Inside, Outside, Leave Me Alone

What does the video mean to you?

I had always found it a sad song, even when I didn't understand the context.  I saw Quadrophenia once long ago, but I was too young and too much in altered states to grasp the meaning.  Now I must get it through these windows into the innerwebz because I can't get my hands on a copy of the movie...

I've been an outsider many times in my life.  I was welcomed into quite a few tribes, but I could always feel my strangeness, even as those who welcomed me may have as well but did their best to not betray it.

But back to the video.  I discovered it awhile back on YouTube, and it struck me because I now have a son coming of age, and I remember the awkwardness of adolescence.  I love the old world faces on the train, btw.  Veddy veddy mid 20th Century Europe.

Btw, Roger Daltry has to be the greatest rock singer if for no other reason than the fact that he sang not one but two demented but excellent rock operas written by his eccentric but talented guitarist Pete Townsend.

Red Scare

Here come the food police again...

"Small quantities of processed meat such as bacon, sausages or salami can increase the likelihood of dying by a fifth, researchers from Harvard School of Medicine found. Eating steak increases the risk of dying by 12%.

The study found that cutting the amount of red meat in peoples’ diets to 1.5 ounces (42 grams) a day, equivalent to one large steak a week, could prevent almost one in 10 early deaths in men and one in 13 in women." (Pseudoscience Nannies condemn Red Meat)

1.5 Ounces a day??? Who the hell could live on that? The average working man eats that in one bite! And their idea of a "large steak" is ludicrous. 7 X 1.5 = 10.5 ounces, hardly "large" in the realm of Steakdom.

“Compared with red meat, other dietary components, such as fish, poultry, nuts, legumes, low-fat dairy products, and whole grains, were associated with lower risk.

They want us to live on nuts and berries...

Here's the unscientific part. Correlation does not mean causation:

Scientists added that people who eat a diet high in red meat were also likely to be generally unhealthier because they were more likely to smoke, be overweight and not exercise.

So, unless those scientists can show how eating red meat causes smoking and sloth, they can blow it our their blow holes.

Cameron English discusses the myriad problems with non-clinical studies that produced this junk science:

Research like this is entirely dependent upon participants to accurately recall what they've eaten during the period the study is in progress

Recording what you eat with any degree of accuracy is incredibly difficult even when you are motivated to do so, as anyone who has ever dieted knows. Now, imagine assessing the food surveys of over 100,000 people for a study spanning slightly more than two decades. Good luck. (Red Meat not to Blame)

Here's the real agenda...

In an accompanying editorial Dr Dean Ornish, of the University of California, San Francisco, said that eating less red meat could also help tackle climate change.

He said: “In addition to their health benefits, the food choices we make each day affect other important areas as well. What is personally sustainable is globally sustainable. What is good for you is good for our planet.”

Liberals love shouting "Science!" like that old dude in the Thomas Dolby video, while most of them know nothing about it.  When we conservatives are accused of being anti-science, this is the kind of junk science we are against.

The latte liberals can nibble their sticks and twigs and nuts.  Me, I'll continue grilling steaks when I can afford them and slow smoking big slabs of Texas-style Beef Brisket.

Red Meat Blamed for Everything

Treasury-Fed-Goldman Sachs: An Axis of Evil

The crooks at Golden Calf are in the news again, thanks to a loud and damning resignation letter...

Some of the best analysis I have seen on the issue is by Bill Frezza. He’s one of the good guys. He writes in Forbes Magazine, often training his razor sharp darts at the crony crapitalist rip-off artists and the big government buffoons who enable them.

I am certain that you will be hard pressed to find systematic illegal activity at Goldman Sachs. These people are lawyered up to the hilt. They know more about securities regulations than the people who wrote them (which I suppose isn't saying much). They know exactly how close to the line they can operate.

No, Goldman Sachs is not a law breaker. With all the former executives and cronies it has parachuted into the halls of government and all the money it showers on politicians running for office, it is actually a law maker. And that is the problem.

TARP was an inside job.  The crooks are still on the inside...

Thanks to this last banking crisis, the lines between the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the Executive branch, and Goldman Sachs have all but disappeared. Using the entirely legal means of calling in chits from both political parties in its hour of need, Goldman Sachs looted the Treasury to save it from a liquidity crisis, cover its speculative investment errors, and make good on winning gambling bets that would have been uncollectable had Uncle Sam not stepped in to bail out counterparties like AIG.

Feel Poorer:  The bailouts stole money from you and me, devalued our savings and eroded our spending power...

Paying back the bailout money to the one entity that has the power to print it does not forgive the sin. In fact, the very act of printing that money stole value from its rightful owners, whose currency was debased, never to be made whole. The notion that the financial system would not have recovered if not for the federal bailouts is a self-serving lie. Yes, some of our largest financial institutions would have been swept away. Yes, their stockholders would have been wiped out-and deservedly so. But the underlying assets would have still been there, ready to be apportioned by a bankruptcy judge. And a lesson would have been learned not soon to be forgotten.

Think more government regulation will fix it?

The Dodd-Frank legislation does nothing but institutionalize their too big to fail status, while making it harder for would-be competitors to rise to challenge them.
This is not real market capitalism as it once was, should be, and could be again. This is crony capitalism of the worst order. (Bill Frezza)

... And it's all brought to you by corrupt politicians, clueless bureaucrats, and the Wall Street moles who infest our government.

Obama's Debt

President Obama has spent more in three years than George Bush, two wars and all, spent in eight.

(CBS News) The National Debt has now increased more during President Obama's three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years of the George W. Bush presidency.

The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.

The National Debt also now exceeds 100% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, the total value of goods and services.

Mr. Obama has been quick to blame his predecessor for the soaring Debt, saying Mr. Bush paid for two wars and a Medicare prescription drug program with borrowed funds. (CBS News)

Mr. Obama has been quick to blame anything and everything to cover his profligate irresponsibility. Bush bears some of the blame, but Obama has done nothing to fix it.  Were he a CEO, he would have been fired by now.

Free Speech

The term "Free Speech" gets thrown around alot. I have used it and abused it myself.

Liberals clamoring to "Hush Rush" or "Flush Rush" or whatever else they want to do to him are not violating his free speech rights, but rather exercising their own rights.We all have a God-given right to speak freely, and the First Amendment to the US Constitution says only that government may not abridge it:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Government may not prohibit your exercise of free speech, but that doesn't stop private citizens from telling one another to shut the hell up, and depending on the context, telling someone to STFU is not a violation of the target's rights.

FreeThinke, driven to madness because I won't get off the topic of abortion, birth control and how our rights fit around those subjects, unleashed a vulgar fusillade to provoke me, a free-speech advocate, to acknowledge that there are limits.

Of course there are limits.  To understand what they are, we must ground the discussion in our natural rights of liberty and property.

