Odds and ends

Jay G comments on a large man's rampage and the inability of "less-than-lethal" weapons to subdue him.

He was pepper-sprayed twice, grappled with multiple officers, *and* Tasered, and yet still remained combatitive. Remember this when it's just you against him, with your young children at risk... Now, certainly, a firearm is not a magic talisman. Pointing at the deranged drug addict very well may not scare him off; heck, even shooting him might not stop him immediately. But it beats the hell out of watching him do freaking jumping jacks after being pepper-sprayed. Something tells me that 9 rounds of .45 ACP +P will have a significantly better chance of slowing him down than a chemical deterrent.

And in other news, the Firearmblog has the puzzle-gun

Inside the puzzle there are a handful of objects what when combined with some of the puzzle pieces produce a .45 caliber muzzleloading pistol!

A very impressive peice. Not anything more than a curio but still neat.


Also from the same blog, an interactive demo/cutaway/ exploded view of a 1911

Silence Seft!

It seems that the first reaction of the ruling class is to shut down, shut up, and shut out any views they don't like.

For example:

Andrew Klavan wrote a book called Empire of Lies. It was slated to be published in France by Seuil Policiers, but the editor who bought the book left that firm, and the new editor decided not to publish Klavan's book. This wasn't because she thought it wouldn't sell; it wasn't an economic decision at all, as Klavan had already been paid. Rather, the editor explained that "she can not publish . . . because of the political and religious aspects of the story." That is, the book's protagonist is a conservative Christian. Not only that, the liberal media is a sort of collective villain.

Klavan ponders

Take the e-mails that the Daily Caller obtained from the now-defunct lefty Web service Journolist. Never mind the personal or psychological implications of a radio producer who lovingly imagines Rush Limbaugh’s death or a law professor who doesn’t know that the FCC has no power to deprive Fox News of a license or a reporter who wants to smear Fred Barnes and other right-wing commentators as racist in order to distract the public from the hateful radicalism of Jeremiah Wright, then Obama’s pastor. The point is not these people’s animus or ignorance or wickedness. The point is that what they desired was not victory in open debate but silence—the silence of censorship, intimidation, or the grave.


...

Old-media pooh-bahs like former ABC anchor Ted Koppel lament the “good old days,” when three government-licensed networks served as gatekeepers to what the public could and couldn’t know. Breitbart, meanwhile, exhorts crowds of citizens to shoot videos and gather information, telling them, “You are the media now!” Breitbart only wants more information, while the left-wing media too often operate through obscurantism and suppression.

Back to John Hinderaker:

It's an interesting question: do liberals try to silence their opponents because of an inherent authoritarian tendency, or merely because they are losing the argument? I think it's a combination of the two.

If they're telling you to shut up, then you're doing something right.

Via Rand.

Helpless Anarchy

Legal Insurrection on the decision to neuter Arizona's attempts to enforce federal law.

States have been left helpless to deal with the anarchy created by the failure of the federal government to enforce border security. Whereas yesterday it was unclear how far states (such as Rhode Island) could go, today states are powerless.

...

As a reader to my prior post points out, states already routinely run searches for a variety of statuses, including outstanding warrants, child support orders, and non-immigration identity checks. Each of these checks potentially could delay release of an innocent person or burden some federal agency.

The Judge's reasoning, particularly that the status check provision violated the 4th Amendment even as to persons already under arrest, applies just as easily to these other status checks.

With a federal government which refuses to take action at the border until there is a deal on "comprehensive" immigration reform, meaning rewarding lawbreakers with a path to citizenship, this decision will insure a sense of anarchy. The law breakers have been emboldened today, for sure.

As it stands this afternoon, it is perfectly rational for someone faced with the choice of obeying the immigration laws or not, to choose not to do so. The choice of lawlessness makes a lot more sense than spending years winding through the byzantine legal immigration system, because the end result will be the same but lawlessness gets
you here more quickly.

When the law and the federal government reward lawlessness, something
is very wrong.

The federal goverment is rewarding lawlessness, and preventing states
from as part of a plan to force " 'comprehensive' immigration reform".

And more thoughts from the "other" McCain.

Professor William Jacobson has a legal analysis, but the key point is that the interests of Arizona’s citizens (70% of whom favored the law) and the actions of Arizona legislators count for nothing in the 21st-century American regime, which is a de facto oligarchy where federal judges exercise unlimited authority. The interests of the elites who benefit from unrestricted immigration are the only interests that count. When Judge Susan Bolton was appointed by Bill Clinton 10 years ago, it was with the implicit understanding that Bolton would never thwart the interests of the Ruling Class.

A Ruling Class that ignores the will of the populace. Hmm... sounds familiar.

Goldberg ponders.

Just curious, what would Bolton's reasoning do to "sanctuary cities," "nuclear-free zones" and the like?

Well, that's different. Those subversions of Federal law are for the greater good.

Shiny

Tam Speaks on True custom 1911's and has a link to a wonderful if big weapon

Understand this: By comparison to a true custom 1911, even the nicest Kimber is a mass-produced gat that is only distinguished from its more plebeian brethren by its price tag.

