Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

AZLibertarian discusses the FedGov’s “Cash for Clunkers” program, reflecting on the experience the Arizona state government had with a similar program aimed at “alternate fuel” conversions a few years ago:

The taxpayers of Arizona bought me a third of my truck. Nice if you can get it, but the state can’t stay in business this way.

So, why is this relevant today?

Here’s why….The Cash for Clunkers program is going broke. They overstimulated. They’re having to add money to keep a program meant to last until October make it last beyond its first week.

In short, the fed.gov is doing today what the Arizona state.gov did 10 years ago. For their own reasons, they believe they’re smarter than the Invisible Hand, and it isn’t working.

Again.

— Alternative Fuel Clunkers, Twenty Miles of Bad Road

So we should obviously put them in charge of our health care.

RTWT.

Mean-Spirited and Dangerous vs. Brilliant and Profound

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Mean-Spirited and Dangerous vs. Brilliant and Profound

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson is calling the depiction [of Obama as the Joker], politically mean spirited and dangerous.

Hutchinson is challenging the group or individual that put up the poster to have the courage and decency to publicly identify themselves.

“Depicting the president as demonic and a socialist goes beyond political spoofery,” says Hutchinson, “it is mean-spirited and dangerous.”

“We have issued a public challenge to the person or group that put up the poster to come forth and publicly tell why they have used this offensive depiction to ridicule President Obama.”

That would be this poster:


However, when Vanity Fair published this picture of George W. Bush in July of 2008,


basically the instant the movie opened, the comments were somewhat different:

Great stuff from the talented Friedman (as always). As “agents of chaos” go, W’s right up there with the best of ’em.
Posted 7/29/2008 by Frankie5Angels

So true. Only his puppet strings are missing. 🙂
Posted 7/29/2008 by MimiSoleil

Very good!!!
Posted 7/29/2008 by juckto

Poor Joker, he doesn’t deserve this. Bush isn’t good enough to wear his face.
Posted 7/29/2008 by japsmov

Brilliant and profound.
Posted 7/29/2008 by swordofdamocles

We knew who’d done it. It was “brilliant and profound”! No one even thought to ask “why?” No one in media considered it “mean-spirited and dangerous.” Of course, this was back when dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Now that the Left has its hands on the levers of power, we’re supposed to shut up.

Double standard? What double standard?

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

If you’re a journalist, want to help people and want to tell the truth, what truth are you going to tell? Why, the truth you think helps people, of course!

Technically, that’s the truth.

But it’s very different than the truth.

Barbara Oakley, Why Most Journalists are Democrats: A View from the Soviet Socialist Trenches

h/t to Dr. Helen for this one – a definite must-read! And you might want to peruse my January, 2008 essay The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation, too.

Edumacashun

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Ravenwood points to something I hadn’t bothered to follow up on. Last night Instapundit linked to a story about a college graduate who was suing her alma mater because she couldn’t find a job.

The thing Ravenwood noticed? Let’s see if you can determine what it is (PDF document from which I excerpt):


This is a woman with a 4-year Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. Based on her lawsuit, I can imagine what her job applications look like.

I wouldn’t hire her.

Isn’t that N.I.C.E.

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Isn’t that N.I.C.E?

From “Primary Source” commenter “Grumpy Student”:

By the way, anyone who wants to read all about the body set up to ration healthcare in the UK only needs to look up the Wikipedia entry for “NICE”, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (good name) whose job it is to determine which treatments the NHS will offer based on a cost effectiveness metric. The good thing about this policy (from their point of view) is that patients denied treatment usually die before any court case completes.

It’s important to understand that money the individual has paid in taxes towards healthcare becomes “public money” and therefore they have no right to expect it to be used for their treatment. Therefore the decision becomes “is this treatment in the public interest or could we spend this money doing something else?” not “what are the patient’s needs/is this patient entitled to the treatment?”.

The reason they strike you off if you pay for the treatment yourself is that doing so is seen as using financial wealth to obtain a better standard of care than generally available which is contrary to the philosophy of the NHS (I kid you not).

In the NHS, maintaining socialist dogma is more important than patient care.

Now, go read Neo-neocon’s story of her experience dealing with chronic pain, and what the National Health Service’s National Institute of Clinical Excellence is now, for economic reasons, recommending for people in its system with similar problems.

Then tell me again why nationalized health care is such a rush?

The Parking Ticket

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The Parking Ticket

Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting.

Well, for example, the other day my wife and I went into town and went into a shop.

