Saturday At The Movies: The Survivors

This one from 1983 stars Robin Williams, Walter Matthau, and Jerry Reed. While on the downside, it is basically an hour and a half bill board for every lib talking point on the subject of grabbing guns, it also contains some fine acting from all three of the principles. You probably missed this one at the theaters, as it never drew much of an audience. I saw it for the first time on HBO at about 3 in the morning a few years after they released it. The movie did have me laughing, as the chemistry between Williams, Matthau, and Reed was redeemable enough to cover for its overtly political message. The Social Conditioning scene in which Matthau, "teaches," Williams to use a nonviolent approach in dealing with the hit man may be one of the funniest scenes in any movie.

Be Warned America, One Of The Things Necessary For True Evil To Flourish Is True Stupidity,

When I first saw the picture above, I had not initially read the headline. I thought the guy was wearing red gloves. Sadly, this was not the case. It seems that the man in the picture above, for a reason we'll discuss in a bit, decided along with an accomplice, to attack a complete stranger and cut his head off. The, "red gloves," he sported turned out to be the blood of his victim. He committed this act of pure barbarism in broad daylight, on a busy London street, and felt no impulse to flee the scene ahead of local police, who by the way took 20 full minutes to arrive, There is an added importance to this fact, which we'll also discuss in later. They strutted about like rock stars afterwords, granting interviews to people with cell phones. During the times when citizen journalists weren't recording their rants, they gloated over their accomplishment, taunting the government and the citizens of the nation in which they live.

The motivation for our murderous thugs is not something that requires a psychic. It was not a random act of disaffected youths acting in response to some desperate societal depression. The thought, "I can't find a job so maybe I'll kill someone," was not racing through the otherwise innocent minds of Britain's future. They quite clearly were shouting, "Allah hu akhbar." as they severed their victim's head in front of shocked witnesses. During their many spontaneous interviews, they described in detail that this was their contribution to jihad, Islam's very visible war with the West, our culture, and our principle of freedom. They strutted around like proud peacocks, not worried about the consequences of their actions, because they were convinced that 72 virgin somethings await them in the grand traditional Islamic afterlife, in which every selfish base desire man kind is capable of having will be satisfied as a reward for those who kill infidels in the most gruesome manner possible.

Until yesterday, Britain and the people in charge of her have pretended that terrorism and Islam have no connection. That changed yesterday, as their Prime Minister, David Cameron, for the first time connected those dots in an official manner. Britain it seems is tired of paying the price for appeasement. Their problem of course is that with decades worth of Muslims who have already established deeply entrenched pockets of Sharia throughout England, they're in for one hell of a bad time ahead. They are infested with this cancer upon their society, and it was their willful blindness that did it to them.

We have the same problem here. We have the same pockets of deeply entrenched Sharia existing here. Those same sleeper cells that have infested England, have infested us here, and have already made their presence known. There is a price to pay for pretending that there is no connection between Islam and terrorism. That price was paid in Boston most recently. The politically correct and their police force are going to get the rest of us killed, or worse. Handling acts of terror as police matters, and offering empty platitudes as our weapon to combat them will prove as in effective in the future as those methods have been in the past.

This next point I wish to say while you keep a little piece of personal disclosure in mind. While in High School, and through part of my college experience, many years ago, I was one of these people. So believe me when I tell you this. When you see one of these bumper stickers on the back of a car,



you are in the presence of museum grade stupidity. You may wish to get your camera out, and take pictures of who belongs to the sentiment, and place that photo with your collection of other curios. The owner of that sticky backed messaging performed a miracle simply by placing their pants on correctly during the morning hours, let alone driving a car without a brain.

This politically correct message of unbridled appeasement makes at its core a dangerously naive assumption. It combines an asinine level of moral equivalence with a willful blindness that guarantees the annihilation of all societies that follow its advice.

It assumes that all societies are equal, with none being morally superior or even preferable to others. It equates the acts of groups where public beheadings and honor killings are considered acceptable behavior with those who's acts of barbarism include cutting off the hair and shaving off the beards of any the guilty seek to intimidate. For the liberals reading this, blowing yourself up on a school bus and taking 40 children with you to meet Allah is not on the same level morally speaking as those who spray paint insulting messages on buildings thought to be bars with patrons seeking an, "alternative," lifestyle.

