Oct
06

Some good news at last!

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Looks like I’m finally gonna have to sign up for Netflix. Or possibly Showtime.

Yes! After years of waffling, a fourth season of Arrested Development is finally in the works. AND it’ll tie into the movie they’re planning, too. This is incredible news. And even better that it might run on Netflix come 2013.

ArrDev creator Mitch Hurtwitz spoke about the show at this weekend’s The New Yorker festival, stating that the new season will have a 10-episode run focusing on each of the Bluth family members. Jason Bateman even confirmed as much via Twitter late last night. According to Deadline Hollywood, the show’s producers have also been in talks with Netflix and Showtime to find an outlet for a comeback in 2013, 10 years after its initial run.

Excellent. If you haven’t seen them yet, you can catch the old episodes on Hulu. And over at Ace’s ONT, Ben has posted a couple of clips to whet your appetite.

What a great friggin’ show.

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Oct
06

OFF THE PIGS!

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Jeff would like you all to know that he has some demands, too: “I can’t make it to the Occupy Wall Street protests — my mom backs the Man and so won’t buy me a plane ticket, the bitch — so I’ve decided to occupy our den. Demand 1: Hot Pockets!” Which is way more sane, reasonable, and sensible than the OWS morons will ever be, you know. Don’t miss the updates for a look at how The Struggle is going.

Update! Just don’t compare them to Tea Partiers, the Founders, or any of the original American revolutionaries. Please.

Even the Minutemen, whose first scuffle with the British began the war, were a real army with ranks, subordination, coordination, drills and supplies. There is not a single mention in the historical record of Minutemen playing hacky-sack, burning candles assembled in “peace and love,” or sitting in drum circles.

A British lieutenant-general who fought the Minutemen observed, “Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob will find himself very much mistaken.”

By contrast, the directionless losers protesting “Wall Street” — Obama’s largest donor group — pose for the cameras while uttering random liberal cliches lacking any reason or coherence.

But since everything liberals do must be heroic, the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd insists on comparing themselves to this nation’s heroes.

One told Fox News’ Bill Schulz: “I was born to be here, right now, the founding fathers have been passing down the torch to this generation to make our country great again.”

The Canadian environmental group behind Occupy Wall Street, Adbusters, has compared the Wall Street “revolutionaries” to America’s founding fathers. (Incidentally, those who opposed the American Revolution fled after the war to … Canada.)

The — again — Canadians exulted, “You sense they’re drafting a new Declaration of Independence.”

I suppose you only “sense” it because they’re doing nothing of the sort.

In truth, they’re the direct opposite in every way, and fundamentally un- and anti-American.

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Oct
06

Remember: stupidity does not preclude cunning

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And Ogabe is a stupid, stupid man.

Supposedly, this White House has just made a furious attempt to sink a book, “Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President” by Ron Suskind, which came out Sept. 20. Jay Carney, theWhite House spinmeister, spoke ill of it. Numerous former White Housestaffers spoke ill of it. Mr. Carney said “one passage seems to be lifted almost entirely from Wikipedia.” Why would a respected writer want to do that? I suspect that the White House is going to be as effective in sinkingMr. Suskind as it has been in keeping President Obama’s poll numbers lofty.

The book tells us what we Obama critics have all been saying since early on. This president is the most incompetent and ideologically rigid president in American history. For my part, I began the refrain in July 2009 with a comparison to Andrew Johnson, who at least had the excuse that he was drunk most of the time that he was in the White House. I continued it in August 2010 when I complimented Jimmy Carter by saying he was no longer the worst president of modern times (a compliment that has as yet gone unacknowledged, I might add). And I have continued with monotonous regularity, hazarding the prospect of becoming a bore. Yet I suppose one is never a bore when one calls a liberal hansdoodle a hansdoodle even when he sits in the White House and has been called all manner of genius by our liberal intelligentsia. Remember when the “historian” Michael Beschloss said Mr. Obama’s “IQ is off the charts”? There will come a day when Mr. Beschloss explains that he was saying Mr. Obama registered “off the charts” at the opposite end of genius.

How are all the liberal sages going to get out of their absurd exaggerations of Mr. Obama’s modest gifts?

Easy: they’ll just bury them, and never bring them up again. Those that don’t cling mulishly to them and continue to maintain that their vapid, worshipful pronouncements were correct, that is.

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Oct
06

Still more on the anti-Jobs

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That would be the execrable and odious Elizabeth Warren, natch.

Elizabeth Warren, Harvard law professor and former Obama administration regulator (for consumer protection), is modern liberalism incarnate. As she seeks the Senate seat Democrats held for 57 years before 2010, when Republican Scott Brown impertinently won it, she clarifies the liberal project and the stakes of contemporary politics.

The project is to dilute the concept of individualism, thereby refuting respect for the individual’s zone of sovereignty. The regulatory state, liberalism’s instrument, constantly tries to contract that zone — for the individual’s own good, it says.

Warren is (as William F. Buckley described Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith) a pyromaniac in a field of straw men: She refutes propositions no one asserts. Everyone knows that all striving occurs in a social context, so all attainments are conditioned by their context. This does not, however, entail a collectivist political agenda.

Such an agenda’s premise is that individualism is a chimera, that any individual’s achievements should be considered entirely derivative from society, so the achievements need not be treated as belonging to the individual.

The collectivist agenda is antithetical to America’s premise, which is: Government — including such public goods as roads, schools and police — is instituted to facilitate individual striving, a.k.a. the pursuit of happiness.

Again: you can’t be a Progressivist and be in any meaningful agreement with America’s founding principles. As Will says, the two positions are antithetical, contradictory, and utterly incompatible. Any statement from “progressives” to the contrary is either deceptive or ignorant. Period.

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Oct
06

RIP Steve Jobs

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Like him or not, the man changed the world for the better.

I don’t know what Steve Jobs’s politics were, I don’t much care, and in any case they are beside the point. The late Mr. Jobs stood for something considerably better than politics. He stood for the model of the world that works.

…That old Motorola cinderblock would cost about $10,000 in 2011 dollars, and you couldn’t play Angry Birds on it or watch Fox News or trade a stock. Once you figure out why your cell phone gets better and cheaper every year but your public schools get more expensive and less effective, you can apply that model to answer a great many questions about public policy. Not all of them, but a great many.

Mr. Jobs’s contribution to the world is Apple and its products, along with Pixar and his other enterprises, his 338 patented inventions — his work— not some Steve Jobs Memorial Foundation for Giving Stuff to Poor People in Exotic Lands and Making Me Feel Good About Myself. Because he already did that: He gave them better computers, better telephones, better music players, etc. In a lot of cases, he gave them better jobs, too. Did he do it because he was a nice guy, or because he was greedy, or because he was a maniacally single-minded competitor who got up every morning possessed by an unspeakable rage to strangle his rivals? The beauty of capitalism — the beauty of the iPhone world as opposed to the world of politics — is that that question does not matter one little bit. Whatever drove Jobs, it drove him to create superior products, better stuff at better prices. Profits are not deductions from the sum of the public good, but the real measure of the social value a firm creates.

Williamson includes a highly-pertinent slam at the Occupy Wall Street morons, too, winding up thus:

And to the kids camped out down on Wall Street: Look at the phone in your hand. Look at the rat-infested subway. Visit the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, then visit a housing project in the South Bronx. Which world do you want to live in?

They’re way too goddamned stupid to figure that one out on their own, and way too arrogant in their ignorance to accept it if it’s explained to them.