Speaking as a Kimber fan: this is Very, very true. Kimbers *are* mass produced and thus the quality will suffer. And they are overprice, but if you are patient you can pick one up used for a good price with little wear (my full-size really only had break-in wear, but it was sold because the previous owner tried to put a buffer in it and gave up).

However, a true custom is worlds apart. Both in quality and price (but that level of quality and customization is exactly what you're paying for).

It makes me happy that pistols like this exist at all. It makes me even happier to see them beat to hell from hard use on the range. No sword, no matter how perfect, is much use if it just hangs over the mantelpiece looking pretty.

Indeed. The weapon is a tool; it should be used. Otherwise it's just a piece of art.

And now you're putting bad thoughts in my head... and there is a Brownells catalog on the kitchen table.

They told me that if I voted for McCain...

... heartless beancounters would takeover the healthcare industry and deny coverage of life-extending drugs because they cost too much.
And they were right!

Appologies to the Blogfather.

Standard practice for evaluating drugs is to use data-driven objective endpoints to evaluate effectiveness and safety. In the case of Avastin, the FDA has arbitrarily and unilaterally stopped using this objective criterion and are applying a highly subjective criterion of “clinically significant”—to cut costs.

No one disputes that the drug helps extends life for terminal patients. The FDA is arguing that it just doesn’t do it for long enough to be worth the cost. So now the FDA is deciding how much life is “significant” and what it is worth? This should be a decision for patients, doctors and family members and the FDA should not be replacing their own value judgments about how much time is significant. While six months might not be significant to a statistician or a bureaucrat, for the families of a loved one or a dying patient, it’s a lifetime.

Emphasis added. The FDA is no longer content with determining if a drug is safe, now they want to know if it's "cost effective." Oh the dark irony of "Free" Healthcare being even more bottom-line oriented, then again it's also more expensive and tyranical, so dark irony abounds.

Modern Serfdom

So Rep. Frank didn't get his senior discount and he freaks out over a dollar.
Tam has the snark.

I find it mildly ironic that Rep. Frank, generally a big fan of rules and regulations, got all bent out of shape when some got applied to him, as though he were some... some... commoner or something.

On the plus side, he's been pretty foursquare against various national ID proposals, so maybe he was just being ideologically consistent.

And, seriously, Barney... a dollar? All this fuss for a buck? How come you never raise this kind of a stink when it's my money you're spending like a drunken sailor on shore leave in Bangkok?

It's the commoner part.

Victor Davis Hanson has some related thoughts. Specifically on Kerry's tax haven boat.

Second, there is a disturbing pattern here: Those who are most adamant in pressing for higher taxes, rather than emphasizing spending cuts, themselves seem to be the most ready to cheat on their own taxes — think of a Dodd, Geithner, Kerry, or Rangel. That narrative of hypocrisy ties into a larger and disturbing trend: Could it be that leftist populists who rail against the unfairness of the system and activists who call for radical political and lifestyle changes are motivated by a need for psychological exemptions for their very concrete indulgences?

Surely if one were to collate what John Edwards has said about two Americas, what Al Gore has said about frivolous consumption and its effect on the environment, and Tom Friedman’s eloquent warnings about unsustainable Western lifestyles, one would never imagine the thousands of square footage in living space that each sees as essential to his own existence.

Not only do you get to save the world, but you get to be well-compensated and have your position secured.

More Tricksy Math

Oh dear....

Let me see if I can type this right: $1,470,000,000,000.00 — and that is just the part of the bill that we do not know how to pay. The actual bill for government spending this year is more than twice that. We are borrowing 41 cents of every dollar we spend. We are spending $36,000 per household.

Okay, here is the ritual denunciation: That is the biggest deficit in the history of the United States of America, in gross dollars. For Pete’s sake.

And here is the reality: That is the biggest deficit in the history of the United States of America since World War II, as a portion of GDP. That deficit is about 10 percent of GDP; the Bush-era deficits were typically about 3 percent of GDP.

36k per household per year. Well... looks like big government is going for broke. And way to make Bush look fiscally sane.

Speaking of going for broke.

How do you get 86k applicants for .gov money out of a pool of less than 40k...

That means that the U.S. may be recompensing at least 86,000 African-American farmers for past racial discrimination. But how could that possibly be true if there are only 39,697 African-American farmers in existence nationwide? And if only some subset of them ever applied for a loan and were then unfairly denied a loan?

If someone can explain this to me, I’ll add it in an update to this post. Could it be that there is a constant turnover of African-Americans trying out farming for a few years, and then quickly giving it up, so that although there may be only 40,000 farmers at
any one time, over the years, the total number of different people involved in farming is much larger? If so, is there any evidence for this? Or could there be another explanation?

Clearly, math is racist.

And so there is reluctance to fork over the money. But there also seems to be a reluctance on the part of the Senate to admit why they won’t fund the settlement, because the issue is just too racially charged.

