Dude!

Talk about irresponsible.

Dangerous Gun Stolen From SWAT Officer

WFTV found out Tuesday an elite and dangerous gun is on the streets after being stolen from a Sanford SWAT officer. Investigators believe car burglars swiped it from inside the officer's unmarked patrol car at his Volusia County home. Investigators aren't sure if the car doors were even locked.

Investigators said there were no obvious signs that someone forced their way in. WFTV’s sources said there was even a special key left in the car's gun rack that allowed the thieves to steal the very high-powered weapon.

The article says it was an automatic M-4 assault rifle - a machine gun. He left the key in the gun lock and didn't even lock the car doors.

Mastercard Trying to Look All PC

MasterCard offers card aimed at Muslims

Is it available to everyone who wants one, or just Muslims? That's the test.

With the iFreedom Plus Mastercard, holders load up their card with cash in advance, up to $6,000. Each purchase draws down on the account without accruing interest.

Cardholders pay $50 for two years of use and each transfer of cash on to the card costs 95 cents.

Apparently, paying interest on credit cards is against sharia law. So in this sleight of hand Mastercard is getting their "interest" from fees and the interest Mastercard earns on their money. This isn't new, they have been available, I've seen prepaid Visa cards at Walmart for some time.

Why not just open a second checking account and use the debit card? Just transfer the funds you need and if someone hacks your card they don't have your main account.

It does strike me as ironic that they would name a credit card targeted to Muslims the iFreedom Plus. I guess they couldn't call it the iOppressed Plus.

And Just So You Know, Death Panels WILL Save Money

Oh, by the way, the, ahem, Medical Advisory Board, aka death panel, IS in the health care control bill, despite all the denials and the laughing at Sarah Palin for suggesting such a thing.

Goldfish 'Stings'

In America, it's illegal to sell cigarettes or alcohol to minors. In England, it's (also?) illegal to sell goldfish to minors.

Her offence was to unwittingly sell a goldfish to a 14-year-old boy taking part in a trading standards 'sting'.

At most, pet shop owner Joan Higgins, 66, expected a slap on the wrist for breaking new animal welfare laws which ban the sale of pets to under-16s.

Instead, the great-grandmother was taken to court, fined £1,000, placed under curfew - and ordered to wear an electronic tag for two months.

The punishment is normally handed out to violent thugs and repeat offenders.

Wow, they have goldfish stings? It's hard to imagine an entire society where the government treats everyone like a 2-year-old. Alright, maybe 5. Of course, America is on the same path, we just started late.

Let the Smearing Begin

Infiltrators posing as tea partiers? by Michael Massie

The liberal Democrats, aided by infectious granuloma like Janeane Garafolo and Rosie O'Donnell, have been attempting to brand the tea party as a movement motivated by racism since its inception. Congress members are now following in vocal pursuit.

This is an orchestrated assault by left-wing socialists straight from the pages of Saul Alinsky's playbook. His plan was to have his people pose as members of the groups he hated and act in disruptive, untoward ways that the groups he opposed would be blamed for. It is intended to impugn, marginalize and intimidate into submission tea-party members and the grass-roots movement that is growing in its intensity like a brush fire on a dry prairie.

The airways are now filled with Democrats claiming they are receiving threats and being called names by those angered that Obamacare was passed. I argue this is simply untrue. Allegations of the "N" word being hurled at black congressmen are unsubstantiated. It is not impossible that a rogue tea-party member or someone associated with same would leave a voice message that was less than flattering. That said, absolutely nothing dissuades me from believing that people posing as tea-party members would, in fact, do that and more for the express purpose of negatively branding their perceived opponents.

He sums it up with the thought I have had on my mind the past few weeks.

We must be aware that, potentially, Janet Napolitano will use these fabrications to attempt taking action against us. Keep in mind, it wasn't that long ago that she referenced us, along with U.S. military veterans, as being potential right-wing terrorists.

And it has already begun. I will go out on the limb and say that this Alleged Militia Plot is mostly trumped up BS charges and is part of a plan to scare the American people and put down the Tea Party movement. Weapons of mass destruction? To kill police officers? to levy war against the United States? Those guys, pictured in that article? I don't think Hollywood would buy that plot.

And what, pray tell, are the weapons of mass destruction? homemade bombs? So, in other words, Iraq is flooded with weapons of mass destruction. But I thought they never found any. I get so confused by main stream media reporting. They lie so much they can't remember what they said last.

The arrests have dealt "a severe blow to a dangerous organization that today stands accused of conspiring to levy war against the United States," Attorney General Eric Holder said.

A dangerous organization? to the United States? No. Sorry. I'm not buying it.
Look, I don't know what the deal is with those guys but I'm pretty sure it's not as bad as they are making it out to be. It might be bad for all I know, just not what they are making it out to be, that's all.

