NUFF SAID?

THERE IS NO GOD BUT ALLAH

AND MOHAMMED IS HIS PROPHET

According to news reports, this is the flag that Man Haron Monis had his hostages holding up in the window of the Lindt Cafe.  The flag and the statement on it (the Shahada) find widespread use through the Islamic World.

Saudi Arabia

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

Caucasus (Chechnya) Emirate

And the list goes on: Hamas, Al-Shabaab, Al-Nusra, The Islamic State (ISIS)

But when you get right down to it, the Shahada is in direct contradiction to western values.  Contrast the Shahada with the Nicene Creed

WE BELIEVE

Or the Apostle's Creed

I BELIEVE

What did Man Haron Monis believe?

 "Those atheists, people of the book (Christians and Jews), where will they end up? In Surfers Paradise? On the Gold Coast? Where will they end up? In hell and not part-time, for eternity.  They are the worst in God's creation."

SBS Australia

So, why do we let these medieval asshats in our countries again? 

SBS Australia  

And why don't we deport them when they act like asshats?

GLCM

BGM-109G Gryphon

It's pronounced "Glickem"

The State Department has declared Russia to be in violation of the INF (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces) Agreement and one option on the table is the return of US Nuclear Ground Launched Cruise Missiles to Europe.  At their peak, the US had 464 GLCMs and 108 Pershing II Missiles forward deployed in Europe.  The INF treaty was a historic down-ratcheting of the nuclear standoff, the complete elimination of intermediate range ballistic missiles on both sides.

I'll give Putin this... he's certainly got a great big brass set of them.

At the center of the issue is the 9K720 Iskander, NATO Codename SS-26 Stone and its R-500 cruise missile.

Photo: A.Savin

And you thought the Cold War was over.

3rd Sunday of Advent: Gaudete Sunday

It gets its name from the introit of this Sunday's service:

Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.

Originally the period before Christmas was a fast of forty days similar to the Easter Lent, in fact starting on day after the feast of St. Martin it was referred to as St Martin's Lent.  As the Easter Lent had Laetare Sunday a break from the normal Lenten rigours, Gaudete Sunday was a break from the rigours of the pre-Christmas fast.

And just because I like Latin and Mediaeval Baebes...

J.R.R Zeppelin

Or should that be Led Tolkien?  With the upcoming release of The Battle of Five Armies the final movie in the Peter Jackson Hobbit trilogy on the 17th (12 December in the UK). We pause to take a look at the influence of J.R.R Tolkien on popular music.

Some believe that the song is the story of the Battle of Pelennor Fields, the battle for Minas Tirith.  The Queen of Light is Eowyn, who bids Aragorn goodbye and then turns to join the Rohan army. The Prince of Peace is Aragorn, as he embraces the gloom of the Paths of the Dead.  The Dark Lord is a reference to either the Witch King of Angmar or Sauron himself. The horses thunder would be the Rider's of Rhohan, and waiting for the eastern glow would be the arrival of Gandalf and the Rider's attacking at sunrise from the east, turning the tide of battle.  "The drums will shake the castle wall, the ring wraiths ride in black" is probably the most direct reference to the Lord of the Rings and the Nazgul.  "The magic runes are writ in gold to bring the balance back" may be a reference to the rune carved sword wielded by Merry and the death of the Witch King.

There has been other conjecture that many of Led Zeppelin's songs were influenced by J.R.R Tolkien.  Ramble On has been suggested to represent the Hobbits journey, especially with the reference to the deepest depths of Mordor and to Gollum and the evil one. 

Over the Hills and Far Away has also been suggested as have Misty Mountain Hop and Stairway to Heaven, although the band has denied any Stairway to Heaven connection.  It should be noted also that among all this conjecture Robert Plant named his dog "Strider".

Metalstorm

  
This one "Rivendell" by Rush is the no-brainer of the bunch, directly referencing the house of Elrond.