Property is the key

You can speechify in whatever manner you wish on your property.  Come to the Casa Silverfiddle, and you no longer are at liberty to say what the hell ever you want.  We have standards at our house.  They're pretty loose, but if you abuse them you will be asked to leave.  Disrupt the comment thread with your petty little hissy fights or off-topic tirades, and you could be zapped.  Stand up in the middle of a string quartet performance and start singing Megadeth songs, and you'll get tossed out.  Whoever controls the property makes the rules, and that's as it should be.

Trolls

I started making forays into Left Blogistan a few years back, and ended up getting Banned from a Lefty Kook Site.  It burned me up because I was on-topic and had called no names.  Here's what I wrote about the experience:

Sinclair Lewis famously said: "Fascism will come wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible." That may have been true in 1935, but it is now outdated, since the bible and the flag no longer enjoy a prominent position in our left-dominated popular culture.

Fascism is already creeping up on us in the form of left-think political correctness. It is enforced by narrow-minded people who ignorantly call themselves liberals. It is writ large in workplaces, academia, and popular culture. But for big fascism to work, it requires thousands of little mini-me fascists. And these petty tyrants already practice it in thousands of petty fiefdoms scattered across our nation.

A few years later I got kicked out of a blog rather rudely and told in no uncertain terms to never return.  I still believe it was a petty potentate thing to do, because I was polite to everyone, although I did vigorously impugn the sources of their information, so they kicked me out.

However dictatorial and narrow-minded I may think their actions were, they had the right to do it.  Each blog serves a purpose, and when interlopers disrupt that purpose, they are not just "exercising their free speech rights," they are interfering with the rights of many others to have a free exchange of ideas.  Some blogs like this one enjoy a robust clash of ideas, while others do not want their group-think bubble popped, and both are within their rights.  

Jesus of Nazareth

Easter approaches, the focus of Christian life.  Many Christians watch Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" at this time of year, but at Casa Silverfiddle, we watch the late 1970's classic, Jesus of Nazareth.

It is an incredible move, if you can accept a blue-eyed Jesus.  Franco Zeffirelli did it to subtly make Jesus stand out, since the director controversially chose to emphasize the humanness of Our Lord.  The network almost refused to run it, despite the impressive cast of big name actors.

Michael York provides the performance of the movie as a very scary John the Baptist, preaching fire and brimstone like a raving mad man, and tenderly baptizing the repentant.  He should have won an Oscar, the way he so brought this most important man to life.

When he spies Jesus approaching as he is baptizing people, you see him express first an unselfish sadness that he must soon leave this world, followed immediately by a redemptive and inexpressible joy that the Messiah has arrived.  Beautiful.

I don't praise his performance lightly, because the cast is a star-studded who's who of all the big actors of that era.  Robert Powell's portrayal of Jesus is almost hypnotic as he tells parables and befriends those around him, including prostitutes and tax collectors.  James Farrentino is a burly, blustery Simon Peter, gruffly cursing his crew as they get the boats in.  In a crucial and tender moment at Matthew the tax collector's house, he drops his skepticism by tearfully confessing to Jesus, "I'm a stupid man."

Anthony Quinn as a tormented Caiaphas discussing Jesus with the Sanhedrin brings you right there, 2000 dusty years ago as they ponder and debate what it all means. Peter Ustinov is a deliciously decadent Herod, whose imperious and courtly mien descends into a purple murderous rage at the realization that the baby Messiah has escaped his grasp. These scenes bring the Bible stories to life in a way reading cannot, and I love reading and I love the Bible.

The masterpiece is a little over 6 hours long, but because it was originally a mini-series, it is easily broken up into smaller episodes. It is a great way to focus yourself and your children on the life of Jesus as you prepare for Easter. Watching it will also bring home just how controversial Our Lord's life on earth was, from the virgin birth, which caused quite a scandal, to the the zealots and ordinary Jews who saw in him an earthly savior who would lead them in driving the Romans from Jewish lands.

It is a reverent and beautiful treatment of the life of Jesus. I highly recommend it to you and your family.

For more information, I stumbled upon this website that links Bible passages to scenes of the movie.

(R) “Romney” or “Ryan?”

Paul Ryan has unveiled his latest budget, and he’s the only adult in the room, bringing little Barry, Nancy, Harry and their fellow whining naifs in the press to tears by telling them No. Money doesn’t grow on trees.

Democrats, incoherent and out of ideas, hate Ryan because he proposes to dismantle their progressive machinery that has destroyed tens of trillions in wealth and produced $15 trillion in debt and over $50 trillion in future unfunded liabilities. The Buffett Millionaire Tax they propose as a panacea would only raise $31 billion, one-tenth of 1% of the federal budget (if we could get the rich to stand still while government ... taxes them). There ain’t enough tax money to pay for all of this. 100% taxation won’t cover it.

“I think we’ve seen pretty clearly that what this proposal does not do is take the serious approach to getting our fiscal house in order that everyone who’s serious about this issue says you have to take,” spokesman Jay Carney said. (Real Clear Politics)

The White House’s carnie barker in horn-rimmed eyeglasses should be shouting that at his own party. They’ve been on an unbudgeted free-wheeling spending binge for the past three years

We can fix this on our terms, while we still control our destiny, or we can wait until we are like the decrepit Soviet Union or today’s Greece, sold into penury and helplessly prostrate before the international bankers and enemy nations eager for our humiliating comeuppance.

Ryan shows a way out. Not the only way, but he’s the only one with a detailed plan that has been scored and analyzed. The Democrats are intellectually bereft; still hawking last century’s snake oil. Banking regulations failed? Pile on more regulations! Too much debt? We’ll spend our way out! It’s madness.

Democrats Protest Reality

Ryan’s gimlet-eyed analysis of the numbers sends fantasy land liberals into spasmodic paroxysms, leaving Democrat apparatchiks like Gene Sperling raging about “the tyranny of math.” Yes Gene, reality can be a tyrant to little children who stamp their feet demanding that unicorns poop rainbow-colored marshmallows from heaven.

All the left has left is scare tactics, while using “look over here!” tactics to keep our focus off of the looming debt-induced crash. Kevin Drum harps weakly on Ryan’s attempt to hold spending to 19% of GDP, but even that is not a big enough cut. We historically collect around 17% in good time and bad, high tax rates or low tax rates, so government budgeting should revolve around that iron law reality.

Dana Milbank makes the bald-faced case of government as a giant teat, and God forbid we try to wean anyone off of it. The children in the candy store never stop to contemplate that mommy and daddy are borrowing from China to pay for it all, and that it can’t go on forever. They love preaching environmental sustainability, which is a chimera because all natural resources are finite, while simultaneously believing in an eternal fountain of money to pay for their dreams and schemes.

