Thursday, December 24, 2015

The GOP -- 1854 to 2016 -- RIP


The Republican Party is as dead as the Whigs they replaced.  The party was born out of the northern abolitionist movement along with some other political interests of the day, such as the Free Soilers.  After the death of Lincoln, the radical Republicans did their best to destroy the Democrat party in the South and disenfranchise and punish the losers in the rebellion.  It could be argued that Reconstruction was necessary to some extent, but it helped create the reaction that would be visible in Jim Crow and the Segregationists.   It’s impossible to imagine the difference in America today if Lincoln had not been assassinated, if the radicals could have been checked, and if the South’s return to the Union had been more of a welcoming back of the prodigal and less retribution.
 
We have to live with the history we have been given. 

There are things I like about the Grand Old Party.  They have done a better job of standing up to federal encroachment on gun rights and religious freedom than the Democrat Party.  They are less likely to support expansion of the welfare state – usually but not always. 

What killed the Republican Party?  To name but a few symptoms of their fatal disease:

  1. Amnesty – an irrational desire to see our country overrun by third-worlders, a refusal to secure the borders, the feeling that we need to import housekeepers, landscapers, and lettuce-pickers to do the low-paying jobs that people with government jobs and people on welfare won’t do. 
  2. Corporatism – Like Democrats, Republicans do not trust or understand the free market.  GOPe politicians favor big corporations that are in bed with government and benefit most from a large federal budget.  This includes, but is not limited to, defense contractors and agri-business giants. 
  3. Interventionist foreign policies – What’s the use of spending billions on cool new killing machines if we can’t use them?  The positive side of this is that Republicans still have respect for the military and tend to treat our servicemen and veterans better than Democrat politicians.  But we wouldn’t need the defense budget we have if we would mine our own business and secure the damn borders. 
  4. The police state – Republican politicians have a tendency to be what are sometimes called “holster lickers”, i.e., a bit too enthusiastic about supporting police in the name of law and order.  They help fund the War on (some) Drugs and the NSA’s continuing violations of our privacy rights.  I don’t hear much from the GOP about how the unconstitutionally of warrantless searches, highway checkpoints and seizures of assets without due process.  
  5. Pork-barrel spending projects, getting money “back to the district”, Medicare Party D, No Child Left Alone, the EPA, etc. 

I won’t miss them that much.  We have a Democrat Party for big-government socialists and nanny-staters.  We don’t need the Socialist-lite Party.  We need a Freedom Party, someone pulling, not from the “right”, but from the mind-your-own business pole to offer an actual alternative for those of us who believe that liberty, opportunity, and personal responsibility all go hand-in-hand.   We know that freedom means, first and foremost, freedom from government. 


Thursday, December 10, 2015

The Problem Is Immigration



The more time that passes, the more Trump’s message resonates with the populace.  The left and the big-government wing of the right, both here and in Europe, need immigration to fuel their government-based economic policies.  They need the underclass to justify the police state.  They need a class of consumers capable of being placated by government cheese, sex, drugs, and circuses.  They are willing – more than willing, eager to accept a level of violence and mayhem that keeps the productive class living in fear.

As Brendan noted in his comment on the previous post, neither criminal activities nor terrorist attacks threaten the vast majority of the ruling elite.  They are protected, living in zones where drive-bys do not occur.  Their children are not thrown into the maelstroms of public schools, subject to teacher-union flunkies working for retirement.  The lives of their children are not destroyed, for the most part, by illegal drugs and the violence that surrounds the black market. They are not working in or visiting the schools, shops, malls, and offices that get shot up or blown up.  They do not fear the ghetto because it is the ghetto.  They do not fear the danger the invaders carry because they will have contact only with the peaceful gardeners, cooks, and housekeepers among them.

Instead, the rulers fear us, the productive middle-class, the blue-collar people, the mechanics and engineers, the electricians, plumbers, truck drivers, accountants, coders, welders, and machinists.  They fear us because we interact with the real world.  We may not understand quantum mechanics, but the best explanation I ever heard of how a nuclear reactor operates came not from a nuclear engineer but from a construction foreman on the Comanche Peak plant in Texas.  He knew how it had to work.