It is a tragedy that victims of institutional discrimination like the legitimately wronged African-American farmers could be denied their payout due to scammers trying to undeservedly grab a piece of the pie. Instead of getting angry at the Senate for hesitating with the funds, we should be angry at the swindlers (and their lawyers) who contaminated an otherwise valid case

Clearly, the solution to all these problems is to give the government more power.

Meh.

Missle Developments.

Compare and Constrast

Almost makes you wonder what side they're on.

But hey, they've got more important threats to deal with, like the
possibility that Glen Beck mght say something.

Of course...

Laura Curtis has some news. Looks like you can take the politician out of Chicago but...

Obama isn’t letting the oil spill go to waste. Dissatisfied with how his repeated attempts at job killing drilling moratoriums are being smacked down in court, he’s recycled his coal plant bankruptcy plan and broadcast his intent to drown drillers in regulation. He’s also using it to promote his shiny new National Ocean Council.

Yes, we have a president that when told no by the courts decides to do it anyway.

Lovely.

And Curtis notes that once again, Obama is copying Bush: "And reorganizing a lot of smaller agencies and departments under one big one is a great idea. It’s worked out so well at the Department of Homeland Security!"

In fact, even if you don’t drill, fish, live on the coast or enjoy boating, the National Ocean Council will regulate you: “Concerns about water quality would be addressed by promoting and implementing sustainable practices on land.”

Who’s going to lead and guide us in implementing those sustainable practices? The National Ocean Council will be co-chaired by Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren. If his name sounds familiar, perhaps you remember it from the 1970s, when he co-wrote a book called Ecoscience which suggested compulsory abortion, mass sterilization, and a transnational “Planetary Regime” as solutions for the catastrophic overpopulation problem that absolutely, positively needed to be resolved by the year 2000, (that never happened.) He and his co-authors have walked that back somewhat, though Holdren has never unambiguously disavowed the book.

The formation of this new Council is a signal that offshore drilling will likely be regulated into nonexistence. The Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will also participate in the National Ocean Council. The Council is also specifically tasked to cede our maritime sovereignty to the United Nations via the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea; if this is ratified, the International Seabed Authority will be able to restrict or limit our access to undersea “solid, liquid or gaseous mineral resources” if it so chooses.

Obama sees skyrocketing energy costs as a feature, not a bug, of his energy policies.

Naturally. Why not make a new agency that has jurisdiction over everything and no oversight or limitations? It's for your own good.


Read it all.

Klavan & Whittle v Journolist: The Vast Left-Wing Media Conspiracy to Silence Dissent

It's for PJTV members only, but if you are a member you should watch.

Oh the irony of "newsmen" working their hardest to shut down or crush stories that they don't agree with and doing the same to outlets that refuse to play by their rules.

They want you to only hear the messages that they've approved. They even touch on Leftism being a substitue for religion, and how guilt over racism supplants ideas of original sin. Compare Global Warming with apocolptical theology.

One is remined of this quote atributed to Chesterton: When a Man stops believing in God he doesn¹t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.

If you're a member. Watch it. If you're not a member consider joining. It's important to support media that you agree with.


Powerline has a bit more on this "Great Divide". And it comes down to this: "75% of Likely Voters prefer free markets over a government managed economy... Political Class voters narrowly prefer a government managed economy over free markets by a 44% to 37% margin."

Yeah... The people in goverment prefer a goverment managed economy.

This is notable, too: there has been much controversy over whether the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats (or many of them, anyway) can fairly be labeled "socialist." Many on the left purport to view that label as a vile epithet. But a plurality of the political class, not just a far-left fringe, thinks that a government-managed economy is better than free enterprise. If that isn't socialist, what is?

The difference between the political class and the American mainstream is perhaps the most important divide in our current politics, more significant than that between Democrats and Republicans or even conservatives and liberals (although there is obviously much overlap in those pairings). The tea party fits well into this structure. While no doubt mostly Republican and mostly conservative, the tea party represents, more than anything else, the rebellion of mainstream Americans against the political class.

This whole thing with the political class and the media gatekeepers comes down to people who think that they need to manage your life. They don't trust the people; they don't trust you.

And since they don't think you can run your life, then they've got to limit what you can hear, what you can buy, what you can do, and what you can say.

This supression is absolutely required, because they know the common rabble can't be openly convinced to submit to their benevolent rule.

"Holistic" Governance

It's all connected. Statism is statism, whether it's denying your
right to defend yourself or denying your right to get what medical
care you want.

In other words, both the gun control statists and the health care statists believe that we are fundamentally irrational creatures incapable of managing our lives. Hence, the government must restrict our freedoms for our own good.

The statists’ paternalistic view of human nature also explains their constant double-standards. Men like Berwick believe they are qualified to impose draconian rules over the citizenry, because we cannot make such decisions for ourselves. But as the wiser “leaders,” they need not follow the same rules themselves.

Hence, Berwick has exempted himself from his own Medicare restrictions. Similarly, many of the strongest opponents of gun rights have no qualms about using their political “pull” to enable themselves and their cronies to carry guns for self-protection.