For my own part, it’s literally true that Jobs and Apple changed my life; if it weren’t for them, I’d most likely still be driving a truck. In 1998, my girlfriend’s father sent her the latest-and-greatest Mac G3 for her to use for editing photos (she was/is a photographer, at that time attending a fancy-schmancy art school in Atlanta; she now works as a crime-scene photographer for the APD). I had piddled around with various Windoze machines here and there, and they left me completely cold; I had no interest in them whatsoever, and said so many times. But she asked me to set the G3 up for her, and within a month, I had built my first website — I was intrigued and excited, not to say hooked. Previously, what writing I had done was done on an old pain-in-the-ass Royal portable that had belonged for years to my dad, which wasn’t exactly an incentive to do more of it, despite the nostalgia for old typewriters some folks have.

But with the G3, and all the Macs I’ve owned since, well, I just can’t stay away from them. They’ve all been elegant, beautifully designed, and reliable; they just work. They do what they’re supposed to do with no fuss, muss, or hassle. Yeah, they cost more — and you get what you pay for. And although I now also have a five-year-old HP laptop that belonged to my late wife, Windoze still just leaves me cold.

So Steve, if you can hear this somehow wherever your spirit may be a-roaming: thanks. Of course, Lileks has something to say too:

It all seems inevitable in retrospect, but it wasn’t. It took a guy who could see several steps in the future. Beyond this to the thing beyond that.

And now he’s gone to the thing beyond it all. Thanks, Mr. Jobs. Every day: thanks.

Amen to that, my friend. With bells on.

Update! Slublog gets right to the heart of Jobs’ amazing achievement:

I think it’s easy to forget how truly revolutionary the first iPod was. It was small, portable and easy to use. I was old enough when I first got one to be amazed by it – here was a device the size of the cassette tapes I used to put in my Walkman that can hold ALL of my music. I didn’t know I wanted this thing until it was offered to me.

Exactly. The great American experiment wouldn’t have been possible without the freedom and creativity unleashed by capitalism; capitalism itself wouldn’t be possible without people like Jobs. Every day, in every way, they make lives better the whole world around. And a bunch of ingrate mouthbreathers in lower Manhattan are even now screaming and yelling about how “evil” it all is, that it must be “smashed” and destroyed, merely because it can’t live up to their notion of “perfect.” The very fact that these self-made zombies are chronicling and sharing their idiocy on iPads and iPhones is the most efficient refutation of their dunderheaded ideology imaginable. Talk about ironic.

I’ll note, too, that Slu also includes a “thank you” at the end of his short post. In fact, just about every obit I’ve seen so far includes an expression of gratitude to the man. It’s an incredible, powerful testimony to his contribution and influence–far more so than any manifesto or list of foolish “demands” from spoiled, whining children will ever be. Again: ironic, innit?

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest update! Nemo, via Bill:

Long after we are all forgotten — George Bush,  Barack Obama, Osama bin Laden, and all the rest of us, the world will remember Steve Jobs.

Because he said:  “No. I want this.”  And we got things that changed the world forever. It’s a wonderful thing that one bright person could do what no government ever could.

Indeed it is. Stunning, and saddening, that so many refuse to accept the truth of it.

Making magic update! Fine post from Allahpundit:

I’m straining to find a cultural analogy for Jobs and am struck by the fact that I have to leave the business/tech fields entirely to do it. You can do it if you go back far enough — Henry Ford and Edison pop to mind, but…that’s awfully far. The obvious modern comparison is to Bill Gates, but that doesn’t work. Gates, like Jobs, is capital-I Important to the computer age, but in sort of the same way that ancient cave painters were important to the development of art. Jobs started out as a cave painter too but kept at it until he turned into Rembrandt. I think Lileks is close to the mark in comparing him to Walt Disney; my first thought when I heard the news was that only Steven Spielberg’s passing today would hit quite as hard. The common thread among those three is that they all made magic, but Jobs put it in your hands so that you felt like you were the one making it. That’s the crucial difference between Apple and Microsoft — Gates made computers easier to use but Jobs made them objects of wonder. He made magic, literally. There’s no greater epitaph.

Amen.

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Oct
05

As you sow…

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If you support the stated goals of indolent socialist scum, you shouldn’t whine when your business is damaged or destroyed.

For Tzortzatos, the “occupation” has resulted not just in a loss in business. “I’ve had a lot of damage from the protesters,” she said. “I’ve had to put a $200 lock on my bathroom because they come in here and try to bathe. The sink fell down to the ground, cracked open, pulled the plumbing out of the wall and caused a flood. It’s a no-win situation. If I open the restroom for one, 30 people line up outside, disrupting my business.”

A manager at the nearby Essex World Cafe — who asked to remain anonymous — shared similar complaints. Referring to three young men waiting at the end of the counter, he explained, “They want to use the toilet, the phones, we give them free water and free ice. They sit here and don’t buy anything, but they recharge their phone batteries with our plugs, and I tell them, ‘Hey, if you guys are going to come, I need to do some business here. We are suffering, too!’ And then they start with their own words, going against you.” The three young men eventually left the cafe, each carrying large containers the staff had filled with hot and cold water for them.

This manager also cited damages, including graffiti on his restroom walls. “For eight and a half years, there was nothing on those walls,” he said. “Now it says ‘Viva la Revolucion’ everywhere. Yes, ‘Viva la Revolucion,’ but don’t write it on my toilet. I let you use my facilities without being a customer and this is what I get?”

Still, he finds it hard to turn them away. “I cannot say anything against them because most of them have problems of their own,” he said, noting he shares some similar concerns about the issues the protestors have put front and center.

Despite the anger that has risen from such acts of vandalism and carelessness, some local businesses are quietly rooting for the protestors — or at least their cause.

“These young people don’t want to be here,” said one T-shirt vendor, stationed only feet away from the outskirts of the camps. “They don’t want to sit through the rain and cold. They are just looking for results, for change. They just want what we all want — money and security.”

Yeah. Right. Wake the fuck up already, whydon’tcha? Otherwise, don’t come crying to real Americans when the sorry bastards take advantage of your good will for them and their vile agenda and leave your business a busted-up shambles.

Via Jonah G, who’s out there besliming himself in the PuffHo fever swamps so I don’t have to–thank God. Elsewhere at the Corner, Steyn makes a related larger point:

But it’s not just that conservatives are by nature antipathetic to collective action, but also that you need a certain blindness to self-evident absurdity. There is almost nothing so stupid that Frances Fox-Piven won’t say it in public – and, as a result, things are going her way pretty swimmingly. Years ago, Jule Styne, the great composer of “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”, gave me a word of advice: He said the quickest way to make a million dollars was to take the joke that makes you laugh most and play it for real. In the 1927 Broadway season, George Abbott was working on what was supposed to be a comedy about southern morals that results in the gal’s dad shooting her suitor dead. It was going nowhere as a comedy, so he decided to play it as melodrama, and Coquette was the box-office smash of the season: “You never heard such weeping in the theatre in your life,” he told me.

