The Obama administration made the decision not to advertise the tax cuts, though — believing that consumers were more likely to spend the money if they didn’t really notice they had it. The administration includes several economists who study consumer psychology, and they didn’t want consumers to use the tax cuts to pay bills or add to the savings account. The administration wanted them to spend it for groceries or gas or clothing or whatever. So they simply reduced the amount of money that the government withholds for taxes. That resulted in paychecks just slightly larger.

‘Just slightly larger,’ mind you. Well, thanks! Except it isn’t so. And I’ve got the charts and graphs just after the jump.

Behold this charming graph and the meat and potatoes therein:

Democrats say tax cuts represent one-third of the overall stimulus package, not a huge difference from Obama’s original goal of 40 percent. But congressional budget analysts count nearly $100 billion of these measures as spending because they are credits going to people who don’t pay taxes. The CBO adjustment reduces the tax-cut portion of the package to 22 percent.

That’s right, almost one-third of the alleged tax-cuts were going to people who didn’t pay any taxes to begin with. I call that government welfare. And that means that only 82.1 billion dollars is actually going to tax cuts. And, of course, that was not all at once but doled out over 2-3 years as the second chart here clearly demonstrates.

Further, what Tucker also fails to grasp is that changing the withholding levels without changing the actual tax rate is disingenuous, to say the least, as it does not change the total amount due based on income at any time. Shell game, anyone? And does Tucker think increasing the debt by $3,000,000,000 in two years is a good thing, I wonder?

And this fatuous nonsense about Dear Leader keeping mum about these tax cuts? Please. Cynthia Tucker must have a short memory not to recall this:

“Never before in our history has a tax cut taken effect faster or gone to so many hardworking Americans,” Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Radio and internet address, Tucker. Hardly keeping it a secret, was he now?

I wonder what brought this sudden pronouncement on? Maybe he finally sees the writing on the wall?

U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall said Wednesday he has cast his last vote for Nancy Pelosi to lead the House Democrats.

“My candidate’s going to be somebody who’s a centrist, preferably somebody who’s going to be speaker of the entire House” who will work with both parties, Marshall said.

He also said he had no alternatives when casting his vote for speaker of the House. If Pelosi keeps her position, Marshall said he doesn’t expect retaliation for his announcement.

Oh, of course not. Curious that he felt now was the time to announce that he thought Pelosi wasn’t working and playing well with others. Where has he been the last four years?

Marshall even has a new ad out today talking about how he, gosh darn it, is his own man and not the pet of Nancy Pelosi.

I wonder how Marshall can explain how a vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House twice is actually a vote against Nancy Pelosi. Or how supporting card check and TARP, things Pelosi champions, is actually him charting a different course.

But why should Middle Georgia continue to hire and re-hire someone who says they are conservative but then has supported Pelosi so often in the past? Why not instead hire someone who has been conservative from the beginning? Someone, say, like Austin Scott?

Pronouncements like these are the surest sign the end is nigh for Mr. Marshall and that he can soon return to teaching law at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.

Meanwhile, Private William Hudson just e-mailed in a brief video report from Marshall’s campaign headquarters on the status of the re-election effort:

Both men are co-sponsoring the “Honest Expenditure Limitation Program (HELP) Act of 2010.” As Chambliss notes in his press release extolling his virtuous beliefs, “Balancing the federal budget is an obligation that those of us in Washington owe to future generations of Americans, and this legislation takes immediate steps to stop out-of-control federal spending.” Isakson parrots this line in his own press release, noting, “Congress should not continue on the path of saddling our children and grandchildren with insurmountable debt – it’s just wrong.” So, what does the bill do?

Specifically, the proposal would freeze discretionary spending at fiscal year 2008 levels for all appropriations, except those for the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, Veterans Administration, and national security functions of the Department of Energy.

Bold talk, to be sure! What a dramatic move on their part! And when would this legislation, as sponsored by Chambliss and Isakson, to curb spending be fully in effect? 2015.

Five. Years. From. Now. In a word: pathetic.

The problem that spenders like Isakson and Chambliss continue to avoid from inside the cocoon that is the Beltway, is spending is out of control now and has been for many, many years under their watch. And waiting until 2015 is too long.

Make no mistake, this is not a complaint that the sky began to fall on January 20, 2009. This is a problem that has been growing for years under multiple administrations. For the big game about fiscal responsibility talked by Chambliss and Isakson, the publically held national debt, adjusted for inflation, grew by almost two trillion dollars during the last ten years. And who was at the helm in the U.S. Senate during that period? Why, our professed recent converts to the Church of Responsible Living.

