Category Archives: Uncategorized

That Explains It! Weaker men more likely to support welfare state and wealth redistribution

Dwyane 'The Rock' Johnson-20120419-28

The Daily Mail tells us the story.

‘In all three countries, physically strong males consistently pursue the self-interested position on redistribution.’

Men with low upper-body strength, on the other hand, were less likely to support their own self-interest.

No wonder why the men who seem most bent on relying on the protection of the collective instead of being the protector always seem to be milquetoasts.

these-photos-of-joe-biden-getting-intimate-with-a-lady-biker-are-pricelessht_paul_ryan_time5_jef_121011_wblog

 

It is a hell of a lot more plausible than Global Warming.    So get thyself in the gym, move steel, and try not to act like Mary-Ellen Sisterpants.   Bulk up or be crushed.

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Filed under guns, Humor, marines, Personal, Politics, SIR!, Uncategorized, veterans

Tap Me Maybe? Eric Holder’s New Hit

DOJ

I saw the news while eating dinner.   Salamander broke it first over on the front porch, but I was gonna finish my baked scrod, dammit.    His question as to whether the media has “had enough” of Obama and Holder and the infringements on the First and Fourth Amendment rights of the press, I am afraid I have to answer in the negative.  Most, despite the loud protestations of some, are far-left ideologues, who consider such intrusion “breaking a few eggs”.  Hell, Chris Matthews was glad for Hurricane Sandy, with its 100+ dead and quarter million homeless, because it helped his man Obama win re-election.

Sniveling sycophants aside, I have a few questions of my own.  

So, how is this new, streamlined, secret Eric Holder-style due process working for ya?    Anybody still think that the drone strike memo had anything to do with terrorists anywhere?   Or that gun-grabbing efforts anything to do with “the children”?  Or that the IRS targeting political opposition was a matter of “a few low-ranking employees”?   Or that Holder didn’t know anything about Fast and Furious?  Or that the “immigration reform” sought by Obama is anything but allowing millions of illegals onto Democrat voter rolls?  Or that repeal of DADT and women in combat arms was anything other than pandering to special interests to garner votes, at the expense of the combat effectiveness of our Armed Forces?

[Oh wait, I almost forgot the Affordable Healthcare Act.**]

eric al

Here is an interesting quote.  It is by none other than Eric Holder, uncredited author of Fast and Furious, obstructionist in his refusal to prosecute the Black Panther Party voter intimidation case (wrong color),  champion of the authority of the Federal Government to kill any American, anywhere, without such messy and time consuming things like charges, grand juries, trials, or convictions.  Holder here in 2004, discussing the PATRIOT Act (emphasis mine):

When you look at some of the things that have done under the spirit of the act, where you detain citizens without giving them access to a lawyer, where you listen in on attorney-client conversations without involving a judge, these are the kinds of things that have been done in the name of the Patriot Act by this (Bush) administration…

…the problem that I had with the enforcement of the act is that this (Bush) administration said essentially trust us. We’re not going to involve judges, we’re not going to report to Congress on what we’re doing, and I think our history has shown us that we are best when we operate as people governed by the law as opposed to putting our trust in people and that’s the problem I have.

Seems that’s not a problem any more.   At least Bush was going after America’s enemies, and not Obama’s political opponents.

 

**100% to 400% increase in coverage premiums

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Obama: IRS Targeting Political Opponents “Outrageous”

From NBC News:

Amid outcry over revelations that Internal Revenue Service specialists specifically targeted conservative groups for scrutiny before the 2012 elections, President Barack Obama said Monday that the tax agency employees’ reported conduct was “outrageous” and “contrary to our traditions.”

I spose it is a matter of which traditions.   Socialist-communist regimes have a long history of such things.   Sounding Buck Turgidson-esque, the President goes on to say:

…he does not want to judge the findings of an Inspector General investigation “prematurely” but said that if the reports of political targeting are found to be correct, those responsible must be held “fully accountable.”

Like in Fast and Furious, and Benghazi, and with ACORN, and….?  You get the idea.   Marco Rubio has weighed in, and his commentary could be extended to a great deal of this Administration:

“[I]t is clear the IRS cannot operate with even a shred of the American people’s confidence under the current leadership,” Rubio wrote. “I strongly urge that you and President Obama demand the IRS Commissioner’s resignation, effectively immediately. No government agency that has behaved in such a manner can possibly instill any faith and respect from the American public.”

“Baghdad Bob” Carney gets into the act, too:

In a statement earlier Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the president is “concerned” about the reported conduct of “a small number of Internal Revenue Service employees.”

Yeah?  Like the ones at the top?  Anyway, here is the President, expressing his outrage:

Oh yeah, I am still waiting for my Federal Income Tax refund.

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Pediatricians for Gun Control!

No surprise here.  They will try and make the hackneyed and disproved argument that legally-owned firearms present a health risk.   Physicians tend to be overwhelmingly liberal, believe me.  That is no surprise.  What I do object to is the decades-long CDC and other government-funded supposed medical research being done to forward the far-left gun control agenda.   The idea that physicians, especially pediatricians, have the right to ask about firearms ownership in the name of medicine smacks of the big-brother philosophy that our Constitutional liberties present a danger to ourselves and society, and therefore must be carefully regulated or outright forbidden.  

