Going to quote it whole

Because cutting it into bits and pieces would not do it justice, and I want this posted around the world.

Now I know that going back to what education once was and its purpose are over. Further, there have always been more ways to learn a trade than to get an education. That’s a feature, not a bug. Learning a trade was once the near-exclusive bastion of apprenticeships and there’s something to be said for that method.

As Aesop said, the problem with learning a trade at a university is that you learn it wrong, although it does provide grounding in the concepts. I know that is true for folks who come out with Theatre/Film degrees, at the (typical) ripe old age of 24--when it is TOO late to begin pursuing an acting career (unless you’re a character actor). Unless the goal is to teach acting, a degree in it is useless from a professional-actor standpoint.

But that isn’t why parents send their little darlings off to get a degree in Theatre/Film. They do it so their starry-eyed kids will have a “fall back” when the reality of their hopes and chances are dashed, and they get serious about life and making a living. So we have parents who are all too anxious for their children’s hopes and dreams to be destroyed, crushed by the realities of life, for the “better” purpose of making a living.

As I said, the purpose of that type of degree is totally useless in the sphere of working in the field (although the old boy/girl network it provides has been useful to many).

What is astonishing, however, is the complete disconnect on what has been happening in the world and the *gasp* coincidence of destroying education, its purpose, and what it once meant.

We have folks with parchment on their walls running industry, with the morals of sharks. They have come out of the degree mills with the ability to make money--lots of it, and they see that as the goal and purpose in life.

It wasn’t THAT long ago that the perspective was entirely different. Making a living, even a good one, was seen as a means, but not the end. The goal of making a good living was to enable one to afford a life of quiet contemplation, of travel, and of the finer things that the education gave the student the taste for. Now the acquisition of possessions, however tawdry and banal, is seen as the goal.

The acquisition of wealth, for the sake of being wealthy, is now the exclusive pursuit of far too many.

It is no surprise at all that we have disasters like Enron and WorldCom. They were run by men with degrees, and technical competencies in their respective fields, but no education whatsoever. It is no surprise that the pickings for elected representatives is tiny, as if non-existent.

If they had ANY education they would not have been the scoundrels and cads they show themselves to be.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (to name just two) were educated men… probably a handful of the last of them America produced. It isn’t an accident that they devoted a great portion of their life to public service. That’s what educated men do.

Business once cared about an education degree because it provided some degree of certainty that the person you were dealing with had their priorities in proper order. They could be counted on to do the right thing, to be men of honesty and integrity, with morals to avoid all temptations. The great burden of their education made it near-impossible for them to do otherwise. The great big baton of Western Civilization had been passed to them, and dropping all that man had learned and become was just too magnificent to allow it to be casually set aside when there were financial benefits or carnal pleasures to be had.

Education is not education when it provides anything with which to make a living, or anything we might think of today as “useful.” It concerns itself entirely with how you make your life, not your living. An educated man can learn any trade, but a tradesman can do only what he has been trained to do. The minute it becomes something to do, instead of something that is, it is no longer education.

We have this perception that honesty, integrity, and character are things that are endowed in men like legs and arms. And they are not. Civilizing people was the goal of education--exclusively. That small segment of the population, no more than 1% to 5% who were educated, went out into the world with these high ideals and kept them alive.

Now we have Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and an assortment of bad boys. Wealth itself is lauded as a demonstrative of something important. “Pioneers of Industry” are even lauded, and not recognized for the pirates they’ve become.

There are a few institutions that remain committed to education, but they suffer from the pressures of parents and industry to provide skill-training. Their programs have been altered to such an extent that they might as well throw in the towel completely.

Nock was once asked to become the chair of philosophy at a prestigious university. He’d written extensively on the subject, lamenting the loss of education throughout the world (and that was in the 1920s). He politely declined the offer, saying he’d be a useless bungler. He said that all that he would know how to do would be to take his students on their first day of class to the school library, and with great fanfare open the doors and point to the books, “there” and leave them to it.

We’re going to have to figure out how to do it differently. There are a few parents who get this and understand it, but they do it without fanfare or notice… and then there are folks like Mark (who started this thread), wanting to pursue knowledge for the sake of bettering himself, and by extension, the world around him.

We could achieve it in a myriad of ways--through the formation of Socratic Societies (there are quite a number out there, if folks look). The salon tradition is sickly, but not dead.

I doubt, however, that we’ll achieve any measure of success. We’ve gone too far down the road of believing that “all men are created equal” speaks to quality of character, rather than equality in the law, and anything that smacks of elitism is immediately shot down as bad.

All we have left are the books… and if we can keep them from the fires or banned lists, they might continue to serve their purpose… for the few who seek them out and can understand them.

Education in and of itself doesn't mean a damn thing, especially with schools and universities today. Without a foundation to build on, all an education gets you is an over-educated simpleton who can't be trusted to do much of anything. I've seen way too many people who have an education, but don't know the first thing to do with it. They have the know-how, but not the know-why.

Think I'm kidding? Look at all the Democrat American Communist Party politicians, advocating for policies which have been tried and failed. The people who vote the politicians in have degrees, don't they? How can they then advocate for a system of government which has been shown to fail in every country it's been tried?

They have an education, but that just doesn't mean what it used to.

Why you should carry a gun

Because you never know when some deranged Leftist is going to try to gun people down. Or plant a bomb. Standard Leftist/Marxist. They can't win with ideas, so they have to try to intimidate with violence. Just following the standard communist doctrine there. Problem for them is, they haven't disarmed us yet.

There's a maxim that I try to teach the various kids around here. A maxim that I try to live by:

"Don't start the fight. But make damn sure you finish it if someone starts it."

Found at Michelle Malkin.

You want a peek into a conservative mind?

Then go forth and read. Here's a little taste:

I'm tired of it. Tired way down deep. It's the new slave class, the new Company Store that makes me pay for the fantasies and guilt trips of the privileged few who score a sweet government job. And will continue to vote largesse unto themselves as long as they can get away with it. And nobody on the Left will ever use the word, "greedy" for such. I read today where Wellstone didn't provide Workers' Comp for his campaign staff that died with him in the plane crash, so the taxpayer, the little guy, gets to ante up one more time. He was another one, another Hope and Change hypocrite.

Fuck 'em all. Fuck FDR and LBJ and O-ba-ma.

Found at Spat's place.

The Culture of Entitlement

Michelle Malkin links to a couple of pieces written by one Franklin Schneider. They're a hoot, that's for sure. The first piece I'll link to is a nice, hateful rant about the different places he's worked. Now granted, I've dealt with my fair share of bullshit in the workplace, but you know what? If I didn't like it, I FOUND ANOTHER JOB.

That's not the worst of his writing, though. Oh no, the worst of it is where he complains that he didn't get enough unemployment.

When the federal economic stimulus package hit the news in January, my latest run on unemployment was just going dry, and the mere prospect of getting another job was enough to make my testicles retract into my body. When reports surfaced that a three- or six-month (!!) unemployment extension was going to be part of the package, it seemed like government was finally doing something for the little guy, instead of just the fat cats and whiny Christians. I spent the next two weeks Google News-ing “unemployment extension economic stimulus” every 10 minutes.