Even before President Obama took office last year, Federal spending per household had increased almost $3,500.00 in the during the last administration. And, again, who was there with nary a complaint? You betcha: our men from Georgia.

Since President Obama has taken office, and the situation has dramatically deteriorated with his profligate spending now unleashed on the Republic, suddenly these alleged Republicans feel that Tough Action™ is necessary.

But where were they when unanimous consent was requested on the floor of the Senate to push through $10,000,000,000.00 of tax dollars just a few days ago and Senator Jim Bunning raised an objection? Sitting on their hands. After Bunning lifted his objection and the vote on spending the $10,000,000,000.00 was taken, who was front and center to make sure your tax dollars were promptly spent? See the roll call for yourself…both Chambliss and Isakson voted to keep the gravy train running.

And Chambliss even supports those who, like him, also just love the gravy train. People like Governor Charlie Crist in his neighboring state of Florida. Indeed, Chambliss will be helping out his good buddy next week by hosting a fundraiser for Crist, a man who has had no regrets about accepting Federal stimulus dollars. When true fiscal conservative Marco Rubio comes calling, Chambliss seems to be curiously silent and non-supportive.

Meanwhile, as Isakson this week is trying to convince his electorate he isn’t a big spender, just a few months ago he was pushing his grand proposal to spend $16,200,000,000.00 to offer tax credits for home purchases. It was a program which had, based on the cost to date of the program, equated to roughly spending $43,000 tax dollars for each home purchase.

As I covered here and here, Isakson had absolutely no problem (since he is a realtor by trade) to help out his own industry. Now that’s passed, he suddenly has had his Come To Jesus moment and thinks that spending is simply too lavish, too outlandish, to continue.

And, By God, it must be frozen at 2008 levels…in 2015. Five. Years. From. Now.

Chambliss and Isakson are not solely to blame for getting us into this predicament. The blame should be equally shared. But they are endemic of the problem in the Republican Party where words are seen in the highest echelons to be enough and that actual deeds can be thrown to the side.

Responsible spending is not a trendy codeword or a theme for a campaign. It is a way of life and must be demonstrated daily in each and every individual vote regarding Federal spending in the U.S. Senate. For Chambliss and Isakson, their actions are how they will be judged. Thus far, they are failing miserably.

The question we are left with: does anyone care?

Crossposted to PeachPundit.com

As Erick has been repeatedly noting, there is an effort afoot to bring the public’s attention to the plight of three U.S. Navy SEALs (Julio Huertas, Jonathan Keefe and Matthew McCabe) who, as part of SEAL Team 10, have been brought up on charges that one of the most-wanted terrorists in Iraq, Ahmed Hashim Abed, received a boo-boo during a raid in September.

In early December the trio plead not guilty to charges of dereliction of duty and making false official statements. One would expect the government, having already brought charges, to be prepared to move forward to trial, originally set for two of them a fortnight from now.

Well, if you thought that, you’d be wrong.

Documents were submitted Dec. 30 to the trial judge, Capt. Moira Modzelewski, requesting the government continue the special court-martial of Special Operator 1st Class (SEAL) Julio Antonio Huertas, scheduled to begin Jan. 11, and that of SO2 (SEAL) Matthew Vernon McCabe, scheduled for Jan. 19.

Seems that there are some problems with the government’s case.

Both Lombardi [Huertas’ attorney] and Puckett [McCabe's attorney] say much of the government’s case so far is based on the statements of a third class master-at-arms who claims to have witnessed the alleged assault.

Both lawyers say the five separate statements given by that sailor appear to conflict with each other. Neither lawyer could discuss the exact details of the statements.

“I have read five different statements by this person, and all appear to be different,” Lombardi said.

The purported lack of evidence from the government has been identified as an issue since the arraignments started Dec. 7 and was the main reason that Keefe’s lawyer, Greg McCormack, asked for a continuance at Keefe’s Dec. 20 arraignment.

Seize onto this situation while the iron is hot. Go sign the petition asking that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, intervene to dismiss the charges against the three SEALs and direct that they be restored to duty.

These are American Heroes. They deserve better than this.

This leaves the CGA in an enviable position to select the best candidates possible, thus ensuring that future Coast Guard leaders are intelligent, highly skilled and professional. Who could (or even would) complain about that and seek its undoing?

