Damn,
A Modest Proposal . . .
A Modest Proposal . . .
Van Der Leun proposes a solution to our economic crisis. Excerpt:
As we all know, the Social Security Administration (SSa) essentially bet, many years ago, that a lot of people who paid into this Mother of All Ponzi Schemes would simply not live to collect their benefits in any significant degree. It was a “You pay but don’t play” sort of deal. As long as the dead suckers outnumbered the living suckers, all was copacetic.
Now that, through the wonders of Medicare, our elderly can suck down benefits for one, two, or even three decades after 65, the Reverse-Ponzi kicks in and people actually get more out than they ever put in. Looking to “get more out than you put in” is, arguably, the attitude that got us into this mess in the first place.
But even now, this cost is still controllable. It merely requires the will.
Read. It. All.
THIS is Why . . .
. . . an armed insurrection in America will not lead to a restoration of the Constitution and a return to Republican (as in “Republic” not the party misusing the name) ideals:
The Survivors Of US Airways Flight 1549 Make Me Hate People
Just to review, although I’m sure you all know what happened: Ninety seconds after takeoff from New York City’s LaGuardia Airport, some Canada geese were sucked into the plane’s jets, resulting in the immediate loss of thrust in both engines. Unable to reach any airfield from that altitude in unpowered flight, the pilot and crew masterfully set the plane down intact three and a half minutes later in the Hudson River between midtown Manhattan and NJ. All 150 passengers and 5 aircrew on board survived.First of all, let’s just reflect on how astounding that is. The plane was low over NYC, the pilot maneuvered it less than 900 feet over the George Washington Bridge, and set it down gently in the river. Everyone lived. See, that’s the problem—everyone lived. If a a couple dozen of the passengers died, maybe the survivors would be grateful and I wouldn’t have to hear them whining about how much free shit they’re not getting from the airline.
The opening of a short but EXCELLENT rant by ThrowingstarDNA – read it all. (h/t: SayUncle)
Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re not worthy. Not enough of us, anyway. One hundred years of indoctrination has made us this way. Tytler’s Progression seems more and more inevitable every day:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.
I put the country at late-stage apathy, early stage dependence. The depression recession and the “bailout” will put us into full-scale dependence.
We should’ve ignored Claire Wolfe and started shooting a long time ago when it would have done some good. It’s too damned late, now.
“Made as China, Norinco”
I’ve blogged about handmade weapons before, but this not-quite eight minute video (h/t: Dave Hardy) is quite enlightening. It’s about the gun manufacturing done in the remote reaches of Pakistan, where people with, essentially, hand tools make perfectly functional copies of antique and modern firearms.
Cheap.
The title of this post comes from the markings on the slide of this pistol:
It looks like a CZ copy. Nine millimeter, $50. And people wonder why the British handgun ban didn’t work.
But hey, if we can put those eeeeevil gun manufacturers out of business, we can end gun violence!
Horseshit. Guns are not a particularly difficult technology, and there are literally hundreds of millions of them already in circulation. Watch the video where young boys are reloading cartridges on the street and packaging them for sale.
But bear in mind, always, The Other Side believes that “too many guns” defines the problem, and therefore the answer must be to REDUCE THE NUMBER.
But they don’t want to ban anything. Just ask ’em.
Thomas Sowell, Illustrated
“A recently reprinted memoir by Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) has footnotes explaining what words like ‘arraigned,’ ‘curried’ and ‘exculpate’ meant, and explaining who Job was. In other words, this man who was born a slave and never went to school educated himself to the point where his words now have to be explained to today’s expensively under-educated generation.
“There is really nothing very mysterious about why our public schools are failures. When you select the poorest quality college students to be public school teachers, give them iron-clad tenure, a captive audience, and pay them according to seniority rather than performance, why should the results be surprising?
“Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.
“In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with college degrees.”
Touché.
“Make ’em Mad” Dept.
“Make ’em Mad” Dept.
Via Dave Hardy:
I blogged about his case a few days ago — Mr. Dominguez is a law-abiding construction company owner, who owned a registered “assault rifle,” which in California he could legally take from his house to a shooting range. He was going shooting with a friend who was arriving by plane, and was arrested at the airport on the apparently claim that by stopping at the airport in the middle of that drive he broke the law.
