A good example of why holsters are always a good idea.

Seriously, people: do not put loaded guns in your back pocket--or front pocket, or down your pants--without a holster made to go there. You'll shoot your butt (or something more valuable) off.

About time.

The EPA finally recognized that it is, like all government entities, limited by the Constitution and its duly ratified amendments.

Let's see if that extends as far as recognizing that it can't seize property (or abrogate property owners' rights), or lay taxes.

Another semester has begun

And already there's frustration.

I hate admin and bureaucracy.

They've got apps for everything.

If you watch Top Gear (British car show) and happened to see the interview with Stephen Fry, you probably know that iPhone has an app for gay men who want to find other gay men nearby. There's an app that locates where child predators live in relation to where you (and your kids) happen to be.

There's also an app that helped a Texas homeowner know his house was being broken into, so that he could call 911. While he was on vacation in Connecticut.

I've got an app for that, too, for all that I don't have an iPhone, don't go on vacation often at all, and almost never that far away. Here's my app to prevent burglary:

This made me cry a little.

It may be because I'm pregnant, but I think it was more than that. Give it a watch.

*snicker*

This story cracked me up: a Hatian-born Florida Democrat would-be-congresscritter got robbed at gunpoint while waiting in her car to make a campaign appearance at a church.

I'd be laughing at any congresscritter getting no professional courtesy from their colleagues, such as the above; however, the fact that it's a foreign-born Democrat woman, and a typical liberal, makes it better.

Good news...

I found out yesterday that my other half and I will be having a girl!

Who do these guys remind you of?

This one is really good. They made me think of another of my favorite bands when I heard their work the first time.




I like this one even better. Don't ask me why--I couldn't quite put my finger on it. It's the same band and singer backing up one of the greatest guitarists of the 80's and early 90's.

Too...many...remarks! Can't pick one!

I know it's not really funny, but one of the first things I thought when I saw this headline was, "Did somebody drop a nuke on one of Al Gore's global warming summits?"

Bitch has no rights in this country.

She doesn't have the right to stay here. She doesn't have any parental rights to her child. She doesn't have the right to use our court system to take the anchor baby away from the parents who've loved him and raised him as long as he can remember.

She needs to be sent back to Guatemala, bulk rate shipping, postage due.

That needs to happen to each and every criminal alien who pops a kid out on American soil: they get arrested and deported, with their child given to an American couple who can't have kids of their own, to love and raise.

The sad thing is that the Brits are seeing the Obama presidency more clearly than the current administration.

Because, seriously: Gardiner doesn't really miss anything in his analysis of why the current administration is failing so badly. The only thing he didn't really mention was the post turtle issue.

Lie down with filthy, skanky, leftist politicians...

...get up with bed bugs.

Ready for classes next week...

I think that, unless I'm really needed, I won't ask for any more summer classes. They go way too fast, and this summer's seemed to have a lot more special snowflakes in it than I usually have.

Not to mention it leaves me feeling like I don't have quite enough time to get rested from teaching, and ready to teach fall classes.

In any case, though, I did get my textbook finished, and got my site adjusted to remove stuff that I put in the textbook. They don't need to be downloading and using the handouts, but ignoring the explanations of what they're supposed to be doing. And way too many of them do just that.

So, in other words, we need to move away from service industry to manufacture?

That's what I kinda got from this article.

However, the factories mentioned in the articles aren't your grandpa's factories, nor are the jobs something any schlub can do. Most of these factories are automated: that means the jobs require brains, adaptability, and quality education, things that the majority of the American workforce in general lacks.

Thing is, unions have most of American manufacture in a stranglehold. There are still some auto companies that have factories in the U.S. that aren't government owned. Most of those are in non-union states.

Kansas, Missouri, and much of flyover country are right-to-work states. Maybe it'll be flyover country that hauls the rest of the country out of the depression we're currently mired in.

We just need to build a few more factories, and fight to keep unions from raping our workers.

Trust me, people, this isn't a new concept...

The FDIC is making a big deal of praising banks with free checking. Like it's a brand new thing to help poor people.

Um, guys? I've had a checking account with one bank or another for thirteen years, now, and my checking accounts have always been free. The last three banks I've done business with have had free online bill pay. Nor have I ever paid for a savings account.

The article I linked above mentioned that there's a large percentage of people who don't use bank services. Isn't that their choice? Isn't it their choices to engage in behavior (i.e., constantly bouncing checks) that discourages banks from offering them the same type of free checking I've had for darn near half my life?