I don’t know if Donald Trump would be a “good” president.  I am well past the point of thinking that any president is going do much in the direction of making this country better for my grandchildren.  I doubt that I will even vote in the 2016 presidential election.  What I like about Trump is that he has addressed immigration as a problem.  His remarks this week line up with what he has already said about building a wall across the southern border.  We need to stop the invasion.  We need to stop using the words “immigrant” and “refugee”.  They are invaders.  Invaders are an existential threat to our way of life and to our freedom. 

Somewhere between 1% and 10% of Syrian refugees are going to be terrorists. Another 25% (conservatively) are going to be sympathizers, supporters, and enablers.  If we allow in 10,000, we are talking about 100 to 1000 terrorists and 2500 terrorist supporters.  That is the reality.  I am not afraid of those people, but I am angry that this regime is so callous with regard to the lives of American citizens and so willing to use the terrorists and the death and destruction they bring to further restrict, regulate, and deny us our liberties. 

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Trump Terror



Donald Trump calls for closing our borders to all Muslims, and both left and right lose their minds.
 

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


That’s the actual text of the First Amendment, apart from court interpretations.  Most of those, especially on the right, who are upset at Trump, seem to suggest that we cannot legally prohibit American citizens who are practicing Muslims from re-entering this country.  Whether I agree with Trump’s rhetorical point or not, there is absolutely nothing prohibiting Congress from passing a law that says Muslims who leave the borders of the United States will not be allowed to re-enter.  How would we have handled American citizens who visited Japan after Pearl Harbor or who went to Germany once war had been declared?  (We should have declared war on Islam in 2001.)

I’m sure some federal judge somewhere will find case law or pull something out of his or her nether regions that finds such a statute unconstitutional.  Yet that does not seem to me to follow from a reading of the Amendment.  No state religion is being established.  The free exercise of one’s religion within the borders of the United States would not be prohibited – unlike bans on prayer in public schools or Christmas decorations on courthouse lawns or displays of the Ten Commandments.  No rights to speech, publication, peaceable assembly or petition are abridged. 

More than likely an actual law to this effect would have provisions that required a thorough investigation of contacts and activities of those Islamic American citizens who had gone abroad for purposes of business or pleasure and wished to return to the United States.  Given that somewhere on the order of 25% of Muslims are in favor of imposing Sharia law on the United States by any means necessary, such a restriction is quite sensible.   

In any case, had a law of this nature been in place the past few years, the San Bernardino shooting would not have happened.  Unlike additional gun laws or forbidding people on the No-Fly list from (legally) buying firearms, this is an approach that would have saved lives. 

Speaking of the No-Fly list, how is that all that much different from what Trump proposes, aside from the fact that what Trump suggests would target the Terrorist Religion of Choice ©.  

Monday, December 7, 2015

U.S. Per Capita Murder Rate

Washington Times reports that U.S. per capita murder rates are at historic lows.






Obviously "per capita" must ignore the 50% increase in population over the last 50 years.  It also, though, glosses over the demographic shift that has taken place as America has become significantly less "white" due, in part, to the changes wrought by Ted Kennedy's 1965 immigration law.

We know that if we remove certain urban centers such as Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, et al, the U.S. homicide rate drops down the global ranking.

America has always been a violent country.  What happened in the 1960s to increase homicides?  For one thing, there was a lot of forced integration.  The black family in America began to fall apart as federal aid drove fathers out of the house.  Black neighborhoods were broken up as more cities received incentives from the geniuses in Washington, D.C. to herd people into Soviet-style highrises trying to eliminate "slums".  We scaled up the disastrous "War on Drugs".  

What happened in the 1990s to make things less violent?  Concealed carry got national attention in Florida and other states have followed suit as we have not seen Miami become the Wild West.  Experience has proven that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry firearms is more of deterrent to crime than a catalyst. Many incidents are ended not with gunfire and blood but simply when an aggressor looks down the barrel of an intended victim's weapon.   