This is not a problem, I guess, because they're not white guys with guns? I don't know. What about the huge gang problem in our nations cities - and suburbs. Gangs are criminal organizations. Murder - of police officers and innocent civilians, rape, robbery, drug crimes, car jackings, illegal weapon carrying and using are all committed - not just planned - but routinely committed on a daily basis all over this country. Some neighborhoods are held hostage, especially at night, by these gangs. You don't dare leave your house. But what is the problem? A small group of white men running through the woods, in the middle of nowhere, carrying guns, having fun and training to be prepared in case society collapses in on itself - looking more likely everyday - and they will have to defend themselves and their families because there will be no rule of law. Maybe that's not your cup of tea, but if they are not hurting anyone, leave them alone. Maybe you do something they don't like.

Anyone planning to kill police officers or innocent people deserve what they get, you'll get no arguments from me, but training to use legally obtained and lawful weapons to defend yourself against criminals should be applauded and encouraged.

How many times can they jam the words militia, Christian and weapons of mass destruction in one article? Oohhh, and Christian Warrior. So scary.

Shutting Up Your Political Opponent

It's the government thing to do these days. This video applies equally to Amerika as well.

"Fear of free speech is the symptom of a profoundly neurotic and dishonest society which is what we've got on our hands now."

"When the truth is against the law, then there is something seriously wrong with the law."

Intermission

It’s Time for Us to be Amazing Again

A Word to the Weary

Social Security is running deficits now. Its collapse is a matter of actuarial fact, not opinion. The Congressional Budget Office just released a report that says the national debt will reach 90% of our gross domestic product by 2020… and the CBO usually under-estimates the effects of economic slowdown on federal tax revenue. Two years ago, the CBO thought Social Security would not be in the red until 2019. Five years ago, Barack Obama’s party confidently assured us the program would remain solvent for decades. These people have always been wrong. They just compounded their errors with trillions of deficit spending from a bill none of them read.

So, yes, the situation is serious. You can’t wait fourteen years to deal with a meltdown that’s fifteen years away. Even if the system was not due to implode into a black hole of unfunded liability, the offenses against freedom required to create and sustain it would still be wrong. Those offenses did not begin with the current President. They began long before I was born. That doesn’t make them any more excusable. We should not accept decades of error as an insurmountable obstacle to doing better.

The task awaiting us at the ballot box is difficult, but not impossible. Laws have no magical, talismanic power – if they did, we wouldn’t need law enforcement. We can change laws. We can dissolve any body that tells us otherwise. No one can hold us down in our national deathbed. We are instructed to worship the political traditions of the 1940s, 60s, and 70s, when vast and eternal departments of limitless appetite and wretched inefficiency were constructed. Our birthright as Americans includes a far older, stronger tradition from 1776, which teaches us that only our liberty is eternal.

Ripping Out the Foundation

Obamacare Dystopia

I refer you to the decision last year by the donut chain Tim Hortons, a Delaware corporation, to reorganize itself as a Canadian corporation "in order to take advantage of Canadian tax rates." Hold that thought: "In order to take advantage of Canadian tax rates" — a phrase hitherto unknown to American English outside the most fantastical futuristic science fiction.

Race Baiters - Talk, Talk, Talk, No Evidence

I hear a lot of talk about racial epithets being used by members of the Tea Party movement but I have yet to see or hear any evidence. I was just reading an article by the AP that read:

Conservative columnist Andrew Breitbart disputed accounts that tea party activists in Washington shouted racial epithets at black members of Congress amid the health care debate, although he didn't provide any evidence.

Why does Andrew Breitbart have to provide evidence of something that never happened? How do you do that? Where is the evidence of it happening? If you say it happened, YOU must provide the proof. Here are a couple of YouTube videos of the event in question. There is no evidence of racial slurs at all. I see at least one black women there, part of the Tea Party and there is no negative reaction on her part at all.

I have watched a few videos on YouTube that said this happened and NONE of them have provided any proof. Just talk. BS. It's all BS, there is no racial overtone to the Tea Party movement at all. It's not about race, it's about the Constitution. Period. Anyone who says otherwise is either a liar or has been listening to and believing liars.

If John Lewis thought he was in any danger at all he would never have walked through there, I'm sure he had no reason to other than baiting the protesters.





They are shouting, "Kill the Bill!"

Basil has post that shows what the various main stream media outlets reported.

"Being a Muslim is Not a Relationship with God, It's a Relationship with the State."

That's a very interesting quote from the 2nd video, considering the politically correct view is relationship with the state and there is no God. No wonder leftists and Islamists are politically in agreement on the destruction of American values.

Fedzilla

Federal government = Godzilla by Frank J

The federal government is Godzilla. That's the easiest way to look at it. It's this giant, lumbering beast that is marginally under our command. So what do you do with such a thing? Well, if you need to destroy Tokyo (which is something we tasked our government with in the 40s), then it’s well suited for such a task. Godzilla is great at smashing things and can easily unleash havoc.

But let’s say we don’t need to smash something at the moment. Let’s say instead we want it to feed the poor. Well, I guess Godzilla could carry a bunch of food and try to hand it out to the little ants in front of it, but it’s likely to crush a bunch of people and smash a few buildings in the process. It’s so big, it might not even notice that and think it’s doing a great job. And the bigger we make Godzilla, the less it’ll hear our pleas and the more likely it is to unwittingly crush and destroy things while trying to be helpful.