Cromnibus

ABC Schoolhouse Rock

They say Cromnibus is a portmanteau of Continuing Resolution and Omnibus... I say nay, Cromnibus is in reality a portmanteau of Crony and Omnibus.  Nobody likes this bill, well no one except Obama and Oboehner, and those republicans and democrats they've strong-armed into voting for it with pork, pork, and more pork.  

This bill is bad legislation, pork-barrel legislation, bankster legislation.  How can Oboehner get this bill passed? By gathering up enough republicans and democrats without conscience or principle to vote for it. When Redstate is in agreement with Nancy Pelosi you know something is horribly, horribly wrong.

The Kline-Miller amendment is bad law, the Dodd-Frank rollback is bad law, I'm even not all that keen on the campaign finance changes.

NO, NO ,NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! 

Jim Moran (D., Va.) said that Democrats got “virtually everything” they wanted in the cromnibus package, as he praised the bill in terms that could double as the conservative critique of the legislation. “In 20 years of being on the appropriations [committee], I haven’t seen a better compromise in terms of Democratic priorities. Implementing the Affordable Care Act, there’s a lot more money for early childhood development — the only priority that got cut was the EPA but we gave them more money than the administration asked for,” Moran told reporters. National Review

 So, who was it that just swept through the 2014 elections?

In the end the House passed this abomination 219-206, liberals lost tonight and conservatives lost tonight, the only people who won are the Washington insiders.

Here's a message for Republicans and Republican leadership, if John Oboehner wins the floor vote in January 2015 and is Speaker of the House on November 8th, 2016... I'll vote for Hillary Clinton out of spite, whether she's running or not.  Screw you!!! There is no conservative party left in the United States. Done, over, finished, or as I said before, SCREW YOU!!!

Is this really a good idea?

ARM: Asteroid Redirect Mission

Just happened to stumble upon this one following one link to another, but NASA has a plan to capture an asteroid and put in a distant retrograde lunar orbit, sometime in 2020.

Now I used to be the type of person who would find this cool and exciting, but now I have to step back and ask myself...

Is this really a good idea for the agency that slammed a 125 million dollar orbiter into Mars because half the team was using pound-seconds and the other half was using Newton-seconds?

Water water everywhere?

Colorado Water Conservation Board

Colorado vows that downstream states and countries in accordance with interstate compacts and treaties will get every drop of water they are legally entitled to... and "not a drop more".

Western water law is an odd beast and by those treaties and compacts, court rulings, etc.  one third of the Colorado River water belongs to Colorado.  Western water law operates on the first use-senior claim premise, which means that a junior claim upstream can not pull water if it impacts "beneficial use" of a senior claim downstream.  Now I'm no lawyer but I believe that beneficial use is defined as "up to the point of waste".  Out here in the west water is and has always been a big deal.  Believe it or not, here in Colorado while you may direct the water from your downspouts towards your landscaping, it is illegal to collect and store the water unless you are permitted and own the surface water rights.

Colorado's new plan is to create storage for trillions of gallons of Colorado water that currently slips between our proverbial fingers on its way to the Gulf of Baja which it now seldom reaches.  Fortunately for me my water rights predate more than half the population of the state.  Fortunately for California... it's started to rain, so we're not at the point where bottled water as a vanity becomes the greatest invention since... bottled water as a necessity. 

An interesting question we need to ask is that if we have an interstate natural gas distribution grid.

 And an interstate electrical distribution grid.

Why haven't we considered an interstate water distribution grid?  It seems that we seldom have a national scarcity of water, we simply suffer from drought in some locations while others suffer inundation.  Now I'm a small government libertarian, but it is these types of national infrastructure projects that the federal government should be focused on, project for the general welfare of the nation.

Problems that are currently handled regionally, or by compacts by small numbers of states, for example the Colorado River Compact consists of Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California, have a national influence.  To illustrate, water rights can be bought and sold like any commodity, agricultural holders sell those rights to enable municipal development taking farm and ranch land out of circulation, decreasing the supply and increasing the price of food.  The problem is that it is a dead end street, once water rights are allocated to a municipality, there is not a municipality that can turn around and sell them again, and all this is done without a coherent national policy.  As watershed water is diverted to municipalities farmers resort to aquifer water for irrigation, as the aquifers deplete, there is no alternative source for replenishment.