Putting aside all the sturm und drang, here is the cold reality of Ryans “draconian” Plan…

By 2022, under the Ryan Path, debt as a share of GDP would be 62.3% vs. a projected 73.2% in 2012. Under the Obama budget, debt as a share of GDP would be 76.3% in 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Over that period, the Ryan Path would spend $5.3 trillion less than the Obama budget.

Longer term, the differences between the Ryan Path and the Obama budget are even starker. By 2030, debt-to-GDP would be 53% under Ryan, 128% under Obama. By 2040, debt-to-GDP would be 38% under Ryan, 194% under Obama. By 2050, debt-to-GDP would be 10% under Ryan, over 200% under Obama—assuming that under the Obama scenario, the economy hasn’t collapsed. (Pethokoukis)

Meanwhile, Obama and Pelosicrats have offered...  Nothing.

It's Murder

A Stupid Gun Owner is a Dangerous Gun Owner

Responsible gun owners and defenders of the right to self-defense must demand the prosecution of George Zimmerman

Police in the central Florida town of Sanford have said that 28-year-old George Zimmerman says he shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in self-defense during a confrontation in a gated community. Police have described Zimmerman as white; his family says he is Hispanic and not racist. (US News)

Neighborhood vigilante George Zimmerman murdered young Trayvon Martin.  I don't see how a reasonable person could reach any other conclusion. News outlets are blaming Florida's Stand Your Ground Law, but that's just agenda reporting.

Nothing in that law green-lights what Zimmerman did. He was flat-out wrong. Criminally wrong. You can’t just go chasing law-abiding citizens down the street at the point of a gun.

Zimmerman told a police dispatcher that the teen was "up to no good" because he was walking through his neighborhood "just walking around, looking about" with his "hands on his waistband."  Does the idiot have kids? That's what teens do!

Zimmerman chased after Martin, complaining to the dispatcher, "These a******s always get away."

Hell yeah!  When a gun-toting man is chasing you, you're going to try to get away. Of course Martin’s going to run. He probably thought Zimmerman was a pedophile or some kind of crazy person. He had every right to run. He also had a right to turn around and “jump” Zimmerman “from behind” (how do you get jumped from behind by someone you’re chasing? Zimmerman is lying.)

When someone chases you down and assaults you, you have a right to fight back. Too bad the kid didn’t end up kicking the dumb bastard’s head in.

Critics are calling for a repeal of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law in the wake of the killing, but that is like calling for the repeal of driving automobiles every time a pedestrian gets run down.

The perpetrator was not “standing his ground,” he was chasing down an innocent young man who was just trying to get back to his house before the second half started. If anything, had the kid killed Zimmerman, that same law would have protected him.

This is a tragedy. It is assault with a deadly weapon and murder. And Florida's Stand Your Ground law needs to stand.  It will protect potential victims from assaults by people like George Zimmerman.

Update:  Progressives are exploiting this tragedy (as they lamentably always do) to attempt to strike down the Florida law in question.  The law did not authorize Zimmerman to chase down an innocent person.  He was the aggressor in this instance.  Here is the text of the law so you can judge for yourself.

(Alleged Attacker not covered under law)
(Standing your Ground)

The Meaning of Breitbart: Coming out of the Closet

Modern-day liberalism is a prison, with plenty of inmates eager to serve as red shirts to keep the other inmates in line...

Andrew Breitbart Stormed The Bastille

Kirsten Powers, who violated progressive orthodoxy by calling out the sexists on her own side, describes her own experience in how the left keeps the slaves on the plantation. Keith Olberboob called her a "house-trained Fox News liberal,” giving his dozens of fans the green light to join the attack:

After he also tweeted his attacks—which were echoed by other liberals trying to distort what I said—his (presumably “progressive”) followers let me know that I was a “wind-up toy” and a “bobble head” and “just another brainless plastic doll Fox puts on camera to appease the horned up 60-yr old white dudes at home.” All the typical insults that male political analysts and columnists get, I’m sure.

Don’t forget: liberals are the feminists; it’s the GOP who hates women. (Kirsten Powers)

She goes on to describe how liberal men in the media routinely dehumanize women with such cute phrases as "mannish," "female impersonator," and "Squirrely bitch."  Ha ha.

 Let’s just call a spade a spade: the uproar over Limbaugh is only because it fits into the Democratic narrative that the GOP is “anti-woman.” It’s Democratic Party activism dressed up as feminism. (Kirsten Powers)

The conservative women of ShePac have struck back:



Personal Testimony on the Significance of Breitbart

Andrew Breitbart escaped the plantation and lived to tell about it. Even worse for the left, he let other libertine, artistic free-spirits know it was OK on the outside, he helped them to escape and they are now turning on their erstwhile masters.  

If you spend much time at Breitbart, you will read a lot of artsy Hollywood types who are socially liberal but hate how many on the left mock traditional values and invariably blame America first.  They also see the cognitive dissonance of declaring yourself liberal yet cheering on an ever-growing omniscient and omnipresent Big Brother Government.

Daniel Knauf is the latest.  He talks of achieving his dream of being a Hollywood screenwriter, and eventually learning that he was a conservative in the wake of 911. The nonstop orthodox liberal hallelujah choir of blame America first in his own workplace was the catalyst. He was shocked and scared into frozen incoherence. He describes a chilling encounter with a true-believer unsatisfied with his non-committal language and refusal to bash America's stupid cowboy president:

She glared at me for a moment, as if attempting to x-ray my soul to determine whether I was a fellow-traveler, or something... else. Finally, she walked out to go write a check to PETA or shit herself over Global Warming or something. I was, for the moment anyway, safe. (Daniel Knauf – Chasing Andrew)

He describes how liberating it was to meet Andrew Breitbart and to subsequently discover Hollywood was filled with conservatives.

Then came Gerald Molen, Oscar-winning producer of Rain Man, Jurassic Park, and Schindler's List...

The sad part is we have to get to the point of losing everything before we stand tall and state unequivocally, "No more. Stop the madness. Stop it now!"

Last month, the conservative side of politics lost a champion of truth and a strong voice in the conservative movement with the passing of Andrew Breitbart. He was a man of high intellect, vision and courage. He never backed away from a fight and was responsible for turning out those who sought to endear themselves at the public trough via their egregious actions and poor moral values.

He disclosed them and brought them to the bar of justice for the American people to see and judge for themselves. He was a great example for all of us to aspire to. We cannot allow his passing to be just a closing of another chapter in the fortunes of America. We must carry his part of the burden he was so willing to share for all of us. (Hollywood Producer Slams Obama, Praises Breitbart)

For a similar conversion story by a famous playwright, see David Mamet's Why I am no Longer a Brain Dead Liberal.

Andrew Breitbart is gone, but his spirit lives on...

Progressives Infantilize the Poor

State governments that have the temerity to demand voters show official identification have been stirring progressives to righteous indignation for some time now. They noisily protest anything that would prohibit the dead, convicted felons and illegal aliens from voting, since those groups are a reliable Democrat party constituency.

