Quotes

"Fascism and communism both promise "social welfare," "social justice," and "fairness" to justify authoritarian means and extensive arbitrary and discretionary governmental powers." - F. A. Hayek"

"Life is a Bungling process and in no way educational." in James M. Cain

Jean Giraudoux who first said, “Only the mediocre are always at their best.”

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. Sir Winston Churchill

"summum ius summa iniuria" ("More laws, more injustice.") Cicero

As Christopher Hitchens once put it, “The essence of tyranny is not iron law; it is capricious law.”

"Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." Ronald Reagan

"Law is where you buy it." Raymond Chandler

"Why did God make so many damn fools and Democrats?" Clarence Day

"If I feel like feeding squirrels to the nuts, this is the place for it." - Cluny Brown

"Oh, pshaw! When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have." Owen Wister "The Virginian"

Oscar Wilde said about the death scene in Little Nell, you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.

Thomas More's definition of government as "a conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of a commonwealth.” ~ Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples

“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.” ~ Jonathon Swift

Monday, February 28, 2011

Farrakhan: Mideast uprisings will come to US - But in Just the Opposite of the Way He Hopes!

L. Ron Farrakhan yadda yadda ...
Farrakhan: Mideast uprisings will come to US - Chicago Breaking News

By Becky Schlikerman, February 28, 2011

Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan predicted on Sunday that America faces imminent uprisings that mirror those in the Middle East.

“What you are looking at in Tunisia, in Egypt … Libya, in Bahrain … what you see happening there … you’d better prepare because it will be coming to your door,” Farrakhan said in a booming voice, thousands of followers cheering in his wake.

Farrakhan also called on President Barack Obama to allow protesters to march, urging the president not to attack innocent people when they do.

The controversial minster spoke to a packed house at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont as part of the 81st annual celebration of Saviours' Day, which marks the birth of the faith’s founder, W. Fard Muhammad.

The keynote address, titled “God will send saviours,” capped a weekend of workshops focused on health, preparing for natural disasters and unidentified flying objects. The Nation of Islam believes in a UFO called “the wheel” or “the Mother Plane.”

Farrakhan has described a 1985 religious experience in which he ascended into a flying saucer and heard the voice of Elijah Muhammad predicting historical events that came to pass.

For about four hours, Farrakhan spoke and jumped from topic to topic, citing religious texts.
He praised Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Farrakhan extolled the virtues of Scientology and its auditing process, which is considered spiritual counseling by its members.

“L. Ron Hubbard is so exceedingly valuable to every Caucasian person on this earth,” Farrakhan said.

“… L. Ron Hubbard himself was and is trying to civilize white people and make them better human beings and take away from them their reactive minds … Mr. Hubbard recognized that his people have to be civilized,” Farrakhan said to a cheering crowd.

bschlikerman@tribune.com

Possibly the best thing to happen would be a Shutdown - Dems get slightly more blame than GOP in gov’t shutdown


Judge Andrew Napolitano posed that if the Federal Government Shuts Down, we can find out how much government is really just so much waste and how little of it essential, Brilliant!
Poll: Dems get slightly more blame than GOP in gov’t shutdown « Hot Air

Everyone is watched in China, all the time! China protest call smothered in police blanket

The dirty secret is that so are we, most of the time, and in England, almost all the time. Our surveillance is just more electronic.China protest call smothered in police blanket - Yahoo! News

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – An online call for anti-government protests across China on Sunday instead brought an emphatic show of force by police determined to deter any buds of the kind of unrest that has shaken the Middle East.

Lines of police checked passers-by and warned away foreign photo journalists in downtown Beijing and Shanghai after a U.S.-based Chinese website spread calls for Chinese people to emulate the "Jasmine Revolution" sweeping the Middle East and stage gatherings in support of democratic change.

Officials from China's ruling Communist Party have dismissed the idea that they could be hit by protests like those that have rippled across the Middle East.

But a rash of detentions and censorship of online discussion of the Middle East have shown that Beijing is deeply nervous about any signs of opposition to its one-party rule.