(A similar double-standard exists with the global warming issue, where climate alarmists berate ordinary Americans for their “carbon footprints,” while jet-setting to international conferences to criticize the very industrial society that makes such air travel possible. The climate alarmists’ proposed carbon restrictions are apparently for the little people only.)

In short, know your place serf.

This aslo applies to things like taxes. You see, Sen Kerry keeps his yacht in a tax haven to avoid the high taxes in the city he represents.

Taxes, like rationing, regulation, and restrictions are for the little peopel.

Reynolds and Coats.

Glen Reynolds interviews Fmr. Senator Coats who... wants back in.

He spins the crank of anti Washington establishment... specifically Dem Establishment.

The interesting bit is at 7:20 when Glen Reynolds challenges Coats on his Gun Rights record.

Interesting spin on Coat's vote for the Assault Weapons Ban... he claims there was a Crack-Cocaine epidemic and illegal russian arms smuggling... which he then asserts the AWB "solved". Thus it was was fine to let repeal.

And he assures us it won't be needed again. He claims he's 99% with the NRA (minus that whole AWB ban). Oy.

I would have prefered Reynolds to have put more pressure on Coats, but that line of questioning did put him off-kilter.

Narrative Conspiracy

Here we go again.

Nothing too surprising but.... here it is.

What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

If the right forces us all to either defend [him] or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead[...] call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.

Contrary to your initial guess Spencer Ackerman is not talking about
Obama (the reluctance to defend should be a big clue), and he's not talking about calling Tea Partiers racist.

Oh no, this is about Jeremiah Wright and how the Media spun the
narrative to defend Obama and get him elected.

For the greater good

None of the participants are all that shocking, but the explicitness
of their effort to ensure that Jeremiah Wright was considered
off-limits for future discussion is pretty eye-opening. The petition
that grew out of the discussion can be found here; like I said, none
of the participants is all that surprising.

Having said that, if you’ve ever felt like left-wing journalists
colluded to call people “racist”… well, Spencer Ackerman called for
just that.

And here's where Jim Geraghty quotes the Ackerman passage (in his
version the identity of who the media are defending and who they are
attacking is not obscured).


But you can trust them when they tell you that this other group of
administration critics are racist.

Yeah, who cares who we destroy?

And you can bet that whatever replaced Ezra Klein’s JournoList is now brimming with the same sinister plotting against the Tea Party. You can bet that when J. Christian Adams blew the whistle about ongoing and systemic discrimination at the Department of Justice, whatever the new JournoList is sent out the marching orders to Politico and the like to spike the story and throw off some chaff with yet another meme
about how the Tea Party is racist.

Enter the NAACP.

What is surprising about today’s revelations is that these JournoListers have somehow deluded themselves into thinking they’re doing good. I was always under the impression that the wicked knew they were wicked, and yet we’ve caught them cold in their little online coven and they honestly seem to believe that group tackling the truth — a legitimate story — with bullying, peer pressure, outright lies and character assassination is some sort of righteous cause:

This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”

Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.

…a revolting descent into tabloid journalism and a gross disservice to Americans concerned about the great issues facing the nation and the
world.

It has everything to do with the attempts of the right to maintain control of the country.

Considering Weigel’s talk of setting Matt Drudge on fire, Ezra Klein’s off-color recommendation for Tim Russert, and now Ackerman fantasizing about putting conservatives through plate glass windows, there is a bizarre addiction to lurid, violent, threatening language – not just among the commenters of liberal blogs, but among the folks who we are told represent their best and brightest. It’s disturbing, and the fact that it doesn’t bother more people is disturbing.

Emphasis added. And time to repost the two quotes I put in the comments yesterday

"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."
— Robert A. Heinlein

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

Sound familiar?

Yeah... it's for your own good, the greater good




Andrew Breitbart

No steadfast journalism rule is unbendable when it comes to justifying and protecting the racket that is modern journalism, specifically, political journalism in the United States today. The ends justify the means for the Democrat Media Complex. They lie when they claim to be objective. They lie when they claim to be unbiased, because these so called “truth seekers” are guilty of engaging in open
political warfare. And when the whistle is blown, they simply double
down. “Journolist” — like Media Matters, but more insidious, if that’s possible — is an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle, technology and “the masses” uncovered the conspiracy.

Talk radio and the Internet have allowed outsiders the ability to challenge a multiple generational shift from journalism being about the story, to journalism being crafted toward a partisan end. From Newsweek killing the Lewinsky story to the Swift Boat veterans (until the undermedia pressure got too big) to the Dan Rather implosion to the open attempt to keep the Al Gore masseuse story under wraps to the
John Edwards/Rielle Hunter debacle to the Van Jones admission of missing the story to the networks ignoring the ACORN video footage to the media playing up trumped up charges of racism in the Tea Party — while ignoring exculpatory evidence — to the mother of all media-as-political weaponry: the non-vetting of candidate Obama, the mainstream media has shown that it is in an ideological death spiral. And the ground is right here.

Roger L Simon has his own thoughts, and what is truely lacking.