I think the sheer plonking earnestness of leftist agitprop makes the same point. I mean, is there anything as hilarious as anarchists demanding more total government control, which is in essence what “Occupy Wall Street” boils down to? Yet those guys are out there playing it for real, and very convincingly – as they do with all the most exquisite jests, from “climate change” to transgendered bathrooms. When I sang “Kung Fu Fighting”, I prefaced it by saying that in an ideal world this is not the hill of western civilization I would have chosen to die on. But we don’t get a choice, and Jay’s correct. Instead of doing eight bars as a droll after-dinner jape, I should be out in the street leading thousands of angry “activists” in the full twelve-minute megamix. As my compatriot Kate McMillan likes to say, “Not showing up to riot is a failed conservative policy.“

True enough. But as the nation continues to lurch further into the socialist morass and our erstwhile prosperity and freedom disappear entirely and for good, that will change. And seeing as how we have all the guns, when we do finally riot, it’s going to have a lot more impact than any mere “street theater.”

So to speak.

Update! 99 Percenters? Yeah, right.

Dear protesters in New York City,

You are not 99 percent of America. I don’t mean that in the obvious numerical sense. If 99 percent of Americans had actually joined your march, Manhattan would have flipped over by now.

What I mean is that if 99 percent of Americans actually sympathized with your cause, the entire nation’s economy would have collapsed long ago — apparently to the delight of the organizers of this current protest.

Those people you left stuck in traffic have a hard time paying their bills and rents and health insurance and mortgages. They worry about things like finding decent schools for their children to attend and making sure they don’t get fired at work, and fixing leaking roofs and chimneys.

You know what they don’t worry about, ever? Smashing patriarchy and capitalism.

So when your organizers go on television and say things like, “It’s revolution, not reform!” and they’re not joking, those words might give some of these narrow-minded people an unpleasant, October 1917 kind of feeling.

As well it might. Nice thing is, though, that when the commies do finally take over, spoiled-rotten little useful-idiot brats like these are always the very first ones to be put up against a wall and shot. It’d be damned nice if we could just go ahead and take care of that without having to deal with any idiotic revolution first.

Bang, zoom update! JWF: “The one thing most of these slobs aren’t occupying is a job.” That’s by way of a link to this deliciously satisfying blast from Michael Graham:

Attention, Boston: The Occupiers want YOU — to do their laundry.

The Occupation movement featured an online posting on Monday requesting “volunteers” to come to the New York City campsite, pick up the protesters’ laundry, “take it to their home to get it clean and bring it back.”

You know — just like Mom?

Has there ever been such a collection of mewling, puking overgrown babies as the clueless college brats of the “Occupation” — a particularly ironic phrase given how few of these oafs actually have one.

Read all of it. He tells it exactly like it is, pulling no punches whatever, and I promise: you will LOVE it.

WE DEMAND update! Harsanyi lays ‘em out:

We demand a minimum wage of $10, no … make it $20. We earned it. And we demand the end of “profiteering,” because there is no better way to end joblessness than stopping the growth of capital. We also demand a maximum wage law, because selfish American dreams need a ceiling.

We demand the institution of direct democracy, because if a bunch of people say it’s OK, it’s OK. And everyone deserves to have his or her voice heard. Except Mr. Moneybags, who we demand stop contributing his own money to candidates we disagree with, to issue groups we loathe and to lobbyists who do not work for organizations featuring “Service,“ ”Employees,“ ”International” and/or “Union” in their title.

We demand the end to bailouts and corporate subsidies, unless we’re talking about companies that feature sunflowers or sun rays in their logos, because that’s the kind of morally gratifying institution we approve of, and thus, they should totally be fast-tracked and bailed out with your money to bring the fossil fuel economy (“the economy”) to an end.

As near-impossible as it is to parody these purblind fools, David somehow manages it.

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Oct
04

Obnoxious twit gets hers

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When you’re talking Meggie Mac, the word “obnoxious” pretty much says it all, although “twit” makes an important contribution as well. Follows, one of the most enjoyable smack downs I’ve seen in a long, long time.

Of course, the subject matter of your letter is a fairly obvious parody to any person of even barely functional literacy. Thus – and your client probably didn’t tell you this – even she recognized that the posts were parodies (or “parody’s,” as she put it). At approximately 8:25 p.m. EDT on September 17th, your client posted to her Twitter feed, “I don’t care about parody’s(sic) or fake names – but falsely putting my name on someone else’s writing is illegal.” She then subsequently deleted this Tweet, presumably when someone told her that “parody’s” were constitutionally protected and it might look bad in a subsequent lawsuit if she were caught admitting in public that these posts were obvious parodies. Not to worry: My client has screenshots.

(I treat as obvious humor the assertions in your letter that the parodies in question were appropriations of your client’s likeness for advertising purposes, and that persons with no minimum contacts at all with California would in any way be susceptible to jurisdiction there. It is my sincere suggestion that your client do so as well.)

My client will not be bullied out of exercising his First Amendment right to make clear his belief that your client is a spoiled, brainless twit who is cheapening the political discourse in this country. Therefore, henceforth, the “Totally Meghan McCain” series may be found at http://pajamasmedia.com for your client’s reading pleasure.

On the off chance that your client actually files the baseless litigation you threatened in your September 23, 2011 letter, Mr. Wolf will pursue all available remedies available under any applicable anti-SLAPP statutes, State law malicious prosecution/abuse of process actions, and/or Rule 11 sanctions. Although I do not envy you the Herculean task before you, please make sure your client understands the potential consequences to her personally – in addition to those her attorney would face – for pursuing this ill-advised course of action.

On a personal and professional note, I am of the firm conviction that the world is a worse place because of unscrupulous lawyers who force people and companies to forego their legal rights simply because they don’t want to pay the fees lawyers to defend themselves – even from suits that are meritless on their face. It is particularly obnoxious when it is used as an effort to chill free speech – political speech, no less – as has become all too common in response to unflattering internet postings.

Backstory here. First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers — except ones like this guy.

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Oct
04

Waiting for the world to end blow up in our faces

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An excellent, if grim, piece.

The world is always a dangerous place; but in the last few years that danger seems to have spread. Equatorial and sub-Saharan Africa may be about to tip over into another hellish era of tribal warfare. China, when it isn’t being arrogantly expansionist seems to be dancing on thin demographic ice. As its hordes of men grow up without women, its thinkers now write about the value of ‘small’ wars. In Russia, faced with economic collapse if oil prices slump, Vladimar Putin has made himself de facto Tsar – or worse. And in Europe, the aging population, trapped between rioting welfare junkies and unassimilated Muslim immigrants, fervently hopes (they don’t pray anymore) that they will die before their long vacation from economic reality ends.

As for the United States, the world’s military protector and economic backstop, there is not only the greatest philosophical schism since the Civil War, but a dangerous lack of leadership at the top. Even as it is crushing new business and new job creation at home with endless regulations and the corruption of corporatism, it is also projecting a self-righteous image of weakness abroad. The lesson of history is that vacuums in leadership are always filled, more often by the ambitious than the responsible. And that, at least in the short run, “soft” power is no defense against hard men. Right now there are some very hard men out there leading nations, loading their pistols and eyeing their neighbors and rivals.

I learned a long time ago that when things seem crazy, they usually are – no matter how much smart people try to convince you otherwise. There is a lot of crazy going around right now…and it won’t disappear just because we look away or tell ourselves it’s not as bad as it seems.
 
Ours is not Auden’s “low, dishonest decade” before World War II, but it certainly has been a decade of denial and distraction.  But no amount of ignoring the magnitude of the threat, or busying ourselves with other matters, changes the fact that there are not only millions of switches out there waiting to be tripped, but that, in our networked world, all of those switches are wired together. Or that even one of them, snapping at the right moment, could send trillions of chains of consequence around the world in less time than it takes to say “Sarajevo.”

No comment from me necessary. Read it.

(Via Insty)

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Oct
03

Repeal reality!

