Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

Ah, Chuck, we hardly knew ye…
Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

In the same article referenced below:

Cigarette sales in New York plummeted almost 50 percent in July after the city raised the tax on each pack from 8 cents to $1.50. The new tax, which Bloomberg pushed to help close a record budget gap, drove the price of some name brands to more than $7 per pack.

I thought the point here was to raise money to cover health care expenses allegedly accruing on the system because of smokers, not to actually stop them from smoking so the revenue wouldn’t be raised. So let’s see, we’re also going to ban smoking in restaurants in NYC…so cigarette sales are going to, hmm, plummet even more, aren’t they?
Oh, wait, I’m beginning to sound like Rush Limbaugh here…
…which may not be a bad thing.

Headline: NYC Mayor Wants to Ban Smoking in All Bars and Restaurants
Fine, Mr. Mayor, you won’t find my wife and me as tourists in your little town anytime in the near, mid, or far future if this passes.
I thought you were trying to boost tourism, not kill it.

Who said this, when was it said, and what was it in reference to?
“Away with the idea of getting independence first, and looking after liberty afterward. Our liberties, once lost, may be lost forever.”
Answers in the full text.

Continue reading “For those who fear the loss of liberties…”

Mark Steyn has some extremely trenchant observations today, but his last paragraph is his most important one:

You’ll notice, incidentally, that I haven’t used the word “liberal” to describe the left. “Conservative” has been carelessly appropriated by the media to mean no more than the side you’re not meant to like. John Ashcroft is a hardline conservative, but so, according to the press, is the Taliban and half the Chinese politburo and the crankier Ayatollahs. So I think we conservatives ought to make an attempt to reclaim the word “liberal.” We believe in liberty, and in liberating human potential. I don’t know what you’d call a political culture that reduces voters to dependents, that tells religious institutions whom they can hire, that instructs printers on what printing jobs they’re obliged to accept, that bans squeegee kids unless they’re undercover policemen checking on whether you’re wearing your seatbelt, etc., etc. But “liberal” no longer seems to cover it.

I agree. I think the Conservative movement does need to reclaim the good old term “liberal”. Hayek used the term 60 years ago to mean what we mean today when we say “Conservative”, not what we mean today when we say “Liberal”. It does not mean “liberal with handouts to the point of nanny state”, it means “a believer in freedom of choice, thought, and anything else you can think of.” And today the correct definition of “liberal” has much more applicability to the right than it does to the left.

Via Instapundit, this article seems to indicate that knife assaults (or at least assaults by people using knives) are way up in the Australian state of Victoria.
Australia banned from private ownership just about every type of gun several years ago.
I wonder if they’d have less crime if people were allowed to protect themselves with handguns?
I don’t think there would be much argument there.

…is amazing today. I do not think I could be so kind.

Keep up the good work, IDF.

Wow. Not long ago the Joint Chiefs sounded like war was an option they weren’t interested in, regardless of what their job descriptions must read like. Now it appears they’ve changed their minds.

Hugh Hewitt has a few pointed things to say about our favorite Democratic Senator. I don’t think I’d be as harsh about his military record, but there’s no question that Zell Miller could have saved us all a lot of trouble had he simply done the right thing and switched over.
The only thing I can think of is that he believes in his heart that since a Democratic governor appointed him to fill the vacant seat, he has to stay with the party that brung him. And as much as I appreciate his sense of honor, he DID replace an ELECTED Republican. So at this point it almost seems that crossing the aisle would be an act of even greater honor than the one he seems currently to stand upon.