I know I said no politics, but...

This requires comment. It's too iconic and irritating for me to be able to ignore.

Four years ago, the Left started kicking up a fuss about an "outed" CIA agent who wasn't covert at the time her maiden name was mentioned in a Novak piece. Scooter Libby was subsequently railroaded over his faulty memory of this non-crime.

Today, ABC published the names and faces of two men who they call the "'architects' of the CIA's interrogation techniques." They go on to inform the public that these two men are retired military men who both have degrees in psychology, and who trained our pilots in resisting such techniques--but also imply that it's somehow wrong to profit by one's knowledge and talent, when they complain that these men were paid a grand a day to oversee the "torture" (which somehow left no lasting physical damage upon the "victims"--captured terrorists).

They also state that they're somehow not really qualified to set up interrogation practices:

"But it turns out neither Mitchell nor Jessen had any experience in conducting actual interrogations before the CIA hired them.

'They went to two individuals who had no interrogation experience,' said Col. Kleinman. 'They are not interrogators.'"

Umm...again, these two trained our pilots in how to resist torture. I don't know how ABC and their associates can possibly think that these two men who they've exposed (which risks their lives, if not national security--just as the Plame exposure did neither) are not qualified to oversee interrogation.

After all, they weren't asking the questions--just making sure procedure was followed to ensure the overall long-term safety of the terrorists interrogated.

Amazing.

I posted some size comparison baby pictures about three months ago, one where he was four days old in the hospital, with a stuffed monkey to illustrate how small he was, and another at three moths old with the same monkey.

To remind you, here's four days old.


Now, here's six months old with the same monkey.


And here's another smiley picture, just because he's cute.

I thank God every day that he's healthy and happy.

Talk about something I'd love to read!

A UC San Diego professor discovered a collection of transcribed letters in the British Library. Not just any letters, either. These were a transcribed correspondence between Benjamin Franklin and a number of different people, written during the French and Indian War. It references an action that Franklin aided the British general in, referred to as "the wagon affair," in his autobiography.

These letters were assumed lost. This is the first time, possibly since they were compiled, that scholars have read them. They're to be published in the April issue of the William and Mary Quarterly.

Wow. I'm so glad I've got access to a university library. I've got to read these.

You know how stoners always say that pot wouldn't be illegal if it had been discovered about the same time as aspirin?

Apparently, they're wrong. According to the Journal of Experimental Botany, a man (probably a shaman, possibly a stoner) was buried with 789 grams (a little less than 28 ounces) of pot. Not recently, either: their best dating guesstimate is that he was buried with the weed about 2,700 years ago.

Determination and the achievable American Dream.

I read stories on the news all the time about how bad the economy is, how horrible single mothers have it, how necessary government intervention is to make sure people keep eating, and keep a roof over their heads. I hear about the inner cities, and how young black men are trapped by poverty. I hear how children are born into poverty and will continue the cycle.

Bullshit.

When I was about six or so, my dad walked out on us. I wish to God he'd walked all the way out, but he didn't, and he and my mother spent the next six years in a vicious custody fight, one made all the worse by the facts that Dad didn't really want us and was only using the fight to hurt Mom, and that he was horribly was abusive to us.

I won't go into that.

What I will say is that, by some miracle, my mother regained physical custody of us, and managed to force Dad to start paying child support. $366 per month for two of us. She never reentered the work force, and still managed to make that tiny amount stretch to cover shelter, utilities, and clothing, while the government pitched in for food. Given that, legally, we were wards of the state, and that the state chose to treat Mom as an unpaid foster parent, that's the absolute least they could do. I've got a grudge, but have already covered it in Tuesday's post.

When I was twelve, Dad lost all rights to anything other than supervised visits for an hour per week. I began to see that there would, eventually, be a light at the end of the tunnel.

So, as a twelve-year-old, I sat down and thought about my situation, and about my future. I looked at my surroundings, and at my peers, and at their parents. I realized two things: one, my surroundings (my hometown and county) were toxic; and two, my peers' parents were living the same way their parents did, and my peers would likely follow suit.