What started as a call for protest has instead become an opportunity for the Chinese government to brandish the big and sophisticated security forces funded by rapid economic growth.

In Shanghai, police bundled away at least seven men, one of whom had been taking photos. Reuters TV filmed several policemen forcing a man in a brown jacket into aPublic Security Bureau van, while other police held up an umbrella to block the view.

In Beijing, uniformed police were joined by plainclothes officers who kept shoppers and journalists moving. Men in sanitation uniforms with armbands that said "Public Security Volunteer" used brooms to sweep pedestrians along.

[read more at above link]

Gov. Walker: compromise with unions is to allow more out of control spending

Government Union employees and their democrat supporters are not workers, they are placeholder employees and forced union dues parasites. Go into a municipal building, a county office, or a federal office. Once you get past the metal detectors, see how long it takes to get help if you require them to get out of their chair.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Arab uprisings: Obama's response was dithering and pathetic.

Arab uprisings: Obama's response was dithering and pathetic. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

Is Barack Obama Secretly Swiss?

The administration's pathetic, dithering response to the Arab uprisings has been both cynical and naive.

A Trip through "It's a Small, Small World After All" The Tunnel of Feel Good Nightmares -Andrew Klavan: Multiculturalism Explained

YouTube - Andrew Klavan: Multiculturalism Explained

Personal protection is our birthright, Utah draws thousands gun permit

Gun rights of the individual do not belong in the hands of the bureaucracy. Self protection is the right of everyone!
Government's stupidity (what a shock?) take away the right of protection in the places where personal protection is needed most! Go to a city hall, municipal, building, county office, State and Federal Buildings and Courthouses. You are subjected to airport like metal detection and pat down for the protection of the 'more than equal' government employees. The irony is that everyone is more vulnerable since they have been disarmed. Why are we not surprised when there are shootings that take place inside these hollowed halls because some specially treated government person was able to smuggle in a gun with everyone else made defenceless. The same is even more true in school, where there is an open invitation to psychopathic cowards to kill the unprotected en mass!
Utah draws thousands for no-shooting-required gun permit | Reuters

(Reuters) - Texans seeking concealed handgun licenses are increasingly turning to Utah, a state that does not require actually shooting a gun to get a permit.

"Once the word got out, everybody was doing it," said Texas state Rep. Lon Burnam.

From 2009 to 2010 the number of Utah permits issued to Texans more than doubled to 5,678 from 2,173, according to Utah's Bureau of Criminal Identification. Of the 66,371 permits Utah issued last year, more than 70 percent went to out-of-staters, bureau figures show. All this was while the overall number of concealed licenses issued in Utah declined.

Utah requires only four hours of training and no shooting, while Texas requires 10 hours, including firing a gun on a shooting range. The Utah fee is $65, compared to $140 in Texas. And it's possible to get a Utah permit without ever setting foot in that state.

"It's easier," said Carrie Kroll of the Texas Pediatric Society, who got a Utah permit in advance of the Texas legislative session that began in January. "I know just enough to understand what I don't know."

The Utah course teaches how to safely load, unload, store and carry a firearm, and explains Utah and federal laws on use of force by private citizens. Participants learn basic gun safety, such as treating all firearms as if they are loaded, and they learn about the parts of a gun, different types of ammunition and various shooting positions.

Utah applicants do not have to take a test while applicants to the Texas program do.

[more at abpve link]

Close the UN - Has Anyone Told Ambassador Rice There’s a Crisis In Libya?

The Rosett Report » Has Anyone Told Ambassador Rice There’s a Crisis In Libya?
February 25, 2011 - 9:57 pm - by Claudia Rosett
excepts-

... In Geneva, the Human Rights Council interrupted its usual anti-Israel programming to hold its own emergency session on Friday, and engage in the novel activity of demanding the suspension of Libya from its ranks and a probe into Gaddafi’s abuses in Libya. Even Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon cut short a UN public relations recruiting trip to Hollywood early this week, in order to phone Gaddafi and dash back to New York.

