Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

Author: Fuzzy Slippers

Profile photo

Fuzzy Slippers

I am a constitutional conservative, a writer, and an editor.

Follow me on Twitter @fuzislippers

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on May 10, 2015 24 Comments
Jeb Bush's super PAC expects to raise $100 million by the end of this month.  According to Politico:
Jeb Bush is putting in motion an ambitious plan to develop a super PAC that would be unprecedented in its size and scope — a blueprint growing in scale and intensity as he nears the formal launch of his presidential campaign. The group, called Right to Rise, is said to be on track for raising an historic $100 million by the end of May, and its budget is expected to dwarf that of Bush’s official campaign many times over. In interviews, more than half a dozen sources familiar with the Right to Rise plans described a juggernaut that was rapidly taking shape — from its likely headquarters in Los Angeles, 2,700 miles from the Miami office where Bush was basing his campaign, to a new fundraising push aimed at expanding its ballooning coffers.
It turns out that his delay in announcing his candidacy is likely tied to campaign finance laws:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on May 09, 2015 25 Comments
In 2011, the DOJ ordered the Dayton Police Department and the Fire Department of New York to lower the required test scores of minorities after too many failed to pass the existing exams, and in 2013, the Marines changed their fitness requirement for women after the majority of female recruits were unable to perform the required three pull-ups. This week we learn that the FDNY is allowing a woman to become a fire fighter despite failing a crucial fitness exam.  According to The New York Post:
The FDNY for the first time in its history will allow someone who failed its crucial physical fitness test to join the Bravest, The Post has learned. Rebecca Wax, 33, is set to graduate Tuesday from the Fire Academy without passing the Functional Skills Training test, a grueling obstacle course of job-related tasks performed in full gear with a limited air supply, an insider has revealed. “They’re going to allow the first person to graduate without passing because this administration has lowered the standard,” said the insider, who is familiar with the training. Upon graduation, Wax would be assigned to a firehouse and tasked with the full duties of a firefighter.
As you might imagine, not everyone is thrilled with this development.  An FDNY member tells The Post, "We’re being asked to go into a fire with someone who isn’t 100 percent qualified.  Our job is a team effort. If there’s a weak link in the chain, either civilians or our members can die.” This is particularly problematic because Wax is the only female firefighter who has failed the fitness exam and still made the cut.  The female firefighters who passed the fitness and other exams are livid; the Post reports:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on May 09, 2015 13 Comments
Last year marked the twenty-year anniversary of Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" that is often credited with helping usher in the 1994 Republican Revolution.  The Gingrich "Contract with America" was a simple, straightforward list of major reforms Republicans promised to introduce and bring up for a vote should they take control of Congress:
  • A balanced budget amendment and line item veto;
  • A crime bill that funds police and prisons over social programs;
  • Real welfare reform;
  • Family reinforcement measures that strengthen parental rights in education and child support enforcement;
  • Family tax cuts;
  • Stronger national defense;
  • A rise in the Social Security earnings limit to stop penalizing working seniors;
  • Job creation and regulatory reform policies;
  • Common sense legal reforms to stop frivolous lawsuits; and
  • A first-ever vote on term limits for members of Congress.
Within the first 100 days, the first Republican majority in both Houses of Congress in 40 years, passed bills tackling almost every item (the notable exception: term limits for Congress). That was then.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on May 04, 2015 24 Comments
While the official U.S. policy has long been that we don't pay ransom to terrorists who kidnap American citizens, the Obama administration is working to find a way around this long-standing and eminently sensible stance. The idea is to allow the family of hostages held by terrorists to pay ransoms to terrorists and avoid prosecution for aiding terrorist organizations.  ABC News reports:
Families of American hostages who communicate with foreign kidnappers or raise money and pay ransoms will no longer have to fear prosecution for aiding terrorist groups, a White House-ordered advisory group on U.S. hostage policy is expected to recommend, senior officials told ABC News last week. "There will be absolutely zero chance of any family member of an American held hostage overseas ever facing jail themselves, or even the threat of prosecution, for trying to free their loved ones," said one of three senior officials familiar with the hostage policy team's ongoing review.
It appears that in the matter of the families versus the government, both get their way.  The families, understandably, want to save their family members (though paying ransom is no guarantee), and this government prefers to negotiate with, rather than defeat terrorists.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on May 03, 2015 30 Comments
When Al Sharpton called for the nationalization of America's police forces earlier this month, many were quick to dismiss him as reactionary or even radical.  However, it may be worth revisiting this point in light of the news that the DOJ is going to be spending $20 million in body cams for police.  As Ed Morrissey notes:
This is another step in the de facto nationalization of police forces under the aegis of the DoJ. Milwaukee’s Sheriff David Clarke warned about that earlier in the week, and this is another soft step in that direction. The $20 million pilot program will almost certainly have to expand significantly in order to have an impact, and the DoJ will end up imposing it as a standard through the enforcement of their Civil Rights Division. That erodes the kind of local control that keeps police forces responsive to their own communities, much the same way that the avalanche of mandates from the Department of Education has done to school boards around the country. This is a decision that should be left to states and local communities.
When any entity takes money or resources from the federal government, it automatically becomes subject to regulations, restrictions, mandates, and oversight by the feds.  We see this in education both at the K-12 and the university level, in health care, even in senior centers where residents have been told they cannot pray before meals because their senior center receives federal funding. It is worrying, then, when the federal government decides to step in and provide body cams for local and state police.  The issue is not whether the cameras are a good idea; people on both sides of the aisle tend to agree that the cams will help resolve questions about police activities quickly, before incidents become inflamed.  The problem is the role of the federal government in local and state policing.  Do we really want a nationalized police force?