I really didn't want that. I did not want to grow up to become my mother and put my children through the same thing I'd gone through. I did not want to stay in a town and county that knew what was going on, but turned a blind eye because my dad was one of the pillars of the community: a pastor that worked at a factory and a bowling alley, like everyone else, and that volunteered to coach kids in his spare time.

I decided, at twelve, that I was getting out as soon as I could. I assumed that, though I was small for my age (frequently mistaken for nine, or so), I'd grow, and I'd enlist in one of the branches in the armed forces. I was leaning toward the Navy, because I didn't think I'd be physically capable of being a Marine. At fifteen, I stood a whopping inch under five feet, was about 85-90 pounds (which made my dreams of serving my country dubious, but still just barely possible), and I hurt myself really bad in P.E. Blew out my right knee. Found out that none of my joints would have stood up under the abuse I'd have put them through in the military.

One road out turned out to have a bridge out sign square across it. That could have stopped me, gotten me to decide I couldn't get out, and decide that it was best to stick with the dependency I knew. I didn't, though. Determination picked me back up, dusted me back off, and set me back on my feet on the crossroads.

Okay, I thought. I'll just find another way out. Women have done it for centuries--I'll find someone from somewhere else and get married. That plan didn't pan out, either. I'm really glad it didn't. Getting married just to get away from what was never home would have been a very bad idea. It would have really made me no better than a whore--exchanging sex for financial and/or other considerations.

Determination, again, is what kept me going. I took what I thought of as a long shot: I went to college (met my best friend, who I later married, there). I hadn't thought I was smart enough. Turns out I was wrong. Really wrong--I went on for an MA in English, and coasted as much as I had through college. I was expecting both college and grad school to be harder than they were.

I teach college, now. I love the job, even on days I want to smack my head against something unyielding. My husband and I have no debt, and we own a home. No, we don't make a lot of money--in fact, we're considered working poor by the government, and got a unearned income refund--but we don't come up short, either.

In short, I have achieved the American Dream. How? The way it's always been achieved. Thought. Planning. Determination. Hard work. All of the above, along with a healthy dose of get back up and either keep going or change direction.

I'm not that special. I managed to get out of a bad situation mostly intact. I love teaching, so I can't say my sanity stayed intact, but still. I've got everything I ever really wanted.

And if I can do it, anyone can. All they need is to want to get out, to know they can, to plan their way out in workable steps, and to be flexible enough to change their plans. It may not be easy, but is that simple.

Anyone who says that it isn't that simple in the inner cities is racist.

Cool idea, but...

A bunch of scientists in South Dakota have made an interesting discovery: it's possible to embed antimicrobial properties to paint. Interior wall paint.

They say that it'll kill staph, E. coli, and MRSA within minutes of contact.

I have to wonder, though, if this is a good idea. I mean, think about it: where did MRSA come from? Hospitals. Where they use a lot of antibacterial soaps (a lot of the time incorrectly), antibacterial gel hand cleaner, antibacterial cleaning supplies, and lots and lots of antibiotics. It killed of the weak strains to leave the strong to get stronger.

If they develop this new tech to the point that it's really effective, and really cost effective, then everybody's going to want to use it. Which, in turn, will kill 99.9% of airborne bacteria, most of which will never make us sick. It 's immediately eradicated by our immune systems, which learn what to look for.

Current studies are indicating that the emphasis on super-clean homes can actually make people sick by not allowing their immune systems to learn what to attack and what not to attack. Those studies also indicate that this is one possible cause of allergies.

I flat refuse to discuss the political implications. Anyone can imagine the government's reaction should this prove as effective as its inventors claim.

In short, this is a cool idea, but not necessarily a good one.

I'm getting tired of politics.

I'm going to write a bit here, and then I'm going to not write about politics for a good, long while. There's not much I'm willing to do. I don't think that the small amount I can do will make much of a difference either in the short run or the long run. Therefore, I'm going to put forth my opinions and beliefs here, in this post, then ignore politics for a good while.