Where’s Susan Rice, the cabinet rank ambassador of the free world’s superpower? On the day Hosni Mubarak stepped down as dictator of Egypt, Feb. 11, she was visiting Oregon to give a talk on “Why America Needs the United Nations.” This week, as Libyans escalated their uprising against more than 41 years of Gaddafi’s totalitarian, terror-based reign, Rice sent her deputy to an emergency Security Council meeting on Libya on Tuesday, and took off for a two-day meeting in Cape Town, South Africa.

What was so urgent about this this meeting in Cape Town? Did it have anything to do with the droves of Libyan diplomats, from New York to Geneva to Cairo, now renouncing the Gaddafi regime? Did it have anything to do with the warning of Libya’s deputy ambassador to the UN that Gaddafi, with his threats of house-to-house assaults, was launching a genocide against Libyans who defied him? Did it have anything to do with mass rebellion roiling North Africa and the Middle East, and sending tremors as far as China and North Korea?
insolvency. These are the symbols of the Obama presidency.


Thursday, February 24, 2011

Scam Sam-Pure Cronyism - New Soros investment fund, profiting off Obama's 'green energy' push, hires top Obama energy aide

Carbon Credits and the Anthropogenic Global Warming Scam. Big bucks are waiting to be made by the connected few who can force legeslation based on 'air.'

New Soros investment fund, profiting off Obama's 'green energy' push, hires top Obama energy aide | Timothy P. Carney | Beltway Confidential | Washington Examine
Here is the full story-

George Soros -- whom we're always told is not serving his own economic interests at all by promoting liberal politicians and big-government policies -- is launching a new investment fund that plans to profit off of the "green energy" boom, which is entirely dependent on government subsidies supported by the groups Soros funds.

As the press release puts it, this fund will "leverage technology and business model innovation to improve energy efficiency, reduce waste and emissions, harness renewable energy, and more efficiently use natural resources, among other applications." As Soros puts it in the same release: “Developing alternative sources of energy and achieving greater energy efficiency is both a significant global investment opportunity and an environmental imperative.” Cadie Thompson at CNBC's NetNet flagged this.

So, yeah. The big-government policies advanced by the liberal outfits he funds -- like Center for American Progress -- will enrich the companies in which Soros is investing.

But this story gets better.

The press release casually mentions whom Soros is hiring to run this new fund: Cathy Zoi. As Cadie Thompson at CNBC's NetNet (edited by my brother John Carney), puts it,

Zoi was Barack Obama's "Acting Under Secretary for Energy and Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy." An Al Gore acolyte, Zoi was Obama's point-woman on subsidizing green tech. Now she's going to work for George Soros to profit off of subsidized green tech.

If you remember Zoi's name, it's because of another green-tech conflict of interest: Zoi's husband is an executive at a window company, Serious Windows, which the White House regularly held up as a "poster child of green industry."

The Freedom Foundation of Minnesota put it this way:

"Ms. Zoi is married to Robin Roy, a top executive at Serious Materials, a privately held manufacturer of 'sustainable green building materials' located in California. On the Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure submitted by Ms. Zoi to the White House Ethics office as part of her confirmation, Ms. Zoi disclosed ownership with her spouse of 120,000 vested and unvested stock options in Serious Materials, a company her office regulates and that she may profit from."

Oh yeah, Serious Materials pocketed federal stimulus money, too.
But as NetNet's Thompson puts it:
But we can put all that behind us, because now Zoi has left the Obama Administration and will go back to work making an honest living in the private sector, where she can put all the knowledge she gained from working for the Department of Energy to work for the private equity firms. Thata girl Zoi!
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/02/new-soros-hedge-fun-profiting-obamas-green-energy-push-hires-top-#ixzz1EvfD8Y3E


This State has more lawyers per capita and the least understanding of the 2nd Amendment - Christie on New Jersey’s Gun Laws

Christie on New Jersey’s Gun Laws - By Robert VerBruggen - The Corner - National Review Online
The reason is an early-2008 change to a law called the Graves Act. The new policy mandated a three-year sentence for anyone caught with an illegal gun — no matter how obscure the technicality or how innocent the mistake that made it illegal. I spoke with several members of the New Jersey legislature — Republicans and Democrats — who were interested in reforming the law, but they were divided as to whether their liberal colleagues would cooperate. ...