What do you think?

CADILLAC

Cadillac and non-traditional marketing.

Cadillac recently announced that it is changing its naming scheme...again.  Cadillac is abandoning three letter designations like ATS and CTS and the new flagship sedan will be the CT6.

Cadillac is also moving its headquarters from Detroit to New York, that brilliant strategy also came along with the now infamous comment "Everyone in New York is always just a little bit ahead of everyone else”

Cadillac's Brand and Reputation Strategy director also gave an interview with Fortune under the headline "... It's not about the cars."

“We want to be a global luxury brand that happens to sell cars. We don’t want to be an automotive brand,”

Good luck with that... because when it comes down to it, it IS about the cars.  Sure if you're a shallow metro-sexual fashionista it might be about the brand, but there are only so many of those, and even fewer that are buying cars.  Which is why I own a Mercedes and not a Cadillac, but then again I guess when all you're doing is badge engineering on  a GMT K2 platform all you really have to sell is brand.

Me, I'm not interested in a Cadillac unless it's the 58 in the video above. Let me know when it goes back to being about the cars.

Why we need to hang the lawyers!

  What you see here is a standard six foot, indoor/outdoor extension cord available almost everywhere this time of year. It purpose is to provide power for Christmas lights. 
 In order to use this device in as inconspicuous and unobtrusive manner possible, I had to remove no less than 10, count them 10, warning labels in both English, and Spanish. ( There were actually 11, but I left the "UL approved" label in place ) Fully 15% of the length of the cord was taken up by labels.

 

 The gist of their content, in both languages, was to discourage the use of this appliance in fashions that could never be contemplated by anyone with an IQ rivaling that of an aspidistra. If you're dumber than that, you probably can't read them anyway.
 
 While I confess that I haven't investigated whether this insult is the contrivance of a government who thinks it's citizenry brainless dolts, or an industry bullied into such measures by trial lawyers slavering over the prospect of paydays, either way it's offensive and you can bet the farm that somewhere, somehow, the lawyers are behind it.

2nd Sunday of Advent: Advent Wreath

Photo: Clemens Pfieffer

Advent wreaths have their origins in the folk traditions of northern Europe, where in the deep of winter people lit candles on wheel-shaped bundles of evergreen. Both the evergreen and the circular shape symbolized ongoing life.  The four candles symbolizing Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love are lit on the four Sundays of Advent.  In the Catholic tradition the candles are most often violet and rose while in Protestant churches it is common to use four red candles.  In some traditions the candles represent the Patriarchs, the Prophets,  John the Baptist, and Mary.  In the latter tradition the second candle is often referred to as the Bethlehem candle:

Saturday Sessions: The Grateful Dead

There is such a large body of work by this band I'll just throw up some of my favorites.

One thing that the Grateful Dead is famous for is their musical improvisation, illustrated below by the studio version at 4:46 and a live version at 9:18, almost twice as long.

In all the Grateful Dead discography encompasses 140 albums and innumerable bootleg recordings, so I'm sure I've missed your favorite... let us know what it is.

 

Justice?

Another day, another grand jury decision guaranteed to inflame an already infuriated citizenry.  The grand jury in New York declined to indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo in the choking death of Eric Garner.

Here is a video of the incident, with commentary before and after.  The action in question starts at around 1:00.



There are many issues here.  I start with the more trivial and work my way to the deadly serious.

First off, is this the best use of police assets?
...to focus on people selling "loosies," single cigarettes?  Why is this even against the law?  Aren't there more serious criminal matters to attend to?  And did you see how many cops were there?  You'd think they'd cornered a serial rapist-murderer.

Do these cops know the community they are policing?
If not, why not?  If so, then they know this is a nonviolent man.  So why did they take him down so violently?  There are techniques to get nonviolent suspects to comply, and the best ones don't resemble WWF spectacles.