Funny thing, though.  Deaths by “gun violence”, two-thirds of which are suicides, and the rest largely committed by criminals for whom laws are not at all effective, number around 31,ooo in the US annually.  Deaths through medical errors?  Well, here is some data between 2001 and 2003:

An average of 195,000 people in the USA died due to potentially preventable, in-hospital medical errors in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, according to a new study of 37 million patient records that was released today by HealthGrades, the healthcare quality company.

What’s that look like in a graph?  I thought you’d never ask.

firearms vs medical errors

So doctors and medical professionals kill nineteen times the number of people that non-suicide “gun violence” kills.   Apparently, those people who die from in-hospital medical errors are much less dead than someone killed by a gun in a homicide.   And doctors and medical professionals kill more than THREE HUNDRED TIMES the number of people who die in firearms accidents.

I wonder if all the time and attention and money spent by the CDC and by medical organizations to further the lefty agenda might been better spent on training doctors and clinicians to do their jobs properly.

Just a thought.  By the way, how about they “do no harm” and shut up about trying to foist their political views upon us in the guise of medical research?

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Three Days of Mourning!

Why didn’t someone tell me?  

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Fuddruckers closes on Hilton Head after 28 years

Fuddruckers was a Sunday afternoon ritual, if you were lucky to have it off, when I was at Parris Island working recruit series twenty-odd years ago.  Chocolate shakes, and incredible burgers with everything imaginable on them.  And artery-clogging fries.   Three years in Recruit Training Regiment meant lots of 100+ hour six- and seven-day work weeks with recruits on deck, which was always.  A little air conditioning and good chow were a damned welcome break for a few hours.

I will make a last trip to Parris Island before I retire, but I was looking forward to sitting down at Fuddruckers and topping off my cholesterol.    Rumor has it that the one in Alexandria VA is also closed.

Dammit, I feel old.

But that’s all shove be’ind me — long ago an’ fur away,

-RK

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Battle for Berlin, 1945

This week marks VE Day, commemorating the Victory in Europe over Hitler’s Third Reich.  The last and perhaps the most savage battle was for the German capital of Berlin.   This from the Battlefield series, which was aired weekly on Far East Network (“Forced Entertainment Network”) when I had an artillery battery in Okinawa in 1996.   The entire series is superb, and if you look, you can find most of them on line.  They are also available on DVD.   They contain a pretty good description of the higher tactical through the strategic picture, and have enough detail and technical stuff, but not too much.

Since the series was made, Russian archives have been explored more completely, and the number of Soviet casualties have been scaled up more than two-fold, from the 305,000 quoted in this episode, to nearly 700,000.   Note the ever-present use of artillery and mortars, rockets, and field guns, even in an urban environment.   The episode is 116 minutes, roughly the time one spends clicking on all of Mav’s aviation links and cool pictures and videos and stuff.   So get your Eastern Front geek on, and watch it.  You know you wanna.

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Separated at Birth?

Now, I am not a conspiracy theorist, by and large.  But there are things that are just too coincidental for my taste.

ergo2Remy_Jerry-head

 

Either Tayyip Ergodan of Turkey played second base, or Jerry Remy is NOT from Fall River.

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Sometimes, the Headline Tells You Everything You Want to Know, Part II.

“Horror as Bear on a Bike EATS a Monkey at the End of Sick Circus Cycle Race”

This is one of those headlines.  The UK’s Daily Mail tells you the rest.

It is not clear when the latest video was taken but Shanghai Wild Animal Park said in 2006 that the Olympic event had been scrapped following complaints and ‘out of consideration for the safety of our visitors.’

The VISITORS?   What about the poor damned chimp?   I always said I was sure glad I was not a sailor on a Soviet Nuclear Submarine.   I will have to add “monkey in a Chinese circus” to that.  

 

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Obama at OSU: “They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner.”

obama3lenin

jeffersonFrederick_Douglass_portrait_900x6002

President Obama’s commencement address to the graduates at the Ohio State University contained the following remarks:

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

One would hope, at least, that the History majors and Political Science majors were squirming in their seats because their respective educations gave them insights that would cause them to disagree fundamentally with Obama’s assertions.  However, after sixteen years in the leftist secular-progressive socialist indoctrination camps that are secondary and higher education in this country, I am not optimistic.  Though it might be instructive to include an essay question on a final exam in which students would be asked to identify where forcible wealth redistribution, government-enforced equality, and government-dictated behaviors did not end in tyranny, oppression, and death.