Fiscal policies

I think the government is rushing us toward the edge of a cliff, fiscally. The democrites have put us into a position where they could force socialism through by engineering a collapse, then trying to cause a panic about it.

The worst part is that they succeeded.

It really started under Johnson, I believe. Or maybe all the way back to FDR. It was he, after all, that opened the door for the government to step in as a social safety net for those who failed in life. And this after he engineered the extension of the Great Depression by his partnership with the major unions resulting in a federal refusal to allow companies to fire workers or freeze wages to save themselves. FDR also set up that major Ponzi scheme called Social Security. To be entirely fair, he did not intend for it to last more than one generation, to replace individuals' need to be saving for their own retirement, or for the money to be used in any way except to be put into a trust fund for those who paid it in.

However, we know which road is paved with good intentions--and that goes double for government good intentions.

Johnson, in his war on poverty, created government welfare: a government check paid to individuals who do not have a job, and do not intend to look for a job. That may not have been what he intended to do, but he obviously forgot about the law of unintended consequences. Or, maybe not--a vast majority of those on the government dole vote Democrat to keep the checks coming.

The community reinvestment act, passed under the Clinton administration, and ignored by the Bush administration, is what set us up for this current economic collapse. It forced banks to make loans to people who obviously weren't suited to them by threatening prosecution for racial discrimination in writing mortgages. It was for noble intentions: the American dream, after all, includes owning a home, and many were flatly unable to. The community reinvestment act was intended to help those who couldn't afford a mortgage to get one anyway, completely ignoring that government intervention would not help them pay a debt they could not afford to take out in the first place. And, because the banks knew that they could not pay the mortgages they took out (which made them a bad risk), and because the banks were required to write them anyway, the sub prime mortgage with the super-high interest rate was created.

Greed factored in, yes, but government intervention started the ball rolling. And nobody really paid attention to the men (and women) behind the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac curtain: former Clinton administration officials who looted the companies by keeping two sets of books--one that held the liabilities, and the other that held the assets--that they could use to fleece their investors and earn bonuses larger than those the government crawfished on with AIG.

The really scary part is that the government has said that they're going to "monetize" the national debt, which has spiraled into a number that, when you take into account all government financial liabilities, exceeds the world GDP. Not even China is buying our debt anymore. Nobody is.

And now, with the economy in the process of complete collapse, and no nation in the world willing or able to lend us money, the government, headed by the Communist in Chief, has bought controlling interest in the biggest national banks, GMC, and AIG, and are trying to set up to grab controlling interest in every other branch of industry, through government spending and through new environmental regulations. And if that isn't enough, he's also pushing through legislation to take even more of our money and pour it into nationalizing health care. Socialized medicine. Medicaid for everyone. Rationed health care. I'll have more to say on that in the section on domestic policies. For now, let me just say that, like everything else he's pushing through, we simply do not have the cash to pay for it.

Foreign policies

Our Communist in Chief is also scaring the shit out of me with his interactions with other nations. Not only has he gravely insulted our real allies in the global war defending against Islam, but he's shoved his tongue so far up our enemies' asses that he's tickling their tonsils. And they're enjoying every moment.

Saudi Arabia: He bowed to their king. Bowed from the waist. Looked, from the video footage, like he kissed the king's hand, as well.

I am an American. I am no nation's subject. My president should bow to no other head of state. At best, the king of Saudi Arabia is my president's equal. In reality, there is no power in the world that can really touch us, militarily--which means that the king of Saudi Arabia should have bowed to the President of the United States.

Iran: Obama has been offering major concessions to a nation that hates us, eagerly awaits the Apocalypse, and is actively working to acquire nuclear weapons in order to kick-start the Apocalypse. And Iran has openly stated that they are unwilling to compromise, but that they'll take our subjugation, thanks bunches.

And they're laughing at us for having elected the spineless Communist weasel now in the White House.