Do they still teach Verbal Judo techniques to police officers?
I ask that because so many seem so quick to go for the shoot or the take down.  Mr. Garner was textbook non-compliant.  That immediately put him in danger of being on the bad end of escalating compliance techniques.  Still, why the inept attempt at an MMA-style rear naked choke (that turned into a forearm across Garner's windpipe)?  Is this all trained law enforcement professionals have in their toolbox? 

What happened after the takedown is just as egregious
Do police know CPR?  Can they identify if someone is in immediate medical distress?  After the struggle, Mr. Garner was down, clearly not moving and apparently not breathing and the cops just stood there dumb, poking at him every now and then or gently nudging him as if to try to wake him up.  Start watching the video at around the 3:00 mark, and keep watching.  If you are not angry and saddened by the 4:45 or even the 5:00 mark, you have no human compassion in your soul.

Mr. Garner was not a gun-wielding maniac.  He was not on PCP and slinging people through plate glass windows.  He was giving the cops some attitude and flinching away when they tried to cuff him.  Non-compliant?  Yes.  But he attacked no one, and had no recent history of violence.

This is the best New York's "finest" can do?

I am not anti-cop, but I must wonder where are police departments getting these people, and what kind of training are they providing them?

We could contract out policing to street gangs and get the same result.

* - Here is a different compilation, with the aftermath first:
Eric Garner Choke hold Death

Justice

Human nature is timeless, and its study brings wisdom 

The Greeks knew it but left the knowledge pasted inside the pages of philosophy.  The founding fathers knew it and crafted a system of government based upon a keen insight into man's fallen nature.



The works of William Shakespeare are a goldmine of human nature on display:  Love and hate, lust, greed, anger, abuse of power...  it's all there.

Justice and Mercy 

In The Bard's play, Measure for Measure, Claudio is condemned to die for knocking up his betrothed before the nuptials.  In act II, Isabella, Claudio's holy and virginal sister, pleads for mercy to Angelo the magistrate. 

Angelo rightly reminds her that True Justice lies not in some sappy sentimentality or misguided empathy.  True Justice, God's Justice, Nature's Justice, is blind to emotional appeals and always balances the scales.

Isabella:  Yet show some pity.

Angelo:  I show it most of all when I show justice; 
For then I pity those I do not know,
Which a dismiss'd offense would after gall;
And do him right that, answering one foul wrong, Lives not to act another. 
Be satisfied; Your brother dies to-morrow; be content.

That last line sounds callous, but the deeper meaning is that each of us should be satisfied when justice is done, even when it is done against us, for that is the cosmic order. Adam Smith, who no doubt was familiar with Shakespeare, summed it up succintly:   

"Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."

 Abuse of Power

Counterpoised against a righteous exercise of justice is abuse of power.  Isabella laments how men harshly wield the power lent to them by God:

O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength;
but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.

Abuse of power is timeless...

Could great men thunder
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,
For every pelting, petty officer
Would use his heaven for thunder.
Nothing but thunder!

She reminds us that God loans power and authority to man so that we may model our societies upon His justice.  But "proud man..."

Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he 's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep
who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

So it's not just an abuse of power and authority man engages in, but a usurpation of God's gifts that are loaned to us.  We forget we are "dust and to dust we will return."  Flush with pride and earthly arrogance, we forget we are fit for eternity, and we end up as angry apes who make the angels weep.  Were the angels mere earthly creatures like us, they would spare the pity and simply laugh derisively at us. 

* - Jove:  King of the Gods in Roman mythology, god of sky and thunder

DEAR SANTA

American Atheists

The above billboard will appear in Memphis, Nashville, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Fort Smith, Arkansas — right in the middle of a handful of red states. The campaign, according to an American Atheists news release, is “aimed at in-the-closet atheists who are pressured to observe religious traditions during the holidays” and who might want to attend the group’s Memphis conference next year.      MSN

The Oxford English Dictionary defines an Atheist as a "Person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods" and defines an Antitheist as "One opposed to belief in the existence of a god".  I'll leave it up to you to categorize this organization into what you believe to be the appropriate category.