When the package including the extension failed by one vote, I was so fucking pissed at the United States government that if an al-Qaeda recruiter had pitched me at that moment, I’d be in the Afghanistan desert as we speak, screaming Arabic at the top of my lungs while bayoneting an Uncle Sam mannequin.

What a nice guy, eh? He's going to stop getting my tax dollars, and he's pissed about it.

Not only do I feel no guilt whatsoever about sucking from the state’s teat, I feel that I’m absolutely entitled to it. First of all, the employer that fired me pays for half of my unemployment, and fuck them.

Mr. Schneider then goes on to prove that he has absolutely no knowledge or idea of economics.

Second of all, it’s really my money in the first place. See, your employer never pays you what you’re worth—there’s a surplus, some of which goes toward overhead and various other business costs, and the rest of which is kept as profit. (This is what Marx was referring to when he talked about “exploitation of the workers.”) A tiny fraction of this surplus—which, again, has been skimmed off of my labor—is put into a government-mandated account to go toward unemployment checks for fired workers. So yeah, it’s my money. Give it back. And since most people’s lives are so devoid of meaning that they’d rather go directly into another shitty job than be forced to confront the sheer emptiness of their existence, most of that money never even gets distributed.

This guy has no clue. And from the sounds of it, he's never HAD a clue. Does he know how much money a company is forced to spend on every employee? Does he know how much money in various taxes a company has to put out for each employee? Obviously not, or he would not have penned that mind-numbingly stupid screed.

And reading even farther down, you see that this guy does not want to be a contributing member of society at all. He just wants us to give him our money so he can do whatever he wants:

Another friend of mine—also an old hand at unemployment milking—tried for months to get fired from a local movie theater. After witnessing shenanigans that at most work places would not only get you fired, but would also get you arrested, he realized they had him in check. After much hand-wringing, he walked out mid-shift.

We saw each other in the grocery store a few weeks back, during the economic stimulus debate. He’d read about the wrangling over the unemployment extension and said he’d thought of me.

“The best part,” he said, chuckling, “was when one of the senators supporting the extension was like, ‘These people want to work, they want nothing more than to work but through no fault of their own, they just can’t find jobs!’”

“Yes, I want nothing more than to go into an office for eight hours a day and get ordered around by inferior people. It’s not about the money! I’ll do it for free!”

“My life is empty if I can’t man a cash register. Please, I want to contribute!”

“Goddamnit, why can’t I find a job? It’s almost as if I’m not trying at all!”

We amused ourselves in this manner for several minutes.

Ha ha fucking ha, you worthless fart-sniffer.

When I was laid off in Seattle, I had another job in a month. ONE MONTH. And thanks to the fact that I didn't blow my cash on too much stupid shit, I didn't apply for unemployment. I made it without any help. But then, I was raised to believe that you had best not count on anyone else for your life. To do so makes you little more than a slave to someone else's whims.

Mr. Schneider willing places the chains on his own wrists. Notice that the option of running his own business never even crosses his mind. I know people who hate the 9-5 bullshit. I know people who would rather slit their own wrists than work in a cubicle in some office where the HR assholes demand every little PC motto be enforced.

These people find non-office jobs, or they start their own businesses. And they couldn't be happier. But they also are self-reliant people, not sniveling little parasites like Mr. Schneider.

Let's face it; if Mr. Schneider the teat-sucking tick wants to do nothing but lay on the beach and bad-mouth his former employers, that's his prerogative. But nobody should be forced to pay for it. And if he thinks he has a right to my tax dollars, he's got another thing coming.

OHMYGOSHOHMYGOSH!

Dennis Hastert's Congressional seat went to a Democrat American Communist Party member!

Um.... so that's going to change things how?

Some of the blame has to fall on Hastert himself. His run as Speaker got marred by corruption and massive increases in pork-barrel politics, two themes not without their connections. He personally benefited from pork legislation that increased the value of land he owned as part of a trust. He also fought to protect William “Dollar Bill” Jefferson from an FBI investigation into bribery and corruption rather than take a more reformist stance that demanded transparency and clean government.

The guy was a corrupt shitheel who tried to protect other corrupt shitheels. He was part of the problem. He was SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE during a period when we had a Republican president and Republican control of Congress.

His accomplishments? Nothing. No, rewind, dub over, it was LESS than nothing. Federal spending went up, the GOP crumbled like little bitches before the Dimocrat opposition on any topic, corruption ran rampant, and the conservative principals that got them elected into office were thrown right out the window. It was a giant leap backwards for the GOP, and it led to the Republicans getting kicked in the nutsack in 2006.

Unfortunately, I really don't think the GOP has changed any. They're just a little less socialist and corrupt than the Democrat American Communist Party.

We're so screwed.

Winter Soldier II: Ludicrous Lies on Parade

LGF serves up the latests frauds from the newest phony soldier, eg. "Phonies", who misrepresent their service to claim moral authority and are selectively featured by the MainStreamMedia in spite of their non-representative views.

The anti-war left is preparing to stage a rerun of the infamous “Winter Soldiers” travesty, and here’s one of their star witnesses, identified only by her first name “Jen:” A Soldier in Winter.

The ludicrous stories this woman is telling are so over the top and obviously false, it’s hard to believe anyone gives them credence; but the fact that leftists are apparently willing to believe this garbage speaks volumes about their so-called “support for the troops.”
...
Jennifer Spranger, secretary of the Milwaukee chapter of IVAW, is a very likely suspect for “Jen.”
...
...notice that Salon does not identify her as a member of IVAW.

Cross Posted at DANEgerus

The Wrong Question

I can't remember where I saw the discussion (and if you're the one who asked the question, please let me know so I can link to you), but it was about the California case where the courts have ruled that the parents cannot home school their children.

Now, the question that was asked was this: Is there a constitutional right to homeschool? And it got the wheels turning a bit in my head, albeit slowly after sleeping in and waking up late this morning.

The more I thought about that question, the more I'm convinced that it's the wrong question to ask. The right question is this: What gives the state the power to tell you how your children will be schooled?

Not everything is a constitutional right. But it does not have to be a constitutional right. Remember that the Constitution of the United States of America never places limits on The People. It limits what the Government can do, but places no such limits on the general population. The question of how that family schools it's kids should never come up, because there's nothing in the Constitution that gives the State the power to dictate how the kids are schooled. The State should not have any say in that matter at all.

In short, what has happened in California is that the State has flipped roles. Instead of being limited by the Constitution, it is using laws to limit what the people can do. Instead of The People smacking the State on the nose with a newspaper and saying "NO!", the State has now, in essence, turned The People into subjects instead of citizens.

It's time for the actual citizens of that state to leave.

And more anti-military crap

I know it's not the water in California, because I've met plenty of sane people from that state. But there seems to be an infestation of shitheads that keeps on growing, and I'm wondering how to keep the infection from spreading to the rest of the country.