His response was not encouraging: “No. Not at all. In fact, I think that Democrats — if they had a Democratic governor, there would be even more of these put on the books. They tried to in [former governor Jon] Corzine’s last year [in office], and they got caught up in the legislature trying to do even more.”

Oklahoma police captain reassigned for refusing to attend mosque event

More unnecessary government feel-good garbage.
Oklahoma police captain reassigned for refusing to attend mosque event « Creeping Sharia

A police captain in Tulsa, Oklahoma, will file a lawsuit against the city police department today because it reassigned him after he refused to order his subordinates to attend an event at the city’s mosque on March 4.

Paul Fields, a 41-year-old veteran who joined the force in 1995, refused to order officers under his command to attend the mosque’s Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, he says, because it violated his First Amendment rights of association and religion and departmental policy.

“We want to make it very clear, it’s not related just because it’s a mosque[; that] hasn’t anything to do with his ultimate decision,” Scott Wood, Fields’ attorney, told Tulsa’s NewsOn6.com. “It has to do with the intersection of religious rights of an individual to not associate with other people if they choose not to.”

"I take exception with requiring officers to attend this event. Past invitations to attend religious/non-religious institutions for similar purposes have always been voluntary."

Gaddafi: Barakeh Obama is friend - Talks like Tarzan acts like Cheeta

Gaddafi is still too ugly to show a picture.
This may be a possible explanation for the long silence and no direct naming of the Loony Libyan Colonel by Obama.
Gaddafi: Barakeh Obama is friend - Israel News, Ynetnews

Libyan leader praises US president: 'He is of Muslim descent, his policy should be supported, as he now leans towards peace'

Roee Nahmias

Published: 04.17.10, 15:15 / Israel News

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi considers the US president a blessing to the Muslim world. In a speech published in London-based al-Hayat newspaper on Saturday, Gaddafi praised Barack Obama, called him a "friend" and said there is no longer any dispute between his country and the US.

Speaking in the Libyan city of Sirt at an event marking the 24th anniversary of an American attack on Libya, he said, "At the time, we were the target of the American cannon, the American navy challenged us in the gulf of Sirt and attacked us all along Libya's shores. America tested Libya, and the Libyan people resisted the large country, but today, thank God, the difference is great."
[read more at the above link]

read more-
Is This Why Obama Is Silent As Gaddafi Massacres His People?

"Blast" from the past-

Gaddafi: Palestinians should have nukes

Libyan leader says Arab nations and 'even the Palestinians' should be allowed nuclear weapons as long as Israel's nuclear ambitions are tolerated. He adds he would oppose Iran acquiring nuclear weapons if it acknowledges such a goal.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Government Workers Are America’s New Elite - But Do Not Call Them "Workers," They are just Employees!

Nothing is produced by them except paper and headaches.
Government Workers Are America’s New Elite | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty
This is a great comprehensive article that is pertinent today.

Qaddafi Has Two Choices

No Photo now, he's too ugly!
Qaddafi Has Two Choices - By David Pryce-Jones - David Calling - National Review Online
Excerpts - For years you have been enjoying doing whatever you like with the total wealth of the country, stashing it away by buying large share-holdings in Italian and German companies. Billions and billions more dollars are available in the oil reserves. Western oil companies queue up to give you this unearned wealth and the power to do mischief that goes with it.

There is nobody and nothing that counts in the country except you and your sons. In fact it isn’t really a country at all, just a bunch of tribes that you have been careful to leave disorganized and stuck in the old ways.

