Thursday Ice Coffee--Spring Training Starts

Yeehaw! We in Virginia already have the right to openly carry guns into restaurants. Now Richmond proposes to allow concealed weapons into restaurants. I want to know what girly-men are behind this. I had proposed that the law bearing open weapons be limited to antique six-shooters so to give us the air of the frontier again. Apparently, my neighbors want Uzis and Glocks. But isn't the issue whether you can really shoot and not spread the customers?

I have been told by my conservative friends that fund-raising for the NRA is going through the roof as they maintain that Obama is plotting to take all their guns away. An alternative answer to this is that the NRA has a great dental plan and people want to take advantage of it in a bad time. Gun sales are going gang-busters (maybe not the right word) since the Mexican cartels have been importing alot of weaponry from the States. The State of Montana in an attempt to get around any federal restrictions is encouraging the local manufacture of munitions and guns. My brother-in-law, a recent citizen of the United States, reports that there is an ammunition shortage in Florida. Why he should be interested remains an open question.

I received e-mail flashes that Senator DeMint's amendment on the Fairness Doctrine passed 87-11. A great triumph for conservatives. Well, step back. It was appended to the bill that would give the District of Columbia a house seat, something all but moderate Republicans oppose. Since Obama opposed the re-introduction of the Fairness Doctrine but supports voting rights for D.C., who came out ahead? And now the talk radio heads can't use the Fairness Doctrine as a way to raise funds.

Mary Matalin, whose last campaign venture was Dick Allen's epic fail for the Senate ("Remember the Macaca Moment"), says that the U.S. faces a "mini-crisis" in the financial system. Let's see the entire global financial system collapsed, credit vanished, 19 million homes are empty and millions more are being foreclosed, and the unemployment rates in states are topping 10% and above. It's just a tad incovenient.

Rep. Boehner is still at it. He now says that the Republican agenda is a tough sell because Americans are like "Welfare Queens", who just want handouts. We heard of the Blame American First San Francisco Democrats. Now we have the Hate America First Republicans. We could have a new category "Self-Hating Americans".

Obama is a tax-raiser. He intends to raise the top marginal rates, tax the wealthy for health care and proposes a tax increase ("dramatic according to the Wall Street Journal") on overseas profits by American corporations. We applaud the last move.

As we explained previously, there is about $2.5 trillion of tax revenues hiding offshore. The fact that no one who earns under $250,000 will pay a penny more escapes his critics. For me that is the salient point if you are a Republican figuring out who you lost. Obama just stole the middle and upper-middle class away from the Republicans and they haven't discovered it yet.

You knew this was coming. The agribusinesses, mining companies and other corporate interests who feel their ox is about to be gored are gearing up big time with the lobbying firms to kill Obama's initiatives in Congress. The chances are they will succeed with the Blue Dog Democrats doing their bidding along with the Republicans.

The case against Texas billionaire Allen Stanford's multi-billion scam has taken some interesting turns as analysts comment that the SEC and the Feds were told to stand down by John Negroponte, the commissar for intelligence under Bush. Also interesting is that the Biden family is in this episode up to their elbows. It's looking more like an intelligence plot everyday.

For your amusement, you might try to log onto the CPAC conference here in Washington where you can laugh along with tales of how amateurish the Obama Administration is and how Biden doesn't know the difference between a website and a phone number. Rush Limbaugh will be given an award for his defense of the Constitution. It should be fun for all!

Did Bobby Jindal diss volcano monitoring to get at Sarah Palin, who now is sitting on a live volcano in Alaska? Sarah Palin is saying now that Jindal is really a closet Moslem. (Actually Hindu). Little Billy Kristol says the new Republican strategy is to slow everything down and to tie everything up in procedural debates so that not everything Obama wants can be enacted. In that way, he hopes lightning will strike --eventually.

Anyway, catch the Stevie Wonder Concert on PBS if you can. Stevie surprises by playing a mean classical piano. Maybe he should have a duet with Condi Rice.