In denying the Royal High School student delayed entry into the Marine Corps, Children's Court Commissioner Marilyn Mackel reportedly told Sage and a recruiter that she didn't approve of the Iraq war, didn't trust recruiters and didn't support the military.

"The judge said she didn't support the Iraq war for any reason why we're over there," said Marine recruiter Sgt. Guillermo Medrano of the Simi Valley USMC recruiting office.

"She just said all recruiters were the same - that they `all tap dance and tell me what I want to hear.' She said she didn't want him to fight in it."

Things like this are why the government needs to have as little power as possible.

Destroying the Anti-Gun arguments

I swear, if you ever need pro-gun reasoning, just bookmark The Smallest Minority. Go to his sidebar and start reading. And check out his latest effort.

Anti-military

The Left wants a replay from the 70's. Bring it on. Will it be like Jesse McBeth? Jimmy Massy? I swear, the keep trotting out the same old crap, time and time again.

Yes, I question their patriotism.

When Leftists attack

Michelle Malkin has a whole list of Leftist attacks against military recruiters. It's only going to get worse, folks. Why? Because the Democrat American Communist Party supports this kind of action. Some openly, some behind closed doors. But we have one side of American politics run by the barking moonbats, and this is the predictable result.

Also from Malkin, the good guys get a word in.

Still, it's going to get worse. When the attacks against recruiting stations, ROTC buildings and other military areas happened, nary a peep was heard from the mainstream DNC. And more importantly, no one on the Left side of politics did anything to prevent another attack. Nobody spoke out against the attacks. No Leftist did a damn thing to support the military under attack.

And then they wonder why the attacks continued?

Template change

You might have noticed that the link to the American Conservative Party is gone from the upper-right corner. It's been replaced by a link to Soldier's Angels, which is well known for Project Valour-IT. If anyone ever wanted to donate to this blog, I'm asking folks to go donate to Soldier's Angels instead.

Trust me, they can use it a lot more than I can.

Busy Day

Hey, I told y'all a while back that I would be busy. So today is a Linky Love day.

Curmudgeonly and Skeptical: Treason at the State Department. In better days, we would be warming up barrels of tar and plucking chickens.

Random Nuclear Strikes: They Did What? Lemmee ask you a question here - since the Leftist traitors in this country have decided to start blowing up military recruiting stations, can I now shoot them on sight and get a reward?

Personal Effects: Start Packing. The state of Kalifornia has just decided that parent's can't homeschool their children. In short, parents have no rights to their kids what so ever. The STATE just told the PARENTS that the parents have no choice, no say, no right to determine how their kids are schooled. Folks, if that doesn't scare the shit out of you, I don't know what will. The STATE has determined that the children are to be bundled off to their local publik skool indoctrination center, and the parents have to go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

It's time to start shooting people in Kalifornia. Maybe that's why Kalifornia doesn't allow it's subjects to carry guns?

Drumwaster;s Rants: ReadysetGO! If you're a math person, try his challenge. It'll keep you up for a while.

Rachel Lucas: I bet your mom's super-glad she squirted you out. I know the type of person Ms. Lucas is writing about. I've dealt with them. And I can't say I understand them one bit.

Daily Mail: Britain's first "safe text" street. Um.... wow. Just wow. I'm trying to find the words to express just how revolting I'm finding the people who A) advocate for this kind of crap, and B) think it's just fine and dandy. Oh, I know!

brainless, dazed, deficient, dense, dim, dodo, doltish, dopy, dotterel, dull, dumb, dummy*, foolish, futile, gullible, half-baked*, half-witted*, idiotic, ill-advised, imbecilic, inane, indiscreet, insensate, irrelevant, irresponsible, laughable, loser*, ludicrous, meaningless, mindless, moronic, naive, nonsensical, obtuse, pointless, puerile, rash, senseless, short-sighted, simple, simple-minded, slow, sluggish, stolid, stupefied, thick, thickheaded, trivial, unintelligent, unthinking, witless

Ayup, that might just begin to cover it. Seriously folks, if you are so damn (pick a word from above) that you need padding on street posts in order to protect yourself while you text, then you have no right to breed and pollute the world with your equally mentally-deficient spawn. Some people in Britain have just admitted that they are incapable of doing ANYTHING to deal with day-to-day life, and they are now nothing more than burdens on society, retards that have to be kept away from hot stoves and open second-story windows, dolts and dimwits that cause more problems for everyone else with an IQ over 30 or so. Break out the straitjackets and padded romper-rooms, because we're going to need them.

Or better yet, remove the damn protection and let these mind-numbingly stupid people kill themselves! Let's make stupidity painful again! A friend of the Mrs. and I had a plan to kill off the stupid people who do nothing but make life difficult for everyone else. Remove all the safety tags off of everything. That sign at the gas station that says not to drink gasoline? Take it off. Put up a sign that reads "TASTES GREAT ON CORNFLAKES". And once that wave of idiots dies off, we'll remove another safety sign to kill off the next wave. If you're too stupid to realize that blow-drying your hair in the bathtub is a bad idea, then maybe you need to die off and let the intelligent people take over, m'kay?

Or we'll just take the padding off of the street posts in London, and watch the mouth-breaking morons break themselves. At least it'll be good for a laugh or two, until you realize that without the benefit of medical castration, these poltroons and parasites are breeding.

Lord, that's a scary thought.

Oh, but they SUPPORT the troops!

Yeah, right.

Anyone else seen this video, of a Marine purportedly throwing a puppy off a cliff? People still can't agree - was it a real dog or a fake dog? If it was real, was it dead or alive? Who the hell knows? Yet ABC is already rolling out the "War-tortured troops suffering from Bush-imposed illegal war on innocent terrorists!" meme.

The motivation for such an act, if it did indeed occur, may be as complex and deep as the U.S. war that has dragged on for more than four years, experts told ABCNEWS.com. Chief among them: Having to live with the constant fear of being injured or killed might have led this Marine to take his aggression out on a defenseless animal, several psychologists said.

If it did occur? IF IT DID OCCUR???? THESE FUCKING BASTARDS DON'T EVEN KNOW IF THE EVENT ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENED AND YET THEY TROT OUT THIS FUCKING BULLSHIT HIT PIECE ON THE MILITARY, PRESIDENT BUSH, AND THE WAR ON TERROR!

YOU FUCKING COMMUNIST COCK-BITING, AGENDA PUSHING, BIASED PIECES OF SHIT!

How about this: Some people are sick fucks! And if that was a real, live dog then the Marine who did it needs to have the book thrown at him! But I would still rather trust any group of US Marines over the kool-aid guzzling propaganda whores of ANY Has-Been Media outlet. Other than one or two quick links, how many stories have been put out by the MSM on military members bring dogs home from Iraq? Did they trot out the psychologists for those troops?

Hell no. It didn't fit the narrative, did it?

The best thing that could happen to the MSM in America is for it to die quickly. I never trust any news from any major news outlet. They've proven that they can't be trusted. They've proven that they would rather lie, skew the facts, and twist the story in order to push their agenda. They've proven that they cannot be objective for fair.

