No More Eggs by the Dozen: EU Micromanages British Sales

File this under one of the most ridiculous egregious examples of big government micromanagement that I’ve ever seen. British food merchants are now forbidden to sell products by the number (i.e. a dozen eggs, rolls, et al.) and are told they must sell by weight only. It’s also forbidden to put the weight AND the number of items on the package. Why? Because the EU is crazy. Hi, welcome to big government.

Until now, Britain has been exempt from EU regulations that forbid the selling of goods by number. But last week MEPs voted to end Britain’s deal despite objections from UK members.

The new rules will mean that instead of packaging telling shoppers a box contains six eggs, it will show the weight in grams of the eggs inside, for example 372g.

Or that a bag of white rolls has 322g inside instead of half a dozen. The rules will not allow both the weight and the quantity to be displayed.

[…]

The move could cost retailers millions of pounds because of changes they will have to make to packaging and labelling, as well as the extra burden of weighing each box of food before it is put on sale.

The cost is likely to be passed on to shoppers through higher grocery bills.

The cost that merchants will be forced to incur complying with this law will be astronomical. Yes, at a time when the world economy is teetering on the edge, let’s make it more difficult for families to afford food! Let’s raise the cost of their groceries as a way to help them. If you told me that Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter was writing these regulations I would be completely unsurprised.

Look how much time they have on their hands:

The new labelling row is the latest in a long line of European Union food policy scandals.

The EU passed a directive in 1994 ruling that top-of-the-range bananas had to be ‘free from malformation or abnormal curvature of the fingers’. The directive was ridiculed as a symbol of bureaucratic excess in Brussels.

In 1988, it ruled that top-of-the-range cucumbers must bend by only 10mm per 10cm in a directive designed to help packaging and transport.

In 1979, another directive ruled that carrots should be termed as fruits, as the Portuguese made jam out of them.

In 2003, a threatened European ban on smoky-bacon crisps was averted at the last minute when MEPs forced through amendments after a backlash from the British public.

Finger-curved bananas? Ghastly! But a ban on bacon crisps? ATROCITY. David Cameron will meet his first test as prime minister going toe-to-toe with the EU over this.

If cap-and-tax passes we’ll face a similar intrusion.

Biden Campaigns for the New Blago

Giannoulias doesn’t have Blago’s seksai Big Boy hair-do, though.

As the Chicago Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet noted, Biden’s far from the only White House attaché trekking to Illinois this month to assist Democratic Senate nominee Alexi Giannoulias with fundraising

Yes, Biden is campaigning for this guy.

Whose aides do this to people:

Why are liberals so touchy-feely and quick to commit battery and assault? GET GIRLFRIENDS.

(video via)

WSJ: Liberals Flunk Econ 101

Interesting article from the Wall Street Journal:

Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic and I considered the 4,835 respondents’ (all American adults) answers to eight survey questions about basic economics. We also asked the respondents about their political leanings: progressive/very liberal; liberal; moderate; conservative; very conservative; and libertarian.

[…]

Consider one of the economic propositions in the December 2008 poll: “Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.” People were asked if they: 1) strongly agree; 2) somewhat agree; 3) somewhat disagree; 4) strongly disagree; 5) are not sure.

Basic economics acknowledges that whatever redeeming features a restriction may have, it increases the cost of production and exchange, making goods and services less affordable.

[…]

In this case, percentage of conservatives answering incorrectly was 22.3%, very conservatives 17.6% and libertarians 15.7%. But the percentage of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly was 67.6% and liberals 60.1%. The pattern was not an anomaly.

Suffocating the free market and allowing government to intrude fixing regulations, limitations, et al. is disastrous for an economy; this scenario has played out time and time again on the international stage in various countries. I don’t know if it’s because liberals confuse it with American exceptionalism and thus, think that this time it will be different, but it’s not compassionate to make it harder for people to provide for themselves or to take away their opportunities to do so.

Conservatives Target Incumbents; Dems Prefer Establishment

From Gallup:

Registered voters are nearly twice as likely to say they would rather vote for a congressional candidate with no prior experience in Congress as to say they would vote for one who has previously served in Congress. This view, however, is not shared by all party groups, as Democrats are slightly more likely to favor a candidate with congressional experience.

These party differences may reflect the fact that Democrats currently hold the majority of seats in Congress, so the more incumbents who are re-elected, presumably the better for the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, only as many as one in four independents or Republicans seem to place a high value on congressional experience this year.