And if Godzilla is in the middle of trying to help us and we accidentally make it mad…

A Religion of Intolerance

Muslims Burn a Christian Alive in Pakistan

Arshad Masih was brutally killed by Muslims because he refused to renounce the Christian faith. He died from burns which covered 80 per cent of his body and it took three agonizing days before he finally passed away from being burnt alive by Muslims.

Hat Tip: Rich

Universal lack of access. Equality of crap.

Mark Steyn Double Tap today:

No tiers left to shed

There are more MRI machines in the city of Philadelphia than the whole of Canada. The average wait for an MRI in the US is three days. In Canada, it's six months - but that's with all these ghastly private clinics. Now that we’re getting rid of those, I'm confident we can push that waiting time all the way up to the coveted one-year mark. And that's what counts, isn’t it? Universal lack of access. Equality of crap.

The Nationalization of your body

Ultimately, it's not the nationalization of health care but the nationalization of your body. Right now, if you want an MRI, it's between you and your doctors. In a government-run system, if you want an MRI and you can't get one, it's the government's fault. And the government should do something about it. Not give you the MRI, of course (that's too obvious, as well as too expensive), but at least introduce a new Patient's Bill of Rights, as Gordon Brown's just done, promising every Briton the "right" to hospital treatment within 18 weeks. Or your (tax) money back? Ah, well, no, but the Prime Minister's charter will also give you "guaranteed access to cancer treatments", as well as "the right to die at home", which sounds a bit as if Mr Brown is covering himself. Scotland's male cancer survival rate is 40 per cent, compared to America’s 66 per cent. So if the other 60 per cent of Scots all exercise their right to die at home that might free up some "guaranteed access" for the remainder. And, if it doesn't, the Prime Minister will perhaps introduce a new helpline - 1-800-PATIENT – in which all you have to do is punch in your postal code and some bureaucrat will come on the line to explain that that new cancer-survival targets for your area will be introduced circa 2012, so call back then, if you're not dead.

Canadian Hatemongers

Oh, Canada! by Ann Coulter

If a university official's letter accusing a speaker of having a proclivity to commit speech crimes before she's given the speech—which then leads to Facebook postings demanding that Ann Coulter be hurt, a massive riot and a police-ordered cancellation of the speech—is not hate speech, then there is no such thing as hate speech.

"Mob rule in Ottawa as leftist thugs used violence, intimidation and the threat of anarchy to prevent Ann Coulter from speaking at a local, bush league university."

Shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre by Mark Steyn

The quality of your argument is only important if you want to win by persuasion. But it’s irrelevant if you want to win by intimidation. I’m personally very happy to defend my columns in robust debate, but, if Canada believed in robust debate, we wouldn't have these "human rights" commissions or university administrators like the wretched M Houle in the first place. The morons who shut down Ann Coulter last night don't care that they made her point for her, anymore than those Muslim agitators in the streets of London fretted about the internal contradictions of threatening to kill anyone who says they're violent.

Now Why Would That Be?

Authors of "Obamacare" conveniently Exempted from "Obamacare"

One such surprise is found on page 158 of the legislation, which appears to create a carve out for senior staff members in the leadership offices and on congressional committees, essentially exempting those senior Democrat staffers who wrote the bill from being forced to purchase health care plans in the same way as other Americans.

Institutional Cowardice

The mother of a Ballard High School student is fuming after the health center on campus helped facilitate her daughter's abortion during school hours.

"We had no idea this was being facilitated on campus," said Jill. "They just told her that if she concealed it from her family, that it would be free of charge and no financial responsibility."

On a related note: Health Care Law Signals US Empire Decline?

This guy only sees 'one' signal?

In their expansionary phase, empires force people to go out, seek risks and fend for themselves, Murrin said, reminding of the dismantling of the British empire after the war, when the National Health Service, which ensures universal health coverage in Britain, was created.

"This (empire decline) is actually a dead-set course that societies get into and it will happen very quickly I'm afraid,"

Fundamentally Flawed

If We Don't Fight for It, We Don't Deserve It

It's a Civil War: What We Do Now by Dennis Prager

I write the words "civil war" with an ache in my heart. But we are in one.

Thank God this civil war is non-violent. But the fact is that the left and the rest of the country share almost no values. The American value system and the leftist value system are irreconcilable. If the left wins, America's values lose. If American values prevail, the left loses.

Vote Buying Continues

Democrats in congress are pushing a new law that would allow convicted felons to vote.

Like minded voters.

Legalized Corruption

Congress' legalized corruption by Walter E. Williams

A far better explanation for the billions going to the campaign coffers of Washington politicians and lobbyist lies in the awesome government power and control over business, property, employment and other areas of our lives. Having such power, Washington politicians are in the position to grant favors and commit acts that if committed by a private person would land him in jail.

We will only begin to correct this mess the country is in when we hold congress to the same standards and laws that you and I must obey. Republicans, Democrats, doesn't matter. For our present congress we can have an prisoner admitting station right down the hall so we can watch on CSPAN as they are led away from their seats and processed.