They've proven that they have no real reason to exist other than to push totalitarian bias.

Quote of the Day

Taken from a piece that you have to read in it's entirety.

The West has no use for sanctimonious homilies from societies that cannot provide clean drinking water or sewage systems, that make no provisions for the handicapped, and that leave 40 to 50 percent of their citizens illiterate.

As Bill Whittle once wrote(in his essay Tribes) it's NURTURE, and not NATURE that makes us who we are. Well, our culture is one of the main things that nurture who we become.

Anyways, go read it if you haven't already done so.

What level of education all that money buys

This will not surprise you:

ABRAHAM KATSMAN : Obama-mania and cult of self-esteem

Obama has tapped into is the first generation educated in schools focused on "self-esteem." Now, the products of self-esteem education have come of political age in substantial numbers, perhaps with profound implications for this and future elections.

For the past two decades, America's educational establishment has stressed the inculcation of self-esteem as the supreme educational goal. Self-respect - the product of struggle and achievement - is out; self-esteem - the entitlement tofeel great self-worth regardless of actual accomplishment - is in.

Strict correction of misspelling or of wrong answers to math problems is discouraged. Competition is a big no-no: many youth sports leagues forbid keeping score, lest any child's self-esteem suffer from the indignity of losing. Posting honor rolls is discouraged, as it might injure the self-esteem of those who did not make the grade.

Grade inflation is rampant in schools: according to one recent study, about half of today's college freshman had an "A" average in high school compared to under 20% in the late 1960s, even though SAT scores have tanked over the same period. The focus on self-esteem has, in a sense, been a huge success.

For example, American students have very high scores when asked to assess how good they are at math. Unfortunately, they have low/mediocre scores in actual math performance, routinely being outscored by students in most other developed countries.

Inevitably, however, such over-indulgence of students leads to increased narcissism, self-absorption, and sense of entitlement. Those with self-esteem disproportionate to their achievement tend to be less willing to take responsibility for their own failures, shortcomings, or bad behavior.

Coddled children raised to believe that any dream is not only attainable, but an entitlement granted regardless of actual effort and accomplishment are increasingly growing into depressed and stressed young adults as they rudely discover that the post-school world is not so cooperative and doesn't really care about their dreams or their feelings. In the real world, they keep score.

The more money we pour into education the worse the results. Shouldn't it bother everyone that public schools spend twice the money per pupil, that private schools charge in tuition, yet those public schools turn in far worse results?

Well... unless your political campaign is funded by the NEA.

Cross Posted at DANEgerus

"But it's not FAAAIRRRR," or "Cookie Economics"

The standard hue and cry around which your garden variety socialist will attempt to rally his or her hemp-wearing, birkenstock-clad friends is that a capitalist society is inherently "unfair." The disparity of incomes between the rich and the poor apparently highlights some fundamental flaw in the system, a wrong which needs to be rapidly and forcibly righted through a more "fair" redistribution of wealth from the wealthy elite to the poor downtrodden masses; you know, those souls suffering under the crushing thumb of their capitalist task masters. Or some such.

Let's look at the whole concept of "fair," shall we?

Say, for example, your second grade teacher decides to reward students with cookies for good work. Her plan is simple - equal pay for equal work. If everyone achieves to the required level, everyone gets a cookie. Sounds great, right? Totally fair. Everybody gets the same thing. Now, what if she started giving two cookies to her "favorite" students, the teacher's pets who play her game, while she still only gives one to the others. As a matter of fact, what if she starting NOT giving cookies to the students she didn't like, so she could have more to give to her favorites. That wouldn't be FAIR, would it? Most would agree -- no.

So, now, we return to the original system, where everyone is rewarded with a cookie for a good days schoolwork. But, the way the system is set up, you can only get one cookie per day. Period. So, no matter how much MORE work you do, your reward is…one cookie. Ah, but now let's throw in a little more modern socialism for spice. Because the teacher is so worried about the students' self esteem, and she doesn't want anyone to feel exluded or "disenfranchised," in the noble idea of being "fair" to everyone, she decides to give everyone a cookie NO MATTER WHAT. Every day, every student gets a cookie, all in the interest of fairness.

Pretty soon, Johnny Snotlocker figures out that he's going to get a cookie regardless of whether he does all the homework or not. He can act up in class, pull Sally's pigtails, steal Freddy's pencil...he still get's his cookie.

Soon thereafter, Billy Squaredaway realizes that no matter how well he behaves, no matter how much extra credit he does, how neatly he writes his papers or how helpful he is to the teacher or other students, he also only ever gets one cookie.

What is Johnny's motivation to behave or achieve if he knows that a cookie awaits him at the end of the day, regardless? And what is Billy's motivation to excel if he is going to get the same grade as Johnny, or get the same number of cookies as Johnny?

Let's make this even MORE applicable to modern times. Say Billy does a little tutoring on the side, helps some of the slower students, and they, in turn, give him one of their cookies in thanks. Billy realizes that this is a great deal, and starts building up a pretty good collection of cookies for himself. Soon, however, Johnny Snotlocker finds out about it, and decides he wants more cookies, too. Now, Johnny, not being smart enough or dedicated enough to earn his OWN cookies, figures out a better plan. He complains to the teacher that Billy Squaredaway having so many more cookies than everybody else JUST. ISN'T. FAIR! Billy's got eight or ten cookies, but Johnny and Sally and Suzy all only have one or two. The teacher thinks things over, and realizes that little Johnny has a point. Her goal is to treat everyone equally, to ensure that no one feels either superior or inferior to anyone else. So she marches over and tells Billy that he's got to hand his extra cookies out to the other students who have less. To. Be. Fair.

The light bulb goes on in little Billy's head, and he realizes that, no matter what he does, he's really only ever going to be allowed to keep one cookie. So, he finally knuckles under, waits patiently for the day to end so that he can get his next cookie, and leaves his textbooks to gather dust. Oh but wait, there's more.

For the final blast of realism, the teacher tells Billy that, in order to make sure that ALL the students are getting an extra cookie, Billy has to continue to tutor other students, but give the teacher all the extra cookies he earns so that she can redistribute them more equitably. As a matter of fact, any students who earn extra cookies all have to hand anything in excess of the basic one-cookie amount to the teacher, who, of course, is the only who can determine what is a "fair" distribution.

So, I ask you, gentle reader, which scenario is more fair? Let's try this from a slightly different perspective.

Billy Squaredaway goes to school, gets good grades, gets into a decent college and graduates. Maybe he joins the military or heads straight for corporate America. Perhaps, based on his education, drive, and experience, he develops an innovative distribution system that streamlines a company's processes. He gets a hefty raise, and is soon making $125,000 a year.

Johnny Snotlocker drops out of high school, gets a series of dead end jobs, moves in with his pregnant girlfriend, who also dropped out of school, and they end up living on welfare and food stamps. Most of which are used to buy cigarettes and poptarts. All told, they bring in maybe $27,000 a year.