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Been wondering what the smelly morons befouling lower Manhattan are really all about? Well, wonder no more.

I fear, though, that by calling them “morons,” I have been far too charitable. I’m not sure there’s a strong enough word for this level of idiocy.

Update! Not really related, but I get to use the same line as before, so here goes: Been wondering why the Justice Department whitewashed the New Black Panther voter-intimidation case? Well, wonder no more.

Not that you ever really needed to wonder, this being King “God DAMN America” Ogabe and all.

Via Andrew McCarthy, who has a few highly pertinent things to say himself.

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Oct
03

THEM!

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Oh, great. Just great.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — It sounds like a horror movie: Biting ants invade by the millions. A camper’s metal walls bulge from the pressure of ants nesting behind them. A circle of poison stops them for only a day, and then a fresh horde shows up, bringing babies. Stand in the yard, and in seconds ants cover your shoes.

It’s an extreme example of what can happen when the ants — which also can disable huge industrial plants — go unchecked.

Controlling them can cost thousands of dollars. But the story is real, told by someone who’s been studying ants for a decade.

“Months later, I could close my eyes and see them moving,” said Joe MacGown, who curates the ant, mosquito and scarab collections at the Mississippi State Entomological Museum at Mississippi State University.

He’s been back to check on the hairy crazy ants. They’re still around. The occupant isn’t.

And they’re on the move in Florida, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana. In Texas, they’ve invaded homes and industrial complexes, urban areas and rural areas. They travel in cargo containers, hay bales, potted plants, motorcycles and moving vans. They overwhelm beehives — one Texas beekeeper was losing 100 a year in 2009. They short out industrial equipment.

If one gets electrocuted, its death releases a chemical cue to attack a threat to the colony, said Roger Gold, an entomology professor at Texas A&M.

“The other ants rush in. Before long, you have a ball of ants,” he said.

Well, we dare not try to exterminate them. That would be Wrong, and animal-rights lunatics would just cry and cry over it. Obviously, this is Mother Nature’s revenge on us evil humans for destroying the environment, so we need to just shut up, sit back, and take our medicine. We deserve it, after all.

I admit, it’d be kinda funny seeing an ant traveling by motorcycle. Don’t know how they’d reach the handlebars, though.

(Via Dave in Texas)

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Oct
03

Imagine!

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Hey, I remember this guy from back when I gave a damn about football!

Imagine the National Football League in an alternate reality. Each player’s salary is based on how long he’s been in the league. It’s about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he’s an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster. For every year a player’s been in this NFL, he gets a bump in pay. The only difference between Tom Brady and the worst player in the league is a few years of step increases. And if a player makes it through his third season, he can never be cut from the roster until he chooses to retire, except in the most extreme cases of misconduct.

Let’s face the truth about this alternate reality: The on-field product would steadily decline. Why bother playing harder or better and risk getting hurt?

No matter how much money was poured into the league, it wouldn’t get better. In fact, in many ways the disincentive to play harder or to try to stand out would be even stronger with more money.

Of course, a few wild-eyed reformers might suggest the whole system was broken and needed revamping to reward better results, but the players union would refuse to budge and then demonize the reform advocates: “They hate football. They hate the players. They hate the fans.” The only thing that might get done would be building bigger, more expensive stadiums and installing more state-of-the-art technology. But that just wouldn’t help.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the NFL in this alternate reality is the real-life American public education system.

Well, obviously those wild-eyed reformers would be racist, hate-filled Teabaggers, and the Pretend pResident would be completely justified in sending out squads of Imperial Stormtroopers SEIU goons to beat them down. This bit is good, too:

Perhaps no other sector of American society so demonstrates the failure of government spending and interference. We’ve destroyed individual initiative, individual innovation and personal achievement, and marginalized anyone willing to point it out. As one of my coaches used to say, “You don’t get vast results with half-vast efforts!”

The results we’re looking for are students learning, so we need to reward great teachers who show they can make that happen—and get rid of bad teachers who don’t get the job done. It’s what we do in every other profession: If you’re good, you get rewarded, and if you’re not, then you look for other work.

Correction: it’s what we do in every other profession not controlled by the Almighty State. Which is fewer and fewer of them these days.

And if you’re surprised at all by Tarkenton’s conservatism, you probably shouldn’t be: at the bottom, we find this:

Mr. Tarkenton, an NFL Hall of Fame quarterback with the Minnesota Vikings and the New York Giants from 1961 to 1978, is an entrepreneur who runs two websites devoted to small business education.

See? It all makes sense now: he’s one of those evil, greedy, money-grubbing capitalists who doesn’t care about Duh Peepul and wants all the children to starve.

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Oct
03

The WH phone rings…

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And the Dunce In Chief answers.

Now… now Juan… let’s just calm down here a minute. Just, okay.. okay… let me please explain, okay? See, the funny thing is, it turns out, a couple years back there was, well, this stimulus program money, and then there were these brainstorming sessions, where, well, there were some ideas what to do with it. So, anyhoo, one of the ideas that happened was, ‘hey, what if there were, say, 2000 machine guns that got sent to Mexican drug lords?’ and so forth.

Well no, of course we couldn’t tell you. It would have ruined the surprise.

Well, okay, I guess the gato is out of the ol’ bag-o. You know that drug cartel war problem you’ve been having? So, well, the idea was, hey, wouldn’t it be great if somehow we could put a trace on the machine guns, and then, surprise! It’d be a like a whole pinata full of drug lord information.

Mmhm.

Why? Well see, if we traced all the machine guns we gave to your drug lords, then we could all learn how your drug lords get their machine guns.

Well, Juan, yes, certainly, that’s one hypothesis. But I mean besides from us.

He handles it about as well as you’d expect.

Update! Is there more, you…oh, to hell with it.

Hardly a week passes now without some revelation about the Obama administration’s complicity in what may yet turn out to be one of the worst and most lethal scandals in American history: Operation Fast and Furious.

In a classic Friday document dump — a sure sign of an administration with something to hide — the feds released to congressional investigators a month’s worth of e-mail correspondence in the summer of 2010 between Bill Newell, then head ATF agent in Phoenix, and his friend Kevin O’Reilly, a former White House national-security staffer for North American affairs.

What do you know? Among the e-mails was a photograph of a powerful Barrett .50-caliber rifle that had been illegally purchased in Tucson and recovered in Sonora, Mexico, raising the possibility of a second “gunwalking” program, this one called “Wide Receiver.”

Like Fast and Furious, the ATF-supervised scheme that saw thousands of weapons “walk” across the Mexican border for reasons no one in the Justice Department has yet satisfactorily explained, Wide Receiver was apparently a joint operation that also included the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the IRS and the US Attorney’s office.

It’s likely there have been others, in such states as Florida and Indiana.

Likely? It’s all but certain. In fact, it’s likely that if people knew what these out-of-control fascist goons get up to, in all sorts of ways, they’d be marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks…among other useful things. Or so I would hope, anyway.

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Oct
03

SHOCKER: Perry apparently another Robert “Sheets” Byrd!

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The WaPo, in its desperation to prop up its irrevocably tainted King, has slimed and sleazed around West Texas trying to find a way Palinize Rick Perry. Apparently, he painted “I hate niggers!” on a huge rock at a farm he himself stole from the People with the help of his father (another redneck racist in his own right, of course, and we all know those Southern apples never fall very far from the lynching tree, wink wink). He then brought in all the black folks he could find by dragging them behind his pickup truck to the place, and taunted them with racial slurs while throwing watermelons and fried chicken at them, tapdancing and capering about in blackface, and pointing out his devilish handiwork for them all to see and have their feelings hurt by.