Islam: I'm covering all of the other nations that have a Muslim majority, here, but aren't a threat in any other way but in their major export--Muslim males between the ages of 17 and 45. In other words, terrorists.

Obama gave his first official media interview to Al Jazeera, the Islamofacist cable television station that encourages acts of terrorism against us, and against other Muslims.

Obama has offered to meet with and deal with terrorist regimes besides Iran and Saudi Arabia--for instance, there are no moderates in the Taliban.

He's setting us up for another terrorist attack that will make September 11, 2001, look as mild in comparison as Oklahoma City's terrorist attack looks in comparison with New York City's. Well, Oklahoma City's attack looks mild in comparison to rational people, at least--Janet Napolitano can't seem to tell the difference.

North Korea: Obama ignored their quasi-successful ICBM launch. They're a belligerent on par with Iran, and they have not only nukes, but are about to have the capability to hit us with them. And they still carry a grudge about us protecting South Korea from them.

Russia: Obama has thrown some of our allies under the bus, trying to get Russia to back us with Iran. Russia's response? "Yeah, we'd appreciate you bending over and taking it with regards to the ICBM shield that you're building in Europe. We don't want you to protect them from us, and we don't believe that you're trying to protect them from the Middle East. But no, we're not going to back you with Iran. Pussy."

Russia is a threat. A growing threat. No, they're not on par with terrorism--yet. They're heading that way, and they're escalating the new Cold War behavior, frustrated that we're not taking them seriously. They could attack militarily to try to make us take them seriously.

Somehow, with this administration, I doubt it would work. Obama would roll with the kick, and beg them not to kick us again.

Which would convince them that we're weak enough to beat (and I'm not so sure it's wrong).

Domestic policies

Back to socialism. It's not just the financial aspect of socialism that scares the living bat crap out of me. It's the totalitarianism.

You see, I read Orwell's 1984 when I was fourteen years old. It resonated. Loudly.

When I was 14, my family was under government control. I mean that literally. We got food stamps, and medicaid. The only reason we didn't get welfare as well was because, at that time, my mother miraculously (and by that, I mean it was with the hand of God in our finances) managed to make $366 per month in child support cover everything else.

But my sibling and I were in the state's legal custody, even while our mother had physical custody. And the government, and child welfare (a definite oxymoron, in our case) told us what we could do, and what we couldn't; where we could go, and where we couldn't; how we could be disciplined, and how we couldn't; what we could be taught, and what we couldn't.

We'd landed in the social safety net. Socialism. Totalitarianism. Petty tin-pot dictators with delusions of grandeur told us how we were going to live our lives.

We, as a nation, are almost there. Socialism runs our schools. Socialism runs our banks--now. Socialism runs some of our industry--now. Petty tin-pot self-appointed elites run the elections, and think that, since they're smarter than all of the rest of the nation, put together, that they should be able to tell us how to run our lives.

Totalitarianism.

You see it in the report the Missouri Highway Patrol put together on conservatives being potential terrorists. You see it in the report leaked from the Department of Homeland Security, and the arrogance and disrespect to our soldiers and veterans in the implication that our soldiers and veterans are no better than a Muslim. No better than the September 11th hijackers that killed over 3,000 innocent Americans--the only military target that day was the Pentagon. You see it in the way the FBI was ordered by the White House, in the middle of March, to watch the Tax Day Tea Party protests (though Obama denies knowing that the protest was going to happen). You see it in the ways they keep trying to disarm us, the citizenry.

The government no longer fears us. We're starting to fear the government. And, as Thomas Jefferson says, that is the mark of tyranny.

Political parties

By the way, I'm not Democrat-bashing, here. Every politician in Washington, D.C.--from the President, the CIA, the FBI, to all 535 members of congress, to the nine supreme court "justices," to all of the lobbyists, to the media to the commenters to everyone that works there for any branch of the government or for anything that reports on government actions--is at fault. Not one of the so-called "Beltway" is blameless. I hate them all: Democrats and Republicans and Independents that caucus with the two major parties.