You have interfered successfully abroad by supporting Irish terrorists, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and other African dictators — and killed Westerners by bombing planes and nightclubs. The United States has accepted blood money for American citizens you murdered. Sen. John McCain called you “an interesting man” and Tony Blair is happy to give you multiple embraces and photo-ops. The United Nations elected your Libya to the Human Rights Council.

Whatever you do, then, has never had any bad consequences for you. ...

Nobody knows how many hundreds, perhaps thousands, have already been gunned down in Libya, or how many more will be. Once you have shown that you are capable of killing 1,200 men in prison, you are a committed criminal and will certainly go as deep into further crime as you think fit.

Speaking for myself now, I think that Qaddafi is unlikely to slip out of the country like other Arab dictators. It is a case of kill or be killed. Whatever happens, the harm he has done Libya will extend. Either he reasserts himself through superior violence and punishes everyone he suspects of being behind the uprising, or he is himself somehow left for dead. In the latter case, there is no successor, no institution to assume the role of governance, and the horrors of anarchy are the sole prospect.


Harry Reid: 'The time has come for us to outlaw prostitution' - What, No Freebies Harry!?

Ever notice how the major press ignores the fact that Harry Reid is a Mormon and makes a big deal of it with Romney? How about polygamy for Muslim's (and Mormon's) Harry?

Harry Reid: 'The time has come for us to outlaw prostitution' - Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011 | 9:45 a.m. - Las Vegas Sun

CARSON CITY — Sen. Harry Reid on Tuesday called for “an adult conversation” about prostitution in Nevada, saying it is an impediment to economic development because it discourages businesses from moving here.

“Nevada needs to be known as the first place for innovation and investment – not as the last place where prostitution is still legal,” he said in a speech to the Nevada Legislature.

Reid told the assembled lawmakers that he met recently with a group of business leaders who run data centers for technology companies. They visited Storey County in search of a new location for their businesses but “one of the businessmen in that meeting told me he simply couldn’t believe that one of the biggest businesses in the county he was considering for his new home has legal prostitution.”

He said he has talked to families who “don’t want their children to look out of a school bus and see a brothel.”

"We should do everything we can to make sure the world holds Nevada in the same high regard you and I do," Reid continued. "If we want to attract business to Nevada that puts people back to work, the time has come for us to outlaw prostitution."

The industry had been warned that Reid would call for an end to legalized prostitution, which is allowed only in the state's rural counties.

Dennis Hof, a flamboyant brothel owner, arrived at the Legislature about 90 minutes before Reid was scheduled to speak. Hof was accompanied by eight working girls from his brothel outside Carson City.

"Harry Reid will have to pry the cat house keys from my cold dead hands," he told the media.

Legislative leaders were not pleased at the prospect of the leading Democrat in the U.S. Senate floating legalized prostitution as a key issue for them to confront. Some questioned the timing of his call, coming as the state grapples with a massive budget deficit and record unemployment.

If Reid believes prostitution gives Nevada enough of a black eye that business won’t relocate here, some wondered, why then would he create a circus-like spectacle by mentioning the topic and attracting national attention to it.

I just like the Photo (and Apple Too) Attack of the Minis - Cringely on technology


I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Attack of the Minis - Cringely on technology

[photo from The-Italian-Job}

Nothing Like Lies and Faith to Engender Deadly Fanaticism - 31 Muslims convicted for setting train fire that killed 59 Hindus

Atomic Missiles face each other over Kashmir. If it wasn't Kashmir, it would be over mountain passes or waterways or a fencepost or someone sleeping with their feet the wrong way. There is a new form of global warming that is upwelling from the equatorial regions of the Asia and Africa. This presages the return to Dark Ages that could bring a plague of death beyond any imagination. And death holds no fear for absolute fanatics.

31 Muslims convicted for setting train fire that killed 59 Hindus « Creeping Sharia

Religion of peace?

via 31 convicted in deadly Godhra train fire that sparked fatal anti-Muslim riots in India.