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on May 02, 2015 24 Comments
GoFundMe doesn't actually say Christians and conservatives need not apply, but it's difficult not to wonder if that is the intent of their policy change.  In the past week, they have shut down the GoFundMe pages of two Christian-owned businesses who declined to participate in same-sex weddings.  HotAir reports:
Last week they shut down fundraising pages for Sweet Cakes by Melissa and Arlene’s Flowers, two Christian-owned businesses facing discrimination charges for declining to provide services to same-sex weddings, and caught hell for it from conservatives online. With good reason. Until this week, GoFundMe banned fundraising “in defense of formal charges of heinous crimes, including violent, hateful, or sexual acts,” but Sweet Cakes and Arlene’s Flowers weren’t accused of crimes. They were accused of violating civil antidiscrimination statutes. Even if they had been accused of crimes, only a truly lunatic supporter of gay marriage would treat politely refusing to bake a wedding cake as on par with the sort of crimes people typically think of as “heinous.”
According to The Washington Times, the change in GoFundMe's Terms of Service, made after it shut down Sweet Cakes and Arlene's Flowers, includes the words "discriminatory acts":
The website quietly expanded its list of banned crowdfunding activities this week shortly after The Washington Times questioned GoFundMe’s reliance on its policy against campaigns in defense of “formal charges of heinous crimes” to pull fundraisers for Arlene’s Flowers and for Sweet Cakes by Melissa. The new policy, which includes a ban on campaigns in defense of “claims of discriminatory acts,” would appear to make it more difficult to raise money on behalf of businesses facing crippling civil damages awards after refusing to provide services for gay weddings for religious reasons.
Regardless of there being no formal charges filed, the far left was incensed when Indiana's Memories Pizza garnered over three quarters of a million dollars in GoFundMe donations.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 26, 2015 18 Comments
White supremacy, white privilege, whatever you want to call it, it's the attempt to "other" white people in America and to essentially blame all problems encountered by minorities on "white" power structures and on "white" justice systems. Obama and Eric Holder are big proponents, as we know, and as we've seen recently, so are all sorts of people in positions of power from the Al Sharptons right down to the local "community organizer." The good news is that you don't have to actually participate in this as a white person . . .  or even be aware of it, actually. If you're white (and male--doubly bad), you are racist even if you think you aren't, and you bask in a privilege that encircles you like a fluffy protective bubble, bouncing you from opportunity to opportunity from riches to more riches. All because you are white. Don't try to confuse the issue by noting that the president, former attorney general, and various well-paid MSNBC host proponents of white privilege are not actually white and are, by anyone's definition, privileged. This doesn't matter. Because white privilege! As Rick Moran writes:
What makes the academic study of “white supremacy” and “white privilege” so perfect for racialists is that it requires absolutely no parameters of study. There are no standards of proof. There is no way any claims can be vetted in peer-reviewed journals because the “evidence” can be explained by other factors. Anything and everything can be pointed to as being a result of white supremacy or white privilege because of one’s personal worldview — looking at the entire world through a prism of race. And apparently, you don’t even need a white person around for white supremacy to rear its ugly head.
This is just as absurd as it sounds, but it is what is behind much public policy today. From our universities to our local police stations, from the federal government to our local places of worship (well, the "white" ones), our culture is being fundamentally transformed.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 26, 2015 59 Comments
This week has been very revealing in terms of what conservatives actually think and what progressives imagine we think.  The "big" question that kicked it all off was "would you attend a gay wedding?"  This was, apparently, supposed to separate the knuckle-dragging haters on the right from the sophisticated and pious leftists.  John Nolte writes:
Another Republican presidential hopeful, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, made all kinds of headlines when he said something that would not surprise anyone who has spent any amount of time with a conservative Christian — that he would attend a same sex wedding. Out here in the real world this is a dog-bites-man story. Nevertheless, our media considered it as newsworthy as the sinking of the Titanic.
And that's the problem.  As surreal as it seems to most of us on the right, the leftist media and progressive groups actually believe that we have such hate in our hearts that we wouldn't support our own friends and family members should they be gay.  This is, after all, a very different question than whether or not gay "marriage" should be legal.  At least it is to us. This fundamental misunderstanding of conservatives seems more than a simple political weapon designed to rally progressives against those (supposedly) intolerant, nasty Republicans.  The conviction with which they approach such topics--so certain that some candidate's willingness to attend a gay friend's wedding will instill in the base a violent disgust--suggests that they really believe their own myths about us.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 25, 2015 27 Comments
David Frum's naive delight in what he seems certain is Elizabeth Warren's completely pure and altruistic populism leads him to insist that she'll run for president, despite her repeated statements that she will not.  He writes,
By now Warren knows (assuming she didn’t know before she arrived there) that the only thing the Senate can offer somebody like her is the velvety asphyxiation of every idealistic hope. If what you like best is the sound of your own voice and the deference of those around you, then a senatorship is a wonderful job. If you’re in politics to accomplish things, the institution must be almost unbearable. Can Warren bear it? The endless talk, talk, talk? The scoldings from White House aides whenever she says or does something they deem unhelpful? The merciless editing of her speech at the next Democratic National Convention —and the surgical exclusion from the innermost council of the party leadership? That’s the “unique role in the national conversation” in which a Hillary Clinton led Democratic party will cast Elizabeth Warren. Warren's got nothing to gain from staying put in the Senate except drudgery, ineffectuality, and humiliation.
She's simply too good for the Senate, and her beautiful soul can only be quashed and trampled in the Senate quagmire.  The only way to save herself--and America!--is to run against and beat Hillary for the Democrat nomination, and if she is as sincere as Frum believes her to be, she has no other choice but to run.  Frum explains:
If a politician expresses ideas that are shared by literally tens of millions of people—and that are being expressed by no other first-tier political figure—she owes it to her supporters to take their cause to the open hearing and fair trial of the nation. It would be negligent and irresponsible not to do so. Elizabeth Warren belongs to that unusual group who stick by their principles even when it might cost them something, including an election. But if you’re willing to lose for your principles, surely you should be willing to try to win for them?
However, what if Warren is not sincere but is, instead, inauthentic?