The socialists will scream that it is Billy's obligation, his duty, to calve off huge chunks of his hard earned money to help out Johnny, who is "poor." After all, since Johnny is a victim of the capitalist process, it only makes sense to penalize the capitalists to help him. It's UNFAIR of Billy to have all that money while Johnny languishes on food stamps, "unable" to earn a living.

I think that it's UNFAIR to expect Billy to be forced to pay his EARNED income to Johnny, just because. I think that it's UNFAIR for Billy to face scorn and derision for having the audacity to actually be successful. I think it's unfair to penalize Billy for being more successful by taking more in taxes to support Johnny each time Billy's wages increase.

I think it's UNFAIR of Johnny to expect, even demand that he be supported, as if it was some right. He had many of the same opportunities as Billy. He made different choices.

What the socialists always seem to miss is that the more disincentives we give the Billys of the world to be prosperous, the less money they will have to pour back into the economy. The more we penalize our highest wage earners and the more we demand they pay into government social programs, the less they will spend on consumer goods, the production of which keeps so many people emplolyed. Make it too expensive for a business to operate due to heavy taxes to support things like welfare and unemployment, the more jobs are lost as the company moves offshore.

You actually create more unemployment be insisting on this bastardized forms of "fairness." We are the strongest, healthiest, most advanced country on the planet. We got that way by encouraging innovation, achievement, excellence and rewards for good performance. Not by the levying of crushing taxes which make rich people into poor people, and the poor people into slaves of the state.

Now this is going too far

Or maybe not. I mean, if they can make money selling this stuff to World of Warcraft geeks, (NSFW!) many of whom haven't seen a real woman in years, then more power to them, right?

I guess my sense of decency is in a struggle with my notion of allowing people to do what they want.

On the other hand, when I was thirteen, I would have been so into that it's not even funny. But that was... um... mumblemumble years ago.

BATFU taking another shop to court

The trial for Red's Trading Post begins today. Given that the BATFU can't even seem to keep track of it's own firearms, I'm hoping that Red's tears through them like shit through a goose.

You want jackbooted thugs? Look no father than the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Think of all the money we could save if they were shut down. Millions! Billions, even!

Two Must Reads

From Kim du Toit. The first is on the Law of Unintended Consequences, as it applies to the Democrat American Communist Party's financial dreams. Read, learn, vote.

Second, a post on gated communities in Great Britain. And the reason I find this post interesting is due to the number of gated communities here in Puerto Rico.

Hell, gated communities, gated houses, bars over every window and opening, permanently locked doors on shops, you name it, the crime rate here has made people live like prisoners in their own houses, which have more iron over the windows than most prisons I've ever seen. To get into the leather shop we frequent here, you have to go through a wrought iron door, and stand in front of another door which is locked, whereupon the shop owner and see you and identify if you're carrying anything naughty, and whether or not he should let you into the shop. Other than the big chain stores, this is the norm. All doors are always locked, and the shopkeeper lets you into the store when you ring a doorbell or a buzzer. MacPhearson's Leather in Seattle was in what we considered a high crime area, and all they had was a little alarm on the door to let them know when someone walked in.

The houses have bars everywhere. Most places don't have a single opening that's not covered by bars or concrete. One house I went to had three different locks on three different doors just to get into the kitchen. We have friends who own a house a little ways from post, and every entrance into that house is made from solid steel, with security locks, with different keys for each door. And they live inside a gated community! This is how they have to deal with the crime INSIDE A GATED COMMUNITY! Their dog has bitten at least two people who tried to crawl over their back fence. In a gated community.

Now, I've told you all that so I can ask you this: What is the big common denominator between Great Britain and Puerto Rico?

Both countries have severely restrictive gun laws. As in, the ordinary Joe can't get a gun, which means that the criminals, many of whom DO have guns, can have the run of the place and do whatever the hell they want without fear of being ventilated.

Hmmmmmmmm...... Anyways, go. Read. Vote.

Adding on to Steve's post below

I seem to be doing that a lot. So sue me. One guy's post starts the wheels turning.

Here's a question for my readers: Can you identify the Palestinian Army uniform?

Of course you can't. They use Hamas and Fatah "militants" as their army. They have no uniformed military service. They're freaking TERRORISTS, for cryin' out loud. So that fact ties in with THIS fact:

Every time you read about Palestinian "civilians" being killed, you cannot think of that as a western civilizations. Because all of the militants being killed are technically "civilians". They don't wear a uniform. They don't follow the Geneva Conventions. They don't target other military forces.

They wear civilian garb. They target other civilians. They use hospitals, schools, and other bases of population as attack points.

What does this all mean? Well, because we have a biased, worthless, kool-aid guzzling media, what this means is that if the IDF kills some shithead who's attacking a disco or pizza joint, then they've killed a "civilian".

Think about that. According to the MSM, some terrorist asshat firing an AK-47 at a group of Jews waiting for a bus is technically a "civilian".

According to the MSM, some carpet-munching fuckstick who's assaulting an IDF checkpoint is a "civilian".

According to the MSM, some turbaned tumblefuck who's firing rockets into an Israeli town is a "civilian".

So when you hear about "60 civilians" being killed..... well, you can bet good money that 59 of them were carrying rifles or RPGs and attacking Israel. So, to anyone who had a brain and who lives in the real world, they're not "civilians". They are "enemy combatants", and they are perfectly legitimate targets.

Ethanol. For the children.

U.S. to Scale Back Global Food Aid Amid Soaring Prices

The prices have risen as more of the grains are being consumed by biofuel production and fast-growing markets in China and India, The Washington Post reports.

Yeah. Do I fight global warming or global hunger? Hmmmm, decisions, decisions....

Warning! Tissue Alert! Not for the emotionally weak!

Palestinians: 85 killed since Israeli operation in Gaza began

No word on how many were involved in FIRING ROCKETS INTO ISRAEL FOR WEEKS NOW.
The caption for the photo?

Emergency workers carry a wounded baby after an Israeli operation near Jebaliya on Saturday.

That's right! I said a WOUNDED BABY! Did you get the WOUNDED BABY part? Good, because I'd hate to think that you went through the rest of today completely ignorant of the fate of all the BABIES THAT THE ISRAELIS ARE TRYING TO KILL!!

Look at the poor little tyke. Covered in blood, missing limbs, screaming in agon...oh, wait.

The sources said 85 people, including civilians and children, have been
killed in the Jebaliyah area since the incursion began Wednesday

Ahhh, yes. The Sources. Sounds like something out of an episode of "Lost." You caught the part about civilians and children being killed, right? RIGHT!? Could that be because the Paleswinians have a bad habit of firing their rocket launchers from schoolyards and peoples' front lawns? Or perhaps when a 15 year old "militant" is one of the people loading the launchers, you get to call him a "child" for propaganda purposes?

Heyyyy...waaaait a minute! Isn't that that Green Helmet guy (again!)?

The Future is Now

Six more years, coming up.



Yup. I re-enlisted. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to have some fun today.

Caption Contest

I'm going to hell for this one:




"Hillary prepares to show her skills as a master debater."