The other glaring problem with this bumper sticker is that it assumes, quite moronically, that all of the referenced groups have equal amounts of trouble getting along with the others in that collection. Coexisting would be no problem for any of the last five groups, if the first one did not feel that world domination was its duty to their Deity. The message of this idiocy is that the remaining five groups referenced are unwilling to coexist, while ignoring that the first group actually is unwilling to coexist.

There is another aspect to this story. The two assailants were armed, not only with knives and cleavers, but with guns also. In England, guns are not legal to possess, even for police. Somehow, the criminals found a way to break that law, and why shouldn't they. Clearly, obeying the laws of the land was not one of their priorities. The Police took longer to arrive, because they were tipped that they would be facing a situation where the bad guys had guns. They were able to strut around for 20 minutes unchallenged, precisely because they knew that no one passing by on the street would be armed. When the police arrived, they opened fire on the cops.

No Kirsten Powers, Liberalism Is Not At Fault, Liberals Are.

I read something this morning that had me giggling for an entire day. You may be wondering what, during this scandal and disaster clad week could possibly help lighten the load of the gloom that has cast its pall over my perception of our national mood? Well, it was the logical gymnastics performed by a leading pundit of the political left, Kirsten Powers. She has written a defense of liberalism that is so convoluted, I feel fairly confident that her powers of critical thought could only have been developed at one of our institutions of expensive learning, (known as college.)

I literally do not know where to begin with Kirsten. So I guess I'll start here. Saying that there's a correlation between liberalism and these scandals is at best a straw man argument. Such foolishness allows Barack Obama, his Chicago cronies, and the culture of thuggish criminals which inhabit the Executive Branch to escape culpability. Were I a member of the Obama camp, attaching these scandals to something broader than my specific group would be something that I would actively be attempting to accomplish. Being one of a crowd in this instance is preferable to being placed atop the graft pyramid. Make no mistake about it, these latest bits that keep evolving every day have already placed the worst of Richard Nixon and his admittedly bad behavior in the category of piker.

Then she said this, and I could not thank her sufficiently, for making exactly the point that every conservative and otherwise advocate of smaller government has been making for decades.

Scandals happen under every president, regardless of the size of the government and regardless of the political ideology of the leader of that government.

Yes, scandals happen in every administration. That is because power has a corrupting influence all to itself. I made that point on Monday, with this post. The difference, and it is an individual character issue, is how those scandals are dealt with, from where did they originate, and how transparent the Administration is with those seeking truthful answers. These abuses of power were made by people who wished to hold that power, and wished to seek an expanse in government power, so that they could have more of that which their ambition drives them to seek. So yes, there is a connection between liberalism and scandal, but not in the way that she has implied with the argument she's so helpfully put into my mouth.

Let me explain Dear Kirsten. This is not a chicken and egg scenario. We do not have to guess which came first, temptation or falling for that temptation. We just need to worry about solutions. The major difference between the left and right is in how we would go about solving these problems. Your side sees this graft and corruption and exclaim, this is bad, we need to change the people in charge, because obviously we haven't found the right folks yet. We look at this problem and say, the right people do not, nor will ever exist. We need to find a way to constrain the reigns of power, so as to limit the ability of those who would seek to do wrong, to do just that. It isn't just the individual people who can cause tyranny, but allowance of the apparatus at their control to give them greater opportunity that is at play here. I do not doubt your sincerity at being appalled by the abuse of power exhibited by George W. Bush. I also do not doubt your sincerity at the anger you have shown with our current President for the very same offenses. What perplexes me however is your theory that our problems could be solved if only we find someone new, and entrust them with greater amounts of authority.

To this point, Kirsten has only been wrong, here is where she crossed the border into bizarre.

It so happens that the claim that government is bigger under President Obama than any time in history -- an oft-repeated trope -- is actually not even true. Not counting the military, there were 3,054,000 federal employees in 1988, the last full year conservative standard bearer Ronald Reagan was in office. In 2011, there were 2,756,000 -- a reduction of 10% from Reagan. Even characterizing the IRS scandal as a "big government" problem is silly: less than 200 employees in a single Cincinnati office had to process 60,000 non-profit applications. Government bloat this is not.

