Man Proposes, God Disposes

Chavez turns 57 vowing to stay in power until 2031

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sang, danced and said he intends to stay in power for two more decades as he celebrated his 57th birthday looking ahead to months of cancer treatment.

Proclaiming the Name

If you can get past your religious prejudices - we all have them - there is a lot you can learn from these two men. I'm more comfortable with the style of Nehemia Gordon and I'm sometimes very uncomfortable with the style of Keith Johnson, but we just need to get out of our comfort zones sometimes. The styles and the venue are irrelevant, the message is key.

Nehemia Gordon


Keith Johnson

“This is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.”

President Obama gave a speech to La Raza the other day and admitted that "the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting" when it came to dealing with Congress over the debt deal. And while he added the caveat that our democracy doesn't work like that – the crowd was cheering the possibility of Obama side stepping Congress and doing things his own way.

Criminals Ignore Laws

Norway's gun laws prove easy to ignore

The massacre on the island of Utøya is certain to lead to a security review, with particular stress on how Anders Behring Breivik obtained his weapons. Norway already has some of the toughest gun laws in the world, but they were apparently easily circumvented by the killer.

That's why they call them outlaws. They don't care about your laws, only law abiding people are effected by laws. In fact, our freedoms are being taken away by the myriad of laws that criminals ignore anyway.

You shall not murder, how about that law? And this one: You shall not steal. A couple of perfectly good laws that our government wants to ban.

Not a Good Weekend for Gun-Free Zones

Texas: 6 Killed In Grand Prairie Roller Rink Shooting

Seattle: 10 wounded as gunfire erupts at Kent car show

Norway: Norway mourns island youth camp and Oslo attacks

I absolutely hate that there are people who would do these things and I wish with all my heart that there was a way to stop this from ever happening. The only thing that can be done is to be prepared to fight back. Don't live your life at the mercy of the most evil guy in the room. Peace through strength. I know a lot of people don't like to hear that but it is the reality on the ground. People like this love gun-free zones. Unarmed people are easy and safe targets. Criminals like unarmed people.

My heart goes out to the victims.

Unsuspecting Tourists?

Osceola Theme Park Ticket Scheme Busted

The bust took place over four days, and 14 people were arrested for reselling theme park tickets to unsuspecting tourists. The tickets that were sold were multi-day tickets to attractions like Walt Disney World, SeaWorld, and Universal Studios. The suspects would buy tickets that still had a few days left on them and resell them to visitors for a "discounted price."

Worker Tries Reselling Multiday Theme Park Tickets

When tourists see they can sell their unused tickets for cash, many jump at the chance, said police.

Most of the tourists buying these tickets know what they are doing. I get asked all the time where these tickets can be bought and I warn them every time that it is illegal and they should buy the tickets at the park or on the official website of the park. THEY DON'T CARE. They buy them anyway. They come down here with the intention of buying cheaper tickets outside the park, illegal or not, and it's been going on for years. Sure, when they are caught they claim they had no idea, but I assure you in most cases that is not so. I have worked within earshot of some of these booths and I have heard the explanation of what to do and how. They know.

Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?

Thomas Sowell hit one out of the ball park with this one: Good Things

Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We all recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this simple, common sense fact is routinely ignored.

In politics, there are not simply good things but some special Good Things -- with a capital G and capital T -- which are considered always better to have more of.

Many of the things advocated by environmental extremists, for example, are things that most of us might think of as good things. But, in politics, they become Good Things whose repercussions and costs are brushed aside as unworthy considerations.

Nobody wants to breathe dirty air or drink dirty water. But, if either becomes 98 percent pure, 99 percent pure or 99.9 percent pure, there is some point beyond which the costs skyrocket and the benefits become meager or non-existent.

Stuck on Stupid

Will a Bullet tax reduce crime?

...Baltimore mayoral candidate Otis Rolley has unveiled a new proposal to add a $1 bullet tax to each round sold within city limits. This would be part of Rolley's multi-pronged strategy to reduce crime in Baltimore...

So a box of ammo that now costs $15.00 would, under his plan, cost $65.00. So all of us law abiding shmucks get the bill while the criminals will just steal the ammo they want - same way criminals get guns. It's getting so it doesn't pay to be honest anymore. Liberalism is a mental disorder.

This shows that they kinda, sorta understand that taxing something creates less of it. They tax cigarettes cause they don't want people to smoke, they want to tax bullets so people won't shoot - the 'sin' tax, levied on products or services they want to discourage. But why does taxing productivity cause them to salivate? They want less productivity? They don't want people making money? Really? What they really want is for people to make money and give it all to them so they can continue their power trip.

The Fear-Mongering President

Nothing Green Here, More Like Red

Wind Farm Turbines Slaughter Bats

"The 420 wind turbines now in use across Pennsylvania killed more than 10,000 bats last year — mostly in the late summer months, according to the state Game Commission. That's an average of 25 bats per turbine per year, and the Nature Conservancy predicts as many as 2,900 turbines will be set up across the state by 2030.

This is a bad time to be a bat.