The only real disenfranchisement caused by stricter voter registration and identification laws would be a self-imposed one on the irresponsible and the lazy, another reliable liberal constituency if it can be rounded up and bussed to the polls after being lured in by free booze and cigarettes.

Kevin Drum sums up the liberal view of poor minorities...

Lots of people assume that getting photo ID is no big deal. Most people have it, and even the ones who don't can easily get it. After all, it's free! But that's not true. First, you need a birth certificate. Middle-class folks might not realize this, but not everyone has a birth certificate handy, and both the hassle factor and the cost of getting one can be real deterrents. Add to that the hassle of getting a ride to a DMV office two counties away during working hours, and voting in the next election suddenly got a whole lot harder for you than it is for your average middle-class white suburbanite. You might even never get around to it. ( Kevin Drum – The Poor are Stupid and Helpless)

You need that stuff to get a job and to be a responsible citizen! How do these helpless people get to the polls? How do they get out of bed and feed themselves on their own? How do they find their ass with both hands?

The Denver Post, in a rare moment of lucidity, gets it right:

A 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case involving a voter ID law in Indiana, a state that also does not fall into the higher-scrutiny category, made it clear there wasn't anything inherently discriminatory about requiring voters to present a photo ID before casting a ballot.

The opinion was written by a liberal voice on the court, John Paul Stevens. He brushed aside concerns the law would disproportionately harm Democrats over Republicans.

If your natural constituency is lazy and irresponsible, changing the rules for them is not the answer.  If liberals really cared about these people, they would help them get these documents, not just so they can identify themselves at the polls, but so they can get into the mainstream of society and better their lives.

The answer is to help these people without documents become responsible; but that would work against the Democrats, since that would also probably turn them into Republicans.

Free Speech in a Time of Choler

For those who doubt that the modern left is turning into what Orwell warned us against...

Angelo Carusone, who started both the Stop Beck and Stop Limbaugh campaigns and who now works at Media Matters, prefers to call his efforts “education.” (Politico – Left’s War on Rush)

Meanwhile, people who are supposed to be taken seriously because they are senators shovel BS like this...

"Rush Limbaugh's comments were just nasty and directed at a particular young woman who had a particular point of view and was expressing herself. Bill Maher's a comedian. It's much different," said Schumer. "Rush Limbaugh has tremendous weight in the Republican Party and no one will rebut him. Bill Maher's a comedian who's on at eleven o'clock at night, but has very little influence on what's happening here." (NY Mag)

Breitbarting the Left

Oh, OK. If you label your misogyny as comedy, and you’re on late at night and you don’t have what someone subjectively considers “much influence,” it’s OK.

 Rolling along unquestioned and answerable to no one breeds this brand of arrogance and stupidity on the left, but Breitbart jammed a stick in the spokes, and the liberals with skinned knees are crying to mommy.

The Breitbartian pushback tactics are working...

Obama Henchman Cancels Bill Maher Appearance

David Axelrod will not be appearing as a guest on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” despite reports last week that he was scheduled to do the show in the next few weeks. (Politico)

Liberal Pigmouth Withdraws from Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association annual dinner

A couple of years ago, “comedian” Louis CK “joked” on the Opie and Anthony radio show about Palin coming to the Republican convention “holding a baby that just came out of her f-ing, disgusting [C-word], her f-ing retard-making [C-word].”

Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren posted a blog using similar language calling for a boycott of the Association’s dinner. Susteren wrote in her blog: “Another pig….and a media association has hired the pig, Louis C.K., to be their headliner for the big media dinner? Really? I am not going. I refuse to go. Everyone in the media should join me in this boycott.”

Following Van Susteren's criticism, Louis C.K. has withdrawn from the Association's dinner. (Newsbusters)

John Nolte over at Breitbart laments the flame wars and wishes it would all end, while reminding us that it was the liberals who started it, and they are now being burned by the flames they fanned.

We don’t want to shut people up, we just want to confront the liberal manufactured outrage BS machine with their own medicine.  Everybody on all sides needs to drop the bs. We all make mistakes, we all say stupid things in our lives, and no one is immune from criticism.

Maher Defends Limbaugh

In a strange twist, while we on the right use Bill Maher's crude misogynist vulgarity as a bludgeon against the left, Maher was defending Rush Limbaugh.

He also defended his earlier Twitter defense of Limbaugh, saying that Limbaugh had apologized and so the left looks bad for not accepting. “I said I don’t like it that people are made to disappear when they say something you – or people try to make them disappear – when they say something you don’t like. That’s America. Sometimes you’re made to feel uncomfortable, okay?” (Politico)

He argued that “the word they are upset about” was not said on HBO, but during his stand-up comedy act, “which I consider the last bastion of free speech.” (Politico)

And that is what this is really all about. Free Speech. Bill Maher is right. You speak freely and take the consequences. Noisy pre-fab offense-taking and the boycotts they spawn pollute the environment even worse.

The left could learn something from Maher. At least he takes a defensible and logically consistent position

Politico – Left’s War on Rush
Politico – “They Thought I was Finished”

Life: Ten Universal Principles

As I posted yet another anti-abortion piece, FreeThinke Grumped “Why are we going through it again …”

AOW agreed, but more diplomatically. She’s a wise and Godly woman, so I always listen to her. She is pro-life, but she also displays a world-weariness when the subject comes around.

I hate to beat a dead horse, but how a society views life says much about it. Taking life lightly will rot a people.

The left has turned a woman’s right to choose to kill a human life into a sacrament, a dogma which shall not be questioned. When you shove it in my face and demand funding for it, it is my right to question it, criticize it and even protest it.

Who really thinks doctors never performed "medically-necessary" abortions before Roe v Wade? Who thinks that putting out the flashing neon "Get Abortions Here" sign didn't increase that abhorrent practice?

If abortion were something that took place quietly in a normal medical setting, not Planned Parenthood abortion mills and God only knows how many charnel houses like that one in Philadelphia, what would we have to protest? Some hospitals would loudly trumpet that they do not perform abortions, while others would tell nosy inquirers to mind their own damned business.

Someone pointed out that most of the world's nations ban abortions, and from my own experience, I'd bet the farm that abortions still happen in those places. A large dose of birth control pills essentially acts as a "morning after solution." Please don't ask me how I know.

For those who care about the underlying argument for human life, I recommend the the thin but packed book, Ten Universal Principles - A Brief Philosophy of the Life Issues. It is a master work of tight pro-life logic that focuses not just on abortion, but on the sanctity of all human life and how to defend it.  I know the hard-core lefties won’t read it; they’ve already gone over the edge and nothing will bring them back. If a judge says so, kill ‘em! That is the principle-free progressive world they have created.

You don't think abortion is a slippery slope to infanticide?  Check this out:  Killing Babies no Different from Abortion. "Experts" say it, so it must be so.