American Atheists said it is bringing the campaign to the South not because of the quantity of atheists there, but because “discrimination and mistrust of atheists is especially pronounced” in the region.

Perhaps that question about atheists and antitheists is one atheists ought to ask about themselves when they question why people feel the way they do about them. In a PEW Survey that asked how Americans feel about different groups on a scale of 0 (Coldest) to 100 (Warmest), Jews, Catholics, and Evangelical Christians ranked 63,62,61 respectively.  Buddhists, Hindus, and Mormons ranked in the middle (53,50,48) while Atheists (41) barely squeaked out ahead of Muslims (40).

I have absolutely no problem with atheists, yet the public face of atheism isn't atheistic, it's antitheist.  I can't shake the feeling that the most vocal antitheists base their actions more on personal animosity than rational thought.  The notion that religion is and has been the root of all evil is misguided and runs contrary to the historical record, one need look no further than to the history of secular states to observe that their track record is no better and often worse than that of religion.  There is no doubt that man has committed great evils and atrocities, often in the name of religion but just as often in the name of the king, state, or party.  More often than not religion is an excuse and not the cause.  As The Shadow used to ask "What evil lurks in the hearts of men?"

Prolegomena to any Further Taxonomy of Leftwing Progressivism

Is anyone else fed up with the rope-a-dope the lefties give us when we press them in comment threads to explain themselves?  I have yet to hear one of them provide a cogent explanation of just what liberalism is.  Is there no manifesto akin to Russell Kirk's most excellent 10 Conservative Principles?

When confronted with the irrefutable logical outcome of their horrible dogma, lefties perform one or a combination of several evasive maneuvers. This led me to identify and name some of the more common tactics employed by leftwing weasels and slippery socialists when a right thinking person confronts them in a blog thread and call BS on their BS. 

Here is my humble list of neologisms describing liberal debating tactics.  What do you think?
 
1) Liberal Lafftosh: Go all goofy and laugh it off

2) Wriggling the Game: Feign ignorance or purposely misunderstand the question

3) Self-Flatulation: Explode in righteous anger and malodorous indignation

4) Il Canardo: Ignore you or steer the conversation into the ditch by introducing irrelevancies (Ducky's favorite)

5) The Jersey Special: Slide off the Jersey Turnpike of truth and spin your intellectual wheels trying to justify the unjustifiable, explain the inexplicable, defend the indefensible... all accompanied by smelly, billowing clouds of dust and smoke as the marxist malefactor burns rubber, screeches, and mires the car deeper into the intellectual ruts he creates.

Can you think up some more?  Post them in the comments section for the amusement of all.

How to Stop the Immigration Madness

Our immigration system is not broken, and President Obama's imperial decree will not "fix" it. With a wave of his magic scepter, he has just invited millions more in.

Two actions would slow the tide and turn it into a trickle:

1. An ironclad worker verification system...
...(unlike the puny, nebulous system we have now) and draconian punishments for employers who hire undocumented workers.

We can do this folks. We're in an age of global banking networks and almost instant background checks for gun purchases. We have the technology, but government doesn't have the will, thanks to their masters, the Silicon Valley Robber Barons and the US Chamber of Communists.

Instead of armed INS raids at job sites, with news footage of poor men and women being cuffed and stuffed, accompanied by interviews with scared wives and children whose breadwinner has just been locked up, it should be government bureaucrats auditing the company's employment records, and frogmarching the management off to jail.

2. No government assistance...
...of any kind to anyone who cannot prove she is here legally. That includes publicly-funded services like schools and hospitals. We should provide medical care to anyone who needs it, but for the undocumented, the next step after receiving care is a plane ticket home, with the US government billing the undocumented immigrant's government.

No government contracts to churches to provide assistance to illegal immigrants. If Churches believe providing succor to people here illegally is the work of Christ, then they can do it on their own dime.