Friday, December 4, 2015

Rhetoric, Reason and Numbers -- Updated, link fixed

First, there is usually no point in trying to reason a person out of a position they did not reach by reason.  Reason and logic have nothing to do with fear, manipulation, deliberate ignorance, and mass superstition.  This covers about 95% of the anti-gun arguments.  To combat rhetoric, use rhetoric.

Still there is that 5% or so that get their "facts" from PMSNBC.

Hotair discussed Barbara Boxer's comments about California's restrictive gun laws and how they have lower the rate of homicides.  Check out the chart and some of the links in the article.  The firearms murder rate per 100,000 population in America has dropped drastically over the last 20 years even while more and more states have adopted "sensible" concealed carry laws, and firearms ownership has risen:

 As for the gun homicide rate specifically, that’s dropped by nearly half since 1993 according to Pew’s data. Robert VerBruggen has a column well worth your time at NRO today detailing his state-by-state comparison of gun ownership rates and homicide rates. Logically, if the left is right that more guns in circulation necessarily means more violence, we should see more homicides in states where more people are armed. That’s not what we see, per VerBruggen. States are all over the statistical map. States where guns are more freely available do tend to see more suicides by shooting, but suicide typically doesn’t factor heavily into progressive rhetoric about gun-grabbing.

I have talked about suicides before.  These are tragedies that are very close to my heart and might be the single logical argument for  some form of waiting period.  I think a good night's sleep and a reduction in the use of most legal pharmaceuticals would save more lives than restricting access to firearms.

As for Obama's contention that mass shooting don't happen in other countries, well, he is wrong:


The French have witnessed three mass public shootings this year. January saw two attacks, one on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and another on a Paris supermarket. In the November attacks, 129 people were killed and 352 were injured. In 2015, France suffered more casualties than the U.S. has suffered during Obama's entire presidency (508 to 394).

Obama also overlooks Norway, where Anders Behring Breivik used a gun to kill 67 people and wound 110 others. Still others were killed by bombs that Breivik detonated. Of the four worst K-12 school shootings, three have occurred in Europe. Germany had two of these — one in 2002 at Erfut and another in 2009 at Winnenden, with a total death toll of 34.

Obama isn't correct even if he meant the frequency of fatalities or attacks. Many European countries actually have higher rates of death from public shootings that resulted in four or more murders. It's simply a matter of adjusting for America's much larger population.

Keep in mind that it does not bother people like Obama, Clinton, Bush, or any of the other power-mad politicians to lie.  They will say anything and do anything to maintain power and control over their voters.  They are uninterested in the negative consequences of the laws they pass.  To them it is a game, and they play to win -- popularity, position, power, and prestige.  Those who suddenly want to shout down prayers to God in favor of appeals to politicians will discover this truth the hard way.

If these bleating sheep really wanted to make America a better, safer, more just nation, they would concern themselves with becoming better people, as Micah suggested long, long ago:  Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God


Finally, a modest proposal.



Tuesday, December 1, 2015

More Shenanigans at the University of Missouri

Far be it from me to tell someone how to raise their kids.  Somehow I seriously doubt the football team will be demanding the firing of MU assistant professor Youssif Omar after he dragged his 14-year-old daughter by the hair down a flight of stairs.  Omar was upset that his daughter was not wearing her hajib:


Omar ... grabbed the girl “very violently by the hair” and pulled her outside and down a flight of stairs. [He also] allegedly slapped the girl’s face and pulled her into his car by her hair ...

Honestly, I have no problem with a father disciplining his daughter for violating his cultural and religious standards for dress and deportment.  I am not offended by the fact that a Muslim father thought his teenage daughter should be properly covered.  I am offended by the fact that Omar thought he could get away with physically attacking his child, publicly humiliating her. 

We are not "anti-Muslim".  We are not "afraid" of Islam or its practitioners.  The realistic among, however, realize that Muslims have, for the most part, a different worldview.  The local mosque is not going to condemn Omar.  Muslims are going to make excuses for this man and his actions.  Students are not going to go on a hunger strike to protest the fact that they have a child abuser as an assistant professor.  It's one of the joys of diversity.