Footloose in Iraq

News from Baghdad that "young men in tight T-shirts and skinny jeans are being beaten to death with cement blocks and dumped in the streets” is now coming to light in the West.

We took out Saddam Hussein, the Arab firewall containing the Persians, and the Iraqis are celebrating their freedom by bombing Christians out of their churches and killing gays.

AP News and the New York Times report that gays, emos, and others who do not conform the the Islamist straightjacket are being targeted and killed.

"We warn in the strongest terms to every male and female debauchee," the Shiite militia hit list says. "If you do not stop this dirty act within four days, then the punishment of God will fall on you at the hands of Mujahideen." (AP News)

A cynic observes the constant chaos in the Middle East, interrupted only by tyranny, and observes that some people just need a dictator. I also wonder who is crazier, the people who live there, or westerners who crash in thinking they can make a difference?

When Self-Expression is Lethal

If Hollywood were not stilted and braindead, it would have remade “Footloose” in Iraq, focusing on its Emo community. To be gay, Christian, or emo, are all genuine human rights, and their expression springs from the human soul. Those dead young men were only trying to live their lives as they saw fit. They were not harming anyone but the haters who are so insecure in their faith that they must murder all nonconformist threats to it...

But over the past month, threatening letters began appearing in Shiite neighborhoods across Baghdad, residents said.

One of the fliers, scanned and posted online, addresses dozens of gay men by name and nickname. It warns people identified as Japanese Haider, Allawi the Bra, Mohammed the Flower and others: Reform your behavior, stop being gay, or face deadly consequences. 
“Your fate will be death if you don’t quit doing this,” one leaflet warns. “Punishment will be tougher and tougher, you gays. Don’t be like the people of Lot.”

Another flier circulating around the Zayouna neighborhood appears addressed to emo youths. It tells them to cut their hair, not to wear the clothing of devil worshipers, and not to listen to metal, emo or rap music. And if they refuse, “God’s punishment will be come down upon you,” the letter says. (NY Times)

It took them killing gays for the New York Times to wake up. Yes, they reported on Christian killings, but it took the killing of gays to change the tone and tenor of their reporting.  Regardless, I am glad the press is reporting this.  It is a gruesome human rights violation.

At what point will liberals realize that the Islamist fetish is not compatible with the gay one?

At some point, and perhaps this is one of them, they will have to drop one for the other. The choice is clear: Being gay is a legitimate exercise of ones rights; being a self-proclaimed Flaming Sword of God who murders others is a grotesque stain upon humanity.  I understand the gossamer optimism at the first whiff of the Arab Spring, but Islamists (as opposed to everyday Muslims) lurk, and too many people too easily fall under their sway.

This and other sad episodes remind us of the sad fact that we cannot change other societies, and we should stop trying. The soldier who snapped and murdered those Afghans shows us that such chimeric pursuits can end up killing our own souls. 

The Bill of Wrongs

Tuesday, I explained how there is nothing unconstitutional about bringing your religion into the public square and into debates about government, even if you're a president or senator.

"But, but but..."  sputter the leftwing Christophobes and anti-papist jihadis, "What's to keep Rick Santorum from implementing a theocracy, complete with a 16th Century inquisition with the hot pincers pulling out fingernails and women being burned for witchcraft?"

The US Constitution!  Defend it and it will defend you. The same 1st Amendment that safeguards our freedom of worship also prohibits religious zealots from hijacking government and using the federal seat of power to issue religious edicts.

Article 1, Section 8, lists the things the federal government may do: 

* Collect taxes to pay debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare
* Borrow money and regulate commerce with foreign nations and the several states
* Establish laws for immigration and bankruptcies
* Coin money and punish counterfeiters
* Establish post offices and patents
* Set up courts, punish pirates, declare war, raise armies and maintain a navy
* Exercise authority over the federal district and other federal properties

That's it, my liberal friends. Those are the powers delegated to the federal government by the people of these United States. And just in case the snakes tried to crawl out, the founders put this lid on it:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
-- 10th Amendment to the US Constution

The Constitution limits government's power, not the people's

Does anyone else find it troubling how progressives love pushing people around and telling us all how to live but will brook no criticism of government? It's especially entertaining how they do it while simultaneously crying about the imminent rightwingchristian takeover (which has been imminent since 1980, btw).

The constitution limits government and says nothing about how We The People should live.  The founders knew it wasn't government's place to tell people how much salt to put on their food; what kind of cars to drive; how to remunerate employees; what, when and where they may smoke; how many firearms we may own; let alone press taxpayers into the service of venture socialism and government funded crony crapitalism.

Here There Be Tygers

I am loathe to praise the president for anything, but amid all his foreign policy fumblings, he may be striking the right posture on Iran. It still doesn't excuse his morally repugnant abandonment of the Iranian uprising, but anyway, Leslie Gelb explains:

Those who can’t wait to start a war with Iran tell us that Tehran is within three seconds, three months, or a year of developing a nuclear weapon. I promise you they don’t know this for anything near a fact.

Now, are these activities something to worry about? Absolutely! But it is not a basis for going to war now or soon. It is a basis for Americans, Israelis, and others to find out more as quickly as possible through better intelligence and diplomacy. Yes, diplomacy, because we can argue forever about exactly what the Iranians have and intend, but making diplomatic proposals allows us to test our hypotheses. If Tehran rejects reasonable proposals, then there are grounds for raising suspicions and waving the war wand. (Leslie Gelb – The Dangers of Warmongering)

With memories still fresh of the Bush Administration’s naïve swallowing whole Achmed Chalabi’s tales of 1001 Iraqi Nights, we should be dubious of any claims made by those who want to bomb Iran now.

Mr. Gelb also cautions against getting involved in Syria, and he provides sound reasoning. We don’t know who the Syrian rebels are; we could be arming and aiding Al Qaeda. What if they win? Will they press on to threaten allies Jordan and Israel? There are too many unknowns and a furious fusillade of unintended consequences await.

Bomb Syria

I respect these worries, but I find myself leaning towards a Libya-like involvement in Syria if for no other reason than to cut off Iranian access to The Levant and the greater Middle East. Without Syria, Iran is isolated, and their proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and other places are isolated as well. It would deal a punishing blow to Iran without firing one shot at them.

Yes, it could unleash other furies, but the involvement of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and small but mighty Qatar could help contain them. One thing that would certainly have to be done would be a guaranteed safe enclave for Christians, Alawites and other minorities. This is key to peeling Alawite support away from Assad. They are literally fighting for their lives, being a small minority that has been oppressing the Sunni majority. The Alawites are an off-shoot from the bigger offshoot, the Twelver Shia. So even among heretics, they are heretics.