Just whose voices are they that warn “incessantly” of tyranny that Obama begs to be rejected?  If you are scoring at home, here are a few of the no-account alarmists unreasonably suspicious of government overreach:

  •  Thomas Jefferson
  • John Stuart Mill
  • Voltaire
  • Martin Luther King
  • Edmund Burke
  • Alexander Hamilton
  • Thomas Paine
  • Abraham Lincoln
  • Patrick Henry
  • Benjamin Franklin
  • Plato
  • Frederick Douglass
  • Samuel Adams
  • CS Lewis
  • Aristotle
  • James Madison
  • Ronald Reagan

Whose voices have extolled the virtues of government authority and the necessity to limit the freedoms of citizens, for their own safety and well-being?  Here’s a sample of Obama’s esteemed colleagues:

  • Mao Tse-Tung
  • Pol Pot
  • Malcolm X
  • Fidel Castro
  • Earl Browder
  • Friedrich Engels
  • Saul Alinsky
  • Hugo Chavez 
  • Vladimir Lenin
  • Eugene Debs
  • Leon Trotsky
  • Idi Amin
  • Karl Marx
  • Che Guevara

In his speech, Obama remarked, “Because we understand that this democracy is ours.”   That phrase, and the plural possessive, has an entirely different meaning for those who warn against the encroachment of government authority on individual liberties than it does for those who believe that government, America’s experiment included, is about collectivism, and “what can be done by us, together”.   That difference is precisely the difference between liberty and tyranny.

Class of 2013, ignore five centuries of despotism at your own peril.  Because tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.      -Camus

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150 Years Ago: Chancellorsville, May 3rd, 1863

Union soldiers waiting to advance, Chancellorsville

An interesting post over at Op-For by the redoubtable LtCol P commemorating the 150th anniversary of the famous Stonewall Jackson flank attack in the middle of the week-long battle.

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While the Battle of Chancellorsville was a stunning Southern victory, and the end of General Joe Hooker’s time at the head of the Army of the Potomac, the battle was not all disaster for the Federals, nor did their soldiers fail to fight.   Some fought extraordinarily well.  The 240-odd Officers and men of the 115th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, fighting under Dan Sickles’ Third Corps, held the western wall of the Federal position just west of Wilderness Church, in and around Hazel Grove.  The Regimental History for the 115th PA Vol. Inf. tells the story:

At daylight on the 3rd, the first line was attacked.  After holding its position for an hour, it fell back on its supports.  The Second line was then ordered to advance.  With alacrity it sprang forward, driving the enemy, when Colonel Lancaster fell, pierced through the temple with a minie-ball, [sic] the command devolving on Major Dunne.  Without faltering, the line pressed forward, recapturing the breastworks, taking four hundred prisoners and two stands of colors…  The position was held against the desperate efforts to carry it…

The price, including the desperate fighting withdrawal on the 6th, was high.

The Regiment entered the battle with fourteen Officers and two-hundred thirty men; of these, Colonel Lancaster, and Captains John J. Donnelly and George Cromley were killed,  and Captains Richard Dillon and Wm. A. Reilly, and Lieutenants William J. Ashe, James Malloy, and Evan Davis were wounded, the two latter mortally.  Captain Dillon lost his left arm.   Eight men were killed, seventy-three wounded, and twenty-two missing; an aggregate loss of one-hundred eleven.

CW-Chancellorsville-Front

One of those seventy-three wounded was Private C. A. Warner of D Co., who was struck in the chest by a Rebel musket ball.

Warner, C.A. Private Wounded at Chancellorsville, Va., May 3, 1863 (Pa. Archives); Tr. to Co. D, 110th Regiment, P.V., June 22, 1864 D

Surgeons could not remove it, so it remained in his chest for the remainder of his life, which was all too short.   Just weeks before his son, my grandfather, was born in 1885, Christopher A. Warner died of complications from his wound.   He was 43.

One of the most incredibly moving experiences I ever had was walking through the Chancellorsville Battlefield in 1986 while at the Basic School.  Our 25-mile MCCRES hike was conducted there, and while 25 miles in 8 hours with a full march order is no leisure stroll, the venue was inspired.  On our breaks, Park Rangers would conduct impromptu lecture on the course of the battle.  I asked a Ranger at one point where the 115th PA Volunteers had fought, and he informed me that we were standing on the spot.

Knowing that I was within yards of where one of my ancestors had been wounded in the Civil War was both a thrill and a strongly compelling experience.   Even after the nearly thirty years, I remember every detail of the spot, and of the few minutes spent in thought, before shouldering MY pack again and falling into the long column of men being trained for war.  It is something I shall never forget.

[Update-XBrad]- Of course, for ALL your American Civil War blogging needs, be sure to check out Craig’s blog To The Sound Of The Guns. He’s devoted considerable space to Chancellorsville.

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If We Don’t Have It, You Don’t Need It!

nhs025

Here is a quick quiz:

Where can you go for a shopping trip and get everything on this shopping list without leaving the building?

  • Loaf of oat bread
  • Oscillating lawn sprinkler
  • $150 bottle of rare wine
  • 11/16ths combination wrench
  • Dress pattern for a prom gown
  • An apple-maple muffin
  • A box of .35 Whelen in 250 grain FMJ
  • Spread satin latex paint
  • A fill-up of premium gas
  • A post card of wintertime Norwich VT
  • The classic electric game “Operation”

Yep.  Dan and Whits.   The leading image in the post shows the building when it was Merrill’s Hardware, around 1890.  The building to the immediate right is the Norwich Inn, which inspired the setting on which the 1980s sitcom Newhart was based.

