Quote of the Day – “Always Free Cheese in the Mousetrap” Edition

Today’s QotD comes from a YouTube video of a citizen speaking in opposition to the city of Concord NH’s acquisition of a BearCat armored personnel carrier.  Watch the whole thing, seriously, but here’s the QotD:

What’s happening here is we’re building a domestic military because it’s unlawful and unconstitutional to use American troops on American soil. So what we’re doing is building a military.

What we’re doing here, and let’s not kid about it, we’re building a domestic army and we’re shrinking the military because the government is afraid of it’s own citizens.

Only the right-wingers.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Equc9A1pqQk?rel=0]

Quote of the Day – The Kind of Day I’m Having Edition

We have not succeeded in answering all our questions. The answers we have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions. In some ways we feel we are as confused as ever, but we believe we are confused on a higher plane and about more important things. — Anonymous

There comes a point in the history of every project when it becomes necessary to shoot the engineers and begin production.  — Anonymous

Quote of the Day – Prophecy Edition

As mentioned in the post below, reader John Hardin has taken the download I got from JS-Kit/Echo when they discontinued their commenting function, and has reconstructed many of the comment threads that were previously lost including the one to my February, 2008 post Human Reconstruction, the Healing of Souls, and the Remaking of Society. Today’s QotD comes from that recovered comment thread, by reader “James”:

Anyone who has listened to anything Obama has ever said and who thinks he is going to do anything that even remotely resembles defending the Constitution is simply delusional.

He will keep everything passed by the current administration and add more of his own. He will then turn in inwards in ways that Bush could never get away with, and get nothing but applause for it. Same goes for Hillary and the Manchurian Candidate. There is simply no way to impliment and administer their socialist program without it.

And five years later on, he proves to be absolutely 100% accurate with the exception of the “applause” comment, at least with regard to things like expanded drone strikes, NSA spying on American citizens, IRS-Gate, etc.   

Silence, yes.  “Applause” not so much.

I have the BEST readers, I swear.

So Much To Do, So Little Time…

Still working 10-12 hour days.  Lots going on out in the real world, and no time to analyze and write about any of it. 

Nobody shows for a “Climate Change Rally” in  Washington.  The snark and schadenfreude just ache to be written.

Obamacare’s implementation of a 30-hour “full time” workweek has spawned an “unintended consequence” – hour cuts to avoid having to provide health care.  “Unintended” my ass.  Everyone who saw that provision KNEW what the result would be.  But the White House says there’s no there, there.  In other Obamacare news, first there was the delay of planned Medicare cuts, then delay of the “employer mandate” for companies with 50 or more employees, and now the cap on out-of-pocket expenses has been delayed by proclamation.  And they’re still telling us that our premiums will go down.

A rodeo clown gets “lifetime ban” for un-PC political speech, and calls for “federal involvement” are raised. 

Jesse Jackson, Jr. and his wife get jail sentences, and CBS doesn’t find his party affiliation newsworthy.  (Hey, the New York Times put it in the first SENTENCE of their story.)

The Federal Government is still running at a loss, but the National Debt has remained at $16,699,396,000,000 since last month.  Truly, if a private business was run like the .gov, it would be shut down in thirty seconds and every officer would be sitting in prison alongside Rep. Jackson, Jr.  And the regular media has nothing to say about this accounting sleight-of-hand, I guess because “the right people” are in charge.

In other money news, apparently while the Fed can create money electronically with ease, the Mint can’t actually PRINT money worth a damn.

Egypt is coming apart at the seams.  Syria isn’t doing any better.  Or Iraq.  That “smart diplomacy” sure is working wonders, no?

Still no motion from the media on IRS-Gate, Bengazi-Gate, or any of the other myriad Obama scandals.  Of course not!  He’s not George W. Bush!

Yeesh.  Maybe I should be happy that I’ve got three more weeks of  busting my ass at work, and at least another month when I get back from Reno.

Please enjoy yourself in the comments and the archives, and a BIG thank you to reader John Hardin who has been making MASSIVE efforts to make available the old JS-Kit/Echo comment threads for a lot of the older posts, like this one.  Thank you, John.  It’s much appreciated, and if I’m ever in your neck of the woods, I owe you a beer or twelve.

Quote of the Day: What Obama Hath Wrought Edition

Bryan Preston at The PJ TatlerMatt Damon and Charles Krauthammer Agree: Obama is No Good:

Obama is leading. He just isn’t leading in any traditionally American way, through the constitutional process and within the bounds of our historic political discourse. But he is leading, and it’s a grave mistake to believe otherwise.

Kevin Williamson warns where Obama is leading.

Barack Obama’s administration is unmoored from the institutions that have long kept the imperial tendencies of the American presidency in check. That is partly the fault of Congress, which has punted too many of its legislative responsibilities to the president’s army of faceless regulators, but it is in no small part the result of an intentional strategy on the part of the administration. He has spent the past five years methodically testing the limits of what he can get away with, like one of those crafty velociraptors testing the electric fence in Jurassic Park. Barack Obama is a Harvard Law graduate, and he knows that he cannot make recess appointments when Congress is not in recess. He knows that his HHS is promulgating regulations that conflict with federal statutes. He knows that he is not constitutionally empowered to pick and choose which laws will be enforced. This is a might-makes-right presidency, and if Barack Obama has been from time to time muddled and contradictory, he has been clear on the point that he has no intention of being limited by something so trivial as the law.

Or what used to be our common language. Obama doesn’t believe in either one.

And here we are, living in what was a constitutional republic being rapidly transformed into a surveillance state.

And this is why, as much as I respect him, I find Victor Davis Hanson’s analysis of the Obama presidency unconvincing.

Discuss.

Light Blogging Alert

I woke up at 03:30 this morning thinking about a work-related problem.  Looks like for the next several weeks (excepting my trip to Gun Blogger Rendezvous VIII), I’m going to be BURIED at work, so don’t expect to see much here except for random snippets.  Certainly no Überposts.  Sorry about that.  Read the archives, or go outside and get a tan or something.

Privilege

I have stated on more than one occasion that the purpose of government throughout history (with apologies to Thomas Jefferson) has not been the protection of individual rights, but the protection and expansion of the privileges and power of the privileged and powerful.  In fact the definition of the word privilege is:

a special benefit, exemption from a duty, or immunity from penalty, given to a particular person, a group or a class of people

The latin roots of the word mean “private law.”

So you can imagine my (lack of) shock when I read about California Public Employees’ Magical Immunity to Traffic Tickets (h/t: Instapundit):

“They’ve exempted themselves from the rules they’re enforcing,” said Chad Dornsife, director of the Best Highway Safety Practices Institute. “They know it, is what’s really sick about this. This isn’t some surprise that when the camera comes out they don’t have to worry about it.”…

“It’s a courtesy, law enforcement to law enforcement,” San Francisco Police Sgt. Tom Lee said. “We let it go.”

Want to avoid traffic tickets?  Get a special license plate only issued to .gov employees.  Don’t like Obamacare? Beg your lawmaker for a waiver. If you’re a lawmaker, give yourself an exemption“Exempt(ing) themselves from the rules they’re enforcing” is SOP for the powerful and privileged.  I don’t understand why anyone would be surprised.  Why should the law apply to them?  They have private law.