And, as for the "minorities" cited by the article, isn't it a personal choice to commit the crime of jumping the border so that they don't have the identification documents most banks require to open an account?

This strikes me as just another instance of the Community Reinvestment Act, the government interference that directly caused sub-prime lending, the housing bubble, and the current economic problems caused by people defaulting on really stupid loans.

Racist idiot.

I really hate identity politics. You know, the type that says, "Since you're black/Hispanic/a woman, you must vote Democrat."

Excuse me, but that leaves the individual totally out of the equation.

Beyond that? Harry Reid most recent stupidity overlooks one of the main reasons legal residents and naturalized citizens support enforcing current immigration law, by either the federal government or the state: nobody likes someone who butts to the head of the line.

I wonder if they're going to be finally going sane?

I mentioned before that the feds were being a bit insane in their expectations of housing policy results. Actually, I spent quite a bit of time talking about it in various posts.

It looks like now, they're finally realizing that they can't keep doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.

Stupid sellers shouldn't have accepted the offer.

I have no problem with people deciding they don't want to sell their house to someone else for any reason. I don't even care that this couple didn't want to sell their home to a black couple. It's a personal choice. I personally think it's a reprehensible reason, but I'm not going to tell people what they can and can't think.

But they shouldn't have accepted the offer, then refused to sign the papers. That does make them criminally liable.

This smacks of a setup for murder.

I agree that Hillary Clinton would make a better VP than Joe Biden. I also think that she'd make a better POTUS than Obama.

I don't think it's a good idea to set a man up for murder by replacing Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton. If the trade is made, I don't think Obama (should he be re-elected--which I doubt) would live longer than the first two years and one day of his second term.

I don't like the man, either personally, or as a president. However, I'd never wish death upon him, if only for the sake of his daughters.

The answer is yes.

If we count salary plus a dollar amount on benefits, as this article does, federal workers are paid entirely too much.

I'm not protesting the paychecks/benefits of law enforcement officers and teachers. In point of fact, given how much of themselves the really good ones give, they aren't paid enough.

However, those in other government jobs really shouldn't have the benefits they do, not at their pay levels and amount of actual work they do.

That goes more than double for federal workers in the legislative branch.

You'd think they'd WELCOME state aid...

ICE has admitted they don't have the funding to track the illegals that they know about.

The same bureaucracy that stuck its nose in the air and refused to process those turned over by Arizona. Because Arizona's racist, y'know.

I've got a few ideas to cut cost: cut the paperwork and ship the criminals back to where they came from. That would definitely cut some costs.

My other, preferred idea is to post ICE agents down on the border in well-sheltered "hides" with a high-powered rifle and orders to ignore all South-bound illegals, and take out all North-bound wetbacks. Yeah, there'd have to be legislation passed to refuse all lawsuits brought by Mexico and/or the criminals' families, but that would be even cheaper than shipping them back where they came from.

Got my textbook more than half done.

I'm sure not getting royalties for this. Basically, I'm calling it a textbook because I don't have a better word for it. There's some introductory material that I wrote to give students answers to the most common "what am I supposed to do/how am I supposed to do that?" questions, but most of it is the handouts from the paper assignments and some explanations and transition material.

I've got about seven chapters done, and four chapters left to pull together and write. Not much left at all.

Setting up for fall

I'll be a bit busy for much blogging for the next two weeks. I have a textbook to write, and a second to modify.

I do plan on doing some, so stay tuned.

I'm gonna go to hell...

This cracked me up. Talk about an irony sandwich.

I think, maybe, every citizen ought to carry a digital camera of some sort.

After all: they can't prosecute us all for filming them dropping the ball. And, if you think about it, it is in our own best interest to make sure that evidence can't be easily planted (or removed) by those who'd rather we weren't able to defend ourselves.

This is probably a lowball estimate.

I just read that government figures have something like 40.8 million people on food stamps or similar taxpayer funded food benefits.

My guestimate of a dollar amount is based on this: some are granted something like $50/month because of other government benefits that put them just over the threshold, of getting a reasonable, monthly budget of groceries, but still below where they can easily afford to feed them selves; others get $300+ per month per family member. I sort of averaged the likely numbers together to guess that people on food stamps average out to around $200/month.

That's $816 million dollars handed out in entitlements, mostly to those who don't understand the difference between needs and wants (like I mentioned in this blog post). Per month.

Now, multiply that by 12. Comes out to not quite $10 billion per year.

Missouri has laws in place where anyone on the dole is subject to random drug tests, and lose benefits if they test positive. That cut some of the worst offenders off the rolls. I don't know if any other states have anything similar, but it should be mandatory nationwide. I'd also advocate cutting luxury foods off what food stamps will pay for--nothing more than canned food, hamburger meat, beans, and rice. Nothing that's ready made or processed.