So, if you ever find yourself in eastern Vermont, and there is something you really need, head to Norwich and stop in.  You might find you need some deer urine, and remember suddenly that you have been meaning to pick up a crochet hook for the missus.  You might even see Larry, Darryl, and Darryl.  The real-life version, of which there are surprisingly many.

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“What does it hurt to have somebody knock on a door…?”

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It sounds so reasonable, at first.    I mean, everybody wants to “prevent violence”, right?    That is at least the initial premise in Palm Beach, FL.

But the idea of giving the government, through its law enforcement arm, “needed information to keep a close eye on things” flies in the face of every lesson the totalitarianism of the last century taught us.

“How are they possibly going to watch everybody who makes a comment like that? It’s subjective,” said Liz Downey, executive director of the Palm Beach County branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “We don’t want to take away people’s civil liberties just because people aren’t behaving the way we think they should be.”

A damned good question.  Never fear, however, for the efficiency and compassion of government employees and institutions will protect you:

Bradshaw acknowledged the risk that anyone in a messy divorce or in a dispute with a neighbor could abuse the hotline. But, he said, he’s confident that his trained professionals will know how to sort out fact from fiction.

“We know how to sift through frivolous complaints,” he said.

I bet you do.  Wait until the term “troubled people” gets a definition that looks an awful lot like political opposition to the far Left.    Giving such unfettered power and invasive authority to law enforcement is dangerous in the extreme, for  is a violation of the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, and Sixth Amendment.

Not long into the article, the real  agenda pokes through the veil, just a little.

“We want people to call us if the guy down the street says he hates the government, hates the mayor and he’s gonna shoot him,” Bradshaw said.

Hating the government, and the mayor, and wanting to shoot him is not a crime.   Doing so, or threatening to do so, is.  But it seems Bradshaw doesn’t care to wait on such things as the commission of a criminal act, or even probable cause or reasonable suspicion.   I am sure we will be told that the urgency of the problem precludes due process yet again.

Republican Governor Rick Scott should take one of two paths.  He should veto such a frightfully dangerous proposal and make it clear that such an example of egregious government overreach will never get his signature,  or he should simply appoint a Gauleiter for Palm Beach County and drop all pretense to civil liberties.

After all, crimes and violence committed by “private citizens” in the Third Reich or the Soviet Union was historically low compared to crime rates in US cities.

image19200px-Camp_ArbeitMachtFrei

The government?  Not so much.  And it started with police knocking on doors.

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No Money for Diapers?

cigs

tattoo-done

I know I can’t take pictures, or video, without facing a lawsuit.  I dearly wish I could, though it is likely that the idea of shaming some people would lead them even more to consider themselves “victims”, with the concomitant parade of State-salaried do-gooders egging them on and “advocating” for them.

Coming back from a quick lunch today, I see a very young mother, baby on her hip, toddler at her side.  She is hitting the welfare office, across the hall from me.  Her baby has a full diaper, evident as soon as I opened the hallway door.  The guy in the hallway comments to her that the kid needs a change, to which she replies that she hasn’t got any money for diapers.

What DOES she have?  Tattoos.  A bunch of them.  (No, that is not her, above.  She was bigger than that.)  Too many for me to count, not that I care to.  What else?  As I was heading TO lunch, she was out having a cigarette.  Or two, or more.

Diapers can be found for about fifteen to twenty bucks a box, containing between 60 and 100.

Cigarettes in Vermont are almost eight bucks a pack.  $72 a carton.

I don’t know what tattoos cost in Vermont these days, not having priced them.

Everything we need to know about the malignant decay of our burgeoning welfare state was standing in the hallway outside my office.  Our money goes (we think) for diapers and formula.  HER money goes for cigarettes, and Lord knows what else.  But she NEEDS our money.  She is entitled to it.  And we are bound to give it to her.  For the children.

How heartless are they who would take food out of her children’s mouths.   And the cost of the health problems caused by the tobacco usage and weight issues must, and will, be borne by all of us, except her.   Because health care is a basic human right.

Any guesses what my objection to such a paradigm has gotten me labeled as more than once?  You betcha.  Racist.  Problem is that, without exception, the many, many people of similar appointment whom I see on a routine basis there and lighting up in front of the WIC offices, are the same race as me.   Government handouts enabling a life without consequence are an addiction that robs people of pride, ambition, judgment, and morality.   And yes, that is all about race.  The Human Race.

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What, Again?

Hollande-Merkel

The Telegraph, which has had a few ringside seats for these kinds of Franco-German spats, tells us that there are differences between the two Continental states, and those differences are sometimes a source of friction.  Perish the thought.

The ministry’s paper said: “French industry is increasingly losing its competitiveness. The relocation of companies abroad continues. Profitability is meagre.”

Relations between France and Germany are chilly after Mr Hollande’s Socialist party accused Mrs Merkel of “egotistical intransigence” and called for “democratic confrontation” with Berlin.

While France clings to its totemic 35-hour working week, workers in Germany are increasingly discontented at having to endure years of low pay rises.

It points out that France has the “second lowest annual working time” in the European Union, while its “tax and social security burden” is the highest in the eurozone. It also warns that France has made too little investment in research and development.