Yes, you guessed it: the United States Congress is seeking to fix problems where none exist!

Let’s get the back story, first:

Eight years after the Coast Guard and the NAACP signed a voluntary agreement to work together to boost the number of African-Americans at its 1,000-cadet service academy, the annual enrollment and graduation figures for blacks remain in single digits.

Seven blacks graduated from the academy based in New London, Conn., in the spring of 2001, the year the agreement was signed.

The same number graduated from the Class of 2006, the first class for which blacks were recruited under the agreement.

Subsequently, there were seven black graduates in 2007, five in 2008 and four in 2009.

That makes 23 graduates in four years under the agreement, including the academy’s first black female valedictorian. In the four previous years, the number was 33.

Leading lawmakers have grown increasingly upset with results even as they repeatedly are told the Guard is working hard to improve diversity in a service where only 311 of its 6,787 commissioned officers are black, with only one black admiral.

“The Coast Guard has just not paid attention to it. It is not antipathy or animosity toward it,” said Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation Committee. “I think we’re moving in the right direction and got the Coast Guard’s attention and we’re not going to let up.”

But, remember, the Corps of Cadets at the CGA get to New London only based on merit. There are no nominations, no quotas, just the best applicants from across the Republic. But that isn’t good enough for Oberstar or Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the Coast Guard subcommittee chairman, who drafted legislation to introduce Congressional nominations into the application process for the CGA.

On a 385-11 vote last month, the House advanced the legislation to the Senate, meaning that (for the most part) the U.S. House of Representatives has reacted to a perceived “wrong” without realizing that the CGA is the model for how all other U.S. services academies should operate. The House also failed to understand that the real goal should be to bring the other service academies around to the kind of thinking in New London that focuses solely on performance and character.

But, some may say, the low numbers of black cadets is endemic of a deep-seeded hatred of minorities that simply must permeate every corner of the CGA grounds!

Nothing could be further from the truth.

At present, the academy reports it has 136 minorities, with 72 Hispanics, 39 Asians and 25 African-Americans.

More than four times as many African-American Cadets are Hispanic and Asian! Huh, who would have thought that all those racists at the CGA were stupid enough not to realize that they were letting in so many minorities! Of course, the truth of the matter is obvious: the merit based system only allows the best of the best applicants the opportunity to attend such an institution.

Make no mistake, though. This is not to suggest that applicants to other services academies are dumb. Far from it. But there is simply no indication that the merit based system at the CGA has done anything but produce quality officers for years. In fact, Cadet First Class Jacqueline Fitch, 21, Catonsville, Md., likes the current merit based system.

Did I mention that Cadet First Class Jacqueline Fitch is black?

Cadet First Class Jacqueline Fitch, 21, Catonsville, Md., who recently became the academy’s first black woman to be named a regimental commander, also wonders about making a change to congressional nominations.

“I know when I applied for the Coast Guard Academy one of the things that made me really proud is that I got into the academy off of my own merit,” she said, explaining she was initially rejected and first had to go prep school. “I had to work really hard to get to the academy.”

Here, Cadet Fitch is seen walking with the Coast Guard Commandant, Admiral Thad Allen, during an inspection on October 9.

Note Fitch’s attitude, though: “I know when I applied for the Coast Guard Academy one of the things that made me really proud is that I got into the academy off of my own merit.” That’s the mark, I respectfully suggest, of an officer. She knows that her career rises and falls not on the color of her skin, but on the work she puts into the tasks before her. That’s the whole point here. We need quality Cadets from wherever they are, whoever they are.

When Fitch wanted to become a Coast Guard Officer, there were no nebulous, racist barriers in her way. The only person that would decide if she succeeded or failed was herself. Is that not what we pride this nation as promoting? Should we not look beyond the skin color of a person? Shouldn’t people be measured by their character and abilities rather than their race?

The Coast Guard Academy has made clear their answer: YES.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Congressman Oberstar and Cummings see things differently. And by God, they are going to fix it!

Cummings, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, expects black enrollment to grow with congressional involvement, at least in part because the House typically has about 40 black lawmakers who would be effective recruiters in largely black congressional districts.

Wonderful rhetoric, that is, except it just isn’t true as the Associated Press has found:

As the nation’s military academies try to recruit more minorities, they aren’t getting much help from members of Congress from urban districts with large numbers of blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.