I'd also advocate cutting off food stamps to any household not on SSI, disability, and without children.

But then again, I'm a heartless taxpayer that thinks that most adults have the responsibility for their own actions, and need to pay the prices for their own choices. It's only when mental (really low IQ, or other cognitive disability--not "emotional disability") disability, physical disability (other than morbid obesity, which--when not coupled with another illness like MS--is a personal choice in most cases I've ever encountered), or age get in the way of being able to make choices to keep one from starving that I think adults should get "free food" from the taxpayer.

From the "All cultures are equal" files...

...I'm going to go out on a limb and make a bet, here: somehow, the left and the illegal alien lobby are going to try to explain how killing a man and drinking his blood are morally neutral because of the culture they come from.

Damn.

A little girl's lemonade stand was shut down in Portland, OR, because she didn't have a $120 license to operate one.

That's 240 cups of lemonade, minimum, for the precious little seven year old to break even.

I don't think we need any more evidence that Big Government and Big Brother don't support entrepreneurship. Nor do we need more evidence that they've never been kids themselves, just crawled out from under a rock into office.

I think this is way beyond "self-incrimination."

There is no way I think this should be permitted. Yes, it's interesting; however, it's so far beyond a violation of individual freedoms--specifically those guaranteed by the fourth and fifth amendments--that it sounds a lot more like Philip K. Dick's "Minority Report" than anything rational.

Pro-law isn't anti-immigrant, just anti-illegal.

Virginia's AG has given a legal opinion that cops in VA can ask foreigners they pull over/arrest for their immigration status, thereby proving himself pro-law.

Maybe if more of the country was pro-law, a nun wouldn't have been killed by a drunk-driving illegal alien. Maybe if the nation was more interested in prosecuting crime that affects others than in modern prohibition, said double-criminal wouldn't have been on the road, drunk again, and hit an innocent woman.

There's a reason Missouri passed Proposition C by such an overwhelming majority.

It isn't because Dear Leader is black, like he's probably going to claim. It isn't just because of the huge price tag that has been understated by every political hack that is pro-Obamacare/ mandatory Medicaid (though that is a large part of why Missouri just kicked the current administration in their empty ballsack).

The citizens--not subjects--of this country don't want socialized medicine. We don't want wait times in emergency rooms long enough to prompt us to suture our own wounds (and then get prosecuted for doing so). We don't want women to go through this in a crowded ER waiting room.

We don't want socialized medicine that gives us access to waiting lines and lists, that gives us government-mandated health-service rationing, instead of permitting the open market to give us access to doctors and care. We don't want an entire segment of our economy enslaved to provide the services that the left has created a "right" to.

This is the United States of America, not Great Britain or the European Union. We are citizens, not subjects. You govern by our consent, not by right of birth.

It seems that most of those in Washington, D.C., have forgotten that.

Big Brother is watching us.

This ought to be illegal. It's an imposition on our God-given rights, guaranteed against government intrusion by the fourth amendment.

"Our own government has become our enemy"

Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu may be referring specifically to the federal government's reaction to and attitudes about illegal immigration, but that's really not as far as it goes. Like King George III of England, the current POTUS (who has delusions of competence) and his cronies have done much, much more than most of us realize in usurping our personal and national God-given freedoms.

Let's start with immigration, shall we?

In refusing to enforce current immigration laws, almost all of which parallel Arizona's laws, the current administration and its lackeys have abdicated responsibility for the welfare of the nation--in its security from attack, in its economic welfare, and in its actual physical health. Illegals in this country commit a disproportionate amount of crime, collect a disproportionate amount of taxpayer funded welfare programs (and by that, I mean no illegal is entitled to any dollar amount spent on them in any form, whether that is through welfare, education, or health care), and are not subjected to the same requirements as legal immigrants with regards to carrying contagious diseases like drug-resistant TB into our country.

This abdication of responsibility led directly to Arizona passing a law with an overwhelming majority that makes federal immigration law and state immigration law the same. By that, I mean Arizona made it a state crime to commit the federal crime of jumping the border without waiting in line.