You have not stood up for the people. You have not stood with us. You have not stood with the constitution. You have stood up against those who elected you. You have not listened to us when we said "No more. No more taxes. No more government programs that don't work. No more socialization/nationalization of health care. No more bailouts. No more of our money taken from us that worked for it and given to those who won't. No more."

And when we try to change things, you ignore us. You ridicule us. You shut us down.

There are no more conservatives in Washington. There are CINOs: Conservatives in Name Only.

Kathleen Parker is a particularly odious example of a CINO: she openly stated in one of her columns that she preferred to see Barack Obama win than see Sarah Palin, a true conservative, as Vice President.

What I believe

I believe in the Declaration of Independence. I believe that, as the government grows more tyrannical, we the people have the right and responsibility to replace it.

I believe in the Constitution of the United States. I believe that the Bill of Rights lists things that the government is prohibited from doing to the people--abridging our rights: our right to speak our minds on politics, race or religion; our right to assemble where we want, with whom we want, to discuss what we want, whenever we want; our right to worship as we please, when we please, and where we please; and our right to own, practice with, and carry guns, knives, or whatever else we choose to carry to defend ourselves with. I have no doubt that they want to abridge, infringe on, and otherwise remove the other rights listed in the first ten amendments.

I believe that we cannot allow it. I believe that unless we stand together against the totalitarian tendencies our government is showing, now, we are kneeling for the boot they will place upon our neck.

I also believe that we are already too late. Which leads me to my last point.

Why I'm not willing to do anything

I've lived under government control before. I remember what they have done to me in the past, and I know what they can, and may well decide to do, to me in the future. And, while I don't mind paying the penalties for standing up for what I believe, it's not just me anymore.

I have a son.

I will not risk him being taken from me to be indoctrinated into the group think of the Communist Elite.

Conclusion

There may well come a time when I feel hope, for a change. There may come a time when I believe I can stand up for my country and my rights without endangering my son.

And there may well come a time when I cannot keep silent any longer.

Until then, I will not discuss politics further. There's nothing to be done but bitch, and I really hate complaining.

WHAT DID SHE JUST SAY???

Warning: Very strong language ahead. Do not read if you are offended by cursing.

Despicable?!? You fucking bitch! How dare you call an American tradition--peaceable assembly to protest taxes--despicable?! You cunt! You should feel lucky we don't perform the other traditional American function when faced with taxation without representation! The last time a petty despot tried that, we threw his entire government out and created our own!

And this time, you treasonous whore, unless you fled to France, where I'd pray for an Imam to stone your nasty ass to death, you'd have nowhere to flee to, since you are a citizen of the land you find so despicable. And you would be hung. Or shot. Because you are a fucking traitor to the Constitution and the United States of America.

Take your head out of Obama's ass, you brainless twat, and look around you. You and your ilk--and by that I mean all politicians, Democrat and Republican alike--are the despicable sacks of shit that caused us to have to protest.

The really ironic part of the story is where she said all of the protesters were radical right-wing GOPers, and the headline at the bottom of the page is about how the Republican party is contemplating embracing the protesters.

In other words, this was not a plot by the Republicans to discredit Obama. First off, there were as many conservatives who vote Democrat, and feel let down by their own party, as there were Republicans or Libertarians.

Second, Obama doesn't need any help. He's discrediting himself fast enough.

Um...no.

Yesterday, amid a whole lot of filthy, tacky jokes by the bright lights of the main stream media, thousands of conservatives came together in a nationwide protest of tax and spend policies. The Republican party thinks that yesterday's protests are a sign that they're going to be able to take control of the government back from the Democrats.

Um...guys? Y'all have done just as much of the tax and spend "compassionate conservative," bigger nanny government bullshit as the Democrats. Yes, many (if not most) of the tea party protesters vote Republican. However. That doesn't necessarily mean that they'll continue to vote GOP if a third-party Reagan appears.

Joe Lieberman identifies as an independent, now, even though he still votes with the Democrats on social and fiscal issues--his position on the war on Islamofacism led the Democrats to kick him out. Reagan himself was a Democrat before, as he said, the party left him.

