Bonehead of the Week

Every once in a while you’ll be reading an article, and you’ll come across something that just makes your jaw drop.  This article is about the conversion of my home county of Bucks from a Republican stronghold to a Democrat stronghold.  It’s happening all over the Philadelphia area, thanks to George W. Bush destroying the Republican coalition.  Thanks George!  People like this woman are typical:

This week was the first moment in more than a generation when the number of registered Democrats surpassed Republicans in Bucks county. “This has been a Republican stronghold for as long as I can remember,” says Marilyn Larsen, a former Republican member of the local school board in Newtown, Bucks Country, who recently registered as a Democrat. Mrs Larsen, a retired teacher, says that it was the Bush administration’s “hostility to science” and the spread of evangelical politics that helped push her across.

I can identify with this too, but it’s not enough to make me head over to ally with the socialists.  But maybe the Republicans should be happy to lose people like this woman, and here’s why:

“Let’s be honest about it, Barack Obama is culturally white – that’s why a lot of people round here are prepared to vote for him,” says Mrs Larsen, who has yet to make up her mind whether to vote for Mr Obama or Hillary Clinton, who retains a lead in the opinion polls. “But when they hear Michelle Obama speak they start wavering. She seems more African-American. People haven’t changed as much as they like to think.”

Congratulations Marilyn Larsen, you’re the bonehead of the week for that statement.  So she’ll vote for Obama because he’s white enough for her?   I could care less that Obama is white, black, green or Barney purple; his policies are the stuff nightmares are made of for advocates of smaller, limited government.

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Quote of the Day

From Obama the Socialist Messiah:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Emphasis mine.  Rachel Lucas had this to say:

Jesus in a meadow. What classic bullshit.

No kidding.  So we’re just a bunch of xenophobic, paranoid Jesus freaks digging a bunker in the back yard because we think the dirty Mexicans stole our jobs, and sharpening our shooting skills in anticipation of invasion of job stealing hordes who will be coming any day now.

Are we really going to elect this elitist piece of shit president?  I won’t vote for anyone who thinks of me and my fellow Pennsylvanians so poorly.

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Mac Gone Mainstream

Tam has a great article on how the Mac faithful haven’t been quite so happy since their product has gone main stream.  I have been a Mac user since 1992, so I’ve been working with this platform for a while.  Of course, the truly geeky among us know that we have not witnessed the Triumph of the Macintosh, but have in fact witnessed NeXT take its rightful place in the world of computing!  The original Macintosh died in 2001, and what everyone has been using since then is really a jazzed up version of NeXTStep that now runs on a very expensive and stylishly designed Intel PC.

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Unisys Tower

Looks like Unisys Corporation (who may or may not have once been my employer) is relocating to the City of Philadelphia from their current headquarters in Blue Bell.  I guess Unisys wants to demonstrate its leadership in the industry by doing the opposite of most technology companies, by selling the cushy campus-like HQ in the ‘burbs, and heading to the concrete jungle.  But the interesting story is that they want to plaster their name all over Liberty Two.  I have to agree this would be tacky, but you have to wonder about people who make arguments like this:

“It will ruin our city,” said Mary Tracy, who heads the nonprofit Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight

A Unisys sign is going to ruin your city?  Ummm.

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Parking Lot Bill Passes in Florida

The Parking Lot bill that allows people to keep their firearms at work on company property has passed in Florida.  NRA has their position on the matter, which I know many of you here agree with, and I respect that.  Unfortunately, I agree with Robb Allen.

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The Passed Ordinances

Thanks again to reader ErnieD for doing the hard work finding the PDFs, but here are the passed ordinances (Sorry, all the links are now dead as of 5/2014):

1. 080018-A Prohibited Possession, Sale, Transfer of Firearms by Persons Subject to Protection from Abuse Orders

http://webapps.phila.gov/council/attachments/5080.pdf

2. 080032-A Reporting Lost or Stolen

http://webapps.phila.gov/council/attachments/5081.pdf

3. 080035-A One Gun A Month

http://webapps.phila.gov/council/attachments/5083.pdf

4. 080017 Removal of Firearms From Persons Posing Risk

http://webapps.phila.gov/council/attachments/4733.pdf

5. 080033 Assault Weapons Ban

http://webapps.phila.gov/council/attachments/4748.pdf

Several of these mirror existing federal and state laws.  Here’s my guess as to what they are planning, based on the laws they didn’t pass, and based on the ones that did.  Ortiz v. Commonwealth pretty clearly established that the city’s Home Rule Charter doesn’t allow it to override Pennsylvania Statute nor the Pennsylvania Constitution, and in this particular case, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld preemption.   But let’s look at the preemption law:

General rule. No county, municipality or township may in any manner regulate the lawful ownership, possession, transfer or transportation of firearms, ammunition or ammuni­tion components when carried or transported for purposes not prohibited by the laws of this commonwealth.

I’m guessing they are planning to argue that the laws which overlap are criminalizing firearms possession for purposes which are prohibited by “the laws of this commonwealth” and so they can regulate.  I’m also guessing they will argue the lost and stolen require doesn’t regulate any of the above, and that the one gun per month scheme also doesn’t regulate any of the above.  I think they fully expect to lose on the assault weapons deal, which was just thrown in there for media effect.

Yes, all these arguments are bogus, and I’m confident they’ll fail, but pretty clearly, I think they will have to argue something other than home rule.

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Pennsylvania Getting More Liberal

According to this article, the southeast of Pennsylvania is growing.

The gains in the south and east, despite big population losses in Philadelphia, have increased the influence of the state’s younger, more affluent, more urban residents. Politically, the shift has made the state less conservative, though it remains less liberal than New Jersey and New York.

Even in Chester County, a Republican bastion, Democratic registrations are creeping up and GOP registrations slipping, though Republicans still hold a registration edge of 48 percent to 37 percent.

“I moved here from western New York because of greater economic opportunity,” said Tom Curtin, who lives in Parkesburg and works for Independence Blue Cross in Valley Forge and Philadelphia. “I think, overall, people in the region are becoming less conservative than they were in the past.”

It’s true.  We’ve seen this pattern before in other states.  One of the problems of New Jersey and New York running their populations out with high taxes and corrupt government is that when the people come here, they still follow the same voting patterns that turned their former states into cesspools.  It’s going to get increasingly more difficult to keep Pennsylvania pro-gun under these conditions.  We’ve been under siege by New York, New Jersey, and Maryland — anti-gun states all — and their populations are moving here.

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