NEW DELHI – An Indian court in the western state of Gujarat has found 31 Muslims guilty of setting fire to a train coach nine years ago, killing 59 Hindu passengers in an incident that sparked some of the worst religious violence in India in recent years.

The verdict was delivered inside the jail by Judge P.R. Patel who charged the men with murder and criminal conspiracy in the plot to kill the Hindu activists. The judge acquitted 63 others accused in the case.

Sentences are scheduled to be announced Friday.

The defendants bought gas, cut into the vestibule to pour it inside and torched the train, said J.M. Panchal, the public prosecutor in the case.

The Sabarmati Express train was carrying Hindu activists who were returning from a pilgrimage. Police had accused the Muslim mob of executing a well conceived plan in the town of Godhra on Feb. 27, 2002.

Read it all. India has been on the front line for a very long time.

Caught Flat-Footed - THE POST-WESTERN MIDDLE EAST

SteynOnline - THE POST-WESTERN MIDDLE EAST
Steyn on the World
WEDNESDAY, 23 FEBRUARY 2011
excerpts-

Listening to lifelong regime toadies belatedly call for the seizure of Mubarak's assets or calibrate the precise moment when it's safe to demand the overthrow of the strongman you've happily served all your life, I'm reminded of the Hakim of Bahrain's visit to London for the Queen's Coronation in 1953. Late in the evening, at the end of the banquet, the diminutive Sheikh Salman came upon the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, sitting at the bottom of a staircase, and attempted to ingratiate himself with a view to winning support for some land claim Bahrain had against Qatar. It had been a bibulous night and Sir Winston was in no mood to discuss the fine points of Arabian territorial disputes.

"Tell him," the PM instructed David Weir, Britain's Political Resident in Bahrain and "gentleman in attendance" to the non-English-speaking Hakim, "tell him that we never desert our friends." Pause. "Unless we have to." ...

... The Kingdom of Egypt in the period between 1922 and 1952 was flawed and ramshackle and corrupt, but it got closer to a functioning, pluralist society than anything in the 60 years since. For example, in 1923, Egypt's first full year as a sovereign state, the country's Minister of Finance was a man called Joseph Cattaui, a Member of Parliament and a Jew.

Try to imagine that now: a Jew serving as an Arab Muslim nation's Finance Minister - or even getting elected as an obscure backbench MP. Sounds like something from a Give-peace-a-chance multifaith fantasy. But it actually happened - and then it stopped happening, and then it became inconceivable for it to happen ever again under any plausible scenario.

...The Egyptian royal house (descended from Albanians) was nobody's idea of a punctilious constitutional monarchy, and Jews there had a rough couple of years in the 1940s. But the Kingdom of Egypt was a better deal than anything that followed. The CIA thought so little of Farouk that their plan to depose him was codenamed "Operation Fat Fucker". Ha-ha. The fuckers they replaced him with had the last laugh. Nasser rounded up Jews for "Zionist activities", removed them from Parliament, confiscated their businesses, and closed down their newspapers. Do you think Imam Qaradawi's minded to see a Jewish Finance Minister back in Cairo? Alas, there are no Jews left now - but there are still plenty of Copts to stick it to.

Colonel Gaddafi? On seizing power in 1969, he immediately canceled any debts owed to Libyan Jews and confiscated all their property. A postwar Jewish population of 40,000 fell on his watch to zero: The last Libyan Jew, Esmeralda Meghnagi, died in 2002, and with her one of the oldest Jewish communities on earth. And in much of the Middle East - including, disgracefully, the de facto American protectorate of Iraq - the Christian community is headed the same way.

The Middle East got worse. The Anglo-French-installed monarchies of the mid-20th century were less bad than the Russo-American-backed dictators of the late 20th century. As for the early 21st, the new Middle East will be friendlier to the Muslim Brotherhood and friendlier to Iran - and less friendly to western interests than at any time since the discovery of oil.

"We never desert our friends. Unless we have to." ...

[Read the full article at the above link.]