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 25, 2015 7 Comments
While I'm not a fan of Grover Norquist, I do appreciate his Americans for Tax Reform's work each election cycle to get candidates on the record regarding tax increases.  It's not the be-all-and-end-all, but it does indicate to voters where candidates stand in terms of big government and taxation.  The Hill reports:
The Taxpayer Protection Pledge is maintained by Grover Norquist’s group, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), and has been signed by the majority of Republicans in Congress. The group says it has shared the pledge with all candidates running for federal office since 1986. In separate statements, Norquist said their signatures show Paul and Cruz continue “to protect American taxpayers against higher taxes.” Signing the pledge could help the senators draw a contrast with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is expected to also launch a presidential bid and is considered a leading candidate for the GOP nomination.
Ted Cruz tweeted a photo of himself signing it to underscore his seriousness:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 25, 2015 18 Comments
Today's college students apparently cannot endure exposure to thoughts or ideas that might conflict with their existing world view.  These precious snowflakes need trigger warnings and safe spaces to protect their delicate sensibilities from anything they may find insulting, wrong-headed, harmful, confusing, or otherwise thought-provoking. Thinking, of course, is the real enemy because it means being open-minded and willing to listen to and engage opposing views in what we quaintly used to call rigorous intellectual debate. Enter the hilarious parody:  Safe Space University, "where we pretend differing opinions simply don't exist":

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 19, 2015 14 Comments
Scott Walker was the latest in the line of Republican candidates and potential candidates to address the New Hampshire Leadership Forum, in the nation's first primary (Iowa is a caucus). Walker's speech was well received. Stephen F. Hayes at The Weekly Standard reports:
Walker guided the crowd through a brief history of his tenure as Wisconsin governor, punctuating the story with suggestions about what his reforms in back home might mean if he were to attempt something similar as president. “Washington is 68 square miles surrounded by reality,” he said, adapting a popular conservative appraisal of Madison. Walker expanded the stump speech he had given in Iowa back in January, a coming out party of sorts, that propelled him to co-frontrunner status in national and early-state polling. The new content made clear that Walker is a hawk and that in a Walker presidency the United States would not only reengage with the world but would project its power without reservation. He called the war on radical Islam and “generational” war and scorched Barack Obama for his ambivalence on the threat. “We’re going to bring the fight to them and fight on their soil and not ours."
Todd Beamon at NewsMax provides some highlights from the speech:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 19, 2015 23 Comments
Army morale is at an all-time low, according to USA Today, and the Army is left scratching its head:
More than half of some 770,000 soldiers are pessimistic about their future in the military and nearly as many are unhappy in their jobs, despite a six-year, $287 million campaign to make troops more optimistic and resilient, findings obtained by USA TODAY show. Twelve months of data through early 2015 show that 403,564 soldiers, or 52%, scored badly in the area of optimism, agreeing with statements such as "I rarely count on good things happening to me." Forty-eight percent have little satisfaction in or commitment to their jobs. [snip] The Army offered contradictory responses to the findings obtained by USA TODAY. Sharyn Saunders, chief of the Army Resiliency Directorate that produced the data, initially disavowed the results. "I've sat and looked at your numbers for quite some time and our team can't figure out how your numbers came about," she said in an interview in March. However, when USA TODAY provided her the supporting Army documents this week, her office acknowledged the data but said the formulas used to produce them were obsolete. "We stand by our previous responses," it said in a statement.
So over the past six years, the time that Obama has been in office, the taxpayer has forked out $287 million in an "optimism" program for the army.  This is the same army that ignored dangerous warning signs that Nidal Hasan was a terrorist-in-waiting, the same army that then declared the Fort Hood terror attack "workplace violence," and the same army that also refused--for six years--to pay benefits to those injured or to the families of those lost?