Doing Dishonest Work

An Off-Budget Office? by Thomas Sowell

Under the headline "Costly Bill Seen as Saving Money," the San Francisco Chronicle last week began a front-page story with these words: "Many people find it hard to understand how the health care legislation heading for a decisive vote Sunday can cost $940 billion and cut the horrendous federal deficit at the same time."

It's not hard to understand at all. It is a lie.

What makes this particular lie pass muster with many people, who might otherwise use their common sense, is that the Congressional Budget Office vouched for the consistency of the budget numbers that say you can add millions of people to a government-run system and yet save money.

The Congressional Budget Office does honest work. But it can only use the numbers that Congress supplies-- and Congress does dishonest work. It is not the CBO's job to give their opinion as to whether any of the marvelous things that Congress says it will do in the future are either likely or possible.

We will begin to fix this mess we have made when congress is held to the same standards and laws as you and I, and it is strictly enforced.

Awesome

When did we lose the right to question authority?

When those that told us to question authority became authority.

A comment by Kurt P on this post

The Truth About "Assault Weapons"

Why gun owners are angry.




The following video compares the power of the "scary" AK47 with common hunting rifles.

No Absolutes?

Do laws exist?

A sermon by Jim O'Brien from the Church of God Cincinnati and Lexington

Quotes of the Day

"There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action."

- Goethe

"Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge."

- Alfred North Whitehead

"We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves."

- Goethe

The Truth Will Hurt

Welcome to Deemocracy by Mark Steyn

Meanwhile, Obamacare will result in the creation of at least 16,500 new jobs. Doctors? Nurses? Ha! Dream on, suckers. That’s 16,500 new IRS agents, who'll be needed to check whether you — yes, you, Mr. and Mrs. Hopendope of 27 Hopeychangey Gardens — are in compliance with the 15 tax increases and dozens of new federal mandates the Deemocrats are about to "deem" into existence. This will be the biggest expansion of the IRS since World War II — and that's change you can believe in. This is what "health" "care" "reform" boils down to: fewer doctors, longer wait times, but more bureaucrats.

Look around you, and take it all in. From now on, it gets worse. If you have kids, they'll live in smaller homes, drive smaller cars, live smaller lives. If you don't have kids, you better hope your neighbors do, because someone needs to spawn a working population large enough to pay for the unsustainable entitlements the Obama party has suckered you into thinking you’re entitled to. The unfunded liabilities of current entitlements are $100 trillion. Try typing that onto your pocket calculator. You can’t. There isn’t enough room for all the zeroes, and, even if they made a pocket calculator large enough, and a pocket large enough, you’d be walking with a limp. To these existing entitlements, Obama and his enforcers in Congress propose to add the grandest of all: health care, on a scale no advanced democracy has ever attempted.

You Will Not Get What Has Been Promised to You

The Parable of the Bread Aisle

And why do we have to pay for bread at all? We need basic foods to survive, far more urgently than we need health insurance. Maybe it would be better if the government took over the bread industry. Think of all the money wasted on packaging and advertising, which could be saved if the State distributed Obama Bread in plain white wrappers that said RYE or WHEAT in simple block lettering. Our wise politicians could then decide if all those different varieties of bread are truly necessary.

If you have studied the history of socialism and communism around the world, you know what the inevitable results of a nationalized bread industry would be: hungry people staring at dusty shelves containing a few expensive loaves of low-quality bread. Humanity has invented few weapons that kill people more efficiently than collectivist agriculture.

We're From the Government and We're Here to Help

Political autism by Pat Boone

Whatever the cause (and I think I've diagnosed it), many of our elected leaders in Congress are behaving as if they've contracted a kind of "political autism." They seem strangely divorced from reality, out of touch with the people who elected them, unable to think rationally. They've collectively abandoned common sense and embarked on some wildly unreasonable courses, seemingly oblivious to the protests and outcries of a majority of American citizens, the very people whom they swore to represent and whose security and well-being they pledged to protect.

Even faced with dire consequences to their own futures and the very future of this country they profess to love, they are on the verge of saddling all of us with unimaginable, unprecedented, un-repayable debt, threatening to drive the United States of America into bankruptcy and economic ruin.

When sensible people try to show these "public servants" that they're plunging all of us over a precipice to financial destruction, they respond (if they even do respond) that they're "doing this for our good," that they're "giving us what we need, and all deserve," that we should honor them for signing into law a massive takeover of our whole health-care system, and that once it's enacted we'll all get to find out what's in this 2,700-page monstrosity of a bill, which even those voting on it can't understand, and many haven't bothered or had the opportunity to read.

Jesus

"This word is supremely the name of human relationship. It is His name as man. It is His name as friend of sinners. Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name 'Joshua.' The name 'Joshua' was a name especially created for a man. The man who was to succeed Moses in the leadership of the Hebrew people was named Hoshea, meaning salvation; but when he was to become the leader his name was mingled with the name Yahweh, or Jehovah, so that Joshua means the salvation of the Lord. In Old Testament history it was borne by two persons: The great leader who brought the people into the land, and the priest seen in the vision of Zechariah standing by the alter. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem long ago there were probably hundreds of Joshuas in Nazareth, Capernaum, Jerusalem.

