The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
Quote of the Day – GunNuts Radio Edition
If the Iranians take to the street in support of their freedoms, the President supports their `protest’. If 250 conservatives gather in a park in the US because they’re pissed about paying taxes, it’s “low-level terrorism.“ – Truthsayer on a call-in to the 6/23 show.
This July 4th should be interesting. Lots of TEA Parties are scheduled.
Quote of the Day – If the Foo Sh!ts Edition
Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress – with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?
One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.
I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent – the failure is deliberate. Don’t laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.
American Thinker, 9/28/08 – Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis by James Simpson
Interesting read. I am once again reminded of the warnings of Yuri Bezmenov from the 1980’s. And remember Rahm Emanuel‘s “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.”
Or that others would thwart, given the time.
(I can hear Markadelphia’s head explode from here!)
Quote of the Day
Already, the government runs our children’s education and our parents’ retirement. Now we’re allowing it to usurp our banks and nationalize what remains of our auto industries. Within weeks, Washington promises a plan to dictate our health care. To do all this, we’ve let Washington run up enough red ink to impoverish our grandchildren. As if all that weren’t enough, the president still found the time to kick our friends in London and Tel Aviv while courting a genocidal, election-stealing maniac in Tehran. He even gave a speech in Cairo — that oppressed, impoverished Old World megalopolis — in which he assured the world that America really is no better than anywhere else.
Well, once upon a time, we were.
Stephen Green, Once Upon a Time in America
As always, RTWT. And the comments.
Invoking the soapbox is appropriate for this stage of the game.
It is right and just to lodge the protest and ask for power back.
At the moment, I’m hard pressed to come up with an historical example of when power was ever genuinely returned as the result of a polite request.
My inner cynic tells me that astute politicians will hear this, and recognize the need to dust off the old meaningless “change and reform in Washington” meme we’ve all heard since we were kids.
We the voters are suckers and fall for it every time.
GeekWithA.45 in a comment on yesterday’s “We the people are coming”
Quote of the Day
In contrast to yesterday’s:
As the fascist government of Iran begins the massacre of its unarmed citizens today, the world slowly, fitfully wakes to the reality of what it means to have a weakling in Washington.
—
Now he has the job and the enemies of America and freedom have taken his measure. And today the dying started. Only the beginning, folks. Only the beginning.
The only prediction left to me is when the dying will start here. As usual, it’s later than we think.
Gerard Van Der Leun, American Digest: Surprise! No Steel in Obama’s Spine After All.
Quote of the Day
There are a million things to hate about President Bush’s costly and wrenching wars. But the fact is, in ousting Saddam in Iraq in 2003 and mobilizing the U.N. to push Syria out of Lebanon in 2005, he opened space for real democratic politics that had not existed in Iraq or Lebanon for decades. “Bush had a simple idea, that the Arabs could be democratic, and at that particular moment simple ideas were what was needed, even if he was disingenuous,” said Michael Young, the opinion editor of The Beirut Daily Star. “It was bolstered by the presence of a U.S. Army in the center of the Middle East. It created a sense that change was possible, that things did not always have to be as they were.”
Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, Winds of Change?
Quote of the Day – Going Galt
If that’s what people want, so be it.
I’m done. If Congress passes Obama’s destructive zombie health plan in any form, I quit.
I will simply not practice medicine anymore. I will take my psychiatry books and my years of experience and do something else. I used to wait tables when I was in college. It’s an honest living and Obama isn’t interested for the time being in nationalizing restaurants–yet.
Let me be clear. I don’t believe that people have a “right” to health care; because, what advocating such a “right” basically means is that you believe you have a “right” to my mind; you have a “right” to my professional competence; i.e., you have a “right” to enslave me.
Dr. Sanity – THIS TIME, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE…LET THE ZOMBIES TAKE OVER MEDICINE
Yes. That’s exactly what it means. And do read the whole piece. She has a lot more to say that needs to be heard.
Quote of the Day – That I Know I’ll Regret Later
But sometimes you just have to say “F^*k it.”
Today’s QotD is a comment by the aforementioned Billy Beck left at the blog The Trooper’s Gal in response to a less than totally admiring comment addressed at him. Here’s Beck’s reply, in its entirety:
Rollory: you can resign yourself to life among inferior animals that look like human beings, but I will not.
I know that humans exist.
Wow. “. . . inferior animals that look like human beings.” Isn’t there a single word for that? Unter-something . . . ?
Good to know where you stand in Beck’s taxonomy, I guess. “Overweening misanthropy” illustrated.
(Oh, yes – Beck’s threatened retribution over this post, too. They’re his words. In context. He can choke on them. Far be it from me to expect anything approaching a retraction.)
UPDATE 6/14: No retraction. The drama continues.
UPDATE II: OK, I was wrong. Apology tendered.
Quote of the Day
It’s not about that. It is about gaining power for your segment of the population. More specifically, it’s about gaining some control over the government’s use of power. That’s all that this global warming movement is about … it is a fraud and a scheme created to empower people who would otherwise be selling Che Guevara t-shirts at a street fair.
Neal Boortz, THE GLOBAL WARMING MOVEMENT ISN’T ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT
Yup.
Quote of the Day
Philosopher Bertrand Russell suggested that “Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.” And, it was Albert Einstein who explained, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So which is it — stupidity, ignorance or insanity — that explains the behavior of my fellow Americans who call for greater government involvement in our lives?
According to latest Rasmussen Reports, 30 percent of Americans believe congressmen are corrupt. Last year, Congress’ approval rating fell to 9 percent, its lowest in history. If the average American were asked his opinion of congressmen, among the more polite terms you’ll hear are thieves and crooks, liars and manipulators, hustlers and quacks. But what do the same people say when our nation faces a major problem? “Government ought to do something!” When people call for government to do something, it is as if they’ve been befallen by amnesia and forgotten just who is running government. It’s the very people whom they have labeled as thieves and crooks, liars and manipulators, hustlers and quacks.
Walter E. Williams, Americans Love Government
Sounds suspiciously similar to the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. Those are the opening paragraphs. Read the rest.