One cannot but think of the stereotypes of the humorless, hard-working German looking over his factory apron at his lazy, decadent French neighbor with contempt and frustration, while the Frenchman stares back from his sidewalk table, eating his wine and cheese, confident of his moral and cultural superiority.

What could go wrong?   It isn’t like these two countries would actually fight over something.  That would be unprecedented….

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VX in Syria; A Vexing Question

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The Telegraph reports, in an article on the fight for the Al-Safirah chemical facility:

The Syrian regime’s chemical warchest is indeed vast – the biggest in the Middle East, and the fourth largest in the world. Started in the 1970s ranks with help from Syria’s Cold War sponsor, Russia, today its programme includes facilities for making mustard gas, sarin and another nerve agent, VX, which stays lethal for much longer after dispersal.

Of course, this is not the first revelation that Assad’s chemical inventory contained VX.  Former Syrian Army Chemical Officer MajGen Adnan Sillou discussed the matter in a December 2012 interview:

He listed mustard gas along with the sarin, VX and tabun nerve agents as the main elements in Syria’s chemical arsenal, whose existence Syria doesn’t even acknowledge.

Despite the anguished cries of the Bush-haters, the question of VX in Syria is a vexing one for the “no chemical weapons in Iraq” crowd.   Only four countries have ever been known to produce VX; Great Britain, where it was discovered/invented, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Iraq.

So, how did VX end up in Basher Al-Assad’s arsenal?  One of two ways, it would seem, or some combination thereof.  It was either provided by what the Telegraph calls Syria’s “Cold War sponsor” (the Soviet Union, not Russia), or it came from Syria’s southeastern neighbor, Saddam’s Iraq.   Or both.

Methinks that the VX stockpiles have MAKSIM‘s fingerprints all over them.  The presence of a KGB General in Iraq in the months leading up to the US invasion cannot plausibly be explained by casting him as an “adviser”.    Primakov had intimate knowledge of Iraq’s chemical capabilties, and would have been in an ideal position to help remove Saddam’s remaining stockpile, along with evidence of Soviet/Russian culpability.

Another alternative is the possibility that the Soviet Union (or Russia post-1991) provided Syria with VX directly.    Were that the case, the likelihood that the Soviets/Russians did the same with Iraq (or provided technical assistance to manufacture) increases dramatically.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Putin’s Russia has remained in the protector role of Assad in Syria, far and above that which would logically attend a regime on such shaky ground internally.   And would explain Primakov’s presence in Iraq in the months leading up to the US invasion.

In either case, those who refuse to acknowledge Syria’s possession of VX, the most lethal of nerve agents, and by far the most difficult to produce, have to do some soul searching.   It might serve them well to search all the way back to 2003.

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The Ice Age Cometh!

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Second Coldest Start To Spring In US History

It wasn’t just my imagination.  Behold, from Steven Goddard’s Real Science post.

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Huh.  To show how significant this catastrophe is, all one has to do is “AlGorify” the data.  (Not to be confused with “algorithm”, which could lend some statistical validity to the process.)

Picture1

So, there’s where next year’s spring temperatures will be come the end of April.  Just a little above freezing.   2015?   Frozen solid.   Anthropomorphic?  I dunno.  And I am also confused by what to do about it.   When the coldest spring of 1975 happened, we were told that we needed to stifle industry and redistribute wealth to the Third World (and Environmentalists’ pockets) to keep the world from freezing.    THEN we were told that we needed to stifle industry and redistribute wealth to the Third World (and the pockets of those same Environmentalists) to keep the world from roasting to oblivion.

I can’t for the life of me understand why 0.00000000035%  of the data is not conclusive.    Even though it was unevenly collected with a wide variety of instruments and methods.   But hey, it is “settled science”, innit?   Like predicting Presidential election results by counting four tenths of a vote.

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Obama’s Syria Intervention Talk: An Echo of Bush

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“I think that in many ways a line’s been crossed when we see tens of thousands of innocent people killed by a regime, but the use of chemical weapons and the danger that is poses to the international community, to neighbors of Syria, the potential of chemical weapons to get into the hands of terrorists, all of those things add increased urgency to what is already a significant security problem and humanitarian problem in the region,” Obama told reporters.

So the hundreds of thousands of innocent people being killed by a regime, the use of chemical weapons, the potential for chemical weapons to get in the hands of terrorists, ARE considerations for military intervention?    Could we say as a counter, perhaps, that Bashar al-Assad poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors…and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history?

Yes, indeed we could.  I am not advocating for or against intervention in Syria, though I would be curious to know whom we believe we would ally with, and whom against, and just what we could accomplish given the active opposition of Putin’s Russia (not least because of the possibility of Russian fingerprints on Syria’s chemical stockpile, and on a chemical stockpile of Iraqi origin).

It seems that President Obama’s “student union view” of the world and how it works has once again collided head-on with reality.    The “game-changer” bandied about so often of late has already happened.   The world, our allies, and our adversaries, will see what comes next.    Will we see the Obama who condemned his predecessor for Iraq?  Or the Obama whose tough talk regarding Syria is a virtual echo of that predecessor?  Has he the statesmanship and foreign policy acumen to act decisively and effectively?   Considering the string of diplomatic failures punctuated by the Benghazi catastrophe and the ineffectual confrontation with the DPRK, I am not terribly hopeful.