Regardless of how you come down on these issues, Leslie Gelb has some sage advice concerning warmongering “experts”:

Americans need protection from these snake-oil salesmen, and that protection depends almost entirely on Congress and the media. They have got to be much tougher with the experts, pin them down on what they know and don't know and what facts their views are based on. They've got to demand real answers, and not let the experts escape with slogans like “lead” and “take action,” or “that will all work out.”

Beware those beating wardrums who have never been to war -- Kurt Silverfiddle

David Warren - Iran Won't Go Away

Congress Shall Make No Law...

In the Church-State debate sidebars that have broken out on the fringes of the 2012 culture wars, a common liberal argument recurs:

"You can’t have it both ways. You can’t demand government stay out of religion, and then attempt to insert your religion into debates about government. The Wall of Separation between Church and State applies to church as well as state."

That is wrong for a couple of reasons. First, there is no such thing as “a wall of separation” in the constitution. Here is what the First Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So, contrary to progressive arguments, it is legitimate and constitutional to bring one’s religious values to the public square. You can even bring them to the House of Representatives, the Senate and the Presidency,  secure in the knowledge that you are a good American acting in accord with the US Constitution.

The second error in this statement is related to the first. The Constitution prohibits the federal government from establishing or prohibiting religion. It places no such strictures on citizens, so it doesn’t go both ways.

Consequently, We the People can have it both ways, freely exercising our religious rights in all public arenas while demanding government stay out of our business.

NY Times - Rick Santorum isn’t Crazy

Afghanistan: Apocalypse Now

The anti-war left will have a hey day with the latest unauthorized killings that happened in Kandahar, and rightly so.  We send them over there to kill people, but only in government-approved ways.

It's a fraught issue ripe for a deep and reasoned philosophical debate. Unfortunately, we no longer know how to have those, so instead, the left's taliban-West outrage squad will squeeze every emotional drop out of it as the armchair generals beat the war drums louder, further inflaming our emotions and clouding our intellect.

I uncategorically agree with Mark Steyn's latest column, America's Longest War will Leave no Trace.

The Rumsfeld strategy that toppled the Taliban over a decade ago was brilliant and innovative: special forces on horseback using GPS to call in unmanned drones. They will analyze it in staff colleges around the world for decades. But what we ought to be analyzing instead is the sad, aimless, bloated, arthritic, transnationalized folly of what followed.

It seems certain that, waging World War II today, the RAF would not carpet-bomb Dresden, and the U.S. would not nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And, lacking the will to inflict massive, total defeat, would we also lack the will to inflict that top-to-toe "cleaning process"?

To modify Bismarck, the Hindu Kush is not worth the bones of a single Pennsylvanian grenadier, or "training officer."

My fellow conservative Americans who may still be in the thrall of those talking heads who insist we must stay in Afghanistan:  Go read Lt Col Dan Davis' report of his experiences in Afghanistan, Truth, Lies and Afghanistan.

They haven't changed for thousands of years.  We sure as hell won't change them.

Breitbart's Obama Expose'

Lefties like Ducky are gleefully hiking their skirts, squatting down and tinkling on Andrew Breitbart’s grave. Don’t blame them, they are just following Commandante O’s exhortation to “punish your enemies.”

The left is all giddy and mocking because Breitbart's Obama Expose dropped no bombshells. I must agree, but two things stood out for me.





Imagine a President with a Neo-Nazi Past...

First, the young Obama belonged to Harvard’s Whitey Haters Club, sponsored by guilty white liberals. That helps put Michelle’s “For the first time in my life I'm proud of my country” comment into context, doesn’t it?

Secondly, The President remained an acolyte of a man who believes in a conspiracy of white people to sell black people into slavery to martians in exchange for space gold which will pay off the national debt. OK, it’s just an allegory, but the neo-Marxist theory it is founded upon is very real, and it ties in nicely with Minister Loogie Farrakhan’s white devil theories.

So yeah, there’s nothing damning in there, and I wish it had come four years ago. I think it is useful for voters to see the Marxist sewer our president has voluntarily marinated himself in. From Harvard to Chicago, it was radical racial resentment politics.

Critical Race Cultist

This was not a youthful infatuation with radicalism. Barack Obama was 30 years old in that video of him at Harvard Law School. Much too old to naively fall under the spell of a charismatic professor. He went willingly to ingest all that crap Professor Derrick Bell and fellow travelers were spewing.

The question remains, did Barack Hussein Obama really believe all that stuff, or did he just use it to gain street cred?  Either way, like sitting in Reverend Wright's Church of God Damn America for 20 years, it doesn't speak well of him.

I was much younger than that when I found myself stationed in Central America, and even at a tender age I knew communism was no good. I also unconsciously realized that although we still have racists among us, we are not a racist country.  I looked around and I saw colonels, generals and senior enlisted people of all races and colors in charge of important stuff and issuing orders to white people. I also inherently realized that if "The System" was rigged, the Powers That Be did a piss poor job of keeping the minorities from jumping the turnstiles...

Cloudy with a Chance of Mashed up Meatbags

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. -- Voltaire

We’re still feeling the aftershocks of Sandra Fluke’s phony rights claims. She is plucky, gotta give here that, staring right into the camera and demanding others pay for her condoms and birth control pills.  And not the cheap Walmart generic crap.  Based on her price tag, she was demanding top shelf!

She was well-prepared and positively basked in the swaddling comfort of friendly liberal audiences, especially since she now proudly sports the Bleeding Heart Victimhood Ribbon for having the good fortune to have been savaged by rightwingpig Rush Limbaugh.

Cost aside, the essence of Fluke's argument is that reproductive freedom requires free birth control. By the same logic, religious freedom requires kosher food subsidies, freedom of speech requires taxpayer-funded computers, and the right to keep and bear arms requires government-supplied guns. (Sandra Fluke’s Protection Racket)

Progressives do not want to debate the real issue. They want to shut down the debate by silencing the opposition; nevermind that the left has a chauvinist pig infestation as well…

"female impersonator."
Not an "authentic" female political candidate
“Mashed up bag of meat with lipstick”
"uninflected by the experiences of the female body."
"Now when I read her stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of (redacted) in her mouth. It vastly improves her prose."
"a perfect demonstration of the necessity of the work Planned Parenthood does"
"black trophy"
"Aunt Jemima."
a list of the top 10 conservative women who deserved to be "hate-f**ked."

That’s just a representative sample of the vile insults puked out by hating leftists upon conservative women. And only from one Michelle Malkin column. “They do it too,” is not an argument to justify anyone’s action, but rather to point out that the left is no better than the right in this regard.

The reason liberals have the upper hand is because they possess a well-oiled manufactured outrage machine and an abuse victim’s ability to justify their own patriarchal perverts doing scummy things like luring barely-legal star-struck interns into performing sexual favors upon them.

Breitbart catalogs the death threats against Limbaugh that Media Matters, Think Progress and other hate factories have inspired. They include threats of rape, murder, punching him in the throat, sticking a gun in his mouth, and a wide variety of the now ubiquitous heart attack fantasies.

