent guy.
Women have a long history of weaponizing access to sex, and manipulating with it, just as men have a long history of rape. Both happen. Both are wrong. Neither should be encouraged. Neither is the solution to the other.
That was some “bad sex”. And she sets her friendship bar pretty low, too. If I had gotten drunk at 15 and “had sex” with two men in a park who announced that if I got pregnant, it was all my fault, I don’t know if I would count the two men among my “friends”. And they were “men” – at least that’s how males at 19 expect to be treated. That whole “if we’re old enough to fight for our country” thing guys get going when we try to classify them as still children. I did like her idea of the standard being “Did she say ‘yes’?” as opposed to “Did she say ‘no’?” A lot of young girls don’t want to admit explicit consent. They want to be able to say they were swept away. Maybe if the social construct was changed, there would be more looking before leaping.
Nowadays they should video explicit verbal consent and what they are consenting to – which orifices will be involved, type of contraception used, all the legal waivers.
Someone should make an app for it.
Then how many of those explicit verbal consent waivers would end up being posted on You Tube?
All of them.
If anything and everything could possibly be rape, then rape becomes meaningless. Kind of like racism over the last 5 years.
Actually, Dandy, some of the “feminists” pushing this very broad, murky definition do indeed think all sex is essentially rape. They openly say so. All penetration is rape, or at least kinda rapey-ish and disempowering. It’s a given to many of them, and that’s the view they start from.
Sorry, but I don’t want people who are that monumentally fucked in the head driving public policy and discussion.
I have actually seen where a guy trying unsuccessfully to get in his date’s pants was classified as “attempted rape”. The same with “emotional manipulation or pressuring a women to have sex”.
You know that really scary statistic that says 1 in 4 college-age women will be the victims of rape or attempted rape? They use a very broad definition of both “rape” and “attempted rape”.
Is being fucked in the head rape? OK, couldn’t resist. 🙂
That video thing didn’t work out too well for the Steubenville “rape crew.” (Their name, not mine!) If it hadn’t been for all the video, photos and tweets, the case would have never even been brought to trial. Same for that fool, Brian Downing, who teabagged the passed-out drunk (male) fan of an opposing team. If the video hadn’t been uploaded to the internet, he probably wouldn’t be sitting in prison.
We got a bit off track but my tongue in cheek suggestion was to have a record of the consent, not the act or the reviews, as it were. Like those legal waivers you have to sign before doing anything remotely physical.
You guys, 15 is under the age of consent! It doesn’t matter if she throws herself at you, she’s still a child! A 19 yr old can own property, vote, go to war, so he can damn well know that having sex with a 15 yr old drunk girl is rape. I don’t care if she threw herself at him and begged for it. 15, under the age of consent. Drunk, unable to give consent. End of story. To make matters worse, they treated this girl like trash, told her they didn’t care if she got pregnant, left her clothes in the park. That’s not “bad sex,” that’s abuse.
That depends on what state they were in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_North_America#State_laws
Drunk/unable to consent is a question of fact for the jury. Simple intoxication is not the same thing.
How they treated her afterwards, their attitudes and the failure to use birth control are not elements of rape. They were obviously douchebags but that isn’t a crime.
The age of consent is 16, 17, or 18 in all states. She was 15. She also says she was drunk and they didn’t put her underwear in the car with her. Since she wasn’t even able to collect her own clothing, she was either drunk or traumatized.
It’s depressing that some women have such low expectations of men. She’s convinced herself that this is normal behavior, that this kind of abuse is to be expected from men, and that she was in control.
I don’t feel good this morning. I’m going back to bed.
I don’t like Mondays.
It’s snowing here, and did all night long, so I’m thinking of crawling under the bed at this point. This is VA, it’s not supposed to do this. Who do I call about this?
Phil?
I think someone took him out already. 🙂
Al Gorezeera
Tell me why…
I see what you did there . . .
Unlike liberals and their embracing of Obama to relieve their guilt. Nope, “different when we do it.”
Honk!
Matt and Toure are rapists.
Oooops, the super secret First Daughters’ Spring Break vacay has been outed…..
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/03/25/Exclusive-Sasha-Malia-Obama-vacation-in-Bahamas-Atlantis
In other news, the WH tours are still canceled…..
This is a super elitest ritzy resort and this is their most IN inseason time of year. Most of us peasants can get better rates in the middle of the summer/hurricane season.
My floors are a disaster (5 dogs with open in/out access and a little rain will do that) and I have to go to the damn grocery store.
Still, not a bad Monday overall. I think I’ll make something with chicken, have no idea what yet.
After the floors, maybe a dog and chicken stew. 🙂 Oh wait, that’s an Obama recipe.
;lol:
Votermom you’re “famous” MOTUS used one your tweets in her post today.
http://www.michellesmirror.com/2013/03/if-youre-so-rich-why-arent-you-smart.html#disqus_thread
Woot!
🙂
Votermom is on a roll awesome at fixing computer glitches and now a rock star with her great twitter skills
She’s been a star here since Day 1
Star!!
*Applause VM*
A couple ideas.
1.Tax political contributions.
2. All elected Federal employees at Administrative level should take a 10% haircut to salary and pensions.
3. President and congress critters should cut administrative expenditures by 25%. No more free cars, phones or flights.
4. Congress should be a part time position with subsequent cut in perks and pay.
Hey those sound like a pretty good jumping off point, obviously there is a lot more cutting within specific budgets.
How about also any perks provided, except security, are considered income and taxed. It works that way for the private sector, just sayin.
I love it 🙂
Define “snow”. Unfamiliar world or term.
I believe that is slang for powdered cocaine.
today is Medal of Honor Day
http://www.homeofheroes.com/moh/history/history_first.html
LOL. They fall off from those cold Canadian winters.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/03/25/Trouble-In-Pigford-Reparations-Paradise
those damn lawyers, they want to get paid
backtrack to go on road trip for gun control. btw did he ever get his budget thingy done?????
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/03/25/obama-to-travel-around-the-country-on-new-gun-control-campaign-n1548220
I hafta go to the dentist this PM – I lost a filling while eating a jelly bean yesterday.
Ban assault jelly beans!
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/03/25/is-sequestration-really-about-dismantling-american-pride/
I would say yes considering the beliefs of the backtrack bunch
{{Headdesk}}
Good old Al – Jesse saying “hymietown?” Nope, not antisemitic. Opposing Nanny Bloomberg? Yeah, definitely.
I think there are hallucinogens in that BLOOBERRY PAAAIIIII!