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Holder Calls Citizenship for Illegal Aliens “Civil Right”

Holder

Eric Holder’s latest copy of the Bill of Rights, w/CH 1, as we say in the Corps.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Amendment VII

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Add:

Creating a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in this country is essential. The way we treat our friends and neighbors who are undocumented… This is a matter of civil and human rights.   (Except for the ones killed with Fast and Furious weapons)

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Kindermord in Philadelphia and a Deafening Silence in the Media

Dr.-Kermit-Gosnell

The horrific details of the five weeks of the Dr. Kermit Gosnell murder trial have come to light in various places of late.  However, the mainstream media has consistently shuffled the trial to the electronic and video version of “below the fold”.   Some are beginning to take notice.  James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal last week wrote a disturbing piece about the “house of horrors” Gosnell orchestrated, and the complicity of other abortion clinics in referring patients to Gosnell despite the legal limitations

The grand jury’s account suggests that other abortionists treated him less as an outlaw than as a niche player in the abortion market. He earned a bad reputation in Philadelphia but received referrals from across the Eastern Seaboard. Many of the women dispatched to him were “well beyond” 24 weeks pregnant, the legal limit in Pennsylvania.

The grand jury did not name any of the clinics, hospitals or doctors who made referrals to Gosnell, except for a Delaware clinic where he also worked part-time. Its narrative suggests, however, that “legitimate” abortionists routinely availed themselves of Gosnell’s services to help their patients evade legal and ethical limits on late-term abortion.

The 2010 Federal raid on Gosnell’s butcher shop was a narcotics raid, and it was only then that the conditions in the clinic came to light.   The grand jury in this case makes it clear that many, many “legal” abortion clinics abetted Gosnell’s activities and his business there.

We are incessantly bombarded with the dubious, politically-slanted notion that the firearms of law-abiding gun-owners are somehow “on the street” and present a threat to the “safety of our children”.    Because “keeping our children safe” is a “national responsibility” and justification for disarming the populace, restricting freedoms, and expanding the power and reach of government at the expense of parental rights.  Those who assert that my firearms are a threat to “the children” are in large part a major component of the rabid pro-abortion lobby, who euphemistically call the stance “pro-choice”.

He or an untrained staffer would induce labor, deliver the baby alive, and then perform the procedure they called by the chilling euphemism “snipping”—slashing the infant to death with scissors to the neck and spine. “Over the years, there were hundreds of ‘snippings,’ ” the grand jury found. But bodies had been disposed of and files destroyed, so the evidence was sufficient to prosecute in only seven cases. One of those victims, a neonatologist testified, was a boy of “32 weeks, if not more, in gestational age.” That is, his mother had been at least 7½ months pregnant.

Adam Lanza, a mentally-ill man of 19 murders his mother, and shoots twenty children and six adults in December of 2012.  The cries in the media and the Obama Administration for restricting the rights of the law-abiding and making ever-stricter gun laws was deafening, on every major network for weeks, and occasionally still there.   Even as the Left admitted that draconian restrictions won’t do a thing to prevent such an act of evil.  The “national discussion” was but a tirade from the gun-grabbers, with a complicit media dutifully broadcasting, and often advocating.

Hundreds of babies killed after live births?   Not a peep from the Administration, decidedly subdued coverage in the national media.  Why, Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke an unkind name made much bigger headlines than this.   Porquois?  Because Roe v. Wade is among the holiest of holies on the far-left.  And a beholden MSM would not dare dream of casting abortion in a negative light.  Even though, as Taranto so eloquently asserts;

The grand jury’s report should also be seen as an indictment of America’s post-Roe abortion industry. Its indifference—at best—to legal limits made possible the deaths of untold numbers of babies, lending credence to the argument that legal abortion is a slippery slope to infanticide.

There is far more truth in that statement than in all the anti-gun propaganda promulgated by those people who want guns banned and abortion legal.   Notice Obama spoke at Planned Parenthood, and claims the NRA “lied” about his gun control push.

The hypocrisy just kills you.  Eventually.

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As if on cue, these words of partisan venom today from our Protector of Children:

“The fact is, after decades of progress, there’s still those who want to turn back the clock to policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st Century…

Strange.  I seem to remember the Massacre of the Innocents being quite a bit longer ago than that.  The babies who had been born alive and had been killed over the decades since Roe v. Wade inside Gosnell’s abortion charnel house could not be reached for comment.

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GUILTY on three counts of MURDER and one involuntary manslaughter.   Wonder when the press will cover it?

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A Little Shooty, Sorta

University of Michigan guard Nik Stauskas made a home video of himself shooting threes, in the rain, in his back yard in Canada.  The 6-7 freshman averaged about eleven a game for the Blue last season.  Note that the 3-point stripe is 19′ 9″ from the bucket, essentially a 20-foot jump shot.   Five minutes, 76 shots.  70 makes, including 46 IN A ROW.  Worth the five minutes.

