Tag: QotD

And This is Why I Read Crystal . . .

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And This is Why I Read Crystal . . .

My last stop of the day was at the tanning place. I approached the oblivious toddler behind the counter and waited patiently for her to hang up her cell phone and acknowledge me. When she finally did so, she sighed impatiently and asked, “Last name?”

“McKnob. But, I have a question.”

She raised her eyebrows at me to indicate her burning desire to know what was troubling me.

“I know jack shit about tanning, obviously. That’s why people randomly take my pulse when I’m sleeping. But I spent a gob of money in here last week to do away with some of my sickly pastiness and I was advised to buy points. Then the other girl talked me into a lotion that has unicorn sperm in it because it’s supposed to make me look like a Coppertone girl overnight or something. I use it as directed, climb in that bed that talks down to me in her snooty British accent and I wait. I’ve used it seven times and I found out last week that the points thing? Waste of money. Also, a girl that used to work here told me the bed I’m in is for maintaining color, not establishing, so I’m wondering why no one told me that and why I was coerced into spending four times the amount of money on points when a membership would have been cheaper.”

She chewed thoughtfully on her gum. Finally, brow creased, she said, “What?”

“Let me try one of the beds that are bad for your skin and get a membership, please.”

She visibly brightened. “Oh, okay! I’ll set you up in bed three.”

“Is there a fire extinguisher in there?”

“No…?”

“I need one.” While she typed, I mumbled. “PETA has it all wrong. They need to be in here, saving us from ourselves.”

Toddler looked up. “Did you say something?”

“Yeah, does it have stuff on your computer screen, like, ‘Baste liberally and cook at 400 degrees for ten to twelve minutes’?”

RTWT. Both parts.

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

Og and Billy have what amounts to a religious disagreement: Og figures we’re too evil to endure without external govenment and Billy figures if we are bad, then our institutions will be bad, too. Pared down to that, it appears we’re thermodynamically doomed: can’t win, can’t break even, can’t quit the game. Life is, however, a local, short-term reversal of entropy: we keep tryin’ stuff and in the long run, nobody is in charge of anything but themselves. Yeah, it’s more fluff. Turtles all the way down. Go outside, reverse some entropy and, damn you, smile. – Roberta X in a comment to her own post, Manners, Customs, Anarchy and Me

It would appear that she has the same problem with Billy Beck’s prickly personality that I do.

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

It’s been done before, but I love this expression:

. . . a sudden and acute failure of the victim selection process. – Massad Ayoob, An urban gunfighter: The lessons of Lance Thomas

There was also this quote from Col. Cooper:

“It is not unusual for critics of the American scene to deplore what they hold to be an uncivilized toleration of personal violence in our society,” Jeff Cooper once wrote. “Violent crime is not so much the issue, but rather the use of violence by socially acceptable persons in self-defense, in the righting of wrongs, and in meeting challenging situations. Such critics feel that Americans are too ready to ignore the police and handle their emergencies personally; and that, further, this barbarous attitude is encouraged, rather than inhibited, by our tradition.”

Some time back in the Dangerous Victims trilogy I wrote:

(The) recognition of the difference between violent and predatory and violent but protective illustrates the difference in worldview between people like me, and the (we’ll call it) pacifist culture.

Britain today represents a perfect example of the pacifist culture in control, because that culture doesn’t really distinguish between violent and predatory and violent but protective – it sees only violent. Their worldview is divided between violent and non-violent, or passive. There is an exception, a logical disconnect if you will, that allows for legitimate violence – but only if that violence is committed by sanctioned officials of the State. And even there, there is ambivalence. If violence is committed by an individual there is another dichotomy: If the violence is committed by a predator, it is the fault of society in not meeting that predator’s needs. The predator is the creation of the society, and is not responsible for the violence. He merely needs to be “cured” of his ailment. If violence is committed by a defender, it is a failure of the defender to adhere to the tenets of the pacifist society. It is the defender who is at fault because he has lived by the rules and has chosen to break them, and who must therefore be punished for his transgression.

It’s nice to know I was channelling the Colonel.