Commenter Miss8S sums it up nicely:

Still more evidence of what happens when the criminally insane lead the mentally ill and emotionally fragile...

Phony Outrage, Insincere Apology

As a gesture of friendship to the left, I want to introduce to them a column by liberal Michael Kinsley. I rarely agree with him, but I’ve always liked him and appreciated his quick mind and intellectual honesty. His sly look and verbal winks and nods lets us know he gets it, and he’s not falling for the propaganda, regardless of where it comes from…

About Limbaugh’s apology:

Well, of course he wasn’t sincere. And of course he was only apologizing to pacify advertisers -- who were getting pressured to pressure Limbaugh by these very critics.
But any apology induced in these circumstances is almost by definition insincere. You can’t demand a public recantation and then expect sincerity along with the humble pie.

He goes on to say that these episodes leave the victim chastened and hobbled. My mind immediately turned to whipped dog Don Imus, who added his howling indignation to the manufactured outrage chorus, and is anyone surprised? As I heard local talk show host Peter Boyles say about those who have seen the light…

“Beware. Once they’ve found themselves, they will come looking for you.”

Insincerity on Both Sides

These umbrage episodes that have become the principal narrative line of our politics are orgies of insincerity.

Of course, the insincerity is on both sides. The pursuers all pretend to be horrified and “saddened” by this unexpected turn of events. In fact, they are delighted. Why not? Their opponent has committed the cardinal political sin: a gaffe.

Kinsley is a liberal in the best since of the word: a lover of liberty, but he’s an endangered species. His piece is a brilliant example of Voltaire’s principle: Kinsley abhors Limbaugh’s views on probably everything, but he defends his right to express them, probably keeping the old “Live by the sword, die by the sword” chestnut in mind. What a concept.

See also It’s Like Totally Different When a Liberal Does It

Rush to Outrage

Rush Limbaugh, hero of the left for two decades, has really blown it. He’s handed a huge victory to the left by removing the birth control debate from the logical forum of constitutional rights and placing it squarely into the Oprahfied realm of touchy-feely emotionalism, where the grievance hustlers can run wild with it.

Liberals are giddily asking, Could this be the end of Limbaugh? even as they grant misogyny exceptions to their own slimeballs, with the White House going so far as to issue a Waiver to Bill Maher. Whip-smart liberal Kirsten Powers is not impressed, pointing out that Limbaugh isn’t the Only Media Misogynist; the left has problems of its own that it studiously ignores. The president did not call Sarah Palin or Laura Ingraham when they were trashed by smirky hatemongering men of the left.

Heedless of the double-standard, the left is in high dudgeon, and the anti-Rush propaganda posts are all using the same picture of him caught in mid-sentence, making him look red-faced and mean. It’s become iconic; the modern-day left’s own image of Emmanuel Goldstein, suitable for not a mere two minutes hate, but perpetual 24/7 eternal flaming rage.

I think Rush’s latest outburst really did put a serious dent in the battleship. Rush’s excuse was weak, “I became like them, descended to their level…” but he will survive this; he’s too talented. But his blue-on-blue cannonade has struck a punishing blow to conservatism.

Meanwhile, the left has whipped itself up into an extra-frothy overwrought state of rage reminiscent of the violent jihadi temper tantrums over burned korans and disrespectful cartoons.

Why did Rush do it?

First, I think he probably has a mean streak. That’s not a killer. The snarkiest liberal comedians display one as well. The real problem I think is that he’s richer than God and lives in a hermetically-sealed bubble. It’s got to distort his thinking and his view on life. It's telling that when he makes life observations, he harkens back to his past as a normal person struggling to pay the bills, because he no longer lives a normal life. He doesn’t hang out in working-class bars shooting pool, mingle with other parents at a public school events or attend church socials. He’s disconnected.

But he will survive, because no one lays down political analysis and skewers the left better than Rush. Media Matters was set up in large part to counter him, as well as Fox News. Think about that. A whole multi-million dollar organization set up to combat one man, and the best they can come up with is small-bore tittle-tattle about his personal life, or overblown outrage at some insult he hurled. And when conservatives point out that million-dollar donors to Obama’s campaign have said some nasty things about Sarah Palin, libs shrug it off because “Bill Maher is a comedian.” Oh, OK. Never would have known it by his comments…

He will also survive the lily-livered advertisers jumping ship. Pro Flowers was the only company I patronized, and I won’t anymore. I don’t like doing business with cowards. Other businesses will quickly fill the breach. A billboard viewed by over 20 million people is just too attractive to pass up.

Silence!

Rush is extremely effective in combating the liberal lunacy that has gripped this country. Don’t believe me? Then why have liberals been on a decades-long jihad to “Hush Rush?” If he were really harming the conservative cause as his indignant opponents claim, wouldn’t they rather let him keep on talking and thus continue digging conservatism’s mass grave?

Don’t buy the phony talking points folks. This latest staged outrage is coordinated and organized by cultural jihadis determined to remove a major obstacle to their Progressive Long March. People like Rush Limbaugh and Andrew Breitbart cut liberals to the quick. The libs' asses are smarting from the lashes, and their anger burns as they lick their wounds. Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.

Progressives are about expanding government control and diminishing personal freedom. Does anyone else find it troubling that liberals are always trying to close things down and shut people up? It’s not only troubling; it’s un-American.

CNN – Limbaugh Revels in the Crossfire
Limbaugh Loses Advertisers
Time for Conservatives to Fight Blacklisting
Silencing the Right
Birth Control Agitprop

Defending the Indefensible

"There is no way he can win. And I don't want to have to defend him while he tries." (Ricochet)

That’s the crux of it. That was a jaded tea party member talking about Mitt Romney, but it could be said of anyone in the field, still in or recently dropped out. It is one thing to silently hold your nose and vote, but quite another to violate your principles by actively defending a progressive statist, which describes everyone in the field except Ron Paul, who brings his own set of unique issues.

Obama is Unelectable 

There is hope. Sean Trende, number crunching political analyst with a 99% accuracy rate, observes that if Gingrich and Romney are unelectable, then so is Barack Obama.

Unpopular, unconvincing, unconstitutional, Obama is not faring well in public opinion polls. Obama is a job destroyer, and is on track to be the first president to have a net job loss during his tenure. The press will try to talk up the still sagging Obama economy, but that will only get him so far. People out of work can't eat hope and change.

Obama is a dismal, angry, clueless failure, even worse than Carter, and that is what we should relentlessly focus on as November 2012 nears. Getting us rid of this modern-day Mussolini before he can pull the handle for the final, fatal flush should be our first and only goal.

I can’t stand Romney or Gingrich, and Santorum is only marginally better, but anyone in the GOP field is head and shoulders better than Barack Obama. Think of who you would rather have pick the next Supreme Court Justice for a narrowly divided court. It’s no contest with the constitution hanging in the balance. I want a President Paul, Santorum, Romney or Gingrich making that pick.