Then bear in mind Paul's declaration concerning the name: 'God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth.' The name given to Him in babyhood, and carried by Him in boyhood and through manhood, was the sign of an intention. He received it anew when He ascended to the right hand of the Father as the sign of the fact that He had accomplished the intention. The name became the name above every name; but it is not a Divine name, it is a human name; it is the name that brings Him near to me in my humanity; it is the name borne by One Who looked out on life with eyes like mine, felt its emotions with a heart like mine, walked its way with feet like mine, did its work with hands like mine; it is truly the name of a man of my humanity, that I feel that I may, without irreverence, lay my hand on His and call Him Brother-Man. That is the supreme significance of the name Jesus, and thus it expresses the truth the title Christ confirms, 'for it is He that shall save His people from their sins.'

In its relation to the Person who bears it the name reminds us that He brings infinite things to our level in order that we may understand them. Jesus of Nazareth was the central, final, ultimate anthropomorphism. Because men could encompass a conception of God only by projecting their own personalities into immensity, God out of immensity contracted His personality to that of a human being, that men might see Him and know Him, grasp the infinite, fathom the unfathomable, and come through flesh into communion with the eternal spirit. In His manhood Jesus was the sacramental revelation of the things that are infinite in their splendor, their glory, and their magnificence. The name 'Jesus' reminds me of the Man, and yet reminds me of the Man through Whom I am enabled to find my way into fellowship with infinite things."

--G. Campbell Morgan, How God has Made Possible What He Requires - The Westminster Pulpit

Deem and Pass

Now for the Slaughter by Peggy Noonan

And so it ends, with a health-care vote expected this weekend. I wonder at what point the administration will realize it wasn’t worth it—worth the discord, worth the diminution in popularity and prestige, worth the deepening of the great divide. What has been lost is so vivid, what has been gained so amorphous, blurry and likely illusory. Memo to future presidents: Never stake your entire survival on the painful passing of a bad bill. Never take the country down the road to Demon Pass.

Criminal Congress

Jail is a good option for those who overstep their bounds. If only. Bernie Madoff is in jail for doing some of the same things congress has been doing. Why should our elected officials get a pass?

I Have a Right to Choose

I am a pro-choice conservative

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Why is he the only one in the government doing his job?

This Doesn't Make You Angry?

Obama surrenders gulf oil to Moscow

The Obama administration is poised to ban offshore oil drilling on the outer continental shelf until 2012 or beyond. Meanwhile, Russia is making a bold strategic leap to begin drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. While the United States attempts to shift gears to alternative fuels to battle the purported evils of carbon emissions, Russia will erect oil derricks off the Cuban coast.

Bleep, bleep, Obama, Pelosi, Reid, bleep, bleep, bleep, Carter, too, bleep.

Cuba has rights to the area in which drilling will be conducted under an agreement the Carter administration recognized. From Russia's perspective, this is another way to gain leverage inside what traditionally has been America's sphere of influence. It may not be as dramatic as the Soviet Union attempting to use Cuba as a missile platform, but in the energy wars, the message is the same. Russia is projecting power into the Western Hemisphere while the United States retreats. The world will not tolerate a superpower that acts like a sidekick much longer.

Honduras has more cojones than we do. Their president tried to sidestep the constitution, they kicked his butt out.

Look Everbody! Health Care!

Edward Khil

I like this video, the ships and the sea.



This one is crazy, he's having fun.



Here he acknowledges his recent YouTube fame.

Quote of the Day - Double Tap

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

- C.S. Lewis

Men are often as devoid of reason as of faith. There are with us still "unreasonable and wicked men." There is no use in arguing with them or trying to be at peace with them: they are false at heart and deceitful in speech.

- Charles Spurgeon

Hawaii, Haiti, They Both Start with an 'H'

And they're both states, right?

Are you embarrassed you voted for him yet? He's way past the Dan Quayle mark. He may have surpassed Joe Biden in verbal gaffes but it's hard to tell, no one pays much attention to Biden.

San Francisco 1905 - Before the Earthquake of 1906

Hat tip: Political Pistachio

Saddest Show in Town

Wow! 3000% Decrease in Premiums!



I'd love to see the math that produces that. This guy is a bad joke.



Picture Obama as the front man and the doctors behind him dancing around. Let the health care begin, hurry, hurry!

I'm not sure that is the real Blue Magic, if you want to see the original, here it is. Can't embed it.

Double Tap

"Every time that Obama talks about health care, people get
something very basic: The whole thing is a fraud."

-Mark Steyn

"Obamacare is not going to increase choice. It is going to provide the kind of regulation that will turn private insurance companies into the equivalent of government-regulated utilities. Look at your electricity bill and figure out how much choice you get with that."

-Mark Steyn

Leave Toyota Alone

I am not afraid of my Toyota Prius

Even if one believes all the hype, the reaction so far has been a giant overreaction. Fifty-odd deaths over 10 years and millions of Toyotas is a drop in the bucket compared to the general risk of being on the road at all.

It’s entirely possible that more people will be killed driving to the dealer for the recall than lives will be saved from going through the safety theater demanded by the Department of Transportation.

But one shouldn’t believe the hype. We went through this a generation ago with the Audi 5000 and other autos accused of sudden acceleration, and, again, mysterious unknowable car components were supposedly at fault.