There are only two problems with this phony narrative, and they’re the usual ones: one, none of the inferences the WaPo wants you to take away from the story are remotely true–what little there is of dirt at the bottom of this pathetic smear attempt has nothing at all to do with Perry–and two (as a reader of Glenn’s helpfully points out), Perry was a Democrat Socialist throughout the time period in question here.

In fact, the only real problem I can see this creating for Perry is the reminder of his previous association with the Slavery Party: the party of Jim Crow; the party that resisted the Civil Rights Act tooth and nail; the party that to this day conspires to keep as many minority voters as possible in a permanent state of servility and dependence, grateful to their DC masters and mindlessly voting in lockstep for generations: the Democrat Socialists.

Know what’s truly interesting about all this, though? Now that Cain is surging, how will the Court Media, in their hopeless desperation to boost the God Who Failed, find a way to tar him as a racist too? The old Uncle Tom/self-hating black man canard, maybe, shopworn and offensive as it is?

They will show you who they’re really afraid of, you know. They just can’t help themselves. And as always with Leftists, lies, smears, innuendo, and misdirection are the only arrows in the quiver. Perry, Cain, and any other Constitution-respecting conservative who looks even momentarily like having a chance at unseating the King–and Progressivism itself–better invest in some good locks for their garbage can lids, and blackout curtains for their windows.

But speaking of Cain, looks like he fell for the WaPo’s smear attempt:

Cain also criticized Rick Perry, when Wallace asked him for his reaction to a Washington Poststory today about land leased by Perry and his family for hunting had had at one point a rock with “N[word]head” on it.

“For him to leave it there as long as he did before I hear that they finally painted over it is just plain insensitive to a lot of black people in this country,” Cain said.

Now that there’s just damned dismaying. According to the WaPo’s own muck-raking story, Perry’s father actually painted over the Rock Of Shame immediately after securing his hunting lease, and then turned the thing over to further obscure the word painted on it — which he arguably had no right to do anyway on property he didn’t own and only occasionally visited. Cain should know better by now than to take anything the liars say at face value. But I suspect that, once they get the shit cannons pointed in his direction and firing full broadsides at him, he’ll learn that lesson the hard way. Otherwise, might as well add a “Mc” to his last name and be done with him.

Update! Jeff G:

A message to Herman Cain: many of your erstwhile supporters are surprised and a bit put off by your adoption of leftist race-baiting tactics of the kind Sharpton is using here.

We hold out hope that you were misinformed about the particulars of the charges against Gov Perry upon which you commented, and that you’ll re-think your response and offer a clarification.

Because here’s the thing: we already have a race-baiting President willing to divide the country and play identity politics coalitions against one another to foment manufactured hatreds that distract from the bloated and rogue federal government’s role in our economic and social collapses.

We don’t need another one.

We certainly don’t. Like I said, this seemingly knee-jerk reaction from Cain, kowtowing mindlessly to the “progressive” reflex of smearing anyone who disagrees with them as supposedly “racist,” no matter how laughably spurious the charge is or what sort of irrelevant, manufactured nonsense it’s based on, is…dismaying.

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Oct
02

Social contract 101

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Dale Franks lays down a lesson that will doubtless go unheeded by those most in need of the education:

Everyone uses the roads. Everyone benefits from education. Everyone benefits from fire and police protection. We have those things not because they are a positive good—though they are—but because they comprise the minimal requirements for maintaining a civilization that we all derive benefits from.

So, not only do the millionaires not derive some additional benefit from their existence, we would still want them even if millionaires didn’t use them at all. And we’d still pay for them, because we all derive an equal benefit from having them. They provide no special advantage to the millionaire that the rest of us don’t enjoy.

What the millionaire does—the only reason he’s even a millionaire—is to provide us with goods and services we willingly purchase. If we didn’t buy his product, he wouldn’t be a millionaire. Whatever advantages he accrues comes not from some benefit he derives from our roads, or teachers or our police. He accrues them because of our desire to give him money for his product. We are the beneficiaries, because we put a higher value on his product than we do on our money, or on someone else’s products. We choose to make him a millionaire, because we value his product more highly than other things. He doesn’t send hulking thugs to our door demanding our money. We go out and buy his product intentionally.

And let’s dispense that the millionaires are using services “the rest of us” paid for. The millionaire is using services that he paid for along with us. And he probably paid more for them, in absolute terms, than most other people. He also indirectly pays for maintaining society through the salaries for all those “workers the rest of us paid to educate”. The payments those workers provide to maintain society only exist because the millionaire’s business provided their jobs. Without those jobs, society’s overall wealth would be smaller, and our ability to maintain that society would be proportionally lessened.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

That’s not the social contract. The social contract is “We maintain civilization because we all benefit from it. And we all have a responsibility to pay for it.” Ms. Warren’s version of the social contract boils down to, “You have to pay more for maintaining our society because you can, and we outnumber you, and can force you to do so.” That’s not a contract. That’s just extortion by majority.

Which sort of upside-down irrationality is, of course, what modern American Leftard statism is all about: tyranny hidden behind a smiley face, fascist thuggery and theft rationalized by supposedly “good” intentions. Incompetence and indolence rewarded, success and achievement punished. Patent unfairness perpetrated in the name of “fairness.” No wonder everything they ever touched has always, always, always turned to shit.

(Via Bill)

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Oct
02

Broken record breaks record

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So I’ve mentioned a couple times that when I have my daughter here, the only thing I’m allowed to get done on the computer is watching YouTube vids of bunnies and kittens. But I’ve been noticing something with these vids the last couple of weeks: namely, a sudden surge of ads for the Ogabe Destroy The Economy Once And For All Decree, officially misnomered the American Jobs Act — a particularly audacious little piece of propaganda, since it’s fundamentally un-American and has nothing at all to do with creating jobs. It’s annoying as hell, frankly; I’d rather see ads for feminine hygiene products than have to put up with yet more of the same garbage from this odious regime. Example:




The audacity of that one’s bad enough, what with scolding a Congress that, under Democrat Socialist mismanagement, didn’t bother to pass or even submit a budget in a couple of years now, to “do its job” and all. But there’s another one wherein the text claims that the bill will “create jobs and not increase the debt by one dime.” Which only serves to remind me of Dashiell Hammett’s Contintental Op and his response to the claims on a sign in a rough-and-tumble bar: “In those few words, I had already spotted three lies, with the promise of more…”

Ahh, but does it get worse, you ask? Hey, get real; it’s Obama we’re talking about here, ferchrissakes.

Hello, everyone. It’s been almost three weeks since I sent the American Jobs Act to Congress – three weeks since I sent them a bill that would put people back to work and put money in people’s pockets. This jobs bill is fully paid for. This jobs bill contains the kinds of proposals that Democrats and Republicans have supported in the past. And now I want it back. It is time for Congress to get its act together and pass this jobs bill so I can sign it into law.

Some Republicans in Congress have said that they agree with certain parts of this jobs bill. If so, it’s time for them to tell me what those proposals are. And if they’re opposed to this jobs bill, I’d like to know what exactly they’re against. Are they against putting teachers and police officers and firefighters back on the job? Are they against hiring construction workers to rebuild our roads and bridges and schools? Are they against giving tax cuts to virtually every worker and small business in America?

