Quickies

A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.






School districts to Obama administration: Your new school lunch program nutritional mandates are killing us.

“The Department of Agriculture’s proposed regulation for school meals estimates $6.8 billion over five years in additional cost resulting from the proposed rules with less than $1.6 billion in additional school lunch reimbursements -- leaving over a $5 billion shortfall for state and local food services officials to attempt to cover.” – Sally Spero, Food Planning Supervisor, San Diego Unified School District, San Diego, CA

Unfunded mandates are always for someone else to worry about, though, right?

Also, from Spero who was testifying in front of The Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education:

“Nothing is achieved when money is spent on food that children won’t even be able to consume and nothing is more disheartening to a school food service professional than to see perfectly good and perfectly untouched food thrown into the trash.”

Translation: Bobby Flay isn't at the grill so these new rules produce food that tastes like garbage. We covered this real-world phenomena, here.

Again, we don't know what the federal government is doing meddling in the school meal business but more importantly, we don't know what schools are doing in the meal business, either.




Lessons learned and growing pains and... a local celeb!

The other main drawback in 2010 was that Tea Party neophytes often chose candidates whose track records or background made them unelectable.

Possibly the prime example of that was Christine O'Donnell, who beat a moderate candidate in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat in Delaware, but whose campaign foundered in part over embarrassing revelations of dabbling in witchcraft. Some establishment Republicans claim poor Tea Party choices cost them the Senate.

"Let's face it, we had people who were solidly unqualified for dog catcher, let alone the office they were running for," said SoCal Tax Revolt Coalition's Wildman.

"The other thing we are learning now is what happens when naive people get into high office," she added of some of the freshmen the Tea Party helped elect.

"So we are learning how to vet candidates properly."

While being a complete outsider was seen as a plus last year, Tea Party groups are now looking for conservative candidates with a track record and name recognition.

In our righteous ardor, this was, admittedly, a realization to which we were slow to come around.

Atta way, Dawn!





Here's B-Daddy riffing on our fascination with Socialism = perpetual adolescence post from this past week.

The key to the leftist mindset is that they cannot imagine adult to adult relationships, hence the "perpetual adolescence" and immaturity in both political tactics and rhetoric. Libertarians and most Conservatives imagine the world in terms of adult relationships, so we can't understand their mind set. Voluntary transactions require a level of maturity beyond adolescence where life is dominated by the welfare from one's parents and frankly from the school system. Fortunately, in America the rewards that accrue to transcending this childish world view provide incentive so that a minority of Americans are leftists.

Do yourself a favor and check out the whole post, here.



Bummer. Looks like Indiana Governor, Mitch Daniels is out.

Again, from The Liberator Today:

The country is the worse off for not having a candidate in the race who has both the guts to discuss the issue of entitlements sensibly AND the proven executive experience dealing with a state budget.

2012 won't be 2010. The public will want proven experience, having been burned by hopey-changey empty-suited rhetoric. Where is that experience going to come from?

Looking on the bright side of things, looks like we'll be let off the hook with respect to our ethanol support litmus test. Unfortunately, the balance of the prospective GOP primary field may force us to adopt some, er, flexibility in this regard. Hey, who ever said we were purists?





Line of the week: On the administration's efforts to find any, any reason for us to stay in Libya

So the Obama legal team is now trying to come up with a plausible theory for why continued participation by the United States does not violate the law (War Powers Act).

(setting the bar high, apparently)


To which AP responds:

First the economy, then Bin Laden, now the WPA: Say what you will about The One, but when he wants something dead, he knows how to get the job done.

We've noted previously that whether its Somali pirates, Middle East dictators or international terrorists (be they foreign or native-born), the Commander-in-Chief never seems more engaged and focused as when he is in the process of wacking people.



OK, that's it for now. By the time this posts, we will have returned from a hike in San Diego's great big ol' backyard and possibly a visit to Alpine Brewery, so updates to this post may or may not be forthcoming.