I think Toyota is getting a raw deal. I'm not even a fan of Toyota, I hate their pushy dealers. Maybe it's karma.

England is Finished

Curry house owner foils burglary... and then HE'S thrown in cell when yobs complain

When a restaurant owner found two teenage yobs raiding his beer cellar, he chased them and held them while his staff dialled 999.

Sal Miah assumed police would commend him for catching the young criminals.

But when officers arrived, they arrested 35-year-old Mr Miah on suspicion of assault and battery.

Sorry England, no country can survive this kind of thinking. Criminals have free run to do whatever they want and you can do nothing, NOTHING, to stop them. Oh, and your government is on the side of the criminals. Get out while you still can.

I Can’t Feel at Home in this World Any More

The Passing

There used to be a movie short called “The March of Time.” It was a kind of newsreel, and dealt with important events in current society as I recall. The march of time, or the passing of time, is a familiar idea, but it is altogether misleading. Time does not march. Time does not pass. We pass.

Like a fast car running westbound on the Interstate, we pass mile marker after mile marker, but the markers don’t move. We move.

But on this interstate, there is no eastbound lane. We pass mile marker after mile marker, but we can never go back. We can’t even stop. And this is one of the more profound truths of the Bible. We are rushing headlong through life. We are here for a little while, and then, we pass. "Man, that is born of a woman” said Job, “is few of days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and then he’s gone." (Job 14:1-2)

Thought of the Day

We need to pass Pelosi, Reid, Frank, et al, like a bad case of kidney stones.

He's Just Plain Wrong

Is Tom Hanks Unhinged?

...yet another commentary on our postmodern society that is as ignorant about its own past as it is confused in its troubled present.

The Rube Goldberg Economic Perpetual Motion Machine

The Rube Goldberg Progressives

The Progressives gravitate to the Rube Goldberg complex system of stacking on ever more and complex government controls and manipulations of the system, when the simple direct system of free market capitalism lies right before their eyes. Freedom to produce wealth requires the controls to be removed, relaxed, and/or limited, not increased.

Gun Control Doesn't Work Dept.

No guns allowed. They don't need no stinkin' guns.

The root of the problem of people killing people lies in the person, not in the weapon. The weapon doesn't matter, it could be anything, even a scarf or bare hands can kill. Guns are not inherently evil, but they can empower you to fight back against evil.

You Are Now a Mouse

Heavy Handed Government Agencies

Fed agencies seize toys, call them 'machine guns'

"If it weren't the ATF making these accusations, I'd laugh, but they must be taking it seriously. In all my years, I've never had anyone talk – even laughingly – about changing these into weapons," he said.

He noted that in an Airsoft, the trigger doesn't activate a firing mechanism, it sends "an electrical signal to the battery, which sends more signal to the motor, which is spinning and sending out those pellets."

Velleco accused the federal government, through its gun regulatory agency, of becoming "an arrogant and out-of-control bureaucracy with a history of trampling on people's gun rights."

At the Everything Airsoft website, a commentary noted, "I would be first in line (behind a bulletproof screen) to witness the carnage that would ensue from somebody attempting to detonate a .223 round in the alloy upper receiver of an M4 GBB (Airsoft pellet gun), as unlikely as it would be with the absence of a firing pin and all the other essential parts of an AR-15 bolt to detonate a live round.

"The ludicrousness dissuades me from wanting to even touch on the other issues such as the barrel ... and the dimensions of the ... receiver being incompatible with real steel tooling," the commentary said

It really makes me wonder whether the people at ATF are really that stupid or they are just trying to give honest businessmen a hard time, run them out of business. My guess would be the latter.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha

Idiotic Law of the Day

A bill has been introduced in the New York Legislature that, if passed, would ban the use of salt in restaurant cooking.

"No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises," the bill, A. 10129 , states in part.

Apparently, Dr. Evil has perfected a weapon that sucks all logic from legislators brains - on local, state and national levels.

Quote of the Day

"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it."

--Jeff Cooper

Dude. Seriously.

Man marries pillow

'They go out to the park or the funfair where it will go on all the rides with him. Then when he goes out to eat he takes it with him and it gets its own seat and its own meal,'

Freedom of Choice?

Chile

Nine days later, 41 pictures here.

Chile Earthquake Moved Entire City 10 Feet to the West

I Saw Hurt Locker

I rented the movie Monday morning not realizing that it had won 6 Oscars the night before. I was just curious to see it because of the lawsuit against the makers of the movie. I'm not a huge fan of war movies, but there have been some good ones. Hurt Locker is no Saving Private Ryan.

I'd have to say it's a mediocre movie. I didn't turn it off but I don't really care if I ever see it again. The biggest turn off to me was the stereotypical portrayal of the characters by a liberal film maker. "War is a drug" is quoted at the beginning of the movie. At one point a wounded Iraqi 'friendly' is 'put down' instead of allowing the medics to save him. Meanwhile, they don't shoot obvious insurgents. Whatever, it's just a movie but it doesn't cast our American fighting men in a good light. It's not the first to do that and it won't be the last.

