The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ-4gnNz0vc?rel=0]
And this one:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJFgWA8odBM?rel=0]
And this:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXEoQJ7ZMZs?rel=0]
And these:
The Thomas Sowell excerpt is seven minutes, the Caroline Glick piece is 50 minutes. Both are absolutely worth your time.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt_q4FA9kUQ?rel=0]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8Gqqq0KR98?rel=0]
The latest xkcd:
Remind you of anyone?
Today’s Quote of the Day comes from Professor Victor Davis Hanson’s latest, Life with the Vandals:
Law enforcement seems not so much overburdened as brilliantly entrepreneurial. Patrol cars flood the highways as never before, looking for the tiniest revenue-raising infraction; the police realize that going after the man who throws a freezer into the local pond is costly and futile, while citing the cell-phone-using but otherwise responsible driver is profitable. In 2009, the most recent year for which traffic statistics have been released, the highway patrol issued 200,000 more violations than in 2006.
RTWT.
I’m reminded of something the Geekwitha.45 said just before he moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania:
We’ll be starting the house hunt after the first of the year. With the miniGeeks, we need a bigger place anyway, and shortly, this will all be a bad dream.
The thing is, I don’t think that’ll be the happy end of the story. I think the story is just beginning to be told.
As I mentioned to Kim, there is a hidden exodus that you won’t read about in the papers:
“People are moving away from certain states: not because they’ve got a job offer, not because they want to be closer to family, but because the state they are living in doesn’t measure up to the level of freedom they believe is appropriate for Americans. We are internal refugees.”
The fact that things have gone so far south in some places that people actually feel compelled to move the fuck out should frighten the almighty piss out of you.
Ten or fifteen years ago, I would’ve dismissed that notion, that people were relocating themselves for freedom within America as the wild rantings of a fringe lunatic, but today, I’m looking for a real estate agent.
It is a symptom of a deep schism in the American scene, one that has been building bit by bit for at least fifty, and probably more like seventy years, and whose effects are now visibly bubbling to the surface.
Just open your eyes and take a long look around you.
If you’re an informed firearms enthusiast, you know how much has been lost since 1934.
Even if you lay aside gun rights issues, let me ask you some questions.
No, on second thought, let’s save the 50 questions for another posting, for now, lets just ask one:
When was the last time you built a bonfire on a beach, openly drank a beer and the presence of a policeman was absolutely no cause for concern? Hmmm?
Professor Hanson will not willingly abandon his ancestral home to the vandals, but a lot of people are bailing out of California, and Professor Hanson has been patiently explaining why. And it should frighten the almighty piss out of you.
Update: The Manhattan Institute reports on the Great California Exodus.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCXHPKhRCVg?rel=0&w=640&h=360]
Give ’em hell, Pat.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPEQMJ0w2qI]
Quote of the day:
This election is not just a test of opposing candidates, but of the voting public.
UPDATE: I’ve just had the time to sit and listen to this entire interview for the first time. I’m struck that Dr. Sowell refutes pretty much every Markadelphia talking point in this single interview – Obama, taxation, economics, the federal budget, education, etc.
It’s uncanny!
Ah, those Muslims, no sense of humor!
On the way in to the office this morning, I heard a news report that a French satire magazine, Charlie Hebdo was deliberately publishing offensive cartoons featuring Mohammed. This is not their first rodeo. The last time they did something similar, their offices were firebombed.
This time there’s a cartoon on the cover page of a Jew pushing an (apparent) Muslim in a wheelchair, both saying “You must not mock us!” while, reportedly, there are “more shocking cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad inside the magazine ‘in daring positions’.”
France is preparing for riots by Muslim unemployed, disaffected youths.
Meanwhile, a cartoon was posted to the interwebs a few days ago depicting the Hindu god Ganesha, Buddha, Moses and Jesus “in daring positions” and nobody got firebombed, nobody rioted, and no one died. If you’re interested, that image (very, VERY NSFW) is here.
I’m reminded once again of one of the quotes on the masthead of this blog – the one by MaxedOutMama:
Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It’s worth it. It’s a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else’s rights, because if you don’t there is no one to defend yours.
Which reminds me, I’ve got another essay on Rights I promised some people a couple of weeks ago. I’d better get back to that….
From the comment thread to Bitter Clingers, Unix Jedi gets the nod for today’s Quote of the Day:
You’re lecturing, and you’re telling us that 2+2 = yellow. Further, if you multiply by Pie, you get Jasmine scent.
Let’s break down your broken-down thought.
that there are very wealthy
Wealth does not equal income.
people in the 47 percent who also don’t pay federal income tax
So you admit that the 47 percent figure is only discussing “federal income tax”, so your strawmen of other people’s “confusion” and “incorrectness” are deliberate obfuscations and deceptions.
so the tax cuts argument will most certainly reach them.
Why? If they’re not paying income tax, why would a further reduction matter to them, personally?
Lemme restate what you just said:
People who have a lot of stuff, don’t pay income taxes, but the chance they might pay less would affect them.
Mark, and you’ve got the effrontery to try and “Furthermore”, lecture us?
You can’t even keep your own “facts” coherent for 20 sentences!
You, sir, win one Internet! Where would you like it delivered?
My favorite Merchant O’Death sent me an email which contained this image I found appropriate to today’s Quote of the Day:
…usually is.