From New York to Chicago to Los Angeles, lawmakers from heavily minority areas rank at or near the bottom in the number of students they have nominated for appointment to West Point, the Naval Academy, or the Air Force Academy, according to an Associated Press review of records from the past five years.

[...]

Representative Nydia Velazquez of New York City, a Democrat and chairwoman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, nominated only four students, the lowest among House members who served the entire five-year period. Democratic Representative Charles Rangel, whose New York City district includes Harlem, was second-lowest, with eight nominations. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose San Francisco district is 29 percent Asian, was also near the bottom, with 19.

In fact, the bottom 20 House members were all from districts where whites make up less than a majority.

Emphasis mine, and rightly so. I will note, though, that the article does rightly applaud Congressman Cummings for his myriad nominations. But how can his proposed legislation achieve the “fix” he seeks when so many of his colleagues could care less?

Alas, this is the issue that the U.S. Congress feels must be addressed with the U.S. Coast Guard: quotas at the CGA. Meanwhile, the Eastern seaboard has no 378-foot high endurance Coast Guard cutters on patrol because they are maintained on a shoestring and inadequate funding is given to the service for fleet replacement on a necessary basis. Indeed, the cutters Dallas and Gallatin are in drydock after being found mission ineffective, even with 40 years of non-stop maintenance by dedicated Coast Guardsmen. And there is more:

Engine-room fires have become a grim routine for the three- and four-decade-old 378s, which have churned their power plants and endured battering seas much longer than their designers intended. There were 18 engine-room fires aboard 378s last year, according to Allen’s testimony, and there already have been seven this year.

Corrosion and fatigue also have plagued several cutters. Two — Dallas and Gallatin — had such severe structural problems that they were taken out of service for repairs in Charleston, S.C. And Allen showed lawmakers a photograph taken aboard the cutter Jarvis in which daylight shone clearly through rust holes in the ship’s hull.

Indeed, the Coast Guard’s aging fleet of high endurance cutters is in such bad shape that officials can’t choose which ships to retire first as their replacements enter service.

Think about that for a moment…and if Congress should be mucking about with regard to CGA admission policy while ignoring funding levels for a critical uniformed service of the Armed Forces.

Liberal Johnny Isakson will, if successful, simply have provided a band aid to a hemorrhaging market (where he made his money) that needs to be allowed to sort itself out.

What’s more, it’s clear that the program, thus far, is rife with fraud.

The Internal Revenue Service has opened 107,000 examinations of questionable claims and identified 167 criminal schemes involving the tax credit since it was expanded as part of the economic stimulus package enacted in February.

The National Association of Realtors claims that the Isakson tax credit has thus far created 350,000 new sales.  Based on the cost to date of the program, that equates to roughly spending 43,000 dollars for each home purchase.

Is that really conservative spending?

Is that a demonstration of good stewardship of the tax payers hard earned dollars?

In a word: no.

Remember, a goodly number of these home purchases would have happened irrespective of the arrival of the tax credit.  The housing markets have never dropped to “zero sales” and some movement of property is always underway.

This tax credit also has the effect of artificially inflating housing prices, thus establishing an environment where additional market inefficiencies can fester and genuine market valuations are unable to establish themselves.

What happens when you artificially prop up housing prices? Imagine the credit were expanded to all home buyers and made permanent. This would simply boost housing prices at the low end of the market by close to $8,000, since all buyers would be willing to pay $8,000 more. (Prices would rise by a little less than $8,000 because at higher prices, more people would be willing to sell.) Whom does this benefit? Not first-time home buyers. It benefits people who already own houses (and their real estate agents) because it’s a one-time boost in housing values. This would be just the latest chapter in a long history of government policies to boost housing prices — the mortgage interest tax deduction, the capital gains exclusion on houses, the extension of the mortgage interest tax deduction to second houses, etc. Each of these policies pushes up prices just once; if you want to keep pushing up housing prices, you have to keep adding sweeteners.

A temporary tax credit has a similar effect, but for a shorter period of time. It boosts the price of a transaction that would have happened anyway. It may create additional transactions, but is that a good thing? If someone could not have afforded a house without the tax credit, then what is he or she going to do when the tax credit goes away and the price of the house falls? In effect, the tax credit is a way of making houses temporarily affordable that would not otherwise be affordable, and we know where that leads.

So what is needed, then?  Simple: remove all the artificial barriers to market entry and exit and allow prices to return to natural market levels.

Just once it would be nice to hear some policymaker or some real estate industry professional say that, in order for the economy to stabilize, home prices must revert to more normal levels – say, levels that are supported by wages or incomes – rather than the familiar refrain that home prices must simply stop falling.

