Mr. Smarty Pants?

So Barack Obama, with his Harvard education, is the commander in chief. He’s never served in the military, but he has been photographed wearing a USMC t-shirt. (Much to the outrage of Marines everywhere.) Now despite his lack of military experience, one would expect him to at least be able to use his Harvard education to properly pronounce the job title of one of the people he is in charge of. And we’re not talking about some sort of strange military custom or award like the French fourragère that is worn by select US military units. We’re talking about the word “corps”.

As in “Marine Corps”. “Peace Corps”. “Army Corps of Engineers”. “Mercy Corps”. “Job Corps”. “AmeriCorps”. “Press Corps”.

Mr. Smarty Pants, with his Harvard education, pronounced it like “corpse” — twice — while referring to a navy corpsman. (Which is a navy term for “medic”.)

We wonder how Obama pronounces “sword”.

Remember when they were geeks?

Used to be, IRS auditors were though of as pencil-pushing geeks. You know: pocket protectors, bad glasses, worse fashion choices? The kind of kids we’d all cheat off of in math class? Not any more! According to this requisition, “the Internal Revenue Service intends to purchase sixty Remington Model 870 Police RAMAC #24587 12 gauge pump-action shotguns for the Criminal Investigation Division.” Why would the IRS need shotguns? Probably the same reason they’re hiring nearly 600 new revenue officers (auditors, in layperson’s speak): to go after anyone and everyone who they even marginally suspect are cheating in some way on their taxes. And as of 2007, the US tax code was 67,204 pages. That’s a growth of 12,358 pages since 2003, and we doubt it’s gotten smaller. The US Tax Code is a political device: it’s used to award favors for friends and supporters by way of tax breaks, and it’s used as a weapon against enemies. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans fall somewhere between the two, and as a result, the IRS hands out about 32,000,000 tax penalties every year.

Of interest, a Reuters story entitled “Advisory: Backdoor taxes to hit middle class” was removed from all wire services such as the New York Times and Yahoo News. Fortunately, some websites grabbed the text before it want missing. Gee, wonder why the story was pulled and who was behind its removal? After all, who would ever mind We the Taxpayers reading about how “lower-income families will pay more as well: the 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent; the 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent; and the 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent.”

When it comes to taxes, we’d like to remind our readers that not all money is created equal:

We’d rather drive

After the failed underwear bomber on Christmas Day, all of a sudden there was a push for these “backscatter x-ray” machines to be installed in airports, despite the fact that they couldn’t have prevented the Fruit of Kaboom Bomber from stuffing PETN in his jock strap and walking on a plane, and ignoring data that the radiation exposure isn’t safe for pregnant women and children. Then there are the near-naked images the machines generate. The TSA has assured us that “the machines have zero storage capability”, yet they specified in 2008 documents that the machines must have image storage and sending abilities. We were all told to calm down, that we’re overreacting, and the typical government “we’re here to help you, not hurt you!” line of malarky.

Let’s just say that we weren’t surprised when over in England, where the same machines are mandatory for all airline passengers, a famous movie star was scanned… then his x-ray-naked picture printed out and passed around airport personnel. Yes, from the same machine that supposedly wasn’t able to allow operators the ability to do such things.

We would like to remind you that the same government who wants you to feel safe and secure in letting complete strangers who are not your doctor see you naked, is the same government who ensures you that letting them manage your healthcare is in your best interests.

Caveat emptor.

There is one bright spot in all of this: apparently Muslim groups are saying the scanners violate the teachings of Islam. So a truly devout Muslim shouldn’t go through the scanners. And since we can’t remember any story of a Christian, Jew, Buddhist, wiccan, pagan, agnostic, deist, or atheist ever trying to hijack or blow up a plane, we say maybe there is a good use for the scanners after all: keeping the slodeydopes (suicide bombers) of planes.

We’re betting there’s more than one

Remember all the people screaming “WHERE ARE THE WMDs?!” after the US military swept through Iraq? They pointed to all these intelligence briefings that said Saddam Hussein had WMDs and pilotless drones and decried President Bush’s attack as needless warmongering just to make his rich oil buddies richer. Many of us used logic and said that Saddam had likely buried contraband weapons in the desert prior to the invasion. (We did give them a couple weeks’ advance notice we were coming, after all.) Well, it seems that we’ve finally found a proverbial needle in a haystack: a buried missile capable of holding a chemical or biological warhead.

We’re not surprised. With the arid conditions of the Iraqi desert, burying hardware of this nature to hide it seems like a great idea. And with the vast expanses of desert, finding such things becomes extremely difficult unless you know right where to look. Besides, we did find between 30 and 40 Russian MiG-25 fighters buried in the Iraqi desert back in 2003, but the media paid as much attention then as it is now.

Missing Person Alert

Has anyone seen Al Gore? Is he going to start appearing on milk cartons? In case you’re in a part of the country without snow (which is unlikely, seeing as how even Dallas, Texas is getting buried in snow), here are some headlines from the past week:

• I thought of killing myself, says climate scandal professor Phil Jones
• Global Warmists Feel a Chilly Wind
• The great global warming collapse
• Snow storm leaves 180,000 without power in Dallas
• Rare snowfall in Rome as cold snap grips Italy
• Climate-Change Debate Is Heating Up in Deep Freeze