Political Stunts
As Human Events put it, the president “denounced political stunts during a political stunt”. Obama called the possibility of a Republican filibuster a political stunt and then flew off with family members of Sandy Hook victims to lobby Congress on gun control.
No relatives of Fast and Furious “gun walking” victims were invited.
Udate: Here’s an interesting Politico story about how professional and effective the lobbying of the Sandy Hook families is.
Iron Lady
Maggie Thatcher died Monday morning. She was preceded in death by Ronald Reagan and John Paul II, the trinity that won the cold war.
Assault Weapons
Now that the it appears “assault weapons” won’t be banned the president is pushing for tougher background checks. Automatic weapons like machine guns where you spray lead all over the place with one pull of the trigger are already illegal . Semi-automatics require a pull of the trigger for each round. Assault weapons are semi-automatics that look scary.
Update: Musket, hell. Here’s a story by John Kass, with amazing video, of a Chicago store owner fighting off an armed robber with a baseball bat.
Unemployment
The economy added 88,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate dropped to 7.6%. The bad news is 500,000 people left the labor market. Only 63.3% of potential workers actually have a job. That’s the lowest labor market participation since 1979 according to IBD. If you include those who have given up looking for a job the unemployment rate is 11.1%.
In 1968 there were 51 full-time workers for every 1 on disability. In January 2013 that ratio is 13-1.
Sequester Scare
The White House is gamely sticking with its policy of Sequester Scare. The president has given himself a 5% pay cut as a show of solidarity with the tots without tours who are denied spring break access to the White House.
In February Janet Napolitano said the Border Patrol would be cut by 5,000 agents. This week it was announced those cuts would be delayed. Here’s Fox News’ Ed Henry asking Jay Carney if Napolitano had been deliberately misleading.