Muslims and other groups who refuse to assimilate and accept basic societal values really have no place among us.  That's the reality.







Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Widows and Orphans

It is a clever rhetorical argument:  that we flyover-country rednecks and racists are afraid of widows and orphans.  Of course there is no objective truth behind it, but there doesn't have to be.  It effectively paints a negative picture which left-leaning Lo-Fo's are quick to embrace. 

The elitist collectivists in Washington are not interested in debating us.  They want to silence us. 

Obama is evidently terrified of white people, especially white Christian males.  Like most black men, Obama immediately goes into his false bravado, macho act when confronted with opposition of any kind from white males.  The only reason he insists on throwing open the borders to illegal immigrants and importing hundreds of thousands of Muslims -- many of whom have connections to terrorist organizations -- is because he wants to replace the white Christian population with more easily manipulated and less intimidating Islamic third-worlders.  


Is that true?  It is at least as true as Obama's assertion that we are afraid of widows and orphans.  We are slowly learning that we cannot defeat rhetoric with dialectic.  The sophists on the other side refuse to engage in logic or reality-based arguments.  Sophists are not interested in truth, only in power. 

On the one hand, I do not want to resort to this kind of low-class, illogical, feelings-based rhetoric.  On the other hand, I would like my grandchildren to know liberty and opportunity.  That's not going to happen if the collectivists have their way. Propaganda has a long history.  It is used because it works. 

There is no rational reason to allow a flood of Syrian or other Islamic refugees into this country or the nations of Europe.  It makes no sense to make France, Germany, or the United States more vulnerable to a terrorist attack.  These people are NOT "fleeing terrorism".  They are fleeing a sectarian war.  In a war between Sunni and Shia or whatever, I have no dog in the fight.  They have been killing one another for fifteen hundred years or so -- when they aren't too busy killing Christians, Jews, and other "infidels". 

I supported Bush's invasion of Iraq because I thought his intention was to teach the Islamic radicals a lesson.  I was wrong.  I am sorry.  It certainly taught me a lesson.  As bad as that turned out, Obama, Jarret, Clinton, et al, multiplied the disaster by pulling out of Iraq and supporting the "Arab Spring" in Egypt, Libya, and Syria thereby further destabilizing the region and effectively creating and arming ISIS.  Not satisfied with creating chaos in the Middle East, they want to import it to the West. 

Whatever it takes to stop this foolishness is justified.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

The Word Is Invasion

There are signs here and there that people are waking up to the threat inherent in the invasion of western nations by third-worlders.  One of the reasons Trump has been doing so well is that he has made immigration the focus of much of his campaign.  Some elements in Europe -- Poland, for example, are expressing nationalistic sentiments.

The Wall Street Journal Blog reports on a press conference by Ted Cruz where the Texas Senator suggests that the general election in 2016 will turn on the issue of immigration:

At a press conference after officially registering for the New Hampshire primary, Mr. Cruz said that “millions” of Republicans will stay home in November if they believe the GOP nominee is soft on immigration, particularly working-class voters who he says would see amnesty for undocumented immigrants as a threat to their ability to find well-paying work. 
He may be right.

More than an economic issue, many of us see the invaders as a threat to our culture and traditional institutions.  Despite what the GOP Establishment says these are not people steeped in the American ideals of individualism and classical liberalism.  They are, for the most part, collectivist in their views.  

An invasion is an act of war.  We need to call these things by their proper names and denounce the traitors and collaborators -- whatever their political labels.

Monday, November 9, 2015

Mizzou Surrenders to Racists

The president of MU resigned because the feelings of some racist witchhunters were hurt about some stuff, most of which was probably made up.

The ante was upped when 32 members of the university's football team joined the hunger strike.  MU football coach, Gary Pinkel, seemed to support his players' action, saying that we are all one at Mizzou.

I am not.  I am going to burn my Mizzou headgear, and, if I can find the sheepskin they gave me, I may send it back to them. 