The update notes that they followed with a SWAT raid on his house and seizure of all his (legal) firearms, and those of his family.
Fortunately, he’s got some first rate firearm attorneys.
RTWT, including the message from Mr. Dominguez.
Eeew! Quote of the Day
Eeew! Quote of the Day
From the mistress of vivid verbal imagery:
Is it just me…
…or did CNN stop just short of slipping Pugsley some tongue in this piece?I guess they feel a lot better about getting openly moist and runny about Marxism these days…
I Have Been Remiss
I Have Been Remiss
. . . in reading Mostly Cajun as regularly as I’d like. Here’s today’s Quote of the Day, a mere smidgen of a damned fine rant everybody needs to read:
(Daschle) and the rest of those elitist a**holes sit up there in Washington and direct their lackies to write a tax code that even THEY can’t understand, and they put into place a HUGE bureaucracy to administer those rules, said bureaucracy known to give contradictory opinions of any given part of that tub of rules, and then our OVERLORDS expect us to kowtow to their rules, but they themselves regularly sidestep, obfuscate and just plain ignore those same rules themselves.
You have no idea how much this galls me. I have seen the acusatory letters from the IRS, basically calling me guilty until I prove myself innocent, and threatening all sorts of legal actions against what little resources my socialist overlords deign me to keep for myself and my family. Yet THESE guys get a pass.
THIS, folks, is the stuff of which revolutions are made.
I could not agree more with his concluding paragraph.
I think every sitting and living former member of both houses of Congress and every current and living former President and cabinet member should be subjected to an IRS audit of their last five year’s tax returns.
I’m willing to bet that if our overlords were made subject to the same penalties and interest charges we peons would be subjected to, that little investigative effort would go a long way towards halving the National Debt.
Pitchforks and torches and hemp, oh my!
On the Subject of Rights . . .
Over the five and a half years I’ve been writing this blog, the topic of Rights has been the most pervasive. In one of the earliest posts, I reprinted a short essay I wrote to win a year’s membership at AR15.com entitled What is a ‘Right’?. That essay inspired a lot of commentary, and a rather extended exchange with a professor of mathematics that makes up the next six posts below it in the “Best Posts” over there near the top of the left sidebar.
And I wrote one more überpost, The United Federation of Planets on that topic as well.
Those are just the ones I thought worth having permanent links to.
Now someone else has decided that the topic is interesting and important enough to dedicate an entire blog to, and since TSM is the current sole resident of his blogroll, I thought I’d give him a link and pass on his invitation to you, my loyal sixteen readers:
I believe that the root cause of many – if not most – of the problems we face today, both domestically and around the world, are due to a basic misunderstanding or misapplication of the concept of “rights”. This blog is my attempt to begin a wide-ranging discussion regarding rights in general, and fundamental / natural / God-given rights in particular. My most ardent hope is that as many people as possible will join me in trying to discover and define what the concept of “rights” actually means, what rights we all have, and how having those rights defines who we are and how we interact as human beings.
My goal is threefold. First, I need to get all of my thoughts and ideas out of my head and put down in writing. This forum will allow me to pick a topic and run with it until I get everything out. Second, I wish to persuade as many people as possible that my ideas are correct, and that adopting them will improve the quality of their lives and the lives of all those with whom they come in contact. And third, the “comments” function will allow for anyone who wishes to do so, to add their own thoughts and ideas regarding whatever I have written. I do not just encourage this – I need it. You see, I believe what I am writing to be objectively true, but in order to test my ideas and beliefs, I need feedback. So please, feel free to comment on anything I write.
He goes by the handle John Galt and blogs at The Rights Project. If you’re interested, take him up on his offer.
UPDATE: Broken link fixed. D’OH!
Wanna Hear Me on the Radio?
My appearance on Charles Heller’s America Armed and Free is now posted on his site, and I’ve copied it to The Internet Archive for (hopefully) permanent access.
I didn’t do too badly, but there’s definitely a reason I prefer the written word. It’s much easier to get that witty, brilliant point across when you have ten minutes to think about it, rather than having to respond extemporaneously.
The most interesting thing about the show? The call in by Phil (Phil R., I think) who called in from Oxford, England to report on the English gun culture. Too cool!