My Sunday night pickup ball excursions are against guys mostly in their 30s and 40s, with the occasional 20-somethings, and a sprinkling of former college players.   If I hit half of my threes in the course of the night, I am pretty happy with that.  But 92%?  In the rain?  Damned remarkable.

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Bringing the Raiders Home from Makin

The events of this video occurred in 1999-2000.  I remember the story then, but I did not know the most amazing part of the story.   That the Butaritari people of that island had buried the Marine dead, had given them a warriors’ burial, is astounding and incredibly moving.

The August 1942 Makin Raid by Carlson’s 2nd Raider Bn killed a large number of Japanese on the island, but the raid was not really a success. as no prisoners were taken, and no Japanese forces diverted from the Solomons to the Gilberts.    Nonetheless, the Butaritari people honored the sacrifice of those Marines, and protected their slain comrades from the hated Japanese until they were liberated in November of 1943.

(Among those on the Makin Raid was 2nd Lt Oscar Peatross, who would win a Navy Cross there.  I had the honor of meeting him when I was stationed at Parris Island in the early 90s.)

Don’t be surprised to get dust in your eye while watching the video.   Nineteen brave young Marines, honored by the people they died to free, and again by those they died to keep free.    Semper Fidelis.

H/T to Dennis

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Winning Words From a Warlord

winston_churchill

In the very darkest days of the Second World War, when England stood alone, and suffered alone, Prime Minister Winston Churchill replaced his friend General Edmund Ironside, veteran of two wars, as Chief of the Imperial General Staff with General Sir John Dill.  Churchill told Dill:

“We cannot afford to confine Army appointments to persons who have excited no hostile comments in their careers…  This is a time to try men of force and vision, and not to be exclusively confined to those who are judged to be thoroughly safe by conventional standards.”

Ponder.

But for the leadership in our Armed Forces to embrace such sentiment.

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Forfeiting Civil Liberties for “Security”: Bloomberg’s New Interpretation of the Constitution

Charles+Schumer+Michael+Bloomberg+NYC+Mayor+SNRKdqdW8zfl

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

-Benjamin Franklin

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the rabid anti-gun zealot who has all but abrogated the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” in his fair city in the name of “reasonable gun laws”, believes the Boston bombings require our interpretation of our Constitutional liberties to change.

But our obligation first and foremost is to keep our kids safe in the schools; first and foremost, to keep you safe if you go to a sporting event; first and foremost is to keep you safe if you walk down the streets or go into our parks,” he said.

No, sorry, what I see and hear are justifications for the ever-expanding authority of government at the expense, yet again, of personal liberties.   Bloomberg’s disingenuous diatribe that metal detectors in schools can be somehow lumped in with draconian firearms laws denying ownership and possession by law-abiding adults as a part of “reasonable” tells you what you need to know about his respect, or lack thereof, for our Constitutional freedoms.

The idea that we are “…endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights…” seems to him to mean “…endowed by the Mayor with certain negotiable rights…”, and should be a giant red (and I do mean RED) flag.  If you missed that one, there is this from a 2011 speech he gave at MIT:

“I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world. I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom’s annoyance. We have the United Nations in New York, and so we have an entree into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have,” Mayor Bloomberg said.

There have been rumors that he is eyeing the White House in 2016.   If he gets there, expect his interpretation of our Constitution to do far more harm to our precious freedom than a dozen Boston terrorists.   As would anyone else who shares his belief that freedom should be bartered so casually for the perception of safety.   Though I am no fan of the PATRIOT Act,  measures infringing on our privacy and liberties since then, and the desires for yet more by people like Michael Bloomberg, make PATRIOT absolutely pale in comparison.

“That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed.”

Secure them.   Not trade them.   Hey, Bloomberg, you can keep your “change”, too.

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The “Wrong” Suspects in Boston

suspects

Well, Boston police did not produce the category of suspect that most of the mainstream media and former advisors to the Obama Administration almost immediately speculated, indeed, fervently HOPED it would be.   The suspects are not white ‘Tea Party’ anti-government types, who picked the city, Boston, and the day of the attack, Patriots’ Day, for the symbolic value of violent opposition to President Obama.

Instead, the suspects were two young brothers from Chechnya, an overwhelmingly Sunni Islamic region.  Though motive is certainly difficult to determine for sure immediately, the chances are now ZILCH that it was anti-Obama Tea Party villain or villains who decided to slaughter innocent Americans.   Despite myriad commentary that virtually campaigned for a conservative white male to be the target.

CNN’s Peter Bergen speculated that the terrorists were “right-wing extremists”.

Charles Pierce, of Esquire, gave us this bit of brilliance:

I would caution folks jumping to conclusions about foreign terrorism to remember that this is the official Patriots Day holiday in Massachusetts, celebrating the Battles at Lexington and Concord, and that the actual date (April 19) was of some significance to, among other people, Tim McVeigh, because he fancied himself a waterer of the tree of liberty and the like.

There was, of course, David Sirota at Salon.com, who expresses his strong preference for white terrorists, while somehow missing the point about radical Islam actually close to BEING an existential threat.