Here's another one:

"I find your lack of faith disturbing..."

Iraq vs. Congress

I have to admit, this kind of made me laugh, until I realized that Congress' failure to do a damn thing worthwhile can and will affect this country negatively for quite some time.

As I see it there are 5 completed areas of legislation that have been addressed by the Iraqi Parliament. The other 13 areas are in various stages of progress, but all indications show that plans, implementation and accountability are in place to properly scale each for Iraq.

The Democratic Party coming into power in 2006 had set 6 benchmarks for themselves and have not accomplished a single one, with the first being the most important:

1) Honest Leadership and Open Government

Iraq is, apparently, doing much better with two major ethnicities and a host of minor ones, tribal governments, multiple parties, two major religious sects and a host of minor ones, and having to work their way out of decades of dictatorship and come to means to work things out according the rule of law inside their Nation.

The US Congress can't find anyone that will actually lead it in an honest fashion nor promulgate openness in appropriations, oversight, or even keep to its Oath of Office. Unlike Iraq, the US Congress cannot even pass a budget on time nor pass any major legislation with regards to US security.

It is a failure.

Yer damn skippy it's a failure. And it will continue being a failure while we have the same communists, bureaucrats, hanger-ons, parasites, and other assorted teat-suckers who have been infesting Capitol Hill for decades still sitting in a position of power.

But to get them kicked out, we have to convince the dipshits who keep voting for them that they need to be kicked out. And how can you teach someone that doesn't want to learn?

Found at Ace of Spades.

Whoa.... somebody from HOLLYWOOD said that?

Then it must be even more obvious than I thought!

In Baghdad, I spoke with Army Gen. David Petraeus about UNHCR’s need for security information and protection for its staff as they re-enter Iraq, and I am pleased that he has offered that support. General Petraeus also told me he would support new efforts to address the humanitarian crisis “to the maximum extent possible”—which leaves me hopeful that more progress can be made.

My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis.

Today’s humanitarian crisis in Iraq—and the potential consequences for our national security—are great. Can the United States afford to gamble that 4 million or more poor and displaced people, in the heart of Middle East, won’t explode in violent desperation, sending the whole region into further disorder?

What we cannot afford, in my view, is to squander the progress that has been made.

As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible.

Well, let's hope SOMEONE hears it other than the choir.

Passing it on

A history lesson, seen at BabyTrollBlog, from Mostly Cajun. History is to be learned from, otherwise we keep making the same mistakes over and over. So let's learn a little something and see if we can't make the same mistakes twice.

SOME OF YOU ARE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT NEARLY EVERY FAMILY IN AMERICA WAS GROSSLY AFFECTED BY WW II. MOST OF YOU DON’T REMEMBER THE RATIONING OF MEAT, SHOES, GASOLINE, AND SUGAR. NO TIRES FOR OUR AUTOMOBILES, AND A SPEED LIMIT OF 35 MILES AN HOUR ON THE ROAD, NOT TO MENTION, NO NEW AUTOMOBILES. READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT HOW WE WOULD REACT TO BEING TAKEN OVER BY FOREIGNERS IN 2008.

Sixty-four years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat. The Nazis had sunk more than 400 British ships in their convoys between England and America taking food and war materials.

At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, who had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing; we had few allies.

France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned itself with its German occupiers, Germany was certainly not an ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia.

Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United States over our northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia and Europe.

America’s only allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was about it. All of Europe, from Norway to Italy (except Russia in the East) was already under the Nazi heel.

The US was certainly not prepared for war. The U.S. had drastically downgraded most of its military forces after WWI because of the depression, so that at the outbreak of WWII, Army units were training with broomsticks because they didn’t have guns, and cars with “tank” painted on the doors because they didn’t have real tanks. A huge chunk of our Navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor. Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England (that was actually the property of Belgium) given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact).

Actually, Belgium surrendered after one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day just to prove they could. Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering losses and the near decimation of its Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later. Hitler first turned his attention to Russia in the late summer of 1940, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse.

Ironically, Russia saved American’s butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.

Russia lost something like 24,000,000 people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Leningrad alone . . . 99% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than 1,000,000 soldiers.

Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war effort against the Brits, then America. If that had happened, the Nazis could have won the war.

All of this has been brought out to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. Now, we find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants, and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world.

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in kaffiyehs - they believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world. All who do not bow to their will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra and their goal. There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East - for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not yet known which side will win, - the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies.

The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC - not an OPEC dominated by the educated, more rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis. Do you want gas in your car? Do you want heating oil next winter? Do you want the dollar to be worth anything? You had better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away. A moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We can’t do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle at a time and place of our choosing . . . in Iraq, not in New York, not in London, or Paris or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we have done two important things:

First we deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam was a terrorist! Saddam was a weapon of mass destruction, responsible for the deaths of probably more than 1,000,000 Iraqis and
2,000,000 Iranians.

Second we created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad people, and the ones we get there we won’t have to get here. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.

WWII, the war with the Japanese and German Nazis, really began with a “whimper” in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for 14 years before the U.S. joined it. It officially ended in 1945 - a 17-year war - and was followed by another decade of U.S. occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again . . . a
27-year war.

WW II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year’s GDP - adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars. WW II cost America more than 400,000 soldiers killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

The cost of not fighting and winning WW II would have been unimaginably greater - a world dominated by Japanese Imperialism and German Nazism.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the United States about $160,000,000,000, which is roughly what the 9/11 terrorist attack cost New York. It has also cost about 3,000 American lives, which is roughly equivalent to lives that the Jihad killed (within the United States) in the 9/11 terrorist attack.

This is not a 60 Minutes TV show, or a two-hour movie in which everything comes out okay. The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly. It always has been, and probably always will be.

The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the U.S. can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an ally, like England, in the Middle East, a platform from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates to conquer the world.

The Iraq War is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war. Now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons . . . unless somebody prevents them from getting them.

We have four options:

1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran’s progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).

3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.

4. Or, we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and possibly most of the rest of Europe. It will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.

If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

The history of the world is the history of civilization clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilizations should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-peace militants kill them.

Remember, perspective is everything, and America’s schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.

The Cold War lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989; 42 years!

Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany!

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten- year occupation, and the U.S. still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50,000,000 people, maybe more than
100,000,000 people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The U.S. has taken more than 3,000 killed in action in Iraq. The U.S. took more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism.

In WWII the U.S. averaged 2,000 KIA a week - for four years. Most of the individual battles of WW II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

The stakes are at least as high. . . a world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).

It’s difficult to understand why the average American does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis.

“Peace activists” always seem to demonstrate here in America, where it’s safe. Why don’t we see peace activists demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places that really need peace activism the most? I’ll tell you why! They would be killed!

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity.

Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy!

Please consider passing along copies of this to students in high school, college and university as it contains information about the American past that is very meaningful TODAY — history about America that very likely is completely unknown by them (and their instructors, too). By being denied the facts and truth of our history, they are at a decided disadvantage when it comes to reasoning and thinking through the issues of today. They are prime targets for misinformation campaigns beamed at enlisting them in causes and beliefs that are special-interest agenda driven.