But forget the paucity of imagination and style, what about the group think? These are the independent minds that seek to mold our culture and political lives? Nowhere to be found is an original thought – unless you count accusing Karl Rove of racism as a brainstorm.

Well, we have had the generation gap and tons of other gaps. Now Journolist reveals we have an “elitism gap.” Gone are the days of the Algonquin Round Table to be replaced by a cabal of humdrum mediocrities on a listservr plotting how to justify the racist ravings of a reactionary theocrat.

Nowhere in evidence, at least in Strong’s article, is the single question any rational mind would ask re: Obama-Wright at the height of a political campaign. Just why did Barack Obama remain in the pew of this reverend for twenty years? But enough of rationality. Journolist clearly isn’t about truth. It’s about winning. What it gives us, inadvertently or not, is the profession of journalism unmasked. And what we see is, alas, what we already knew. And it ain’t pretty.

And another bit of deja vu

Remember in the mid-'90s when Bill Clinton, with the willing cooperation of the media, successfully tied the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building to the rising tide of discontent with the .gov, hanging it like an albatross around the neck of the popular backlash that had triggered the "Republican Revolution" in Congress the previous November?

Tam ends with:

The commercials for the local TeeWee station's Special Investigative Report showed, not fringe extremists, but stock footage of Ma and Pa Kettle waving their Tea Party signs on the statehouse lawn, which is practically the same as plotting to target "police officers and judges and Governors," after all. "

I wonder if there's any... organization on the part of the media do
to all this? Nah.

And I had to include this post from one of Tam's comments
Ritchie said: "As metalworkers will recognize, at some point, bending becomes fabrication."

Rand Simberg thinks on how... superfluous it seemed.

For a long time, while the bias in the media has always been obvious,
I’ve always assumed that it was something in the water around the media coolers — that these people all lived in a self-reinforcing cocoon, marinating in confirmation bias, in which the correct attitudes were subtly rewarded and the incorrect ones not-so-subtly punished. If someone had told me that they actively conspired to drive the message, trumpet and even make up stories that served their narrative, and suppress those that didn’t, or undermined it, I would have said that it was both unnecessary and that even they weren’t that stupid.

But now, even without Breitbart having to pay the hundred Gs, the contents of the JournoList are starting to dribble out, and it’s not a pretty picture.

During the campaign, it almost looked as though there were a media conspiracy to avoid discussion of Jeremiah Wright. Well, now we know why. Simply put, there literally was.

Oh joy.

Minimize, Marginalize, and drop it down the memory hole.

And how it all worked.

Getting closer to SmartBlood

As the Prof says "Well it is the 21st century...."

The U.S. has finally developed artificial blood. It is grown from umbilical cord cells and genetically modified animal cells. It won’t be available for use for another five years (lots of testing and production optimization required), and will cost about $1,000 a pint (450 millileters).

This is a technology that bears watching and has some real future aplications, given the complexity of biological fluids and tissues.

Oh, and kudos to anyone that gets the title reference. Wonder how progress is going on the BrainPal.

What do to?

There is a definite ruling class in this country.
People that feel entitled to run your life and control your choices, all for the greater good. Despite their populist screeds they are quite well to do and very... insulated from the real world.

Both links penned by Victor Davis Hanson.

The interesting thing is that the "serfs" are getting angry about it, and starting to push back, and the elites are pushing back in turn.

Like take this bit of propaganda that Bob Owens has dismantled.


Ed Driscoll looks into the history and thinks about the future. And what happens when the political philosophy borne of the Industrial Revolution: "Machinery was Big — from the steam locomotive to the assembly line to the hydroelectric plant to the printing press, the radio towers and the film studios. Thus they were expensive to acquire, and thus, ownership of that machinery was rare." finally hits the world we are in now.


Bill Quick has some related thoughts.

The Progressive ideology much of the western world has labored under for a century or so is a product of the industrial revolution. It will die and be replaced by something else as the technological revolution sweeps all before it. Political wonks live in the sort of bubble where they give primacy to politics over everything else, little understanding that politics grow from more basic factors, and those factors are currently being rearranged, rebuilt, newly created or destroyed by forces far more powerful than politics or ideology.

The question is what can you do about this?

Well... the Prof and his readers have some suggestions.

Here's a paring down:

* Mockery : Very mockable, very thin-skinned, erupt in embarrassing ways. Use their sense of entitlement against them.

* Transparency : The political class is pretty stupid. Point it out, repeatedly. Use FOIA, ubiquitous videocameras, and other tools to make the stupidity show.

* Money : The coming budget crisis — already here, really, but still largely denied by the rulers — is an opportunity to defund a lot of this patronage stuff. Cut them off in other ways, too. Don’t support the media, nonprofits, and politicians who support them with your money.

* Organize and infiltrate : Take over party apparatus from the ground up.

* Subject : Don't act like one. Rulers like subjects. Don’t be one. “Be armed, both intellectually and especially with guns. The ruling class hates it, but more importantly, it mitigates their baser instincts.”