And, pretty much as soon as Arizona passed the law, Dear Leader and his AG declared that they'd bring a lawsuit against the state that dared uphold national law. Which brings us to

--He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

--He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

Not long afterward, a federal judge in Arizona struck the heart out of the law, disallowing Arizona law enforcement to check the immigration status of those investigated for other crimes. I don't know about you, but I know that if I were to be pulled over for, say, not wearing my seatbelt and the cop finds out that I left my driver's license in my other purse (or pants, like a friend of mine did), I'll be ticketed at the least (my friend, who looked like a drug dealer at the time of the stop, and lived in a rather suspicious looking apartment complex, was arrested) for not having legal ID on me. According to that judge, Mexicans don't have the same burden of proof.

Then again, she's in the direct pay of Dear Leader. If she hadn't ruled like she had (even though she was probably eager to), she might have lost her bench:

--He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

Let's move from immigration law violations to others. Somehow, somewhere, Dear Leader decided it was his right and duty to nominate and hire "czars" to help him carry out his abuses against the American people. We have a Pay Czar, a Car Czar, a Green Jobs Czar, a Health Czar, and many others, which have no authority under the constitution, any more than Dear Leader had to appoint them:

--He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

Worst in my opinion is his insistence that, like Canada and Britain, we must socialize a huge portion of our economy, because healthcare is a basic human right.

Mr. President, we are neither Canadians nor Britons, and their socialized medicine plans failed. Miserably:

--He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

And in with this, we discover that, not only is your plan going to cost more than the federal deficit currently is, it's going to have to have taxes added up front to build up enough funds to make imposing Obamacare/mandatory Medicaid possible.

And that doesn't even count the hidden taxes that is the cap and trade legislation that the lame duck congress will likely force through once the November elections have made the American public's displeasure known:

--For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

We have discussed this at every stage, in every way we can think of. We've posted YouTube videos. We've organized against the socialization of our nation. We've marched on Washington, D.C. itself, totally overshadowing in numbers similar left-wing protests. Has the Federal Government listened? Quite the contrary:

--In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Unlike what many think, Washington D.C. and the federal government haven't failed. They have accomplished much of what they intended, and are working on the rest. If anything, that is what will lead to a second revolution (or civil war, whichever you'd prefer to call it):

...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

I hope that it doesn't come by blood and strife, like the first Revolution did, but I'm fast losing that hope as the Federal government keeps refusing to listen to those who placed it where it is.

Pray for our country. Pray hard. We need it.

More ethics violations.

Besides Rangel, there have been three other names pop up as needing investigation: Maxine Waters (likely connected to Rangel); Jesse Jackson, Jr. (though his dad really needs to be thoroughly investigated for racketeering); and Gregory Meeks. Since all four are niggers in every sense of the word, race-baiter Al Sharpton is claiming that the investigations are racially motivated.

I think it's more likely to be politically than racially motivated. Jesse Jackson, Jr., in particular, makes me wonder if these four have pissed Dear Leader off to the point where he might have had his people quietly pointing the ethics committee in the right direction.

I wonder what dirt Rangel et. al. have on Dear Leader?

Age does matter, sometimes.

And sometimes, there needs to be prosecution involved, not marriage, even when there is "consent." Like here.

Thankfully, when the family tried to get a marriage liscense for their pregnant 13 year old daughter, there was an investigation into who the father was, and the 27 year old man was arrested.

The sick bastard should have been sleeping with a girl closer to his own age, rather than one that could have been his daughter. I understand that, in some countries and cultures, the girl would have been counted an adult. However, this is not one of those countries, and the culture needs to adapt to what this nation's laws require.

"If there's grass on the field, play ball," does not apply when the age difference is so great.

The people of East St. Louis are screwed.

They're in Illinois, one of the states with the nastiest anti-gun attitudes of any state in the union. And the city council of East Saint Louis, on Illinois soil, just fired 19 police officers.

The city, when the firefighters' union and the police officers' union wouldn't accept a 20% pay cut to already abysmal pay, decided last week to simply fire some of those horrible, expensive safety officers.

Take a look at the ratio of fired city workers: out of 37 fired, there were 19 police officers, 11 firefighters, 4 public works employees (gas and water maybe?), and 3 administrators.

That's right: three administrators fired. Thirty-four useful, likely underpaid, city workers fired, but only three likely overpaid administrators.

And in one of the worst crime-ridden areas in the Midwest.

The people who live there have no chance to defend themselves from the violent criminals they live alongside, thanks to the viciously strict gun laws that said criminals refuse to abide by. Those people will have to deal with drug dealers, gangs, and arsonists with fewer cops and firefighters to help them pick up the pieces of their lives.

Maybe the city council needs to be fired, and their salaries folded back into the budget. I bet the city could hire twice the number of essential personnel they just fired.

Creepy.

I don't think I'd want my detergent company following me home (or beating me there), prizes or not.