Economists from across the political spectrum have said that this jobs bill would boost the economy and spur hiring.  Why would you be against that? Especially at a time when so many Americans are struggling and out of work. 

Two long paragraphs and one short one, and every word in them is a lie. Yes, including “and” and “the,” as the famous old quote goes. Far beyond being the most brazen, shameless con artist ever to hold the office of President, he just might be the most brazen, shameless etc ever to hold public office in the US, period. Gotta give him credit for that, I guess, if credit it be.

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Oct
02

Any questions, pinheads?

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Breitbart spells it out, and really, at this point, it’s all that needs to be said, or all anyone can say. +1,000,000. If not more.

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Oct
02

On “soft”

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Saturday Steyn on Sunday, dealing a rap to the chops of Pee-resident Softy McPissypants:

He has a point. This is a great, great country that got so soft that 53 percent of electors voted for a ludicrously unqualified chief executive who would be regarded as a joke candidate in any serious nation. One should not begrudge a man who seizes his opportunity. But one should certainly hold in contempt those who allow him to seize it on the basis of such flaccid generalities as “hope” and “change”: That’s more than “a little” soft. “He’s probably the smartest guy ever to become president,” declared presidential historian Michael Beschloss the day after the 2008 election. But you don’t have to be that smart to put one over on all the smart guys. “I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap,” admits David Brooks, the softest touch at the New York Times. Tina Brown, editor of Newsweek, now says of the president: “He wasn’t ready, it turns out, really.”

If you’re a tenured columnist at the New York Times, you can just about afford the consequences of your sappiness. But out there among the hundreds of thousands of your readers who didn’t know you were a sap until you told them three years later, soft choices have hard consequences. If you’re one of Obama’s core constituencies, the ones who looked so photogenic at all the hopeychangey rallies, things are really hard: “Young Becoming ‘Lost Generation’ Amid Recession” (CBS News). Tough luck, rubes. You got a bumper sticker; he got to make things worse.

But don’t worry, it’s not much better at the other end of the spectrum: “Obama’s Wall Street Donors Look Elsewhere” (UPI). Gee, aren’t you the fellows who, when you buy a company, do something called “due diligence”? But you sunk everything into stock in Obamania Inc. on the basis of his “perfectly creased pant leg” or whatever David Brooks was drooling about that day? You handed a multi-trillion-dollar economy to a community organizer and you’re surprised that it led to more taxes, more bureaucracy, more regulation, more barnacles on an already rusting hulk?

Hard statism is usually murmured in soft, soothing, beguiling terms: Regulation is about cleaner air, healthier restaurants, safer children’s toys. Sounds so nice. But federal regulation alone sucks up 10 percent of GDP. That’s to say, Americans take the equivalent of the Canadian economy and toss it down the toilet just in complying with federal paperwork. Obama and the great toxic alphabet soup of federal regulation — EPA, OSHA, SEC, DHSS — want to take that 10 percent and crank it up to 12, 14, 15 percent.

Who could have foreseen that?

Oh, anybody paying proper attention. Which would not include all those soft (headed) “liberal” shits who would rather the government make the tough calls for them, and insulate them from any consequences. Byron York, too, gets a kick in to the Naked Emperor’s empty head:

There’s another way to read what the president said. Look at Obama’s speeches in the last couple of months, and he has repeatedly scolded audiences for not working hard enough and for not sacrificing enough to achieve the goals he has set for his administration. He’s done it with both supporters and with adversaries. With friends, his message has been: Nobody told you this would be easy, and you’ve got to work harder to enact my agenda. With adversaries, his message is: You’ve had it too easy, and you’ve got to make sacrifices to enact my agenda. Obama’s “gotten a little soft” remark fits into that theme: A soft America is one that is insufficiently willing to work and sacrifice to enact the Obama agenda.

Quit complaining. Stop grumbling. Get to work. Sacrifice. Obama is constantly telling Americans they need to shape up and snap to it, all for the purpose of making the Obama agenda a reality. Lately, with the economy worsening and his approval ratings falling, he’s been having a hard time bending Washington, and the country, to his will. Is it any surprise that he’s now telling Americans they’ve gotten soft?

We as a nation have failed His Holy Highness, clearly, and now must suffer His righteous wrath. You won’t like him when he’s angry, America. Then again, some of us didn’t like his useless, lying, narcissistic ass from the start.

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Sep
30

Unity? Civility? No thanks

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Breitbart gets this one at least mostly right:

In order to win the nomination in 2012, the Republican Party cannot afford to nominate someone like President George W. Bush, who turned the other cheek for half of his presidency, or Sen. John McCain, who wrongly calculated that his friends in the press were his political allies. This election cycle—and the prospective four to eight year cleanup job of the liberal “era of rage”—will not focus on stem cells, abortion, evolution or other business-as-usual election-year litmus tests. This election is about standing up to the bullies.
 
I’ve heard the arguments that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is not conservative enough, but try telling that to the people in the room at the Reagan Library last Tuesday. At the podium that night was a man who in less than two short years has exhibited strength and leadership skills conspicuously absent in the wake of a generation of pervasive political correctness. Big Labor bosses Richard Trumka and Jimmy Hoffa Jr., who stand shoulder-to-shoulder with President Obama, are the bullies on this playground. More than anyone in the country, Gov. Christie has stood his ground in the face of their thuggery and refused to hand over his lunch money.

The fact is, much as I like him (and I do), Christie IS too liberal; any Northeastern Republican has to be, by definition, just because of the sad political realities enforced by the Rust Belt’s near-pandemic level of “progressive” infestation. As a candidate for President, Christie makes a great governor of New Jersey. But that doesn’t mean Andrew is wrong about this:

The next Republican presidential candidate must speak that bluntly and truthfully to this group of people, and call on them to denounce their self-serving, violent and un-American leaders, who have driven them to a point of near-economic ruin. In this regard, the Republican candidate must mimic Chris Christie’s bravery and straight-talk.

Indeed he must. It’s why Perry took off so quickly, right out of the gate: he made some strong statements, unapologetically and without flinching from the perfectly predictable barrage of criticism from the Left they unleashed. Note that when Perry started back-pedaling and waffling on some of his muddle-headed debate answers and previous policy blunders, his political star plummeted like a big, burned-out space rock.

People on both sides are always bleating about the need for “unity” and a more civil, respectful approach to political conflict. Horseshit, says me. The 2012 election will determine the direction this country takes for decades to come. It is a struggle between two conflicting ideas of government: the one laid out in the Constitution versus the idea of the nation as a flock of witless sheep, in need of firm guidance from an all-powerful State that is the sole arbiter of where the polity’s best interests lie. And with Ogabecare set to redefine citizens as subjects once and for all starting in 2014, it’s the last chance to turn the country around non-violently, with ballots instead of bullets–assuming it can be done at all. It’s for all the marbles.

The Left has demonstrated again and again that there is no hope of persuading them, that there is no compromise that they will accept. And really, that last is fair enough: there can be no compromise between liberty and tyranny; between the individual’s fundamental right to self-determination and the power-lust of Statist despots; between the Constitution and Progressivism. As I’ve asked many times before: if you advocate “compromise” with the Left, precisely which of the Bill of Rights are you willing to give up to appease their blatant desire to control every aspect of American life?

This is a fight that must be definitively settled, one way or another–a reckoning that has been put off by the mushy middle’s willingness to go along in the hope of glossing over the core issues and avoiding the inevitable confrontation between them. It’s a battle that needs to be joined fully and passionately, not forestalled.