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 18, 2015 4 Comments
In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that states have the right to refuse the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion without penalty to other, existing, federal Medicaid funding.  Following is the summary from SCOTUSblog:
The Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the Medicaid expansion is divided and complicated.  The bottom line is that: (1) Congress acted constitutionally in offering states funds to expand coverage to millions of new individuals; (2) So states can agree to expand coverage in exchange for those new funds; (3) If the state accepts the expansion funds, it must obey by the new rules and expand coverage; (4) but a state can refuse to participate in the expansion without losing all of its Medicaid funds; instead the state will have the option of continue the its current, unexpanded plan as is. [emphasis added]
It is quite surprising, then, that the Obama administration is trying to use federal low-income pool (LIP) funding to, according to Governor Scott, "coerce" Florida into accepting the short-term federal funding of the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion. There are a number of good reasons for refusing the Medicaid expansion: Not only are health outcomes under Medicaid substantially less than those under any other health care or health insurance program, but this federal funding effectively runs out in only three years, leaving states to foot the hugely-expanded Medicaid bill. Governor Scott has said that he is unwilling to pile such crushing debt on the backs of Florida taxpayers:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 12, 2015 8 Comments
So far, two first-term GOP senators have declared their presidential candidacy (Cruz and Paul), with Rubio set to do so Monday. On both sides of the aisle, there are a lot of questions and concern as people wonder what these first-termers have accomplished.  This is, of course, a fair question to ask, but to be equally fair, we should take note of Harry Reid's lockdown of the Senate for the past six years. Not only were Republican senators unable to accomplish much in Reid's Senate, but neither were Democrat senators (some of whom lost their seats as a result, at least in part).  The National Review reported in January of last year:
The New York Times reported last week on Reid’s “brutish style” and “uncompromising control” over the amendments process in the Senate. Why are more people finally catching on to Reid’s flagrant disregard for Senate customs? In part because conservatives aren’t the only ones complaining. Democrats such as Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota — who wants to repeal Obamacare’s medical-device tax — and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York — who has waged a highly publicized campaign to reform the way the military handles sexual-assault cases — have been denied votes on their proposed amendments to various bills. Gillibrand had hoped to attach her sexual-assault amendment to the defense-appropriations bill that passed in December, but no amendments were allowed. Klobuchar has called for “a more open amendment process” because she’d like a vote on repealing the medical-device tax.
We all watched as frustrated politicians on both sides of the aisle complained that there were more than 300 bills "sitting on Harry Reid's desk," so it seems less than reasonable to focus on legislative accomplishments by first-term GOP senators who were apparently very busily working on legislation that then ended up mired down by Reid.  Even House Dems were urging Reid to pass their bills in the Senate.  To no avail.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 12, 2015 5 Comments

Big government, middle class struggles, food stamps, culture war, Hillary edits, Cold War over?...

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 12, 2015 6 Comments
Hillary is set to announce her presidential run today. At the same time, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg is holding one of his anti-Second Amendment events and the NRA is holding its annual meeting.  Hot Air reports:
The well monied former New York mayor and head honcho of Everytown for Gun Safety is holding his own event in Tennessee to focus attention on politicians who aren’t willing to sign on to ever increasing restrictions of the rights of gun owners.
This is just the sort of attention that Democrats are not eager to bask in.  According to the Washington Times:
The near unity among Republicans on gun rights contrasts with the Democratic divide on the issue, underscoring how the politics appear to have swung in the GOP’s favor. “It is a loser for the Democrats and so they shy away from it — except in Washington, D.C., or New York, where they have a strong liberal constituency and where it is not going to cost them votingwise,” said Robert A. Levy, of the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.
Accessibility by WAH