Now, the majority of Americans feel that both parties have left them. After all, unlike both parties, the majority of we the people still believe in individual rights, and in individual, local, and national soverignty. If we can come together into a new party, one that reasserts the rule of law as written in the Constitution (and not re-interpreted by activist judges), the current two parties who have left us will find out what a mistake that was.

As Missouri goes, so goes the nation.

I called it, nearly a month ago. Missouri published a report that conservative organizations were possible terrorists. Now, Homeland Security has done the same. Further, they've mentioned veterans as a particular danger.

And, of course, the ACORN counter-protests at tomorrow's tea party rallies will do nothing but provide an excuse for the government to attempt to forbid conservative protests of government actions, like tax increases and stimulus spending. That attempt goes directly against the right of assembly articulated by the first amendment. Just as attempts to curtail political speech and journalism does.

The government has attempted to curtail our rights many times during the past four months. Worse, they've implied that the Bill of Rights lists government granted rights.

That is not so. In fact, the Bill of Rights lists rights inherent to being born a human being that the government is prohibited from abridging, infringing upon, curtailing, or otherwise messing with.

The Supreme Court was created by the Constitution to interpret laws as either being in line with the Constitution and Bill of Rights or as being not in line, or unconstitutional. Unfortunately, four (and sometimes a fifth) of the nine justices declare that they interpret the "living document" whose meanings change with the times with disturbing regularity.

The Constitution and its amendments were never meant to be a living document. Its meanings are fixed in the language. The constitution details what the government does. The first ten amendments detail what the federal government is restricted from doing.

In case any of my readers have forgotten, the Constitution and its amendments are linked to the right, under suggested reading. I may or may not write a blog post about the amendments, and the meaning that the Founding Fathers embedded in simple, everyday language to avoid misinterpretation by any except lawyers and congresscritters.

Then again, the Founding Fathers intended the documents to speak to us. The people. The ones who live by the laws of the land rather than flaunting them. It would almost be insulting to you if I were to explain, in plain language, what each means, what it forbids the government from doing, and why.

If you want me to write a post about it anyway, drop me a note in the comments.

And this is why I don't hang with criminals.

Also, why I have a gun.

A nineteen year old girl and her 23 month old son were killed in a home invasion robbery. The gunmen shot her and her son in the head, as well as 9 year old son of the drug dealers she was staying with. They also shot the drug dealers' 11 year old daughter--several times--but she survived, and is in stable condition.

This happened in the still-crime-ridden area around New Orleans.

The story doesn't mention physical descriptions, only what the gunmen were wearing. It has become a trend in the media to leave out physical descriptions when the perps, victims, and drug dealers are all black.

Look, if you don't want people to make assumptions like that, Reverends Jackson and Sharpton, then tell your people to stop living down to the stereotypes. No, not all people of color, whether black, Latino, Asian, or Middle-Eastern are violent criminals. However. A disproportionate number of violent criminals are minorities.

Just... stop. You are in a nation where you have a chance to move out of the self-imposed ghetto you live in. You can be anything, do anything you want. The only thing stopping you is your own behavior, and the politicians who tell you it isn't your behavior but your color.

Stop believing in identity politics. You're in America. Be an American first. Take advantage of what capitalism has to offer. Yes, there are a very few up at the top--but they come down. They don't stay there, and you don't have to stay at the bottom, feeding from government handouts that keep you voting against your best interests, and killing each other over territory and drugs. Seventy percent of the Fortune 400 are people who climbed to the top on their own: making their fortunes, not inheriting them.

The government, the NAACP, MEChA, and all those other identity-politics organizations out there tell you that all Americans are racist, that whites are racists, have the power, and will keep you down.

They're lying to you. They're the ones keeping you down. They're keeping you down so that you will believe that you need them.

Truth is, you don't need them. They need you. They need you to believe that you can't make it on your own so that they can keep the power they've grabbed.

Your power.