Using the number of government employees as a measure for the size and scope of government is just plain fallacy from start to finish. A better measure for the size of government would be the amount of money it confiscates from the tax payers who support it. Another measure would be the scope of regulations increased, decreased, and enforced. This particular method of measuring the size of government ignores an important trend, (an unfortunate byproduct of lacking any useful understanding of both economics and statistics.)

Two years ago, I watched several dozen people lose their cool in my local BMV. I spend my birthday there every four years getting my license renewed. During one episode of pissed off citizen versus snotty bureaucrat, the snotty bureaucrat informed the pissed off citizen that in fact, she was not a government employee. In the State of Ohio, that's actually true. The State you see, under the leadership of Dick Celeste(D), contracted out the service and administration of the BMV to a company that has one customer, the Ohio BMV. The State of Ohio still runs the company, and the entire thing is nothing more than a ruse. So while the scope of government in Ohio has not been lessened one little bit, the State has fewer employees than before the move. More regulations can be added, and more expense layered in, and by using the number of government employees as the measure, the onerous growth of the BMV would be entirely missed. (Just ask any citizen of Ohio exactly how they feel about the BMV, and you'll get an earful.)

Then she added this:

Then there is Benghazi. It is unclear how even the most willfully dishonest person could distort this travesty into an indictment of liberalism or blame it on big government. The fundamental scandal here is that the government scapegoated a private American citizen who made a YouTube video (constitutionally protected free speech) for their inability to protect American embassy workers in Benghazi. Then, to make matters worse, they offered dissembling and contradictory explanations for why they did this and have expressed offense at the mere suggestion they should be transparent about this process. Simple questions such as, "Did the President go to the Situation Room the night of the attack?" are met with blistering outrage.

Whatever happened that night and the weeks following, it's clear that all of the decision-making was centralized among a small cohort of senior government officials. So, to cast this as flowing from an activist government run amok is just wishful thinking on the part of conservatives looking for an anti-liberal theme.

Liberalism is a noble tradition and worldview that is perennially in search of a leader -- and these days even followers -- worthy of its name. If in any of these situations even one person of influence had adhered to the basic tenets of liberalism -- a respect for dissent, free speech, government transparency and liberty -- all of these scandals could have been avoided.

The entire argument here is secondary to the fact that the entire event prior to that night was the direct result of a disastrously foolish and naive foreign policy that not only allowed for a cooperative nation to be over run by the same people who flew planes into several inhabited buildings September 11, 2001, but also saw us supporting that effort. They attacked us on September 11, 2012, mostly with weapons that our President thought would be a good idea to supply them with. The entire argument is secondary to the point that the cover up that followed, and the lies told to the American People were put forward for the purpose of hiding the colossal failure of what has to be the worst foreign policy since Jimmy Carter held the reigns of power. (At least Carter's failure was localized to Iran, with Obama, not so much.) The question now, and the direction of the investigation currently is going to help determine if those people were purposefully sacrificed to help achieve that ruse.

But she is right, it's not liberalism itself that did this, it's Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, and the rest of the children in charge. It's just that if we follow the direction of the Political Left, we'll be granting even more authority to all who would seek to be in charge in the future. The problem with trusting the right people with this power, even if they existed, is that at some time, they'll be replaced by the wrong people again. Even if you loved George W. Bush or Barack Obama and hated the other, the next election cycle could see him replaced with either George W. Bush or Barack Obama once again. I'm not nearly as afraid of Barack Obama's Presidency as I am of the guy who will be elected 20 years from now. I just wish Kirsten Powers had that same fear.

Silver Linings Do Exist!

I always have a private chuckle to my self when the subject of the Second Amendment comes up for debate. It's words are parsed, logical gymnastics applied, straw men erected, ad hominems bandied about, non sequiturs employed, and through it all, the true meaning of the Amendment was never kept a secret.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of
a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed.

The thing is this, we know who it was that wrote those words, and it was not done at some prehistoric time, nor was the meaning of them kept a secret. George Mason was the founding father who insisted on including this in the Bill of Rights, and he was incredibly prolific in arguing in any forum he could find on what he meant by them. The Second Amendment had nothing to do with hunting, other outdoor sports, national defense against foreign invaders, or even home defense as it would be implied today. The true and only purpose for the Second Amendment was to instill exactly the same fear in our government of we the people, as we would ever have of the government.