Quote of the Day

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(Government) is an instrument of force and coercion. And there can never be an instrument of force and coercion which will consciously restrain itself. It must be restrained. Yet there is no tool capable of such restraint. For any type of tool, whatever its nature, which is allegedly formed to restrain and contain government, would, by its own nature, simply become a government’s government.

In other words, the restraining tool for a compulsive instrument would have to contain a greater accumulation of power than the compulsive instrument or it would be ineffective. But this, in essence, would also be a government. It would simply be a larger, more compulsive, more dangerous and more mischievous tool and less subject to restraint than the original instrument of coercion.

The United Nations falls into this category, as does every other prior political organization aimed at universal peace. The United Nations is simply a government’s government. The members of the United Nations are, by definition, not the peoples of the world, but the nations of the world, at present (circa 1959) eighty-two in number.

Individual people cannot belong to the United Nations. Only governments can belong. The delegates to the United Nations are simply politicians who have been appointed by the member governments. And it is in the nature of the United Nations that it will look after the governmental interests of its members. Hence, the things that the member governments desire to do will become the policies of the United Nations.

But the thing all member governments desire to do is to rule their own people and to collect money from them. This is inherent in their natures. So the United Nations, perforce, will aid and abet the member governments in their universal desire to maintain a coercive hold over their individual subjects.

Thus, the United Nations is a government of the governments, by the governments, and for the governments. And it cannot and will not restrain these governments, for the members support the giant, looking to it for backing, even as the individual citizen supports his own government and looks to it for backing. – Robert LeFevre, The Nature of Man and His Government

h/t to Billy Beck for the pointer from a comment to this post at Roberta’s.

I, too, have always liked Professor Bernardo De La Paz’s explanation of his political affiliation of “Rational Anarchist.”

Perhaps “Pragmatic Anarchist” is a more precise term. 😉

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

I decided to tune into the Star Tribune’s coverage of the deliberations of the Minnesota Canvassing Board in the Coleman-Franken recount. It is a strangely compelling artifact of representative democracy, but my observation is this: Al Franken’s supporters display a bewildering inability to fill in bubbles.

I have long felt that some sort of familiarity with the mechanisms of American government should be required of electors. I support a policy that rejects the ballots of any voter incapable of filling the ballot in correctly, as a minimal test of electoral competence. – Jackalope Pursuivant, Counting to 1

Al Franken now leads Coleman by 262 votes. It would appear that every single mis- or un-counted vote went Franken’s way. What are the odds of that?

Hugh Hewitt was right – If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat.

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

“I still believe in bipartisanship,” Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said at a Capitol news conference. “But there is an even greater responsibility than practicing bipartisanship, and that is to govern. And that is what we intend to do here today.” – LA Times: California Democrats devise plan to hike taxes

“In every generation, there are those who want to rule well – but they mean to rule.” – Daniel Webster

(h/t – Firehand)

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

Now, most tactically-aware gunnies will be quick to tell you that the .38 Special is towards the low-end of the so-called “stopping power” spectrum. Matter-of-fact, most would tell you that .358 inches; 158 grains and 900 feet per second is the bare minimum.

Thing is, that old gentleman shoots a minimum of 200 rounds out of that pistol every month. He plinks dirt clods and charcoal briquettes with it; he hunts jackrabbits on his oil lease and turtles in his stock tank with it; he’s taught his children, grandchildren and multiple acquaintances to shoot with it; and he shoots in several formal and informal matches each year with it.

That pistol is a part of him. He puts it on each morning, and takes it off each evening. The bluing has etched away from the thousands of draws from leather he’s practiced; and the grips are worn to match his hands.

If the eco-friendly fertilizer hits the rotating, oscillating, vector-flow cooling unit that .38 is not going to be sitting useless in a gun cabinet: it’s going to be where it’s been for the past several decades — because he carries it.

He’s not going to flinch, he’s not going to fumble his draw or muff his shot; and each round is going to go exactly where he wants it to — because he practices with it.

That, Gentle Readers, is stopping power. – Lawdog, Meditations on Stopping Power