As for the Oscars? I don't get it.

Out Of The Darkness

God wants us to remember that violent death, because violence is the ultimate result of paganism. It is the final expression of a godless society. Cruelty arises immediately when love and truth disappear from society. And God is reminding us that when humanity had done its worst, had sunk to its lowest, had vented its anger in the utter wretchedness and violence and blood of the cross, His love reached down to that very place and, utilizing that violent act, began to redeem, to call back those who were far off and bring them near—in the blood of Christ.

--Ray Stedman

Inscrutable

Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

I've lived in Japan for a long time. When I first came here, I liked living here. Now, I don't. I haven't changed. Japan hasn't really changed, either. Something else, however, has.

Maybe all three of these things are part of the same problem.

This is a long but very interesting look at life in Japan, or at least Tokyo, from an American who has lived there for years.

Good Analogy

Barack Obama and the date-rape of America

Any way you slice it – psychologically, ideologically, politically, morally – we are talking about people in the grip of dark forces and delusion, hell-bent on leading the rest of us downward, which they see as upward.

High Stakes

Losing In Fall OK With Democrats If It Means They Win Health Care

So there was President Obama giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that "now is the hour when we must seize the moment," the same moment he's been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats.

Why is he doing this? Why let "health" "care" "reform" stagger on like the rotting husk in a low-grade creature feature who refuses to stay dead no matter how many stakes you pound through his chest?

Because it's worth it. Big time. I've been saying in this space for two years that the governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture.

It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible.

Here's Something I've Never Seen Before

Kids love doing that in the car, but I've never seen a train do it. Awesome.

Government Socialist Conformity Education Brainwashing

Michigan 6-Year-Old Suspended From School for Making Gun With Hand

"I do think it's harsh for a six-year-old. He's six and he just likes to play. Maybe what you could do is take his recess away. He's only six and he doesn't understand any of this,"

When Roger Waters wrote this he was probably (knowing his politics) thinking, as many do, that fascism is a government of the far right, but it is not. The scale isn't communism far left, fascism far right. The scale is communism, fascism, socialism on the big, oppressive government side and anarchy on the no government side. The goal should be as close to anarchy as possible and still have a functioning society. Liberty rules.

Chilean Earthquake Wave Animation

Corrupt Lamestream Media

ABC Devotes Almost Six Times More Coverage to Jim Bunning's Non-scandal Than to Charlie Rangel's Actual Scandal

Over the last three days, ABC's World News devoted almost six times as much coverage to Senator Jim Bunning and his temporary hold-up of an unemployment bill as the program did for the ongoing revelations that Democratic Charlie Rangel violated House ethics with his trips to the Caribbean.

The difference here is that Rangel's story was an actual scandal and ABC only treated Bunning's actions, which amounted to not giving unanimous consent to a $10 billion spending bill, as a scandal.

Heart of a Warrior

I've been increasingly impressed with what I've been learning from Gabe Suarez through various articles and his Warrior Talk Forums. I was not, however, aware of how he got to where he is now. I'm glad he shared this.

Suarez International

Take a Trade-In?

Can we trade in the current president for this guy? Please?



Part 2

Part 3

It's not just talk, he's doing it. His newest speech available here, but I don't think it will be there long. Well worth listening to, though.

"A Crucial Intersection of Liberty and Obligation"

To Keep and Bear arms by Doctor Zero

The notion that citizens have no good reason to be armed, because the State can protect them from violent crime, is one of the most dangerous lies Big Government has fed its subjects. The government reduces crime through the police and court systems, but no matter how tirelessly the police work, there is very little chance they can actively defend you from assault. There aren’t enough of them, and there never could be. The very areas of privacy that allow us to relax with our friends and families will always be soft targets for criminals… unless we fortify them ourselves. The police arrived at my house several minutes too late to play a role in my attempted execution. They made excellent time – there happened to be a unit in the area. If things had gone a little different, they might have arrived just in time to avenge me.

Citizen access to firearms has reduced crime rates time and again, but this is more than a matter of practicality. It’s a question of principle. The people of an orderly nation surrender the business of vengeance to the government, replacing it with the rule of law. They cannot be expected to surrender the right of defense. The right to protect yourself, and your family, from injury and death is an essential part of your dignity as a free man or woman. Without the First Amendment, you are a slave. Without the Second, you are a child.

The Western nations which have abandoned this essential understanding of an individual’s right to self-defense have become rotting orphanages filled with dependent children. They’re not dealing very well with the invasion of a determined ideology that has complete confidence in its own righteousness, and few reservations about using violence to assert itself. Losing the dignity of self-defense is part of the degeneration from master of the State to its client. As this dignity fades, the people and their government speak less of responsibilities, and more of entitlements.

Health Care Love for Sale

Obama Now Selling Judgeships for Health Care Votes?

Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he's obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson's brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Musical Interlude

He's available for parties.

Answers the question of what Data has been doing since retiring from Star Trek: Next Gen.

They Are Stealing Our Land, Our Money, Our Jobs, and Our Freedom

White House land grab by Sen. Jim DeMint

You'd think the Obama administration is busy enough controlling the banks, insurance companies and automakers, but thanks to whistleblowers at the Department of the Interior, we now learn they're planning to increase their control over energy-rich land in the West.