Conclusion
Take away the chance to work and remove access to the social safety net, and you remove the motivation to come here illegally or to overstay your visa. Sounds harsh, but government's first debt is to its citizens who pay to fund it. 

A pleasant side-effect is that the absence of undocumented people would remove the stigma of being from somewhere else and erase the cloud of suspicion that maybe you are mooching off the government because you talk funny.  There will always be bigots and haters, but reasonable people of goodwill have a right to question what goes on in their own country.
 
In the near future, I will blog about what our nation would look like if we took these steps.

The First Sunday of Advent: Christingle

 

Today is the First Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the Western Liturgical Year and the traditional start of the Christmas Season.

The Christingle has its origins in the Moravian Church in the 18th century with  Bishop Johannes de Watteville of Marienborn.

The orange represents the world, the red ribbon the blood of Christ, the dried fruit represents the fruits of the earth and the four seasons, and the candle Jesus, light of the world.

The story of the Christingle is that there were three children, who were very poor, but wanted to give a gift to Jesus, like the other families at church were doing. The only nice thing they had was an orange, so they decided to give him that. The top was going slightly green, so the eldest cut it out and put a candle in the hole. They thought it looked dull, so the youngest girl took her best red ribbon from her hair and attached it round the middle with toothpicks. The middle child had the idea to put a few pieces of dried fruit on the ends of the sticks. They took it to the church for the Christmas mass, and whereas the other children sneered at their meagre gift, the priest took their gift and showed it as an example of true understanding of the meaning of Christmas.

Saturday Sessions: Just to get you in the mood - Christmas Music!

Black Friday

 

I don't know about you, but I would never go shopping today.  The second to last thing I want to do is shop and the last thing I want to do is shop in crowds.  Do you think the sales worth it? I don't, and apparently neither does the Wall Street Journal:

The Myth of the Black Friday deal.

OCCUPY CHRISTMAS

Also known as Buy Nothing Day was started in Canada in 1992 as a protest against consumerism and over-consumption.  It was moved to the day after Thanksgiving in 1998.  Perhaps they're right, last year 141 million of us went shopping on this day and spent $57.4 Billion dollars. What are you going to do today, shop? Or something else.  Me? I'm going to kick back and enjoy the day off.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

So much for a nice pre-Thanksgiving post.

I've left the video here to illustrate the stark contrast between cultural and social desires and reality, Enjoy.

LET'S NOW TALK ABOUT FERGUSON

Had I the time and the appropriate editing software I'd have treated you with scenes of the Ferguson riots set to the music featured above.

1.  The standard for obtaining an indictment from a Grand Jury is probable cause.  Here's a pleasant or unpleasant fact for you dependent upon your point of view;  If you can't obtain an indictment there is no way in hell you are going to obtain a conviction to the standard of "beyond reasonable doubt".  Let's not mince words though, we all know what the rioters of Ferguson want is a lynching, anything less than hanging Darren Wilson from the old oak tree is just not going to satisfy the crowd.

2.  I have an hour commute each morning and have been spending it cycling through the following talk stations: POTUS, Patriot, Urban View, and Progressive on Sirius.  I'd like to address a comment I heard many times on three of the four stations.  "Mike Brown didn't deserve to die for stealing a handful of cigars".

HELLO! Back the cart up Hoss... Mike Brown didn't die for stealing a handful of cigars, he was stopped for walking in the street and possibly, stealing a handful of cigars.  Mike Brown died for assaulting a police officer.  Now whether or not you consider that justifiable given the evidence released is up to you.

3.  Mike Brown is a symptom of a bigger problem and a catalyst for what is going on right now.   It's a multifaceted problem with everything from the Gangsta subculture to the Police subculture at fault.  It's also a "racial problem", but perhaps not in the way you think.  I've known a lot of cops over the years and there are pretty much only two races: Cops and Civilians. I'm not convinced that if Mike Brown was an 18 year old six foot five 290 pound white kid that came through the window of a patrol vehicle and wrestled for the officers gun things would have turned out any differently.