Certainly, there was never the intention to see acts of armed sedition, as such acts are also prohibited by that very same founding document. That is not however where that particular line of thought ended. Our founding fathers wished for a balance, one in which the federal government would always find its authority and power constrained, limited to the point where tyranny would be the last thing the citizens would have to fear. While making sedition against the law of the land, they also decided to let the government know, in a not too subtle a manner, that revolution would always be possible.

Despite the fact that this reason for that Amendment has been well documented during a time when written records were indeed kept, and exist in the Library of Congress, those of us who point to it have been labeled as the, "tinfoil behatted," to use Jon Stewart's indelicate phrase. How on Earth could anyone in his or her right mind ever doubt the benevolence of the United States Government or those Organizing angels who now make up the group of Marxists who recently were put in charge of our Executive Branch?

The argument has basically gone like this, tyranny is no longer possible with our government, and any fears of such are simply crazy, and all those who entertain such should be ignored, as they clearly lack the competency necessary for civil discourse. Something happened last week that has not only placed the whole gun grab push to the back burner, but has the main progenitors of that line of thinking publicly admitting that yes, the whole tyranny argument is not only a valid one for our side, but is something that we should all actively fear.

Certainly, these last two weeks will be looked back upon by future historians as a pivotal moment in the direction Americans have chosen for themselves. These were the two weeks when the other half of Americans realized that tyranny was indeed something to guard against. These were the two weeks when the other half of us realized that even if you completely trusted either George W. Bush or Barack Obama to be granted dictatorial powers as our nation's chief executive, the next election cycle could see either George W. Bush or Barack Obama elected as the next fellow to be granted that same authority.

What gives me hope about this turn of events, and what it means for the future is not so much the things that are being said, but more who is saying them. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe, not even for a nano second, that the main stream media has suddenly realized the error of their ways and will start objectively reporting on current events, but when to a man, each of them, even the dolts on MSNBC start admitting in public that our government, and more specifically the bureaucracy run by the Obama Administration has stepped way over that line, then something noteworthy, if still subtle has indeed occurred.

I have often asked a question of my liberal debate adversaries, ever since hearing it posed by Milton Friedman first, Where are we going to find these angels who will come and organize our society for us? Dr. Friedman's point was that power itself has a corrupting influence upon those who are granted it. That eventually, given the proper amount of time, even the most well intentioned individual, will become a part of the tyranny of which we should all be very afraid. Those individuals who began using the IRS as a political weapon for the purposes of inflicting punishment upon the ideological rivals of the current Administration doubtless felt that they were doing the nation a service. I have no doubts about their sincerity. They believe their ideology to be so superior to ours that they felt some justification in protecting the country from those who would seek limited government, lower taxes, less interference and regulation from a federal behemoth run amok. I also believe that they should be put in prison for the remainder of their lives, having doubtless used that authority of theirs to do the same to some of those whom they had harassed.

The point that Dr. Friedman was making, was that any government that needs to find benevolent altruistic people capable of running it adequately is doomed to failure. We will never find the right people to be in charge, as those people are simply a fantasy. We need to make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.

Saturday At The Movies: Support Your Local Sheriff

Two movies from the late 60's and early 70's starring James Garner, Walter Brennan, Bruce Dern, Harry Morgan, and one of my personal favorites, Jack Elam. The Support Your Local blank movies mixed comedy and western into plug and play scripts that probably would have worked for more than they were used. Of the two that were made, this one is my favorite, (lucky, since the other one has not been uploaded to youtube.)

Garner delivers as the slow moving laid back quick drawing sheriff who has no use for a reputation. He cleans up a town that finds being dirty much more fun than the alternative, except that the mine owners are tired of having 20% of their revenues extorted.

Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy a fun movie that is not meant to be taken too seriously. It's about an hour and a half of your time, and fun for those who like either comedies or westerns.

Finding Out What's In It: Part What Ever The Numerical Expression For Holy Crap A Nuclear Bomb Just Went Off Happens To Be.

I his usual manner of everything he does or says appearing as slickly produced Kabuki Theater, Barack Obama yesterday, very publicly announced that he and his crack team of completely disengaged minions had identified the sole guilty party responsible for the latest IRS scandal, in which his Treasury Department had singled out political adversaries for heightened scrutiny and audit, and fired him. When the announcement was made at the Presser, right on cue, his White House Staff erupted in those patented and obviously scripted, "spontaneous," high fives, to highlight their delight in putting an end to the single most egregious case of graft since Tammany Hall got one of their own sworn in as President, (Chester A. Arthur.) They did this as if the source of said graft did not begin as the brain child of their very own Dear Leader.