A secret administration memo has surfaced revealing plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres from Montana to New Mexico, halting job- creating activities like ranching, forestry, mining and energy development. Worse, this land grab would dry up tax revenue that's essential for funding schools, firehouses and community centers.

President Obama could enact the plans in this memo with just the stroke of a pen, without any input from the communities affected by it.

Old Ink, Eternal Ideals

If you only watch one video today, make it this one.

Gun Control

"The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own pantyhose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound."

--Unknown

Lose the 10% Ethanol

Green fuels cause more harm than fossil fuels

Using fossil fuel in vehicles is better for the environment than so-called green fuels made from crops, according to a government study...

Quote of the Day

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."

--Albert Einstein

Career Choices

Sheriff Mack

Clowns...

Funny

Double Tap

Two by Mark Steyn, one new, one old.

America's future could be all Greek to us

While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care "summit," thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen - because they're part of the same story. It's just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They're at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided, instead, that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter 20 (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter 17 or 18.

The Case of the Missing Trigger Locks

Something funny happened in Michigan last week. A six-year-old boy shot dead a six-year-old girl. That's not the funny thing. That's a tragedy, and one so freakish that no parent would ever expect to have to confront it. But what was funny was what happened afterward. Hercule Clinton, Sherlock Gore and Perry Bradley began sifting through the evidence and quickly decided whodunnit: it was the National Rifle Association with their opposition to trigger locks.

You really need the obtuse sidekick to do justice to the brilliance of their deduction. "Good grief, Holmes, that's amazing," says Dr. Watson. "We're standing in the middle of a crack house, whose proprietor, a drug dealer with an outstanding warrant for burglary, had been entrusted with the care of his nephews by a drug-addicted single mother, whose wretched progeny had been exposed to marijuana since the day they were born, following the arrest of their father, who has sired six children by three different women, and in which said crack house this unfortunate young chap didn't even have a bed to call his own but slept where he could and thus happened to find under some blankets, secreted there by a ne'er-do-well teenager, a loaded stolen pistol with which he dispatched his fellow first-grader. And yet you say: all we need are trigger locks."

"Elementary, my dear Watson. Trigger locks, plus background checks on gun-show sales, plus more guidance counsellors and anger-management classes. Skip the magnifying glass and deerstalker. I can phone this one in."

The death of six-year-old Kayla Rolland isn't a gun story. It's a social disintegration story. But that's too judgmental for contemporary tastes, especially when, as in this case, the "family" is black.

Yes, This Describes Us

I was recently introduced to a book called Steering Through Chaos: Vice and Virtue in an Age of Moral Confusion by Os Guinness.

There is a review here that is only visible in Internet Explorer, but I want to thank the reviewer for the recommendation. It is on my to read list. Here is an excerpt:

"The legend of our times, it has been suggested, might be "the revenge of failure." That’s what envy has done for us. If we cannot paint well we will destroy the cannons of painting and pass ourselves off as painters. If we will not take the trouble to write poetry, we will destroy the rules of prosody and pass ourselves off as poets. If we’re not inclined to the rigors of an academic discipline, we will destroy the standards of that discipline and pass ourselves off as graduates. If we cannot or will not read, we will say that "linear thought" is now irrelevant and so dispense with reading. If we cannot make music, we will simply make a noise and persuade others that it is music. If we can do nothing at all, why! We will strum a guitar all day and call it self expression. As long as no talent is required, no apprenticeship to a skill, everyone can do it, and we are all magically made equal. Envy has at least momentarily been appeased and failure has had its revenge.

"Envy grows naturally" said Aristotle in relationship between equals. "We live in a society that perhaps as much as any other has pitted equals against equals," writes William F. May but I think he misstates his point. The United States and other western societies are not pitting equals against equals but unequals against unequals as if they are equals. This is a distortion of the idea of equality and it is this distortion as much as anything else that has enabled the enemies of genuine equality to move on the offensive."

"The idea that we are equal has been perverted into the idea that we are identical; and when we then find that we cannot do and experience and enjoy all the things that others do and experience and enjoy, we take our revenge and deny that they were worth doing and experiencing and enjoying in the first place. What we are unable to achieve, we will bring low. What requires talent and training and hard work, we will show can be accomplished without them." Henry Fairlie

"The same can be asked of much of the revenge that envy is taking today to conceal the sense of failure . . . We are giving the name of art to what is not art, of poetry to what is not poetry, of education to what is not education, of achievement to what is not achievement, of morality to what is not morality, and of love to what is not love. We trivialize our concepts of them all to make them seem as if we may all attain them. None of us is wholly exempt from the corruption. We find no place for the unique, for what is rare and cannot be imitated, since we would then not be able to achieve it. We seem no longer able to admire, respect or be grateful for what is nobler or lovelier or greater than ourselves. We must pull down - or put down - what is exceptional."

The world is living so many layers deep in lie after lie, illusion upon illusion it's a wonder any of us can penetrate through to the truth for even a moment. Thank God for making it possible.