Raymond S. Kraft is a writer and lawyer living in Northern California.

Orange Ribbons for Al-Qaeda

Remember the Hollywood smear:

Hollywood smears the troops again

First clip is the troops, second clip is from five minutes later, in which the winner of Best Documentary — a film about American soldiers beating a man to death in Afghanistan, natch — pays his own little tribute. -- AllahPundit

Well now it turns out

Hollywood And The Trendy New “Terrorist” Ribbon

The hot fashion accessory [at Sunday’s Oscar ceremony] was apparently orange ribbons and bracelets in solidarity with terrorist suspects in Guantanamo...
...
The Hollywood Liberal wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a red, white, and blue ribbon, which makes one wonder why they had our troops in Iraq present an Oscar the other night when their hearts are really with those poor sexist, racist, homophobic, theocrats who wear orange jumpsuits.

See Dubya notes

Record, film industry still backing antiwar horse (or, maybe just beating its corpse)

Nope... they are not kidding...
Gateway Pundit notes

ACLU Behind Orange Gitmo Lapel Ribbons At Oscars

Allison Walker, the entertainment industry liaison for the ACLU, which sponsors the Close Guantanamo campaign and distributes the ribbons. Walker is a former talent agent who once worked at William Morris.

I read about a bunch of gay activists that gleefully went to New York to march in solidarity with their oppressed Palestinian-Arab "brothers" and got the sh*t beat out of them when those same "brothers" realized they were a bunch of "gay activists". I am reminded of that because it illustrates why I despise the LibRules. They're hypocritical advocacy for preferential treatment for their special victim classes boils down to anyone who isn't a straight white-male is "oppressed" and deserving of tax-payer subsidies.

Well... Males are less then 1/2 the population, Whites are about 3/4, and straights are about 98-99%... so do the math. Straight White Males are only 1/3 of the population and that makes us a true minority.

If we oppressed straight white males own everything maybe we're just better then you?

Now... consider what happens if Islam wins out and the USA converts to Sha'aria law tomorrow? For a member of the "establishment" like myself I just put a bag over the wife's head, maybe pick up 2-3 additional underage "wives", go through the motions at the local Mosque with my fellow misogynists and studiously look the other way as all the Gay men, Lesbian women, academics, artists and rape victims are rounded up and stoned to death.

The Quran doesn't have a "useful idiot" exception for orange ribbons.

You can play this game at home... simply compare the "special victim classes" demand to the actual consequences of that Leftist's successful indulgent support of the Jihadists, either by active support, selective outrage or apathetic acceptance.

Lets start with "Gay Marriage", that statistics demonstrate homosexuals don't even want, which would result in death by hanging.

Or how about abortion? Oops... sorry... you'll be buried up to your neck and stoned until you bleed to death out your eyes.

Universal Health Care? Nope... sorry... if you examine the economically self-crippled Islamic economies you'll notice they can't steal from the tax-payers for any social services at all.

That's because all of the state's funds, however little that is, will be dedicated to expansion of the military.

Expect to see drilling anywhere the state cares to throw up a drilling rig too...

Freedom of Speech goes out the window along with academic freedom as every school is converted to study of the only book not worth burning, the Quran.

How much "Separation of Church and State" is there in an Islamic theocracy? Ah... not so much.

But don't complain to me... unless you want to be denounced as an apostate and hanged... with an orange rope.

Cross Posted at DANEgerus

WFB Jr., 1925-2008

William F. Buckley Jr. has passed on.

I can't say that I agree with the direction NR has taken lately, WFB had an effect on American politics that the most people can only dream of. It's safe to say that much of the modern conservative movement owes it's existence to WFB.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Buckley.

And by the way

The snowfall at my parents' house reached record levels in January. They started keeping records in Cd'A around1885 or so. That means that ever since they started keeping records, they've NEVER had as much snow on the ground as they did this winter.

Now, to keep things in perspective, back in 1993 we had so much snow that we had to shovel it off the roof to keep the house from collapsing. We used a ladder to get onto the roof. But by the time we were done, we walked off the roof, onto the piled snow, walked down the staircase we cut into that piled snow, and through the tunnel we had to dig to get to the front door.

They have more snow than that this year.

Seems like quite a bit of the globe is experiencing the same thing. But I've got $10 riding on the fact that someone will blame it on global warming.

DANE, you should have cross-posted this one

Bashing Manliness - anti-Heinlein writers. People know that I'm a big fan of Heinlein, especially his early works. As he got older, his science-fiction drifted more into "fiction" than "science", but still, he's a good writer. My signature line from my email is a Heinlein quote:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Notice that nowhere in that quote does he say that a man should whine, cry, bitch and moan until the government comes to pay money out to some jack-ass who couldn't take care of himself if he wanted to. Now, I'm not going to insist that everyone be able to conn a ship, but the spirit of the quote is that you should be able to handle things YOURSELF, whether it's clearing a clogged drain or dealing with any of the various hardships that always crop up in life. There are two kinds of people in life - those who see the hardship and deal with it in some form or another, and those who see the hardship and bitch until someone else takes care of it for them. The former are conservatives. The latter are "liberals". The former either deal with the problem, or in the case of the clogged drain they call a plumber, pay the guy, and go on with their lives. The latter demand that someone else deal with their problems because they're either too damn lazy, too damn pathetic, and too damn chickenshit to deal with it themselves.

Think I'm kidding? Then why do so many liberals demand that the government, i.e. SOMEONE ELSE, take care of their responsibilities?

Oh, and just because the DANE cross-posts here every now and then is no excuse for you not to visit his website daily. I do. Bookmark that sucker.

Math? We don't need no steenkeen Math!

But if you're a math type person, I suggest you check this out.

I must admit - I did OK in algebra. Loved Geometry. Got to advanced algebra and my eyes started crossing. Maybe it was the fact that I couldn't see any real-world applications for it that I would use. I mean, geometry, yeah, I use that all the time, even today. But you got into some of the more abstract rules and formulas, and unless I could see a way to use it my my life, my brain just didn't accept it. Maybe it was the teacher, maybe it was just the way my brain works.

I'll still give it a whirl. What the hell, let's see if I can still remember half the crap I've learned from decades ago.

Oh, Kee-RIST!

Folks, it can be boiled down into one sentence:

It's not how much money you have, it's what you do with the money you have. Compare and contrast:

A photo gallery of American Vagabonds. Notice the tattoos. Notice the piercings. I can tell you from experience that both can be expensive to get done. A decent sized tattoo can cost upwards of $200 or more. Hell, just getting the color done on my wife's armband was $250. And that was JUST TO PUT COLOR INTO AN OUTLINE!

My tattoos cost quite a bit as well. It was money that I chose to spend, but it was rather expensive. When you pick and choose a tattoo artist, you tend to put out a large amount of cash. Why? Well, because I didn't want any back-ally jackass fucking up something that was going to be in my skin for the rest of my life. I wanted to make damn sure that when it was done, it was done right. You only get one chance at it. So I found the best damn artist that I could. But the best artists cost money. But even a back-ally jackass costs money. So a vagabond wandering around with large tattoos on their arms are not going to get much sympathy from me. Piercings can be more expensive, depending on what you get pierced.