Take it back. Take back your rights and your abilities to do what's best for you, as individuals, not you as a group.

No shit?

Former Bush Aides Warn Obama to Beware of Russia's Pledge in Iran Nuclear Issue

He'll screw that up, too--the only thing he hasn't screwed up, he hasn't had control over. The media's been pushing socialism for the last twenty years, at least. It's not surprising that 53% believe in capitalism, 20% in socialism, and the rest don't know who to believe.

And with several socialists in Obama's cabinet, and in the House, we really need to be issued that damned fuzzy hat.

Urgent, he says. Idiot.

President Obama has asked for more money. $83.4 billion--that's $83,400,000,000--for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He says it's urgent.

Urgent it may be, but he's missing a lot more that's just as urgent. For instance, he ignored North Korea's missile--I mean satellite launch. He threw Poland under the bus with the missile shield, and the USSR--sorry, I mean Russia--is now test-firing ICBMs. Iran is edging ever closer to becoming a nuclear power (even France is worried about that, even though Obama doesn't seem to be), and Obama's bowing and scraping to a foreign king (which implies that we are not soverign, and owe fealty to said Islamofacist ruler).

And he says the military request is urgent. More urgent is getting this asshole's majority revoked so that the reach of his idiocy is limited.

Stupid.

We're going into a global cooling event because of lowered solar activity, and The Messiah is contemplating shooting pollution into the atmosphere to block solar radiation and cool the earth's air.

Idiot. Yes, the sea ice is retreating. Yes, the oceans are warming. That does not mean that we are about to have catastrophic, planet-destroying global warming. Look back at the geological evidence around the prehistoric ice ages. Yes, there was a lot of ice--but it was in glaciers. On land.

Evidence suggests that the oceans were warmer then than they are today. Evidence suggests that warmer oceans were the only variable that prevented a mass human die-back: warmer ocean currents kept the coasts livable when continental interiors were ice-locked. Warmer ocean currents allowed for the hunter-gatherer societies to find food enough to keep a breeding population alive and healthy.

Warmer oceans with limited sea ice is not a sign of cataclysmic global warming. It's a sign we're in for a cold, cold time, coming up.

If you'd like to read a good explanation of how that model works, even if it is in a work of fiction, read John Ringo's The Last Centurion. And curse, because rather than the socialist fuck-up Ringo envisioned, we've got a national socialist fuck-up who happens to be stupid as well as malicious.

I have a way to fix Social Security going broke.

Encourage people without children to start smoking in their forties. Since smoking tends to kill people within 20-30 years (if it's going to kill them at all), we'll only be paying out for five to fifteen years, instead of 20-40 years.

Why?

There have been several of what the media calls "massacres*" that have happened since January 20 of this year, where someone has gone on a rampage with a gun, where no law-abiding citizen with a concealed carry permit was nearby to stop the nutjob.

The media has been blowing things way out of proportion, as usual: they hyperventilate about a .22 rifle, for Pete's sake! A frickin' squirrel gun! With a bullet the size of a baby's pinkie!

That particular nutjob tells us something, though, about why these things keep happening.

He said he was afraid Obama was going to take his guns. He was afraid that the cops that answered a domestic disturbance call were there to violate his second amendment rights.

The nutjob that gunned down a bunch of immigrants who were about to take their citizenship test had lost his job because of the Democrat-caused financial meltdown. And he couldn't speak English or find another job because of Democrat-sponsored programs to allow him to get by without English.

Another nutjob lost his job and killed his kids. And then himself.

So, why? Why do these brainless shits keep rampaging?

It's because they're scared. And the Democrats love it when people are scared. It keeps 'em voting Democrat.

*The Holocaust was a massacre. Cambodia was a massacre. The re-education camps in the USSR. Vietnam (after we left). One man shooting a few people is a mass murder, not a massacre. Massacres are nation-level, government-sanctioned, and therefore legal, killing.

Damn.

Mr. Robert Hall of The Old Jarhead is a poet as well as philosopher.

