Just because you've got zombies...

Doesn't mean you can't have a Merry time with the family.



I guess the 50's would have made it through a zombie outbreak pretty well.

Via Rand.

The perfect image to remember of ‘our’ federal government: ‘a large black, . . . creature with churning metal teeth and the shape of a cockroach spliced with a frog” there to take away your property.’”

Allen S. Thorpe on Rhode Island's destruction of toy guns, in front of the kids they took them from.

It's the whole fantastical notion of destroying an item to prevent a behavior, bearing the same rationality as eating the heart of an animal to gain its courage.

Taranto says ‘Nothing says Christmas like taking away a child’s treasured toy and destroying it.’”

And after linking to several young woman shooters, Glen Reynolds quips:

And this is why I’m not worried about America, long-term. There are the people traumatizing their kids by grinding up their toy guns in a hideous monster, and there are the people teaching their daughters to shoot. I know who I’m betting on, long-term.

One culture is teaching responsibility, self-defense, and reliance, the other... isn't.

Getting into the Spirit of things.

Let's see what they do...

VDH looks at Califorina and sees what happens when the Left has its way.

It does provide all the public assistance that it can afford (and more that it borrows for), and apparently waives enforcement of most of California’s burdensome regulations and civic statutes that increasingly have plagued productive citizens to the point of driving them out. How odd that we overregulate those who are citizens and have capital to the point of banishing them from the state, but do not regulate those who are aliens and without capital to the point of encouraging millions more to follow in their footsteps. How odd — to paraphrase what Critias once said of ancient Sparta — that California is at once both the nation’s most unfree and most free state, the most repressed and the wildest.

Read it all.


On a related note here's BlogProf's view on Detroit.

Funny how everytime the Left gets total power over an area it decays into a corrupt, impoverished, crime-riddled, wasteland overseen by a bloated state that is only effective at hasseling the law-abiding and productive. But I suppose that's what happens if you take the Welfare-State, identity poltics, and union graft to their end run.

How far?

I'm feeling rather good, so here's some triumphs for all of humanity.

In the spirit of Bobbi's great post on this subject.

And that is how far we've come. Cutting-edge machining work in Babbage's day, children's toys in our day. Heck, the thing could've been built that way in the 1920s or 1930s.

And here's something a mite older than Babbage's creation:

Strange days...

First we have the National Review telling a sitting democratic congressmen: "Hey, pal, that’s the President of the United States. Show some respect."

And Jim Geraghty realizes the strangeness of the Right having to chastize a democrat openly swearing at Obama in an aside: "(How did it come to the point where we have to be the ones to demand that?)"


He also realizes that once the Left turned on Hillary Clinton they crossed a major Rubicon, anything anyone will be dumped if it got in the way of the Cause. Even Mr Unicorn himself. What's strange is how open their bile is.


And speaking of Clintons... guess who Obama got to do a press conference with him, and then kept doing it after Obama left.

So Obama descided to borrow a term from baseball? Are we looking at a Releif President?

And how's that for Mr. New politics, the man who ran against Washington establishment and Clintonian triangulation (in addition to running against Bush). He makes his primary rival his Sec State, and then he makes the previous Dem-President into... puppet President?

And from Hotair being president is hard.

The leader of the free world brought his predecessor onto the stage to pull his chestnuts out of the fire — and he’s not interested enough to stick around? The Christmas party took precedence over spending a few minutes with Clinton to pitch his own deal?  Michelle wouldn’t have understood if he, er, did his job?

How important is this deal to Obama?  Less than a Christmas party and dealing with his spouse’s irritation.  The picture on the front page says it all — he’s diminishing into a background player in his own presidency, largely because he just can’t be bothered to do any lifting for himself.

Who would have thought that Obama would be a work-shirking, responsibility-ducking, thin-skinned, hard-leftist. Oh, wait...

Mood: Good.

Things are looking quite good. Well that sounds almost banal when put into words.

But it is an amazing feeling knowing you're helping another human being, and it's heartwarming to know you're appreciated in return.

Wooo empathy.

On a tangent here's some very cute dogs eating cabbage.

Truly, we are a nation of Laws and not Men

Well now over two hundred companies have shiny new waivers from Obama's great accomplishment.

If the US passes a law that then requires the government to issue over two hundred waivers in the first few months to avoid disastrous consequences for enforcement, doesn’t that indicate a problem in the law itself?

Nahhhh. What's wrong with giving exemptions to this great reform? It's not like it serves as mass cronyism or a way to bribe people with immunity to follow the very laws they're forcing the rest of us to adhere to.

It's just like the President said: If you like your insurance, and you have the ability to lobby the Administration for a special indulgence, you can keep it.


Ethics!

Kimbers and the Power of Marketing.

Tam talks about Kimber 1911s and their marketing niche

Kimber is basically ridding it's past reputation and only makes cosmetic upgrades to their weapons and they're quite overpriced.

Which is why I have only bought used and plain ones. I do like Kimber and I'll admit much of that is inherited fanboyism, as my father has a Custom I.

But since so many have been sold, and often sold to people with more money than sense you can pickup one used at a good price if you keep looking.

Also as a lefty I prefer their ambi safety and how it's retained. But that you can order and put into any 1911.

Notes

Didn't get to talk about my breaded wings, but I did manage to get ch7 and 8 of Backup Procedures on the other site.

Outage.

I was planning to have the next two chapters posted last night, then my internet went out.

Was out for both desktop and laptop, had a strange area of sites that were down and loss of functionality. First new sites would not work, then everything but messanging and ftp was down, then it was just ftp, then it was everything. Then ftp and google came back, but google was only for one tab.

Needless to say nothing I tried actually did anything, and it took a while for me to get my engineer urges of "fix and win" down to where I could give up and read instead (Shane by Jack Schaefer, very classic end there). On the upside I didn't actually loose any sleep over it.

And turns out it was something I couldn't acutally fix.

The Chicago Sun-Times says that this outage hit the Chicago- region, Northwest Indiana, parts of Michigan and Minnesota and began about 1930 CST and was fixed a little after midnight.

Ah well, will post the chapters a bit later tonight. And the breaded wing recipe hinted at here.

Uh oh

Richard Fernandez examines the wikileaks thing and comes to some disturbing conclusions.

If President Obama has shown himself to be disappointing, Hillary has not exactly covered herself in glory. But it is the contrast between their previous bluster and the present result which is so ludicrous. Here was the team that was going to restore America’s standing among allies; going to ‘end things where they began in Afghanistan’; begin a new era of engagement in the Middle East; prosecute terrorists in court to show moral superiority; create “a world without nuclear weapons”, dismantle “unproven missile defenses”; make the oceans fall; bring prosperity to America and solve health care. And to do this they had the smartest woman in the world at State; huge majorities in the Senate and House.

And all they have to show for it are a few ripped up tickets, some smudged receipts and a few giveaways from a box of crackerjacks. That and pie in their face.

Now the Republic’s enemies must be asking themselves: where is the bottom to these people’s incompetence? Can they do anything at all? How safe is it to rush ahead? Why don’t we try?

Remember, Obama's bulster on all his domestic solutions? Any bets that those plans will be anymore competent? Interesting times.

Via Rand