One of the problems is the way the majority of police interact with the community, most cops interact with three kinds of people: Cops, Victims, and Perps.  They live in different neighborhoods, hang out with other cops, and spend life fairly isolated in patrol cars from the community that they serve.  Until we change the way our police do business, and the federal government isn't helping by militarizing them, nothing is going to change, if anything it is going to get worse. We need to get the police out of their cars, at least in urban areas, and onto the streets and interacting with the community in general on a regular basis.  Cops need a regular assigned neighborhood, need to get to know the people in their neighborhoods and the people need to get to know them.

4. There is a trust issue between the police and the black community.  I got news for you, I'm an upper-middle class middle-aged white guy and there is a trust issue between the police and the white community also.  Understandably, the issues between the police and the two communities are not currently the same, but give it time, I'm sure we'll eventually get there. 

5.  The law enforcement response in Ferguson was incompetent.  While I can sort of understand the rational for initially maintaining a low police presence as to not inflame the situation, we can all see, and hindsight is 20/20, how that worked out.  Maintaining the police in a mass military formation like a phalanx of Hoplites was also stupid (although I do understand that it maximizes police safety).  The police should have been stationed at the store Mike Brown robbed, at the business that had been previously been looted, and stationed in pairs along the street at regular intervals, close enough to support one another but far enough apart to provide general coverage.  Having 200 cops in tight formation controls no more territory than a smaller group could.

What do you think?

Vendepatria en la Casa Blanca

President Obama is a liar:  In his Facebook speech announcing his big speech that would come a day later, he claimed that our immigration system is broken. 

No it's Not:  
It is negligently administered and barely enforced.  People cross our borders with impunity, social services and taxpayer-funded services like schools are ladled out to all with no questions asked, and employment enforcement is nonexistent.  When is the last time you heard about a workplace raid?  More importantly, has any employer ever been punished for hiring undocumented workers? 

El Vendepatria
There's a Spanish word for President Obama that our neighbors south of the Rio Grande know quite well:  Vendepatria; one who sells out his country.  Any citizen in any country of Latin American would hurl that insult at her president if he took an action like Obama's.

Barack Hussein Obama is anti-American, and he leads an anti-American criminal enterprise known as the federal government, which is separate and distinct from We The People, and is dedicated to our enslavement.

We have a job shortage in this country resulting in millions of chronically-unemployed.  What does Obama's Enterprise do?  Import more workers who have a demonstrated track record of accepting below-market wages.  The simple law of supply and demand guarantees that wages will not rise.

Common sense also predicts that this will attract even larger waves of humanity to our southern border, which means more death, rapes and robberies along the way, and more exploitable people here that will constitute an even larger problem than President Obama's latest diktat claimed to address.  And by the way, if his unilateral proclamation was so humane, why did he only hand out 5 million golden tickets, and exclude over 15 million more undocumented unfortunates living here?  How inhumane is that?

Divide and Conquer
This creates another noisy Democrat constituency too poor and ignorant to help themselves.  The more uneducated and unemployable the new arrivals are, the better.  It grows the nanny-state, employs a burgeoning cohort of poverty-pushers and gives racist bigots and grievance hustlers like La Raza and MEChA a bigger bullhorn and a bigger slice of taxpayer-funded largess doled out by progressives in government.

It's Their Nation, We The People just Live in It
Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley want cheap labor, hi-tech and low-tech, because there is no such thing as being too rich, and our progressive government (infested with progressives of all parties) enables them, as it does the Wall Street gangsters.  These nefarious swindlers, along with the US Chamber of Communists, are selling the country right out from under us.  They are stealing our birthright, and purposely changing the face of this nation.  Hollywood drug addicts and cultural pornographers are the the propaganda arm of this Cultural Long March.

They don't care that this nation is becoming a third-world toilet.  They live and travel in their own guarded enclaves.  Their children do not attend government schools.  They are rich enough to shield themselves from the societal destruction they perpetrate.

Free people in Tocqueville's America forming free societies and determining their own lives is messy and inefficient.  Today's progressive elites of all parties need us to be needy, addicted to government nickles and dimes, moving which ever way they nudge us.