I am sick of coddling bullies.  These are "professional weaker brothers" (see Romans 14 and 15) who use their weakness to intimidate others and get their way about anything.  The MU president hadn't done anything.  He was one of them -- as is Pinkel, apparently.  He is being attacked and driven out as a warning to others. 

Straight white males are no longer welcome at the University of Missouri.  The campus must be made safe because black people these days are too weak and pathetic to stand up to a little ribbing and name-calling -- if that really happened, which I doubt.  Previous generations stood up to fire hoses. 

If any of the students at MU who participated in this virtual lynching happen to read my blog, I want you to know that you are ignorant, racist and fascist. 

Friday, November 6, 2015

A Bomb, Really?

So the same U.S. Intelligence resources that have been used to mislead us about one thing and another for years discovers that a plane coming apart at high altitude may have been bombed.

That was my first thought when I heard the news report last week.  Even the proverbial "poorly maintained" Russian aircraft would normally have crashed.  Manpads won't take out planes at an altitude of 30,000 feet.  There was a probably a bomb on board -- just as a bomb is a much more likely cause for the mid-air explosion of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 than some spark in a fuel tank.

Sometimes the feds feel like blaming terrorists; sometimes they don't. 

At this point, my default mode is to assume I am being lied to and manipulated.

Maybe ISIS or some of their Muslim Brotherhood fellow travelers in Egypt decided to retaliate against the Russians for their intervention in Syria.  Maybe the CIA did it themselves. 

The point is that these days it is wise to be wary of any official explanations of anything. 

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Are They Sure They Want This Fight?

From the Gateway Pundit comes this report of a fight over a Confederate flag decal on a truck.  Hoft has posted a video of the confrontation at the link.

A couple of men had driven up to Salt Lake City to attend a Garth Brooks concert.  Clearly these are racist rednecks.  The truck they drove had a rebel flag decal on the window.  Some people found this offensive and gathered around the truck:

Leeper went to the parking lot with his friend and confronted the group. That’s when the fight turned violent.

In one fast and powerful punch, Leeper’s friend was knocked out. A scuffle ensued and Leeper was taken down by a group of six men.

“I’ll be damned if I ever come to Salt Lake again without bringing my gun,” Leeper said.
Escalation is not just for department stores.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

False Dichotomies

If the only choice is between anarchy and tyranny, I would take anarchyHouse Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the House Freedom Caucus, consisting of Tea Party-backed lawmakers, is harmful to Congress as an institution, suggesting that anarchy might work better for them.


This seems to be the age of the false dichotomy.  Politicians, pundits, and the media want to force us to choose between only two options.  Either we go along with business as usual inside the Beltway, or we live by the law of tooth and claw.  Reject the ways of Pelosi and Obama and we'll soon be resorting to cannibalism. 

The trouble is, for most of the low-information voter types and low-IQ media and entertainment figures, fallacious logic is convincing. They buy into the idea government must be all-powerful, intrusive, and despotic because otherwise we become the "Wild West" and descend into chaos.  We have to let foreigners invade our country or we are uncaring, racist, and xenophobic. They can no longer imagine the limited, relatively laissez-faire federal government that existed in this country as recently as the first half of the last century. 

The choice is not between taxpayer-funded, government-protected abortion mills and unwanted, abused children.  The choice is not between federally-controlled, massively over-funded public schools and an illiterate populace.  The choice is not between open borders and an end to all immigration.  The choice is not between no photo IDs for voting and Jim Crow laws.  The choice is not between a defenseless United States and an interventionist foreign policy.  The choice is not between a fascist economy and a socialist economy -- not that that is much of a choice anyway.  The choice is not between Democrat personal welfare and Republican corporate welfare. 

The choice isn't between Democrats and Republicans.  Normally, there are a lot of choices and options in life.  There are solutions to our current problems that stop short of apocalyptic scenarios.  One of the worst things about Obama is exactly this penchant he has for creating strawmen and false dichotomies.  Either we do it his way or we are horrible, terrible, ignorant, intolerant racist bitter clingers.  This from an SOB who isn't even the smartest guy in the room when he's alone taking a crap.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Manufacturing Consent

Over at Ammoland Dean Weingarten published a graphic you need to see


Click on over and read all Dean has to say on this subject.  He has links to a twenty-year-old study by Clayton Cramer on the disproportionate amount of coverage given to mass shootings: 

I have not seen a recent study of the amount of time that the old media devote to mass shooting.  But the stated desire of President Obama to politicize the shootings, and the response of the old media to facilitate his desires, is clear.