There's at least one picture of a guy toking pot out of a soda can. At least, I think it's pot, but it could be just about anything. Hmmmmmmm..... illegal drugs aren't exactly the cheapest thing around, are they?

Look at all the people smoking cigarettes. Even the el cheapo crap sticks are running at around $2 a pack depending on what state you live in. But still... suppose you never left a state where the smokes are cheap. Say, $1 a pack for the cheap ones. That's still $30 a month.

There's one picture of bottles of booze. Now, let's say that they're making their own booze. You still have to buy the grain, you still have to have a still, you still need to buy supplies. That's money, folks.

They want me to feel sorry for them? Hell no.

Now the contrast. You've probably seen this already, but if you haven't, let me quote a bit for you:

Alone on a dark gritty street, Adam Shepard searched for a homeless shelter. He had a gym bag, $25, and little else. A former college athlete with a bachelor's degree, Mr. Shepard had left a comfortable life with supportive parents in Raleigh, N.C. Now he was an outsider on the wrong side of the tracks in Charles­ton, S.C.

But Shepard's descent into poverty in the summer of 2006 was no accident. Shortly after graduating from Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass., he intentionally left his parents' home to test the vivacity of the American Dream. His goal: to have a furnished apartment, a car, and $2,500 in savings within a year.

To make his quest even more challenging, he decided not to use any of his previous contacts or mention his education.

During his first 70 days in Charleston, Shepard lived in a shelter and received food stamps. He also made new friends, finding work as a day laborer, which led to a steady job with a moving company.

Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000.

It ain't what you have, it's how you use it. A bunch of drugged out vagabonds with tats, piercings, and cabinet full of booze just makes me scoff. Folks, THEY CHOOSE TO LIVE THAT WAY. I've been flat ass broke before. You look at what you're bringing in. And you look at the bills you have to pay. You then pay the bills with what you have. Does it suck? Yeah, it does, but I made it work, on a MINIMUM WAGE JOB. So what does this mean?

Well, you don't go out and buy drugs. Drugs just eat up your money and your brain.

You don't go out and buy a new car. I've never owned a new car. And guess what? I haven't had to pay $20,000+ to drive around either.

You don't go out and buy the biggest damn TV you can find. Until we found a kick ass deal on a 27" TV, we just grabbed what we could from thrift shops and garage sales. So we don't have the newest TV. So what? We don't have thousands in debt!

If you're struggling to pay the bills, you do NOT go out and get tattoos, piercings, or other body modifications that eat up cash. I got my tats when I could afford them. As in, I had disposable income. NOT when I was deciding what bargain meat to buy for dinner.

If you're struggling to pay the bills, you don't get a bottle of booze.

You make your choices, and you live with them. Period, end of story. The people in those pictures choose to live the way they do. And I bet if you tried to get them to get a real job and pay real bills, they'd bitch and complain to beat the band. They don't want the responsibility. Well, fine and dandy, but that is THEIR CHOICE. And I do not have ANY RESPONSIBILITY to support them in their choice of lifestyle.

They could improve their life if they wanted to. But they don't.

It's rather hard to type right now

There's a flag football league on post that I'm a part of. I play center on offense and linebacker on defense. The league was put on hold for a bit because of a contract dispute between the post and the refs. Basically, the refs weren't getting paid at all, so they had a pretty damn good reason to be upset.

Anyways, the contract got taken care of, and we're playing catch-up games so that we can get into the playoffs. So my team had a double-header last night.

I told you all that so I can tell you this:

Sometime during the first game, I jammed my thumb blocking a defender. Sometime during the second game I did it again, only harder. I woke up this morning, tried to grab a cup of water, and damn near cried. My thumb hurts like a bastard. It's not broken. I did a check on it, moved it, felt the joint, and it's just jammed real bad. But guess what finger I use to hit the spacebar?

Yep. My right thumb. So it hurts to type right now. But don't worry, I'll still try to post for my ten regular readers. Hell, after taking a weekend off, I can work through the pain for y'all! Heh. In the meantime, I'll going to get caught up on everything I missed this weekend. When your only connection to the world is through your modem, it sucks to have it go out suddenly. Since I don't have cable or a dish, my only way to get news is online. So gimme a while to see what I missed.

Oh, and we won both games, by the skin of our teeth, and we're now in the playoffs. But if we play that shitty against the other teams, we're going to lose our asses.

Two things fixed

As you can see, I got my modem fixed. So I'm back on the intarwebs.

I also got the motorcycle running. I'm stoked. Took it for a ride last night when I got home from work. Damn, I missed riding. I'll be doing a lot more of it in the future.

Newsweek Jumps The Shark for Good

Has Newsweek given up all pretense of objectivity whatsoever? Guess who is getting loving, front-page caresses from Newsweak?

None other than Michelle "I can finally be proud of my country" Obama. The last female/politician to get such the dedicated front page spotlight? Hillary Clinton. Her tag line? "I Finally Found My Voice."

So what is Michelle's trademark? "Barak's Rock" and "I Can Only Be Who I Can Be." {{The preceeding must be stated while looking off-camera, upwards at a roughly 30 degree angle, a wistfully far way, yet confident and noble look in your eyes.}}

Here's a juicy quote:

If his {Barak's} loftiness can set him apart from the crowd, her bluntness draws them in. Standing up before large audiences wasn't easy at first. "I've never participated at this level in any of his campaigns," she told NEWSWEEK last week. "I have usually chosen to just appear when necessary."

Let there be no doubt. She is not campaigning FOR Barak, she's campaigning WITH him. And apparently, her "bluntness" is what "draws people in." This only solidifies the growing perception that, even moreso than will Billary, Michelle and Barak will be a package deal, as she works to "keep him real" and "not forget what we are fighting for." Without her around, it's beginning to sound like ol' Barry would be prone to drift into indirection, suffer numerous gaffes or get too full of himself. What a gal!

It's almost as if Michelle Obama is being billed as Barak's keeper. His handler. She keeps him centered and on track. {{sniff, dab}} Or, translated another way: she's running the show. I almost have to ask who exactly we'll be voting for on election day if "he" get's the nomination?

We haven't seen such a kid-gloves, soft-coated approach to "journalism" since...since...well, since Bill Clinton was in office.

Michelle Obama makes endearingly "blunt" comments, manages to piss-off or otherwise alienate a large chunk of the American voting populace...and she gets the front page of Newsweek. Nice.

Oh, and check the header graphic at the top: "The End of The Conservative Age."

Newsweak has clearly decided who is going to win the culture war, and thrown its unabashed support in that direction.

Internet out

My modem bit the big one late Friday night. I'm writing this from a friend's house right now. I should have the new modem up and running by tomorrow night, but that's not a guarantee. So, if I don't post, you know why.

See you when I'm back online.