It may seem like a good thing to those who fear the flying mammals, but the wind farm mortality rate is an acute example of how harnessing natural energy can lead to disruptions in the circle of life — and the cycle of business. This chain of events mixes biology and economics: Bat populations go down, bug populations go up and farmers are left with the bill for more pesticide and crops (which accounts for those pricey tomatoes in Kansas)."

They also kill a lot of birds.

H/T: The Blaze

Government Schools: EPIC FAIL

When will we face the truth about the failure of government schools? Can we do it now or do we have to sit through all the excuses once again?

178 Teachers & Principals Named: Atlanta Schools Created Culture of Cheating & Fear

Teachers spent nights huddled in a back room, erasing wrong answers on students' test sheets and filling in the correct bubbles. At another school, struggling students were seated next to higher-performing classmates so they could copy answers.

Those and other confessions are contained in a new state report that reveals how far some Atlanta public schools went to raise test scores in the nation's largest-ever cheating scandal. Investigators concluded that nearly half the city's schools allowed the cheating to go unchecked for as long as a decade, beginning in 2001.

Small Business Owner Spotlight

I love small business owners like this.

"Big business loves big government."

His store: Galco's Soda Pop Stop

"Yes, the country is Canada and the year is 2011"

The Mosqueteria

It's the scene every Friday at the cafeteria of Valley Park Middle School in Toronto. That's not a private academy, it's a public school funded by taxpayers. And yet, oddly enough, what's going on is a prayer service – oh, relax, it's not Anglican or anything improper like that; it's Muslim Friday prayers, and the Toronto District School Board says don't worry, it's just for convenience: They put the cafeteria at the local imams' disposal because otherwise the kids would have to troop off to the local mosque and then they’d be late for Lesbian History class or whatever subject is scheduled for Friday afternoon.

Picture at the link. You have to read this.

With or Without You

Worse and Worser

...as the Iranians put it a few years back:

Iran will resume uranium enrichment if the European Union does not recognize its right to do so, two Iranian nuclear negotiators said in an interview published Tuesday.

If you don't let us go nuclear, we'll carry on going nuclear. That's basically the Democrat negotiating position on spending.

The Pursuit of Happiness

America is lost in the pursuit of happiness by focusing on self.



This is not what the Founders had in mind.

If the Pursuit of Happiness Is an Inalienable Right, Why Is There No Department of Happy?

The Founders likely had something larger in mind when crafting the phrase "pursuit of happiness". They knew the classics, and certainly they knew of Aristotle's formulation of happiness. For Aristotle, happiness centered on the pursuit of virtue in order to reach one's potential as a human being. The right to pursue happiness becomes an interesting concept in this context.

People are caught up grasping for the elusive happiness that's like sand slipping through their fingers instead of the true happiness that comes from right relationship with God and man.

Truth or Consequences

Politics Versus Reality

It is hard to understand politics if you are hung up on reality. Politicians leave reality to others. What matters in politics is what you can get the voters to believe, whether it bears any resemblance to reality or not.

We've abandoned the truth and we are reaping the consequences.

Some More Equal Than Others

No Independence Day for debt-ridden America

In his bizarre press conference on Wednesday, Obama made no fewer than six references to corporate jet owners. Just for the record, the tax break for corporate jets was part of the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" – i.e., the stimulus. The Obama stimulus. The Obama-Pelosi-Reid stimulus. The Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Democratic Party stimulus that every single Republican House member and all but three Republican senators voted against. The Obama-Corporate Jet stimulus that some guy called Obama ostentatiously signed into law in Denver after jetting in to host an "economic forum."

Charles Krauthammer did the math. If you eliminate the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Corporate Jet Tax Break, you would save so much dough that, after 5,000 years, you would have clawed back enough money to cover one year of Obama's debt. Five thousand years is the year 7,011. Boy, our kids'll really be safe by then. I see some leftie at MSNBC has just been suspended for characterizing the president's performance Wednesday as that of a demotic synonym for the male reproductive organ. So I shall be more circumspect and say only that even being a hollow unprincipled demagogue requires a certain lightness of touch Obama can't seem to find.

Speaking of corporate jets, did the president fly commercial to Denver? Oh, but that's different! He's in "public service." A couple of weeks before he flew Air Force One to Denver, he flew Air Force One to Williamsburg, Virginia. From the White House (well, via Andrews Air Force Base). That's 150 miles, a 30-minute flight. He took a 747, a wide-bodied jet designed to carry 500 people to the other side of the planet, for a puddle-jump across the Potomac.

Oh, but it was for another "economic forum." This time with House Democrats – the ones who voted for the Obama Corporate Jet Tax Break. "Economic forums" are what we have instead of an economy these days.

Aside from the Sultan of Brunei and one or two similar potentates, no other head of state goes around like this. In a self-governing republic, it ought to be unbecoming. But in the Brokest Nation in History it's ridiculous. And the least the beneficiary of such decadence could do is not condescendingly lecture those who pay for their own transportation. America's debt is an existential crisis, and playing shell games with shriveled peas of demonizable irrelevancies only advertises your contempt for the citizenry.

Obama Just a Guy ... Failing