* Backups : Have a backup plan. Especially with information.

As linked before They're not going down without a fight.

They see such power within their grasp: medical control and tracking your body, counting any gold you buy.

There really is no limit. The idea of a government constrained by what it can do is alien to these people.

You'll have to buy healthcare because the fine for failing to submit is a "tax", and as such well...

A little further down in the story, the CBO says, “Because the penalty is a tax, no one can challenge it in court before paying it and seeking a refund.”

I wondered about that. The IRS has its own courts and its own judges paid for out of its own budget. And they’re the only courts in the land (?) where you’re presumed guilty until proven innocent.

Welcome to Brazil.

We all joked that Obama would make Healthcare in this country like the DMV, turns out they want it like the IRS.

And it won't just be healthcare if they get their way.

Congress can use its taxing power “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution, the department said. For more than a century, it added, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can tax activities that it could not reach by using its power to regulate commerce.

[SNIP]

“The Commerce Clause supplies sufficient authority for the shared-responsibility requirements in the new health reform law,” Mr. Pfeiffer said. “To the extent that there is any question of additional authority — and we don’t believe there is — it would be available through the General Welfare Clause.”

Again, they want you as a subject, and see no limits to their power.

Entabulator both Turbo and Retro

An intersting old machine.

Here's a more modern version based on the same principals.




Here's wiki with more details about the design.

You know... for people that pride themselves on their empathy and open-mindedness...

Liberals really can't understand what motivates someone different from them.

"Emphasis on the convenient."

Another example of someone being unable to understand the motives of a
rival and deciding that evil has to be afoot.

If you don't shut up you're a racist!

You stay classy Think Progress. Naturally, they've got a video out
with the aim of proving that it's racist to protest Dear Leader.
But there's a few... problems.

Passing off their own "infiltration" signs as evidence of Tea Party Racism

And selectively editing a man's words to make him look like he hates black people when his son is just as black as the President.


Well at least they're not using interviews from 2006 (well before the
Tea Party came into existence) to "prove" the Tea Party is racist.

Oh.

You know... if you've got a national movement and you can't scrounge up enough legitimatly racist footage to fill a propaganda piece...

And when called on it they clumsilly try to hide their "evidence" and
quietly edit their video.

But the correction doesn't matter, what matters is supporting the narrative.

Like the NAACP which is now trying to walk back their statements
against those critical of the government. But what do you expect from
a group that refuses to make the text of their resolution public.


As for racist consider this

"Six percent of those polled by Gallup are African-American and
support the Tea Party."

Given about 13% of the US is African-American... and heavily
democratic in political leaning that seems to be more than you'd
expect in a Right-leaning protest group.



But again, the facts don't matter. The whole motive behind this push
is to get the public to think that being against the President's
Policies is taboo.

And there's this: "Rasmussen Reports tells us “63% of Mainstream
Americans say their views are closer to the Tea Party”. Are we to
conclude that two-thirds of Mainstream Americans are racist?"

Yes. You're racist if the "elites" in our ruling class decide you are.
So shut up if you don't want to be called racist


And don't you dare connect the dots and make a timeline of when this
big Racism push kicked into high gear.


And More

A clear pattern of behavior has emerged over the last 16 months. According to liberals, if you disagree with their thinking, and if you disagree with the Obama administration, you are not only wrong, you are a “racist.”

Again, the themes are "shut up peon" and "know your place".

President Bill Clinton was smeared as a racist by the Obama campaign when Hillary Clinton was running for president. It seems that anyone who disagrees with the far left, socialist policies of Barack Obama and the current administration is subject to the heavy hand of the race card.

Ed Driscoll notes that it goes a lot further back than that

And ends with: "Considering that Joe “articulate, bright and clean” Biden is now Obama’s vice president, Hillary his secretary of state, and Bill Clinton being called in to consult on the administration’s flailing permanent campaign, I’d say they’ve pretty much burned themselves out at this point."

But that won't stop them from trying.


And oh wow.... Ed Driscoll has a roundup of a giant mass of stupid.


Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) told the NAACP this week:

All those who wore sheets a long time ago have now lifted them off and started wearing [applause], uh, clothing, uh, with a name, say, I am part of the tea party.

Sure the KKK is a democratic movement, but it gets worse. Click the link to see what she thinks about who won Vietnam.

But you can trust her opinion on the Tea Party.

You really don't know what's best for you?

You want to look at your own DNA? Well we can't have that.

Recent advances in biotechnology have allowed private companies to offer affordable genetic testing directly to consumers, to help them determine their risks of developing problems such as diabetes, heart disease, and various forms of cancer. In response, the U.S. government has told these companies that their tests must be approved by FDA regulators before they can be sold because, in the government’s words, “consumers may make medical decisions in reliance on this information.”

These restrictions thus represent a new level of government paternalism over the citizenry. In the name of “protecting” us, the government seeks to prevent willing consumers from learning medically useful information about their own bodies that could tell them which diseases they may develop — and help them make important treatment, prevention, and lifestyle decisions.