Does This Conference Make Me Look Like a Pervert?

Seaside, Ore. (CBS SEATTLE) – Controversy is surrounding a sex education conference in Oregon as the event has hosted students as young as 11 years old. The conference gives tips on masturbation, using internet porn and quirky alternatives to sex.

Lesson plans taught at the Oregon Adolescent Sexuality Conference include tutorials on porn websites, pamphlets on sexting and information about “teledildonics,” or the remote use of sex toys over the Internet, KOIN-TV reports. (CBS Local - Seattle)

This isn't a conference; it's a criminal enterprise.  The pedophiles in teachers' clothing who planned and perpetrated the crimes committed at that conference should be arrested for sexual pandering to children.

This was a conference paid for by the State of Oregon, and school districts are required to send people to it in order to be eligible for certain types of funding. As the article states, school children also attend.  Based on interviews featured in the articles, the criminal activities were probably a very tiny part of the conference, and those who stumbled into them unawares were shocked at the content.

Go read both links and then explain to me why the state of Oregon should not immediately arrest perverts Cory Silverberg and Brad Victor and charge them with sexual pandering to minors and other pedophilia-related charges.

What The Hell is Going On?

This is not an isolated incident.  A little Yahoogling reveals that sex education is getting kinkier and more graphic, taught by degenerate pederasts whose true goal is to get their own rocks off and turn America's youth into like-minded twisted freaks.

What are the origins of this?  How and why did such a fetid nest of satyrs, nymphomaniacs, sodomites and filthy sexual deviants hijack our popular culture and take over our nation's pedagogy? 

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but there must be people with a purpose behind this.

Could someone educate me?  (Please, in the old-fashioned way).

Illegal Immigration: A Simple Historical Perspective

This is Æthelstan,  first King of the English.  

The traditional view of the process has assumed the migration of several Germanic peoples, later collectively referred to as Anglo-Saxons, from the western coasts of continental Europe, followed by the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms across most of what is now England and parts of lowland Scotland. 

The assumption that the Anglo-Saxon settlement developed from the migration of people from the Germanic coastlands, largely displacing the native people, has been challenged by those suggesting that the changes in material culture and language were caused primarily by a process of acculturation that followed the movement of a relatively small number of people. 

Britain used to be a Celtic Nation

Population pressures and migration 

can move mountains 

Just ask this guy.

Saturday Sessions

Music to contemplate Obama's

Speech by.

Sorry to you old school fans out there, 

I decided to toss in a few covers.

An Appeal to Emotion

Meet Astrid Silva

Harry Reid & Obama's Gal Pal

US Senate

She didn't get to go to her grandmother's funeral, but she did get a $100,000+ K-12 education courtesy of American taxpayers.

Ed100

Don't believe the chart... here's Nevada's 228 page breakdown

One morning in 2011, Silva's mother watched from a window as immigration officials detained her husband on a deportation order. The family called everyone they knew for help, including Reid's office. After several weeks, her father's deportation was deferred until 2014. Silva thanked the senator in a letter decorated with a sketch of mountains and cactus over which she wrote the title of the state song, "Home Means Nevada." L.A Times

I found the President's speech to be short on substance and long on appeals to emotion and hollow promises.

First, we’ll build on our progress at the border with additional resources for our law enforcement personnel so that they can stem the flow of illegal crossings and speed the return of those who do cross over. 

As my father used to say, "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me".

I know some of the critics of the action call it amnesty. Well, it’s the not.

 Merriam-Webster: the act of an authority (as a government) by which pardon is granted to a large group of individuals.

Actually Mr. President, yes it is.

White House Face Sheet on Immigration Plan


Don't worry though folks... it's a win-win situation.  If this gets struck down either in the congress or the courts, we win.  If this doesn't get struck down in either the congress or the courts, well take the words of David Gergen, Director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government to heart:

If a Democratic president can cancel existing laws on immigration, what is to prevent the next Republican from unilaterally canceling laws on health care?