The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
Sorry about the lack of content. I’ve been busy. Got stuff lined up I want to write about, but don’t have the time.
I do, however, have a bleg: what happened to Doc Russia and Bloodletting? The blog has disappeared. I didn’t visit often, but whenever I did, I tried to catch up. (Doc posted infrequently as it was.) That Kim du Toit quote at the top of the page went to a Bloodletting post.
Mailing a check to the government to help the poor because you’re feeling compassionate is like handing the local crackhead a twenty to fetch you a pizza because you’re feeling hungry.
From The Basic Problem, a response to the question “What’s this libertarian stuff about?”
Tam at her best!
From a comment to yesterday’s Victor Davis Hanson piece from which I took the QotD:
(W)elcome to “free market communism”.
This is “redistribution through gaming the system”. Flashing through all Western civilization, in every European, Canadian, Australian, and US marketplace. If it had a video version it would be called “Grand Theft NATO”.50% of the people play by the “old” rules. They pay taxes, pay their mortgages, pay their own food bills, enter the country legally, and basically support the “other half”.The “other half”…play the “victim” of the paying “majority”…and try to guilt them into paying for MORE stuff….while amassing goods and services at the discount window of the “government”, which slanders the paying majority as “greedy”. (and any other slander that imposes immediate guilt and shame…pick a weapon as you walk through the terrain…racism, sexism, homophobia, jingoism, etc)In Grand Theft NATO, the “have nots”…are GIVEN more and more and more. They are “protected” by their benefactors…but, in order to recharge their “batteries” to press on…they MUST vote when they see their “energy” being depleted. Vote for a leftist…get more “energy”, be given more stuff…and more powerful “weapons”.As you reach higher and more sophisticated levels…you get assistance in weapons of mass deception. Global warming is used as a hoax weapon to “redistribute” money, power, influence…from the “haves” who are ripped off on a worldwide basis…to the “have nots” in leftist enclaves.You also get “mass media” protections…a force field shield that covers you for every misdeed, puts out false information and distortions for your benefit.Grand Theft NATO is available everywhere you can find leftists in power. Thanks for playing…now hand over some more of OUR money…you have made enough already.
Yup, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. Thanks to The Silicon Graybeard for the pointer.
History’s revolutions and upheavals — whether the Nika rioting in Constantinople, the periodic uprising of the turba in Rome, the French upheavals, or the Bolshevik Revolution — are rarely fueled by the starving and despised, but by the subsidized and frustrated, who either see their umbilical cord threatened, or their comfort and subsidies static rather than expansive — or their own condition surpassed by that of an envied kulak class. Perceived relative inequality rather than absolute poverty is the engine of revolution.These are strange and dangerous times. An insolvent federal government, an exporting China and India, and an almost complete indifference to federal immigration, tax, and regulatory laws have all combined to create a well-entitled but increasingly angry population, one “empowered” and made more, not less, bitter by the last two years of governance in Washington.Victor Davis Hanson, Works and Days, Thoughts on a Surreal Depression
I’ve got business meetings in the morning and afternoon, but the evening is free. Anybody want to get together for dinner? I’m staying over on the West side off of the Katy freeway. Can’t stay out too late. I’ve got to leave for the airport at 5:00AM.
Our mighty Navy SEALs not only put a bullet through Osama’s head, but carried off his computers, disks and hard drives. So far, all they’ve revealed is that Osama had multiple Netflix rentals of “Rendition,” “In the Valley of Elah,” “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Love Actually.”
Can you imagine what’s on Osama’s hard drives? I mean besides the goat pornography. Pants are wetting throughout Pakistan’s military establishment.Ann Coulter, Next Time, Use FedEx
So (formerly) Great Britain has “some of the toughest gun laws in the world,” according to former Home Secretary Alun Michael, gun laws that were necessary because (he said) “We recognize that only the strictest control of firearms will protect the public.”
They tell us that getting groped and probed and scanned by the TSA is necessary too, and for the same reason – “protecting the public.”
So much for airport security: Man ‘smuggled 80 guns into Britain’ by hiding them in suitcases
An American man is suspected of smuggling 80 weapons into the UK by hiding them in his suitcases.Former U.S. marine Steven Greenoe, who holds British citizenship, apparently strolled through airport security in both Britain and America with dozens of handguns stashed in his suitcases on ten flights last year.
He is believed to have delivered them to criminal contacts in the North West of England.
On one occasion, Greenoe was stopped after officials at Atlanta airport spotted the firearms.But incredibly he was allowed to board the flight after telling officials he worked as an international security consultant.
The revelations are an embarrassment for transatlantic security and for the UK Border Agency. (Ya THINK?)
It makes a mockery of security regulations which mean innocent passengers have to carry cosmetics in clear plastic bags when in fact Greenoe apparently had no problems carrying weapons in a suitcase. (Those regulations were already a mockery. Now they’re a belly-laugh.)
So… did Project Fast and Furious expand to include Jolly Olde England? Is Greenoe a BATF employee, on or off the books?
Oh, and get this:
A number of 9mm semi-automatic pistols believed to have been bought by Mr Greenoe for $500 each in a North Carolina gunshop were offered for sale at up to £5,000 a piece in Britain a week later, according to the Times.
More than 60 weapons, including more than 20 Glock pistols and more than a dozen Ruger handguns, are understood to be still unaccounted for.
Wow! At current exchange rates, that’s an $8200 return on a $500 investment (minus, of course, the plane fare.) Still, you’re looking at close to a 16:1 ROI if you can move five at a time, and he’s moved at least 60 guns that they know about. At a guess, we’re talking $400k worth of profit.
I am once again reminded of Father Guido Sarducci’s Five-Minute University Economics class: “Supply and-a Demand. That’s it.”
Apparently no one in Britain’s gun-control culture has taken that one.
The United travel vouchers have been used. The Redneck Engineer will be coming this year, flying in from Texas. He may be bringing his homemade .50!
I guess I’d better make my reservations soon.
From Primeval Papa this morning (we work together):
A Navy SEAL walks into a bar and says, “Give me a bin Laden!”
The bartender says, “Sorry, sir, but I don’t know that cocktail.”
“It’s easy,” replies the SEAL. “Two shots and a splash of water!”
Pascal is running a contest:
The GOP is having a debate tomorrow in South Carolina.
Your challenge is to listen to the questions and answers and decide what the best answer YOU would come up with.
In the past, TV tells us who wins, and they’ve rigged the set-up. IOW, they NAIL our minds with this set up time and again. I have myself come up with better answers, some of which were quite funny while being practical.
It is my thinking that the American public is far smarter than any currently serving politician or well-known spokesmouth. Here is your chance to prove that is true and get some publicity too.
I am going to do my part to drum up interest in unofficial answers.
To that end, I am prepared to divide up $200 for the answers submitted to my email box that I find better than the answers given by the GOP stiffs to the conservative unfriendly questions served up by the establishmentarian water carriers. And turning the tables on the water carriers by mocking their question before tailoring your answer can be a winner!
Deadline for submission is 11:59 PM Saturday, 5/07/11.
Go read the whole thing. And give ’em hell!