Christie’s unabashed pugnaciousness is indeed admirable, and vital; it will have to be emulated by any Constitutional conservative desirous of winning the war. Anything short of that will just keep us slouching on towards Eurosocialist Gomorrha.

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Sep
30

The problem with “Palestine”

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Is Palestinians. Period.

Abbas unwaveringly insists on the so-called “right of return,” which would demographically destroy Israel by swamping it with millions of Arabs, thereby turning the world’s only Jewish state into the world’s 23rd Arab state. And he has repeatedly declared, as recently as last week in New York: “We shall not recognize a Jewish state.”

Nor is this new. It is perfectly consistent with the long history of Palestinian rejectionism. Consider:

— Camp David, 2000. At a U.S.-sponsored summit, Prime MinisterEhud Barak offers Yasser Arafat a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza — and, astonishingly, the previously inconceivable division of Jerusalem. Arafat refuses — and makes no counteroffer, thereby demonstrating his unseriousness about making any deal. Instead, within two months, he launches a savage terror war that kills a thousand Israelis.

— Taba, 2001. An even sweeter deal — the Clinton Parameters — is offered. Arafat walks away again.

— Israel, 2008. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert makes the ultimate capitulation to Palestinian demands — 100 percent of the West Bank (with land swaps), Palestinian statehood, the division of Jerusalem with the Muslim parts becoming the capital of the newPalestine. And incredibly, he offers to turn over the city’s holy places, including the Western Wall — Judaism’s most sacred site, its Kaaba — to an international body on which sit Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Did Abbas accept? Of course not. If he had, the conflict would be over and Palestine would already be a member of the United Nations.

This is not ancient history. All three peace talks occurred over the past decade. And every one completely contradicts the current mindless narrative of Israeli “intransigence” as the obstacle to peace.

And of course, none of this would be possible without the active assistance of Western “liberal” dunces for whom no Israeli capitulation will ever be enough; no Israeli act of self-defense against barbarian savages unwaveringly and openly committed to genocide and Israel’s destruction will ever fail to be denounced; and no Paleosimian transgression against any conception of human decency will ever be grotesque enough to be noticed or remarked upon.

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Sep
30

WHO’S “gone soft” again, now?

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Actually, I can’t really argue much with the King’s sniffy, condescending assertion. But then, nobody’s ever going to use the Marines’ “born again hard” slogan to describe this tough-as-nails community organizer either:




Gutless pussy, heal thyself.

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Sep
30

The most corrupt administration in American history?

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Yep. Pretty much.

A Daily Caller investigation has found that in addition to the failed company Solyndra, at least four other solar panel manufacturing companies receiving in excess of $500 million in loan guarantees from the Obama administration employ executives or board members who have donated large sums of money to Democratic campaigns.

And as questions swirl around possible connections between political donations and these preferential financing arrangements, the Obama White House suddenly began deflecting The Daily Caller’s questions on Wednesday to the Democratic National Committee.

There’s a lot more to this piece, and you should read it all. But you should also have a set of hip-waders handy–and a barf bag–to help with slogging through the noisome Sargasso of regime bullshit, which is so liberally (ahem) flung about in hopes of overwhelming the stench of corruption as to be deep enough to drown in. Hey, Gangster Government is about more than just thuggish despotism, you know.

At the same time, though, nobody needs to think for a moment that jackbooted thuggishness has been underutilized by the criminal conspiracy against freedom, the Constitution, and the rule of law that is the Ogabe regime:

This just might be the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for to break the festering “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal wide open: the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.

Let that sink in: After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.

In a constantly evolving set of lies, Holder has denied knowing anything about Fast and Furious while at the same time withholding documents from the House and Senate committees looking into the mess while muzzling some witnesses and transferring others.

There are two possible explanations. The first is that the anti-gun Obama administration deliberately wanted American guns planted in Mexico in order to demonize American firearms dealers and gun owners. The operation was manufacturing “evidence” for the president’s false claim that we’re to blame for the appalling levels of Mexican drug-war violence.

If this is true, then Holder & Co. have got to go — and the trail needs to be followed no matter where it leads. For the federal government to seek to frame its own citizens is unconscionable.

Walsh calls for a special prosecutor here, which I don’t necessarily disagree with. But I also think Issa is right to be concerned about turning his investigation over to the Justice Department too early: this particular Justice Department, Ogabe’s completely politicized Justice Department, as currently constituted, clearly cannot be trusted to uphold the law when that conflicts with the hard-Left agenda of the lawless Ogabe regime.

One more tidbit from the Solyndra scam ought to fill out this stinking pile of “progressive” sleaze and corruption nicely: Crony Socialism: Obama Gives $737 Million to Solar Firm Linked to the Pelosi Clan. Also, DeMint coined a phrase I like even better than my own “crony communism”: Venture socialism.

Update! Treacher: “The solar energy ‘industry’ certainly doesn’t react too well to sunlight.” Neither does the Green-pimping Ogabe regime.

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Sep
28

Know your rights: you have none

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All three of ‘em, as the Clash song says? Americans don’t even have that many. Not with jackbooted-thug agencies like the EPA on our necks, we don’t.

There is something dreadfully wrong with our government when people who own an excavation company can get past the local permit offices, and the Army Corps of Engineers, and still “break the law” in a manner that should be punished by five-figure daily fines.

At this point, the Sacketts entered one of those delightful regulatory mazes lined with the bones of American liberty and prosperity. Complying with the EPA’s demands would cost them an estimated $27,000, and the result would be a $23,000 slice of carefully restored, utterly useless land. Defiance would bury them under those gigantic daily fines.

They wanted to contest the agency’s wetlands designation in court, having obtained certifications from a biologist and a soil expert that their property was not a wetland…but discovered that only the EPA could initiate such a proceeding, and they didn’t feel like nipping over to the courthouse to get the ball rolling.

If the Sacketts wanted to jump-start the court case, why, all they had to do was plunk down a few hundred thousand dollars to buy a permit from the EPA, and when the agency denied it, everyone could repair to the courthouse and bust out their soil samples.

In other words, Americans have God-given property rights, which they are free to exercise at the EPA’s convenience, provided they’re willing to fork over thirty-two thousand dollars per day while they wait. All to determine the fate of a property worth less than one day’s non-compliance fine.

The EPA assures us this is “reasonable,” because the fines are accrued until court actions are decided. Oh, well, that’s totally different, then! You’re allowed to assert your property rights at the EPA’s convenience, and take your chances in court…provided you’re ready to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in accrued non-compliance fees if you lose. That sounds like a fair and reasonable procedure for a middle-class couple trying to build a three-bedroom house on half an acre of land to follow! It’s hard to understand why they’re complaining.

According to Businessweek, the EPA does this up to 3,000 times per year.

We are so far from the nation the Founders created you can’t even see it from where we are now. Hell, you can barely even remember seeing it.

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Sep
28

Your tax dollars at work down a Green sewer

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Big Green Government is open for business. For giving you the business, that is.

The glass-and-metal building that Solyndra LLC began erecting alongside Interstate 880 in Fremont, California, in September 2009 was something the Silicon Valley area hadn’t seen in years: a new factory.

It wasn’t just any factory. When it was completed at an estimated cost of $733 million, including proceeds from a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee, it covered 300,000 square feet, the equivalent of five football fields. It had robots that whistled Disney tunes, spa-like showers with liquid-crystal displays of the water temperature, and glass-walled conference rooms.

