Thanks to Nanny, ops, I mean Mayor Bloomberg, New York
City’s ban on large sized beverages goes into effect later this week. It means
that you can go to a restaurant or a pub and order a pitcher of beer or lemonade
with your pizza, but you can’t order a 2 liter bottle of coke (or anything over
16 ozs.). You can still get the large sized drinks at a 7-11 (because it’s
regulated by the state, not the city) but you can’t get one at a theater. You
can still get the large sizes in diet soda or anything with less than 25
calories per 8 ounces. Make sense to
you? Me neither. I wonder if someone should not remind the good mayor that we live
in America –we are supposed to be free, even if it means putting on an extra
pound or two. What’s next? Police weight check stations in Times Square to
issue citations to people who are over the Mayors recommended weight for their
height? Hey, Mr. Bloomberg, I have some free advice: don’t even think of
running for President in 2016. New Yorkers may put up with your totalitarian
edicts but the rest of the country won’t.
Afghan President Karzi is running his mouth again. This
time he made several speeches on Sunday, while our new Secretary of Defense was
in Afghanistan trying to improve relations. In those speeches he implied that
the U.S. and the Taliban were ‘colluding’ to keep the Afghan people afraid of
what will happen in 2014 when most foreign troops will be gone. He also
demanded that U.S. and NATO troops stay off University campuses and stop harassing
the students. That statement got the US Commander particularly irritated saying
that we have no personnel on University campuses and have had no reported
complaints of harassment. Secretary Hagel had dinner with Karzi and afterwards
said he “spoke directly” with him about the false accusations and pointed out
that they were unhelpful. Wow, I’ll bet that put him in his place. Hey, I have
an idea? How about issuing an arrest warrant for corruption? That should get
his attention…
Paul Ryan called for repelling Obamacare and asked
Democrats to work with Republicans on finding common ground. Republicans just don’t
seem to get it. The Democrats aren’t interested in repealing Obamacare, Period.
There is no common ground there. It’s not going to happen while they control the
Senate and the White House. Calling for the unilateral repealing of the bill
just makes the Republicans look obstinate and obstructionist to the majority of
Americans who support the plan. It’s time to change tactics. Find specific
parts of the plan that are bad. Explain to the American people why they need to
go and then call for repeals of those individual sections one at a time. If
they tried doing that from the beginning they’d have had far more success. A
blind man could see that the “All or Nothing” approach does not work. It has
hurt, not helped, the Republicans. If they want any chance of gaining seats in
the Senate and not losing control of the House, the Republicans need to learn
to explain things better –and in small parts the American people can understand.
Oh, and stop calling it Obamacare. President Obama is still very popular (I
have no idea why) and when you call it that most of the voters instinctively tend
to think it’s a good thing, only the Republicans think it’s insulting. Start
calling it the “Affordable Care Act” (its official name) and start pointing out
why it’s anything but affordable.
Live Long and Prosper...
Thanks to Nanny, ops, I mean Mayor Bloomberg, New York
City’s ban on large sized beverages goes into effect later this week. It means
that you can go to a restaurant or a pub and order a pitcher of beer or lemonade
with your pizza, but you can’t order a 2 liter bottle of coke (or anything over
16 ozs.). You can still get the large sized drinks at a 7-11 (because it’s
regulated by the state, not the city) but you can’t get one at a theater. You
can still get the large sizes in diet soda or anything with less than 25
calories per 8 ounces. Make sense to
you? Me neither. I wonder if someone should not remind the good mayor that we live
in America –we are supposed to be free, even if it means putting on an extra
pound or two. What’s next? Police weight check stations in Times Square to
issue citations to people who are over the Mayors recommended weight for their
height? Hey, Mr. Bloomberg, I have some free advice: don’t even think of
running for President in 2016. New Yorkers may put up with your totalitarian
edicts but the rest of the country won’t.
No comments:
Post a Comment