I got a link to this very interesting story, Hardware is Dead, at the site VentureBeat. Excerpt:
In the US, when we talk about tablets we usually mean the iPad and increasingly the Kindle devices, but beyond that there is not much else in the market. I had heard that tablets in China had already reached low price points. You can buy a reasonable Android phone for $100 retail, and I wanted to see if I could find a $150 tablet. This consultant pointed me to a mall filled with hundreds of stalls selling nothing but tablets. I walked into the middle of the scrum to a random stall. I pointed to one of the devices on display and asked, “How much for this one?” 300 kuai. My Mandarin is a bit rusty, so I had to ask again. Slowly, the stall owner repeated renminbi 300 yuan.
If this were a movie, the lights would have dimmed and all the activity in the room frozen. 300 renminbi is US $45. And that was the initial offer price given to a bewildered foreigner in China, no haggling. I felt a literal shock.
I bought the device and did some more research. This was a 7-inch tablet, Wi-Fi only with all the attributes of a good tablet. Capacitive touchscreen. Snappy processor. Front facing camera. 4GB of internal memory and an expandable memory slot.
I later found out that these devices are now all over the supply chain in Shenzhen. At volume, say 20,000 units, you can get them for $35 apiece. My device ran full Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and had access to the full Google API, including Gmail, Maps, YouTube and Google Play (not quite sure how that works either).
A $45 tablet computer.
The thrust of the article is that this is a game-changer. That at that price point, everyone will buy a tablet computer. I think the author is probably right about that. But here’s what I found interesting:
My contacts in the supply chain tell me they expect these devices to ship 20 million to 40 million units this year. Most of these designs are powered by a processor from a company that is not known outside China — All Winner. As a result, we have heard the tablets referred to as “A-Pads.”
When I show this tablet to people in the industry, they have universally shared my shock. And then they always ask “Who made it?” My stock answer is “Who cares?” But the truth of it is that I do not know. There was no brand on the box or on the device. I have combed some of the internal documentation and cannot find an answer. This is how far the Shenzhen electronics complex has evolved. The hardware maker literally does not matter. Contract manufacturers can download a reference design from the chip maker and build to suit customer orders.
Now China is the land from which rumors have been spreading about counterfeit microchips with embedded spyware.
If you wanted to do a real cyberjob on the American economy, imagine what a few months of spying on millions of people doing online purchases and online banking with their “A-Pads” would net you. Bank accounts and routing numbers, credit card numbers and security codes, or just introduce a Stuxnet-like virus into our financial system and let it run wild.
After all, nobody knows who’s building these things, right? Doesn’t matter!
“All Winner.” Well, the Chinese have a saying: “Business is war.”
I know I’m paranoid, but sometimes I wonder if I’m paranoid enough.
Oh, sorry forgot to add this before I hit “Publish”:
Postscript
I thought discovering the A-Pad was pretty exciting. So I was dismayed to find that the week after I got back from China, a device that looks a lot like my A-Pad was on sale at Fry’s Electronics for $79. No brand listed. The process has already begun.
UK expat reader Phil B. (now living in Middle Earth) sends links to the story of Dale Cregan, fine upstanding British subject now suspected in the murders of at least four people, most recently two female constables in an ambush:
For the two unarmed policewomen it was a routine call to a suspected burglary.
But, half an hour later, Fiona Bone, 32, and Nicola Hughes, 23, were gunned down in an act of ‘despicable evil’.
The story of the break-in was apparently a fabrication and lying in wait was a killer.
He cut the constables down in a hail of bullets before tossing a grenade at them.
(My emphasis.)
So, how are those “toughest gun laws in the world” working out for you?
And this isn’t Mr. Cregan’s (alleged) first use of a hand grenade, either:
Police had offered a £50,000 reward for information about the murders of David Short, 46, and his son Mark, 23.
The Short family had been at loggerheads with a rival clan for more than ten years but it spilled into bloodshed – reputedly over drug debts – in May when Mark Short was killed.
A gunman walked into the Cotton Tree pub in Droylsden on May 25 and Mark Short died from a gunshot wound to the neck.
Four men have been charged in connection with his murder and are due to enter pleas at Manchester Crown Court in November.
David Short was killed in a gun and grenade attack at his home in Clayton on August 10 and earlier this month a 33-year-old man appeared at Manchester Crown Court charged with his murder.
That man was Dale Cregan, who had been “released on police bail pending further inquiries”.
Now in that last link there’s a very interesting sidebar. Guess what the “new weapon of choice” is over in “Gun Free Britain”?
Teams of armed officers involved in the manhunt were aware of the increasing involvement of grenades in crime in the North West. (My emphasis.)
They were told the Russian-made military devices each contained 1,000 ball bearings with a ‘kill zone’ of more than 25 yards.
One of the best-known Soviet grenades is the F1, nicknamed the Little Lemon, which has a four-second fuse.
Based on a French design and introduced during World War II, it is now obsolete but can still be found in war zones and is highly prized by gangsters.
This year two Merseyside gangsters were jailed for life after planting a grenade in bushes outside former Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish’s home. It was apparently intended for a neighbour.
They were responsible for a merciless campaign of violence including numerous shootings but their weapon of choice was the grenade.
Phil notes in his email:
Of course the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS – which among the cognoscenti stands for “Couldn’t Prosecute Satan”) which couldn’t get its act together and the Courts that refuse to jail offenders are to blame and deserve their share of criticism for not dong their job….
Not Satan, but they’ll prosecute homeowners for defending themselves, as long as there’s not too much negative press first.
He concludes:
But of course years and years of social engineering have taken their toll on the fabric and morals of society – and why not? Who but the law abiding fears the law?
I am SO glad that I am 12,000 miles away from this lot….
I’m glad you escaped too, Phil.
I’m going back to Left4Dead2.