One of the major reasons that we seem to be having more mass shootings during this administration, is the administration’s and the media’s desire to use those shootings for political purposes.

Progressives call this “manufacturing consent”.   Cramer, in his paper, notes that disproportionate coverage of certain crimes changes the public perception of how much of a danger they are.

No one is going to try and dismiss the evil and insanity of mass shootings nor are we about to discount the tragic and senseless loss of life or the sufferings of the victims and their loved ones.  It is an indictment of the state of our society that (mostly) young men murder the innocent, whether it involves multiple victims in a single instance or single victims in multiple instances, as is the case nightly in our urban centers.

The truth is that life is neither safe nor certain, that tragedies and loss occur on a personal level everyday.   Everyone, though, wants to see a fire, a train wreck, an automobile accident, and any other spectacle.  The media sells its soap on the fact that humans seem to be wired to stare at carnage.  That is bad enough.  It is even worse when our freedoms are threatened on the basis of the media spectacle and the emotional vulnerability it creates.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Corn Squeezin' Not So Pleasin'

Surprise, surprise!  Corn ethanol is not a clean or efficient fuel "... even after an estimated $50 billion in subsidies, in part because of some of the ‘hidden’ costs of ethanol production".

A few years ago, there was much opposition to a proposed ethanol plant a short distance from where I live because of the pressure it would have put on the water table.  Older, shallower wells (mine is fairly deep, partly due to state DNR requirments) would have likely have had to be re-drilled.  The plant would have drawn millions of gallons out of the aquifer every year ("I drink your milkshake").

Corn production itself is fuel and petrochemical intensive.  The linked article cites a study by the University of Tennessee which says:

From an environmental and energy independence perspective, the subsidies and mandates for corn ethanol would have been better and more effectively used had they been directed towards advanced biofuels.   

The other biofuels lack the corn states' lobby in Washington, D.C. 

We can't end this travesty soon enough.  

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Direct Democracy vs. Lawyer-archy

 Vox Day speaks of dealing with our problems in the West and one recommendation is direct democracy.  A quote from VD down in the comments: Mob rule is better than corrupt, self-interested elite rule.

There is a lot of rowdy exchange in the comments.  Everybody understands that central governments, national or multi-national like the EU, have far too much power.  Once bureaucracies and regulatory agencies get started, voting actually has very little effect on daily activities.  The courts become more of a problem than the legislatures. 

We have too many lawyers.  You know why you need lawyers?  To defend yourself against other lawyers.  It is not, generally, a productive profession.  It is parasitical.  It can be symbiotic if there aren't too many, but, in most of the West, they are slowly killing the host.  Mob rule, anarchy, vigilantism, I'm starting to think all of them are better than "lawyer-archy". 

Monday, October 19, 2015

Where Have All The Psychopaths Gone?





I am so not surprised by any of these.  Though I am a  follower of Christ, I have had far too many encounters with wolves in sheep's clothing -- of which the Lord Himself warned, by the way, to question #8.

As far as surgeons and chefs, my response is, who cares?  Police and other uncivil servants, including politicians, are obvious hot spots.  Note that politician isn't on the list but lawyer is.  From which profession are most politicians drawn?

But, of course, they are all from the government and they are here to help you -- like all psychopaths. 

Khartoum

A while back I watched the Charleton Heston/Laurence Olivier film "Khartoum" on my computer.  I don't think a BluRay or anything on a small screen would do justice to the theatrical release in Cinerama -- similar to IMAX.  Still, the story is a good one that will call for comparisons to "Lawrence of Arabia".  Heston plays General Charles Gordon sent to Khartoum in the wake of a massacre of a British-led colonial force.  The enemy, depicted by Olivier, is Muhammad Ahmad, the Mahdi, a Muslim fanatic who leads a war of religious cleansing against the Sudanese and Egyptians.