We were only in there for about 5 minutes. When we came out, there was a cop writing out a parking ticket.

We went up to him and said, ‘Come on man, how about giving a senior citizen a break?’

He ignored us and continued writing the ticket. I called him a Nazi turd. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tires.

So my wife called him a shit-head.

He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket.. This went on for about 20 minutes. The more we abused him, the more tickets he wrote.

Personally, we didn’t care. We came into town by bus and the car had an Obama sticker. We try to have a little fun each day now that we’re retired. It’s important at our age.

Stolen shamelessly from Eagle7222 at AR15.com.

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

I have been more than a little discouraged and disgusted with those who purport to be my fellow countrymen. Everywhere you turn it seems that there is another street-corner evangelist preaching the gospel of government control, and they always seem to have a crowd around them.

It is human nature to seek the most gain from minimum effort, and nothing can be more minimum than having someone else do it for you. These are the people who turn to Mommy Government to solve all of their ills.

In 1865 the country climbed out from under a civil war. Freed slaves reveled in new found freedom.

They soon found out, however, that freedom has its cost. Slavery is safe, because someone takes care of you. It may be only a minimum level of care, barely enough for sustenance, but it is provided to you. Food, clothing and shelter, the first three items on the hierarchy of needs, are given free of monetary cost. The only thing you pay for these things is your soul.

Freedom, however, means that you are left to fend for yourself. Being responsible for yourself means that you must provide for your own food, clothing and shelter. No one is waiting to pick you up when you fall, you live or die by your own actions and decisions. You own yourself, body and soul.

Freedom is scary.

This is why so many people opt for any kind of soft slavery rather than hard freedom.

— Last Refuge of a Scoundrel – This Time the Union Can Keep the Slaves

If ye love wealth better than liberty,
the tranquility of servitude
better than the animating contest of freedom,
go home from us in peace.
We ask not your counsels or your arms.
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains set lightly upon you,
and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

–Samuel Adams, 1776

CMP Update

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I’ve purchased a CMP Garand, a CMP M1 Carbine, and three or four cans of .30-06 on en-bloc clips from the CMP, so I’m on their mailing list. Things may be finally slowing down in the commercial manufacturing sector, but the CMP is still overwhelmed:

LATEST CMP SALES NEWS:

ORDER BACKLOG. For the past nine months, the number of orders received by CMP for rifles, ammunition, and all other products has been unprecedented.
As of today, 31 July 2009, our Sales Order Processing Dept is up to processing / shipping orders received at the end of Apr 2009, with several thousand orders still to go for May – July. The number of incoming orders has decreased enough so that customers should expect an acknowledgment of our receiving orders about 30 days after mailing the order. However, customers should not expect delivery for 90 – 120 days from date order was placed. We ask our customers to bear with us. We will eventually recover from this surge. The CMP staff thanks you for your support and patience.

COMMUNICATION RESPONSE DELAYS. CMP is still receiving hundreds of calls a day, as well as hundreds of emails. Each morning there are dozens of voicemails from the night before. Because of the large volume of constant calls in the daytime, it may take a few days for response. We have a state of the art phone system for a company our size, but the volume of calls is causing the system to do unexpected things. We apologize for any delay in responding to emails or telephone calls.

—

S&H INCREASE FOR 407-CAN. S&H for orders for 407-CAN received on or after 1 Sep 2009 will increase to $9.95 per can. Other S&H charges will remain as they are until further notice.

OVERPAYMENTS TO CMP. Effective immediately, we will consider customer overpayments of $9.99 or less as donations and will show that on the customer invoice / bill of sale. Any overpayment of $10 or more will be immediately refunded to the customer. The $10 figure was chosen because that is our estimate of how much it costs the CMP to process a refund check. This change will be added to our instructions and order forms at time of next printing.

BAVARIAN CARBINES. The Bavarian marked M1 carbines have all been inspected and graded. However, because of the current 90 day backlog of orders, we will not begin accepting orders for these carbines until 1 Oct, 2009.Prices will be posted on the website at the beginning of September.

CARBINE AMMO 438A. CMP continues to receive monthly shipments of carbine ammo, and are slowly reducing the number of backorders. As of 31 July, we have over 3,000 orders for carbine ammo on backorder. Anyone ordering carbine ammo now should expect a minimum of 120 days for delivery, and possibly much longer.

Thank you for your support of the CMP in these historic times.

Orest Michaels
Chief Operating Officer

“Historic times” indeed! 90-120 days for a firearm, over 120 days for .30 Carbine ammo. Wow.