So I will vote GOP this November, and I will criticize, crab and cajole the whole way because I want to live to fight another day.

Obama Shoots Crony Capitalism Craps

The FCC’s bungling of the Lightsquared fiasco is exhibit A of what can happen when government is so fat and sloppy and braindead that one flabby arm doesn’t know what the other one is doing. They can't even get the crony crapitalist corruption right.

For those who haven’t been following it, the FCC greenlighted Lightsquared’s wireless broadband plan, which ended up stepping on the GPS signals that are fundamental to orderly operation of our society, to include airline navigation.

How did this happen?

How one U.S. government agency could approve a business plan that jeopardizes a public utility other government entities consider vital to safety and security, not to mention the economy, is the key question that has lurked behind the battle between LightSquared and the GPS industry since it ignited in earnest a year ago. (Aviation Week)

Here’s how!

The answer emerging from countless legal filings and Congressional hearings is that the government itself is the villain of the piece, the absence of collaboration between agencies allowing one to act without consulting the others. In bypassing its normal processes to expedite approval of LightSquared’s plan to use its mobile satellite service frequencies for a terrestrial broadband wireless network, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) left its fellow Defense and Transportation Departments, Homeland Security and others, scrambling to protect GPS signals on which they now depend. (Aviation Week)

And why did the FCC move so quickly and stupidly?

Critics were quick to point out close personal and political links between President Barack Obama, FCC chairman Julian Genachowski and hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone, LightSquared’s majority owner. (Aviation Week)

As another Obama scandal unfolds, the FCC is running from Lightsquared like a scalded dog and the company's CEO has resigned in disgrace.  Meanwhile, another Obama-Approved Solar company is going under, and GM's sales of Obama's Chevy Dolt are flatter than a pancake, causing layoffs:

General Motors Co. announced the temporary suspension of Chevrolet Volt production and the layoffs of 1300 employees, as the company is cutting Volt manufacturing to meet lower-than-expected demand for the electric cars.

The car company had hoped to sell 45,000 Chevy Volts in America this year, according to the Detrot News, but has only sold about 1,626 over the first two months of 2012. (Examiner)

Government Motors expected to sell 45,000 battery-powered crapboxes?  What are they smoking?

This on top of Obama shutting down drilling, closing over 100 coal-fired power plants, harassing the fossil fuels industry while flushing taxpayer money down the green energy toilet...  Add in devaluation of the dollar, and we have an energy crisis brewing, as the price for driving our cars and powering our homes keep climbing.  All thanks to government-induced scarcity.

Had enough of Obama's venture socialism yet?

US Government Moves to Protect GPS
No Practical Way to Fix Lightsquared GPS Problem

You Don't Have a Right to Other People's Stuff

It was a red banner week for the flaming red left. First, a principle object of liberal rage and hatred died, and then Saturday brought a rare Rush Limbaugh apology. Let's bring the focus back where it belongs: Personal Rights

Progressives have trashed the concept of natural rights, ironically exchanging it for a modern-day Divine Right of Kings

Our nation was founded upon negative rights; essentially, the right to be left alone to do what you wish with your life, liberty and property as you pursue your own personal happiness. The left now crashes in demanding positive rights; the right to shake down others for  free stuff. This is a direct violation of our natural negative rights, eventuating the noisy culture clash.  

They've used the state to confiscate our inherent rights to life, liberty and property, and they put to a vote which "rights" will be granted back to us. We get whatever our Emperor and his Supreme Council bestows upon us.

The various liberal outrage syndicates ensure they get their fair share, while denying political enemies the same.  At the first sign of a threat to the confiscation schemes, they send in an aggrieved tribe screaming choleric indignation to scare off the predatory politicians.  In this brave new world of collectivized rights that are doled back out, whoever screams the loudest wins.

This is upside-down, as Mark Steyn explains:

When it comes to human rights, I go back to 1215 and Magna Carta [...] Back then, “human rights” were rights of humans, of individuals — and restraints upon the king: They’re the rights that matter: limitations upon kingly power.

Eight centuries later, we have entirely inverted the principle: “Rights” are now gifts that a benign king graciously showers upon his subjects — the right to “free” health care, to affordable housing... 

Obama’s bureaucratic edict is upgraded into the “right to contraception coverage at no additional cost.” And, up against a “human right” as basic as that, how can such peripheral rights as freedom of conscience possibly compete? (Mark Steyn)

Nobody is proposing to deny women access to contraception. You wouldn't know it by the hysterical left, screaming like they had Torquemada's hot poker up their rear ends.

Here's some needed clarity on this inflamed issue:

But the right to choose contraception does not entail a right to have it paid for by someone else, any more than the right to own a firearm under the Second Amendment entails the right to a free Smith & Wesson. (Culture Warriors)

The Left Wing:  DC's Newest Reality Show!

The apotheosis of the left's shameless claim on the property of others comes in the form of a 30-year old woman, on national tv, brazenly demanding others pay for her to get her freak on.  "Her parents should be proud," intoned the president.  Uh huh...  Progressives should be proud, the indoctrination is taking hold.

The left has taken Hollywood's West Wing to the next delusional level, with life imitating art as their latest iconic icon provided mock testimony in a phony Hollywood-like set, complete with liberal politicians and their handmaidens in the press starring as themselves!

As Sandra "Get Yo Freak On for Free" Fluke is finding out (Is it true Bill Clinton called Obama asking for her phone number?), when you drag your dirty undies out into the public square and force other people to bow down to your morality and you demand that they pay for you to knock off a piece, it is no longer private morality. It’s public, and your behavior becomes a legitimate debate topic.

Just look at how Obamacare made everyone's health a public topic, giving the first lady a state-sponsored podium to scold all those fat kids.

Battling Rights Claims

What we have in this debate is a clash not between two liberty interests, but rather between two rights-claims – one negative (genuine), the other positive (counterfeit). All that is required for the exercise of a negative right (to self-ownership and, redundantly, liberty and one’s legitimately acquired belongings) is other people’s noninterference.

[...] But the fulfillment of positive rights requires that other people act affirmatively even if they don’t want to — say, by providing products or paying the bills. If one person’s freedom depends on the infringement of someone else’s freedom, the first claim is illegitimate. To hold otherwise is to reject the principle of equality.  (Reason)

The progressive idea of positive rights is a thinly-disguised coercion by mob rule. This direct democracy, granting positive rights to whoever screams the loudest, flies in the face of American values. The American way is to respect the natural rights of all; not cheering when government goes jihad on the rights of your enemies and then gives you the spoils.

Freeman - Liberty: The Other Equality
Mark Steyn - The Perversion of Rights

Sandra Fluke does not Speak for Us

Sandra Fluke Transcript
Rush Limbaugh Apologizes