It really paints the wrong picture about what is going on in the nation’s housing market if, by historical measure, homes are still overvalued by a large margin and the government takes extreme steps to support those valuations.

They are overvalued and it is ludicrous to believe that current inflated price points can be artificially maintained in perpetuity.

This is not to say that I am against lower taxes; far from it.  But tax cuts in such arbitrary ways merely serves to keep economic inefficiencies in place which ultimately hurts the consumer both in the medium and long term.  Maybe this is just a bone being thrown to the banks, perhaps?  You know, those banks which also have been propped up through further, outrageous government spending.

What we are witness to is merely another populist, liberal ploy from an intellectually bankrupt RINO Senator to curry favor in the short term without any cognition of the long term effects of his policy.  That, some may argue, we need to spend another 16,700,000,000 dollars to protect the “investments” already made demonstrates the problem: too much government leads to myriad more problems down the road.

It’s time to bring some sanity and freedom back to our markets.

Cross-posted to Peach Pundit.

Neato mosquito, right? Yet another remarkable achievement for some U.S. Astronauts (and one guy from the European Space Agency)? No doubt.

Unfortunately, Hernandez has decided that now his ride is complete and the rare opportunity he was given to become a member of the U.S. Astronaut Corps has reached a new plateau, that this would be just the perfect time to stick his nose into, of all things, the illegal alien debate.

During a telephone interview with Mexico’s Televisa network, Hernandez pushed for U.S. immigration reform — a key issue for Mexico that has been stalled in Washington amid fierce debate.

“The American economy needs them,” said Hernandez, 47, a California native who toiled in the cucumber, sugar beet and tomato fields alongside his Mexican-born parents. “I believe it’s only fair to find a way to legalize them and give them an opportunity to work openly, so they can also retire in a traditional U.S. system.”

So who does this guy think he is? Well, you see, he is the son of illegal aliens and didn’t learn English until he was 12 years ago. His parents marched him all around California and Mexico, where they illegally crossed the border of the nation whose flag he wears on his flight suit myriad times.

But Mr. Hernandez seems to, based on the quote above, care little about the sovereignty of the nation which has given him so many opportunities and believes that the rule of law and orderly methods of immigration are inappropriate.

“What surprised me is when I saw the world as one. There were no borders. You couldn’t distinguish between the United States and Mexico,” he told Televisa.

Evidently he isn’t aware that the Rio Grande River is a natural border between the United States and Mexico.

But what about NASA, which has invested millions of dollars in Hernandez’s training and enabled him to have this platform from which to spew such inane rhetoric?

NASA spokesman James Hartsfield told The Associated Press that Hernandez was expressing his personal views, “not representing NASA, the astronaut office or any NASA organization in his responses.”

That’s all well and good, but this is a problem that has been on the horizon for many months involving this Astronaut. Indeed, earlier this summer, Hernandez started up his own twitter account where he decided to spend his time twittering primarily in Spanish…to people who are not citizens of the United States…the county which, I may have mentioned, is the one where we would expect he’d feel a primary motivation to share his experiences. Unfortunately, this is not the case, as his “icon” image for the twitter account features him in a launch/entry suit in front of the U.S. flag…and the Mexican flag. We’re all brothers and sisters, you dig?

The ultimate question is if Hernandez’s primary loyalties, as a U.S. Astronaut, rest with the United States. Such a question is made even more curious when he has offered to be an adviser for a future Mexican space agency and will discuss same during a future meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

Ultimately, Hernandez needs to limit his public statements to the adventures that the U.S. taxpayers have afforded him and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden needs to take a moment to consider if he wants the U.S. Astronaut Corps populated by people who wear the U.S. flag on their flight suit but use their position to espouse liberal political ideology while embracing lawlessness and a breakdown in the orderly manner with which immigration to the United States has been handled.

Indeed! Nicholson also has fellow leftists such as Francis Ford Coppola, Kevin Costner, Steven Spielberg, Woody Harrelson, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Leo DiCaprio, Chevy Chase, Robert Redford, Benicio del Toro, Bill Murray, Robert Duvall and James Caan who think ‘ol Fidel and his never ending revolution are just tops.

And who can forget Michael Moore’s thoughts about the health care system in Cuba?