Silly peons, you don't need to know what's in your bodies. Its not like you'll be making your own medical decisions anyway.

Related on the flogging of peasants:

By the way, why do White House officials talk so candidly to Politico? Probably because they write lines like this: “Obama is perceived as failing to win over the public, even though by most conventional measures he is clearly succeeding.”

Silly readers. You only think you don’t like what he’s doing!

Yes a true parsing of that sentence does read that Obama is really winning over the public, but is perceived to be failing at it.

You could give Politico the benefit of the doubt and think they meant to write “The public perceives Obama as failing on his initiatives, even though by most conventional measures he is clearly succeeding at them.” You could then quibble with what "conventional measures" and how he is "clearly succeeding", but at least you would have a sentence that asserts that the president is doing better than people think he is, instead of one that asserts that the president is more well liked than people admit he is.

Though a core tenant of progressivism is that the public well and truly likes the progressive agenda, once it's messaged properly to them.

That goes hand in glove with the other tenant of progressivism: that the public is unfit to make their own decisions and need to have such things properly messaged (and if that fails forced) to them.

And here's some more paternalism and control. Again going to Bill Press and his thoughts on spoiled americans

It comes as no shock to hear a liberal talk about the American public
as 'children' who need scolding. (It also doesn't come as a shock to see that Bill Press doesn't check the data on jobs before declaring that Obama has rescued them.) That's the entire mindset of liberalism -- that the masses can't make their own decisions and need a cadre of elites to do it for them. That explains ObamaCare and every other social engineering project that we've seen since FDR, one of the people that Press claims couldn't possibly govern the nation today if given the chance.

And if the nation is ungovornable well... clearly that means the goverment needs more power.

Our Betters.

So Donald Berwick, a man Obama appointed without even scheduling a hearing in congress, is so gung ho on rationing and responsible use of
healthcare, you'd think his own healthcare plan would be quite modest...

That is if you were a naive rube.

In reality:

In a special benefit conferred on him by the board of directors of the Institute for Health Care Improvement, a nonprofit health care charitable organization he created and which he served as chief executive officer, Berwick and his wife will have health coverage "from retirement until death."

Nice work if you can get it. Will Collier quips: "As always, when the government makes the rules, they apply to everybody... except members of the government. For the peons, rationing and scarcity, but the apparatchiks always keep their dachas--and their fully-funded medical care."



Like this link of Prof Reynolds': “Veterans who apply for jobs on Capitol Hill aren’t receiving critical federal job-placement benefits because Congress has largely exempted itself from a law that aids post-military employment for vets, a new congressional report shows.”



Classy.

Oh and if you dare mock Dear Leader, well you're a racist. Because there's no other possible reason for someone to be sour on Obama.

Not performance, partisanship, economic fears, lack of trust, disillusionment. If you don't like the One, then there's something wrong with you. Hence Bill Press's novel idea of blaming Obama's
slumping poll numbers on voters. But don't worry, there's a solution to bad voters that don't know what's good for you.

And don't you dare say the Obama admin is race-obsessed.



Michael Graham nails the difference.

Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright — both openly racist conspiracy theorists — have been featured speakers at NAACP events. So has Al Sharpton, even after the Tawana Brawley spectacle and the loss of life at Freddie’s Fashion Mart.

Does this make the NAACP an organization of racist, anti-Semitic loons? Or is it the case that any large organization dealing with issues people feel passionate about is going to attract extremists and nuts?

The difference is, when you’re looking for loonies at a tea-party rally, they’re on the fringe. When you’re looking for them at liberal events, they’re on stage.

Reality versus Liberal Fantasy Steven Green notes:

And yet… the Democrats control the White House and both sides of the Capitol Building, and by whopping margins. If they want laws, they can pass them. If they need money, they can borrow it. So what’s wrong? To put it bluntly, liberal policies have crashed head-first into reality.

You know, the reality that we can’t borrow our way out of a debt crisis, that we can’t spend our way out of deficits, that we can’t tax our way to full employment.

Oh, and the most hurtful reality of all — that when liberals implement their policies, Americans don’t like them. Not the policies, and not the liberals, either. Not one bit.

Mean old reality. Ungrateful voters. If only there was some way around them...

Yet somehow, they’re shocked — shocked! — that after being elected to restore some fiscal sanity, the American people weren’t much pleased when the Democrats instead stripped down and opened endless cases of baby oil for the biggest spending orgy in human history. (Maybe somewhere there’s an alien race that’s done worse, but I suspect

And they can't understand why the Tea Parties are so angry at all this spending. Afterall the GOP spend like wild. It's not like you can expect a person to be more angry at a deatbeat friend "borrowing" 50 thousand dollars as opposed to taking 5 thousand dollars.

Know your place!

And Ace has a great example of Liberal Narrative and cocooning.

What would you call a law that has 3/4 support among the public? How
about controversial? (And don't forget to frame your observation to ignore the 17% that want an even stronger law).

Public support for Arizona's controversial new immigration law has increased slightly, a new CBS News poll shows, with 57 percent of Americans characterizing the law as "about right" in the way it addresses the issue of illegal immigration.