“The new building is like the Taj Mahal,” John Pierce, 54, a San Jose resident who worked as a facilities manager at Solyndra, said in an interview.

There it is, folks. There’s what your King (piss be upon him) means when he blibbers moronically about “winning the future.” It means his Green cronies win the future from you. Or, more accurately, steal it–along with your children’s prospects for prosperity, as the King fleeces generations yet unborn for payoffs to shady operators who toe the correct line, grabbing for more centralized power all along the way.

Meanwhile, the King’s cronies build gilded castles as monuments to their unerring instinct for scamming the hapless subjects, and to the staggering corruption inherent in any Superstate such as the one ruling us. Does it get worse? Of course it does. And elsewhere, it gets worse still.

The Energy Department approved two loan guarantees worth more than $1 billion for solar energy projects in Nevada and Arizona, two days before the expiration date of a program that has become a rallying cry for Republican critics of the Obama administration’s green energy program.

The loans were approved Wednesday under the same program that paid for a $528-million loan to Solyndra Inc., a California solar panel maker that went bankrupt after receiving the money and laid off 1,100 workers. Solyndra is under investigation by the FBI and is the focal point of House hearings on the program.

As these no doubt will eventually be. Gotta give Ogabe credit for sheer, balls-out brazenness, though. The fallout from the Solyndra grift has barely even begun, and here he is doubling down. I sure wouldn’t want to play poker with the jug-eared swindler, I’ll say that much.

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Sep
28

More liberal fascism, close to home

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First thing we do, let’s cancel all the elections. Things are too dire, and the only fix is more of the same Democrat Socialist bullshit, right? So let’s get on it with it, right? Or, as AP says, “Hey, you know what would vastly improve American politics? Much less public accountability.”

Well, it would certainly solve the Democrat Socialists’ problems, anyway.

File this in the random-things-politicians-say file. Speaking to a Cary Rotary Club today, N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue suggested suspending Congressional elections for two years so that Congress can focus on economic recovery and not the next election.

“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that,” Perdue said. “You want people who don’t worry about the next election.”

The comment — which came during a discussion of the economy — perked more than a few ears. It’s unclear whether Perdue, a Democrat, is serious — but her tone was level and she asked others to support her on the idea. 

That’s because–despite the N&O’s desperate attempt at spinning this serious gaffe away–she wasn’t joking at all, but expressing a concept near and dear to the “progressive” mind, such as it is. When your intention is to remake society and create a New Progressive Man governed entirely by the diktats of “experts,” who needs or wants any input from the rabble via elections, except as a dumbshow to keep them in line by smoothing over their untidy urges towards self-determination? Back over to Allahpundit:

What’s most amazing to me about her and Orszag’s suggestions is how both take Congress’s gutlessness as an absolute fact of political life, to the point where Perdue thinks it’d be less disruptive to temporarily suspend America’s system of constitutional democracy than to ask Democrats and Republicans to cast a tough vote on, say, a big new stimulus package. Just this morning, Paul Ryan gave a speech doubling down on his free-market approach to solving the Medicare crisis. He’s risking a ferocious backlash from seniors and the end of his political career, but he’s enough of a patriot to accept that risk in the name of putting the country back on track to sustainability. How come he’s the exception in Congress rather than the rule? And if the answer is that he’s not the exception — if you believe, say, that Democrats vote their consciences on all things irrespective of the political consequences they might face — then Perdue’s plan would accomplish nothing. On the contrary, it would lock in the gridlocked Congress we have now instead of giving voters a chance to shake things loose next fall. Ah well. Expect more of this over the next year as Democrats get cranky about their dwindling chances of holding the Senate.

And as Democrat Socialists become more brazen about revealing their real hopes and dreams. As with the putz Mary Frances Barry’s too-revealing-for-liberal-comfort statement noted below (or with murderous Muslim savages), you really don’t have to spend a lot of time micro-analyzing their logorrhea to understand them; all you have to do is just listen to what they’re saying.

Update! Via Jeff: Related? You better believe it, bub.

President Barack Obama, infamously promised – at Google headquarters – “I will take a back seat to no one in my commitment to net neutrality.” He recently bragged about bypassing Congress to get his way, saying: “Until Nancy Pelosi is speaker again, I’d like to work my way around Congress.”

Yeah, I just bet you would. Which end-run around the Constitution is our hapless would-be dictator talking about this time? This one:

Free from regulation, the Internet has been a bright spot in our weak economy, with tech sector unemployment at just 3.3 percent. The net neutrality order will start us down the path to crippling it with regulations. A study from NYU found the rule will destroy between 100,000 and 200,000 jobs.

And the end goal is even more extreme. Robert McChesney, founder of Free Press, a group with deep ties to the Obama administration, the FCC, and the FTC has let slip where the plan leads:

“At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliaminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet. But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”

When fascism comes to America, it will not only be wearing a smiley-face — it will be running on the Democrat Socialist ticket. Which, given the history, is entirely appropriate.

Neo-Marxism on proud display in a patently anti-American regime, committed to destroying the last vestiges of America That Was; governing against the clearly-expressed will of the people it seeks to enslave; and encroaching on liberty by fiat, edict, and Imperial decree. That’s where we are in 2011, people. Deny it if you will. Myself, I’m loading magazines.

Updated update! Andy sums up:

Here, let me translate that for you: “This would be an awesome country if you rubes would just lie back and think of England while your betters fix the mess you made.”

This isn’t really shocking in its scope, though. Both Orszag and Perdue are giving us an insight into the way liberals think, but its not anything that isn’t readily apparent from their actions.

They are firm believers in central planning and do not trust Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”. Hayek’s “knowledge problem”? – never heard of it. They simply do not trust individuals to make the best decisions for themselves and their families.

This control fetish comes through in almost everything they support. Take, for example, mass transit, which involves moving herds of people from point A to point B on a fixed schedule. Meanwhile, with a car I’m free to go where I want when I want. Mass transit = control; automobiles = freedom.

The left has gone so far as to subvert the scientific method to try to scare you into believing your car is destroying the planet to get you to commit untold billions of dollars to mass transit schemes (among other stupidity). It’s not about the planet; it’s about control.

Both Orszag and Perdue seem to have some problems with that “consent of the governed” thing.

Bingo. Again, Levin’s Law applies: you cannot be a “liberal” and have any reverence or respect for the Constitution. They simply contradict each other at the most fundamental level. The Constitution was written to guard against the depredations of those who would seek to establish a State too powerful to allow for individual liberty. It is a document that sets clear limits on what the government may and may not do. “Liberals” seek to remove those limits. They can protest all they like, but that really is all there is to it.

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Sep
27

STOP THE PRESSES!

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Incredible as it may seem, a Democrat Socialist just slipped up and accidentally told the truth.

Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

I’m shocked almost speechless here — not that “liberal” rabble rouser Mary Frances Berry thinks it, but that she’d say it right out loud. But how despicable is it that this bint is willing to recommend such a heinous subterfuge as a viable Democrat Socialist strategy for glomming power? Is there no depth to which these vermin won’t stoop?

Yeah, I know; answers itself. And the counter-strategy for real Americans pretty much presents itself with this mendoucheous statement, too: ignore the whining liars when they try to get in your face with a “racism” charge they already know is phony. If they persist and refuse to go away, punch ‘em in the goddamned mouth. If they get up, punch ‘em again. Lather, rinse, repeat, until they lie still and quiet. No need to just take a dishonest insult like that passively, y’know. And fact is, any truly civilized person with any self-respect…wouldn’t.

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