He published a poem on his blog today that reminded me a bit of Kipling in the feel--specifically, "Recessional."

Go read it. It's excellent.

And if one of the teachers had had a CCW...

...this wouldn't have been so bloody.

After all, "SWAT team officers surrounded the building but it took about four hours to secure the scene... ."

Had he not killed himself, that's four hours the shooter could have been hunting victims.

That's the main reason why I think instructors and test proctors should be able to carry with a CCW on college campuses and federal testing stations: when help is just a phone call (and four hours to make sure it's safe for the cops) away, someone with a CCW permit would be right there to stop the shooter.

WTF?!?

"My new comrade"?!? That's plain speaking.

Good news on the Western Front, comrades! (What are you talking about? It's always good news on the Western Front, now, comrades!) The Revolution has won!

Where's my fuzzy hat? I want my government issue fuzzy hat, and cheap vodka.

Colder weather, here we come.

We're heading into what's called a deep solar minimum, where the sun's output is markedly less. With a lower solar output, we're going into a time of cooler temperatures.

In other words, global cooling.

You see, temperature variations are not caused by industries. They're not caused by burning coal mines or natural gas veins. If anything on earth can affect global temperature variations, it's volcanic eruptions, with the gasses and ash they spew into the air--and once again, they cause a small, world-wide temperature drop as ash floats in the upper atmosphere, and blocks part of the solar energy that reaches earth.

Granted, humans have a small effect, but first-world countries with their greater emphasis on clean energy and industry are not as much a part of that as second-world up-and-comers like India and China, who are struggling to build industry, and have less to spend on clean industry. And, again, even that is a small effect. Just as temperature variations following volcanic eruptions is a small effect. Global climate shift is caused by solar variations, not earthly.

That means man-caused global warming is a faith-based tenet that completely ignores actual science.

Illustrative.

Government gun control thugs have repeated many times that 90% of the guns that Mexican drug cartels use in their crimes come from the United States.

Ha. They left a word out of that statement: 90% of traced firearms come from the US. That adds up to about 17% of total guns that the Mexican government seized from violent criminal cartels.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World offers us a probable reason: in that deceptive utopia, children were trained by repetitions at night of "moral truths." Things that the authorities wanted them to believe. And, like the inhabitants of Huxley's dystopia, we are trained with government-sponsored media repetitions to believe certain things without question: that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer (but no one mentions congressional income at all), that guns kill people (uh-huh, they just jump up and shoot people for the fun of it), that 90% of the guns in Mexico came from the US.

"...upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark" have made most of us unthinking sheep. We accept, as Huxley's characters did, anything we're told as "axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable."

Repetitions of lies condition us to accept any lie they want to spoon feed us, without thinking for ourselves, "Is this true? Where lie the facts of the situation?" The media, well, they report what's going on, right? (Only what they want you to know, dear.) They report the truth, right? (Slanted until it's lies, dear.) They're giving us the information that we have the right to know, right? (Only if it's what's good for you, dear.)

As Huxley's magnificent novel demonstrates, despite the wishes of the powers that be, no amount of repetition of lies make those lies the truth--only the common view.

And any common view may be challenged and swept aside with fact.

Unfortunately, Japan's downwind.

Otherwise, I'd vote for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on North Korea. They are, after all, a belligerent nuclear power.

An iPod?!?

You do not. Get. The Queen of England. An iPod. Ever.

Good God. We've elected the biggest dumbass in the world POTUS. He's far worse than the media's perception of President Bush. Or Vice President Quayle.

And here's an illustration of why I'm intolerant of Islam.

Robert Hall of The Old Jarhead compiled a list of headlines--from March alone--that proves that Islam is not only not a religion of peace, but an abomination. To call them fellow children of God blasphemes the name of God.

The only way Islam can be considered the "Religion of Peace" is if we redefine peace to mean its opposite: violence. And if the UN declares that telling the truth about Islam is hate speech--well, I do hate them. I would not incite violence against them, but I will advocate self defense.

And if part of that self-defense is another Crusade...well, they started it.