"Lawrence" is an epic film and always worth watching.  Lawrence built a legend for himself with The Seven Pillars of Wisdom which is rightfully one of the great books of the 20th Century.  The book, in particular, gives some insight into the political maneuverings that underlie much of the modern Middle East chaos.  "Khartoum", on the other hand, is less an epic than a study in the politics and personalities of the conflict at its center.  Olivier gives us at least a glimpse of the psychology of the fanatic in his portrayal of the Mahdi.

While neither film is perfectly historical -- as if there were such a thing, we can still learn from them.  If you are wondering about the mindset of the people we are fighting in the Middle East, see if you can find a copy of "Khartoum".  That is not to say it will make a viewer an expert, but it is a thought-provoking introduction to some of the issues we face today.


Gordon, while he had some heterodox beliefs, was essentially a Christian, and, back in 1966, filmmakers were less antagonistic, in general, to positive Christian characters.  The Madhi's campaign, much like that of ISIS today, was aimed largely at slaughter and terror to win the allegiance of the fearful.  Gordon understood that the killing would end only with the Mahdi's death.  He was willing to give his life to stir popular support for a war against the jihadis.  

We need to see that we are in an ideological war.  As a foundational belief system, secularism is poorly constructed, weak, and already crumbling.  It will collapse in the face of an Islamic onslaught.  Only Christianity is sufficiently complete and deeply grounded enough to prevail against, as Jesus said, "the gates of hell". 


 

Friday, October 16, 2015

Illinois Cannot Pay Its Lottery Winners

Zero Hedge reports on this issue.

I can't tell everything I know about this, but in the realm of publicly available information, Illinois was one of the first states to go with privatization of its state-run lottery.  The privatization produced significant increases in revenue.  However, the increases were less than the increases promised by the private contractor.  This allowed Illinois to void its contract and return control to the state lottery commission.  As far as I know, that has not helped revenues. 

Knowing how this is supposed to work, I can only assume that money from ticket sales has been diverted from the jackpot payouts to other expenditures.  They are essentially breaking their own law and, if it were any other state, the state's attorney general would already be indicting people.  Since it is probably the most corrupt state in America, no one will be indicted unless the Feds step in -- not likely under Obama's Department of Just-Us. 

When I heard about the state reneging on privatization, my first thought was that it was less about the revenue shortfall than the loss of opportunities for graft.  

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Murder, Media, and Race

I've been out on vacation so I had time to think about the recent mass shooting in Oregon but no opportunity to comment.  Larry Elder on RCP takes on the media's apparent confusion about the murderer's race

There are a lot of murders in America committed by white people.  There are a demographically disproportionate number of murders in America committed by black people and, mostly, other black people are the victims in those cases.  Killings in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Baltimore and other urban centers across the country are what cause the U.S. to be listed near the top in terms of murders.  Murders and other violent crimes happen daily in the black neighborhoods of our large cities, but the squawking-head journalists on television aren't particularly interested.  Those incidents rarely go national -- unless a white cop shoots an "unarmed (black) teen". 

The only time the media gets excited is when the body count piles high in front of a young, white man.  They wanted the Oregon shooter to be a white supremacist.  He was not.  His mother is black.  Where is his manifesto?  I saw the worthless little punk that shot those folks in the Charleston church with his Confederate flag and heard all about his animosity toward blacks.  Why haven't we heard about this punk's motivation?  Does it not fit the preferred narrative?

Admittedly, I have had better things to do, so maybe I missed it, but it sure did quiet down quickly -- except for the calls for "sensible gun control".

I was in the car listening to Mark Levin when Obama did his bit about the shooting. For the first couple of minutes, I actually had hope the petulant scumbag would act presidential and be focused on the pain of those who lost loved ones.  Then, of course, he started his snarky little attack on liberty.  And that's what it is.  Obama and his ilk hate freedom.  I suppose that is only just.  Free men and women hate tyranny.

"The right to buy weapons is the right to be free" -- A.E. van Vogt