It’s funny to me the importance placed upon “congressional experience” over say, executive experience, experience with small business. Note that the Dems believe establishment candidates are better picks for the fall, whereas many GOP just want to clean house. This is why independents are “deserting the Democrats in droves” and why four in ten tea partiers are Dems or indies.

Please, Newsweek. Stop with the Fake Chivalry

Newsweek has it’s manties in a bunch over Right Wing News’s “20 Hottest Conservative Women in New Media” list which, yours truly, was very flattered to have topped for the second year in a row.

Isn’t it sweet of Newsweek to suddenly care about women’s feelings? A magazine which ignored the “hate f*ck” piece on conservative women which ran a couple of years ago, a magazine which published a Runner’s World photo of Palin on its cover with the condescending headline: “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Sarah? She’s Bad News for the GOP — and for Everybody Else, Too.” The difference? Newsweek approached and presented its piece in a condescending manner. RWN celebrated how some of its favorite ladies in new media also happen to be lookers, too. For Newsweek to compare a complimentary piece from RWN to its smart-alecked little cover feature on Palin is laughable; RWN didn’t begin with the premise that conservative women are “problems” to be solved by either liberals or the GOP establishment patriarchy. If we’re to discuss respect for the female sex, let’s begin with the respect shown in the way that each outlet approached the topic of profiling women — by that measure alone Newsweek loses.

Newsweek is behaving like a jealous sorority girl.

… by any sensible standard, it’s clear-cut sexism: women trying to compete on the same intellectual playing field as the men being ranked for how sexy they look in their online profile, not how scathingly they dissect Obamacare.

Looks and intellectual prowess aren’t the same thing; interesting perspective from a publication whose weak excuse for the Palin cover was “It was the most interesting image to illustrate the theme of the cover.”

I’ll straight-up admit that as a chick, looks are powerful, an asset. I and other women on this list don’t pretend. Would it be sexist towards us to use our advantages to disarm others, if we were in truth the predators rather than the prey? Ignoring such a truth just solidifies the “women are stupid and helpless” leftist narrative.

Are we to assume that Newsweek thinks that complimenting a woman’s looks is an insult? I’d bet on any of these ladies on this list against any man any day of the week; it’s even better because they’re all good-looking. If Newsweek is really trying that hard to confuse a fun contest with a measure of intelligence then they just proved my point the the left is predominately more sexist than the right could ever aspire to be simply because they can’t separate a woman’s body from her mind; we can celebrate both when they exist simultaneously. These women have proven themselves on an intellectual level, thus their inclusion on the list.

I’ve heard the left whining and crying about how the one-sheets for each of these women weren’t provided in the article; oh, here, LET ME GOOGLE THAT FOR YOU. Geez, I didn’t even break a sweat. Are your fingers broken? If you have to Google the name of any woman on that list then I hope you don’t take yourself too seriously as a pundit. Sad that the only time some, including Newsweek, took the time to write about any of these accomplished women was to critique their inclusion in a fun contest that was, by way of not taking itself too seriously, more respectful of conservative women than any such write-up I’ve seen in online pulp liberal.

Newsweek accuses conservatives of being inconsistent since they are not protesting this list the way that they lamented the condescending Newsweek cover. Frankly, I think that Newsweek is butthurt because they expected their cover to be a crumb for the conservatives and were perhaps upset when the issue didn’t sell. Newsweek is for sale, after all.

The failure of the right-wing “values” crowd to decry contests like this is bad for them—it undermines their standing to comment on gender—and, most important, bad for women.

The failure of the left to recognize sexism is bad for women. “Values,” what, Christian values? I’m well-versed in Scripture, I’d love for one of the Newsweek bloggers to show me where in the Gospels it forbids the innocent, not malicious “hate f*cking” compliment of an attractive woman. It’s a sad attempt to hook the right with their own values and it only serves to amplify the left’s prejudiced stereotype of conservatives: we have no fun, we only listen to gospel, we surely can’t appreciate God’s work in the beauty or handsomeness of another human. Those “values” include celebrating women, not tearing them down by way of making them appear weak, befuddled, to blame for the problems of Republican men, and as a “problem” which requires immediate attention.

Now, had RWN published a list of attractive women under the headline “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Attractive Conservative Women in New Media” presupposing that we were a problem waiting to be solved, that would be a different issue. But it’s not. That scenario was posed by a liberal male author.

Of course.

Sister Toldjah weighs in, as does Snark and Boobs.