A funny thing happened on the way to the public hanging though. As it turns out, that fellow, who's name is not even worth typing into the keyboard anymore, has only been in his current position for Eight days now. So much for finding the person responsible for this nefarious plot. Hello to the concept of finding a patsy who's head could be chopped before anything so trite as the truth could get out.

So what happened to the person in the offending position before What's his name took over. Her name, which is worth typing into my keyboard, is Sarah Hall Ingram. As you may have guessed, Eight days ago she got herself promoted. As you also may have guessed from my usual Obamacare introduction, he promotion has something to do with that. Wait, it gets worse.

The person now in charge of Obamacare compliance, for the entire nation is.........Sarah Hall Ingram. With that, we have seen Obamacare move from the merely annoying bad economic policy and a potential for the destruction of the world's finest health care system, to a weapon of political intimidation. The very same woman who used her position at the IRS to intimidate Barack Obama's Political foes, whether he knew about it happening or not, is now in charge of determining which people in the country will receive a doctor's care, and which of Barack Obama's political foes will not.

For years, all conservatives have been referred to as the, "tinfoil behatted." This has been true, even though our arguments have always been policy based, and more often than not based on actual evidence to support what ever claim we may have been making. This however, what has been revealed as fact during the last 96 hours, has gone far beyond the scope of anything even the most committed conspiracy theorist could have imagined. The person our President tapped to be in charge of the IRS' portion of Obamacare, has in fact already proven that she feels it is an acceptable part of her job to target political enemies and do them harm. She has proven that she feels comfortable in using the power of her unelected position within our government to stifle the speech of those with whom she disagrees. What could possibly go wrong with the authority granted her now?

Palooka Of The Month: May's Winner - Darrell Issa

What angers me most about our canvas kissing champion this month is what he didn't say. He didn't say, "we're going to follow the evidence where ever it leads, and take the appropriate action, according to the laws of our land." What he chose to do instead, was to send the signal that with his position as the chief investigator of the Republican controlled House, he would make certain that Hillary Clinton would be protected against the harshest of forthcoming political consequences for what at the very least, was a level of incompetence rarely exhibited by members of our species.

Not everything in life has to be politically motivated. Certainly the tragedy that befell the four American citizens in Benghazi should escape that realm. However, it is impossible to separate politics from the task of figuring out which politician or bureaucrat fomented that disaster. It is most especially impossible to separate politics from the process when political considerations being given a higher priority than national security was itself the root cause of the tragedy.

Hillary Clinton's hands may very well have been tied by the man child President, and his foreign policy agenda which centers on projecting American weakness, but she at the same time did keep mum on things afterward and subsequently campaigned hard to help secure his reelection. Looking back at that time period, I seem to remember suggestions being made to place Hillary's picture on milk cartons in order to locate here. Rush Limbaugh issued an Amber Alert for Secretary Clinton. At no point did Hillary step forward and decide that telling the truth was the way to go. As a matter of fact, she did come forward after a month to accept blame, and promptly spent the next six months attempting to deflect said blame.

When the whistle blowers came forward last week and confirmed for many of us what we already knew, our side had securely placed victory well within our grasp, if not already achieved it outright. Which is why it hurts to watch Palooka Issa take the dive and allow a woman to escape that quite possibly may one day win the Presidency. If the investigation into this event accomplishes nothing else for the American people, it should highlight at the very least why Hillary Clinton is woefully short of the makings of a good President. Her behavior throughout all of this should preclude that from ever being even the remotest of possibilities. Yet here we have Darrell Issa, who in one minute and nineteen seconds, let Hillary off of the hook, that goddamned palooka!

I can only guess as to the motivations of Congress Critter Issa, and why he chose to publicly let Hillary off of the hook. Not a single one of those guesses is at all flattering for Representative Issa. They range from bizarre to perverse, and in this case, the perverse would be the best case scenario for Darrell. I will add this however, should our nation one day be saddled with the prospect of addressing Hillary as Madam President, we, and I mean every one who considers him or herself a conservative, should surround Darrell Issa with lit torches and pitch forks and run his ass out of town.