Michael Moore was, of course, certain of the guilt of the Tea Party he despises so much.

And, also, this from taxpayer-funded NPR‘s Dina Temple-Raston:

“April is a big month for anti-government and right-wing individuals,” she said.

“There’s the Columbine anniversary. There’s Hitler’s birthday. There’s the Oklahoma City bombing. The assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco,” she added.

There are a host of other instances of such wishful speculation, on the talking head panels, the liberal blogosphere, and on “twiddah” from the not-so-cerebral far Left.

The most telling, disturbingly so, was the commentary from former Obama adviser David Axelrod.  He posited rather confidently what would be President Obama’s thought process and first instinct.   While he couches it in softer language, his message is clear.  President Obama first looks to his political opponents as the possible terrorists, and opposition to him and his policies as the motive.  Axelrod is eminently correct in his assertion.

This, despite the fact that those who believe in the Constitution and oppose his explosive government growth, intrusion into our privacy, curtailing of our freedoms, and raiding of our wallets have never violated the law, threatened to violate the law, or considered indiscriminate murder of innocent people to be the way to get their points across.  Unlike Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who still do.

The Obama Administration has to be bitterly disappointed.  The terrorists weren’t “home grown” white men who fit Janet Napolitano’s description of Veterans who believe in smaller government, the Second Amendment, and God.     They did not give him a reason to further restrict the rights of the law-abiding, or to disparage those who disagree with him as unreasonable and dangerous criminals.

In fact, these terrorists, who they are and what they did, both at the Marathon on Monday and last evening, put paid to the falsehood that infringing on the Constitutional liberties of the law-abiding with draconian gun laws will prevent someone intent on evil from perpetrating that evil.   Fresh off the stinging rebuke of his anti-gun platform by a Democratic Senate, President Obama cannot even leverage his beholden press to further demonize non-liberal white males as terrorists and murderers who pose a threat to our freedoms.

However, there should be considerable alarm at the willingness, or rather enthusiasm, with which the majority of our media and government officials ruminate, without proof or precedent, on the collective culpability of an entire segment of American citizens.   They simply rub their hands and wait for a chance to bring the full weight of government authority and public opinion (to the extent that they influence the latter) to bear against those they disagree with.

Well, maybe next time.

In the meantime, I will cling to my guns and my religion and the Constitution.   But I have no illusions about the desire of my own government to target me, because of my race and my beliefs, and label me an enemy.    After this fiasco in Boston, none of us should.   All they need are the “right suspects”.

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H7N9 Human-to-Human Transfer in China?

h7n9

The Chinese Government is officially merely “suspicious” about the possibility of transmission by human contact of what has so far proven a deadly new strain of flu, according to China’s own CDC and state-run news media.  The H7N9 strain of flu has reportedly killed 17 of 87 persons infected, a mortality rate of 20%.  (H1N1 in 2009, by comparison, had a mortality rate in the neighborhood of 1.7 persons per 10,000 cases, or 0.0017% using CDC estimates, while the great Spanish Flu of 1918 was mortal to just under 1.8% of those infected.)  It is also likely many of the people infected in China have a lower baseline health than Americans, and in the remote villages especially, lack of access to immediate and effective care, clean water, and antiviral medications, which leads to an artificially high initial mortality.   Just the same, the news got decidedly worse today, despite the optimistic tone of the previous few days.

“Further investigations are still under way to figure out whether the family cluster involved human-to-human transmission,” Feng Zijian, of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the newspaper.

Glenn Thomas, a spokesperson for WHO, tells U.S. News that “it’s still too early to say” whether there have been human-to-human transmission, but that the team they’ve sent there will be investigating the possibility.

“There’s no evidence yet of sustained human-to-human transmission, but the team will be looking into this,” he says.

What is not reassuring at all about the situation is memories of China’s massive cover-up of the SARS epidemic in 2002-3, during which Chinese officials denied the very existence of SARS, and of outbreak clusters for months.  Chinese officials also transferred infected patients, and sometimes entire hospital populations, to keep them from World Health Organization physicians.   Chinese government officials prevaricated, misled, and stonewalled, until the evidence could no longer be hidden.

Despite the embarrassment of the SARS incident, including the deadly results (most of which remained in China and virtually unreported in the world press), and the promise for more transparency, once again on this occasion the Chinese government waited close to a month to report the outbreak in Shanghai, and only on 29 March confirmed the virus as H7N9.

There are rumors of positive tests for H7N9 in asymptomatic people, suggesting a long incubation period during which a victim may be a contagious “carrier”, and there is now reports of confirmed cases among people who have not had any contact with birds or fowl.   Reassurances by Chinese health officials ring increasingly hollow, as their pattern of reporting and non-reporting take on familiar and delusory tones.

I don’t know for sure, but I suspect strongly that human-to-human transmission has been all but confirmed in China for quite some time, perhaps weeks.   Now, there are cases reported in Nanjing and Beijing, in addition to those around Shanghai.    In the age of rapid and easy global travel, containing a deadly pathogen is all but impossible.  Having to rely on Chinese transparency and honesty to have a head start is not at all good.

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