As for Cuba, yes, when I’ve got a film crew there, they’re going to show us their best. But there’s a reason the World Health Organization ranks their health-care system [among] the best in the Third World and that people from Latin America come there for their health care. There’s also a reason Cubans live on average a month longer than we do. I’m not trumpeting Castro or his regime. I just want to say to fellow Americans, “C’mon, we’re the United States! If they can do this, we can do it.”

So, isn’t it interesting what has happened in this tropical paradise over the last few days? You haven’t heard? Why, they don’t have any toilet paper.

No, really. Cuba is out of toilet paper. Like they have none if it. Anywhere. Yes, I’m serious.

There’s good news and bad news in Cuba.

The bad news: There’s a shortage of toilet paper, and officials in Havana say it will not ease until the end of the year.

The good news: Day-old copies of the Communist party’s newspaper Granma, a traditional substitute, are available for less than a U.S. penny. And that’s six to eight full, if rough, pages per day.

Well, at least they have the something to use, right?

Surprisingly, one reporter is able to assess the true state of affairs in Cuba.

But CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria says that “at the bottom of this toilet paper shortage is Cuba’s continuing commitment to its bizarro world of socialist economics.”

“Cuba’s disastrous economy would be a joke were it not for the poverty it has perpetuated among millions of Cubans,” Zakaria said in a video commentary posted last week. “The whole country is stagnating. Fifty percent of its arable fields are going unfarmed. First and second year college students work one month out of the year in agriculture.”

“It’s insane farm policies lead to frequent shortages of fruit, vegetables and other basic food needs, shortages even more serious than toilet paper,” he added. “And all those programs that they have held up for years as successes of the communist revolution — free education for all through college, universal health care — well, Raúl Castro just announced they’re going to have to make cuts in all of these.”

Not such a super duper place, after all, is it, Michael Moore? (I wonder if he’s read how Havana is also fast becoming a “mecca” for child exploitation, as well.)

On with the Revolution, leftists!

We can already see a microcosm of what the future will hold for us all in the United States Armed Forces. Already, the system of Veterans Administration hospitals are monuments for government inefficiency, laziness, and suffering patients on waiting lists hoping that they will receive necessary care…some day.

All that care costs money, though! And with the government footing the bill, the calls for changes in the lifestyle behavior of soldiers have begun.

Medical experts say they have a solution for the military’s increasing smoking rates: Ban it. And not just in basic training — stop selling cigarettes and chewing tobacco on post, stop with the discounts at the PX, don’t allow it in hospitals, and come up with a deadline when everyone should be smoke-free.

You read that right. These Wizards of Smart are recommending that the military ban smoking. Everywhere. At anytime. By any of their personnel. Even, one would suspect, in a war zone. Think I’m kidding?

On the battlefield, they bleed harder after surgery, heal slower after injury and are at higher risk for infection.

It is all about dollars, here, people!

It cost the Veterans Affairs Department $5 billion to treat smoking-related emphysema in 2008, and in 2006, the Military Health System spent about $564 million on tobacco-related costs.

That’s almost as much as the $611 million worth of tobacco military stores sold in 2005.

The point here is not if smoking is a healthy pursuit. The point is that those who think with ObamaCare that the Imperial Federal Government won’t one day start telling you what you can and can’t do everyday with their lives and what allegedly “risky” behavior must be prohibited upon penalty of law are fooling themselves.

The worst health care in the United States can be found in Veterans Administation hospitals. And, now, some are starting the call for our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and coast guardsmen to be prohibited from certain activities which are deemed too costly. Frankly, I say they can have as many smokes as they want. They deserve it…but not in the eyes of “experts.”

If it can happen on base or while deployed, it can also eventually happen in your home.

Rep. Joe Sestak, a former Navy vice admiral, says he’s seriously considering challenging new Democrat Arlen Specter in next year’s Pennsylvania Senate primary.

Sestak said Thursday he’s concerned that Washington’s Democratic establishment has picked a candidate who may not be the best for the party’s voters in Pennsylvania. The suburban Philadelphia congressman says he has concerns about Specter’s voting record — particularly his recent vote against the Democratic-backed budget.

He says Specter’s decision to break with the Republican Party and become a Democrat moved him closer to running. He anticipates a decision in the coming weeks.

Sestak was elected in 2006. Earlier, he commanded an aircraft carrier battlegroup in Afghanistan.

With the number of primary challengers for Specter growing and his “new friends” proving to be less than welcoming, it’s starting to look like the chickens are inbound for a roosting on the tattered remains of a pathetic career. Good riddance.