Controversial? With 74% support, isn't it opposition to the law that's actually controversial?

Supporting the AZ law is controversial, among those whose opinions count.

Again, all you serfs need to shut up and get back to work.

Strange Days...

Glen Reynolds quips:

They told me if I voted for John McCain, the NAACP would be praising Klansmen and attacking black tea partiers on racial grounds. Oh, hell, who am I kidding? Nobody would have been crazy enough to predict that.

Then again, nobody would have predicted that the NAACP would call the term “black hole” racist, either. How the mighty have fallen.

You can only play the race card to silence your enemies for so long. Eventually, it starts to become absurd... no absurdist.

Ed Driscoll has more, and shows that the NAACP's actions may be what forces the MSN to mention how many black conservative politicians there are.

Opps.

And it's a real shape because there is still real racism (against anyone including black people), so the NAACP doesn't have to beclown itself, but I guess advancing a poltical party is what counts.

Rights.

Sebastian asks some questions about what it means to infringe on a right.
He just pretends that it's not a gun right in question:

Is [Chicago's] ban on firing ranges constitutional? Wouldn’t the right to keep and bear arms necessarily have to extend to the right to practice and drill with arms? Could Chicago ban adult literacy education centers within the city’s borders? Or ban teaching of English Literature Appreciation? Ban spelling bees? Outlaw teaching of foreign languages?

Is the 100 dollar fee they are charging for licenses just fine too? What if they charged a 100 dollar fee to be paid before having an abortion? What if they charged 100 dollars for a marriage license? Or charged 100 dollars for a demonstration permit? The Courts have generally frowned on license fees in exercise of fundamental rights that are punitive in nature, rather than to cover filing and processing costs.

It's like they don't trust the government.

A reader writes to Glen Reynolds about the buisness environment.

The past two years, but this year especially, the single most common thought passed on by employers has been “I’m not sure I want to hire anyone right now, until we know what’s going to happen with taxes and medical coverage”. This is understandable, as these two items make up huge parts of a business’s outgoing spending. Not knowing what they will be nailed with, a LOT of small employers are taking the only safe road. They are putting expansion and hiring plans on hold, till the business environment regains some sanity.

Clearly the President needs another speech to vilify business and promise another boatload of sweeping changes via gigantic legislation.

That should remove their worries.


Or maybe an unemployment mandate (take a page from healthcare)? People will have to get jobs, and if they cannot find one in a private sector one in the public will be provided.

If they fail to get any job then regretfully they will have to be punished. Can't have people out there wrecking the economy can we?

And if this scheme sounds a bit... familiar. That just means it'll work this time!

Put on your tinfoil hat and wookie suit

Steven Den Beste looks at various events and wonders: incompetence or malice?

Yes.

Utopists again....

This bit from Jonah Goldberg's readers on the Yucca Mountian stuck my funny bone.

Jonah:
As a long-time Nevada resident I've spent a decade trying to bang into the
heads of Nevada politicians (and people who will actually listen) that there is
an opportunity to turn Yucca Mountain into a boom for Nevada. Just agree
to stop opposing the facility in exchange for an industry-funded reprocessing
facility at the site.

Reprocessing is currently outlawed in the US due to a Jimmy Carter
presidential edict. Repeal it! It was intended to prevent nuclear
proliferation. Ha! Even your couch knows how well that has worked.Reprocessing
would break down the spent fuel rods, remove the plutonium (about 3% of each
rod) then reprocess the remaining U235 and U238 into new rods. The
technology is well known - it was invented here, and the French have been
doing it for years.

Incidentally, the opponents always cite the size of the nuclear waste
problem in terms of weight - 78,000 tons sounds like a lot. But don't forget
Uranium and Plutonium are among the heaviest of minerals - a ton of this stuff
is approximately 1 cubic foot in volume. All of it would fit into a football
field, end zone to end zone in a pile stacked 5.2 feet high. About halfway up to
the goalposts. And the 3% that needs to be sequestered (the Plutonium)
amounts to 2340 cubic feet. Of course that has to be broken into
smaller pieces and vitrified (encased in molten glass), but the point is, its a
solvable problem.

Emphasis added.

Wow.... so we have Jimmy Carter (an obstensible nuclear engineer) banning a process heavily used by the French that recycles nuclear fuel. So not only are our reactors that much more inefficient but this is responsible for what 30 times more waste being around?

Once again the greens prefer their utopian ideology to processes that acutally make things safer and more efficient.

Just like how the EPA won't let skimmers that simply filter out oil work in the Gulf. Why? Because the water they dump overboard has too much oil in it. You see it's far better to mandate a near pefect 99.9985% purity than actually... filter at a 99% purity, but at a much higher rate.

Then again there's a lot that could be done to help clean up the spill.

So much more. Read and see if this sounds like the actions of an administration that actually wants this thing cleaned up, or is even capable of it.

But hey, maybe if the President gets his Energy Tax, he'll let the prols clean up the mess.