Category: Politics

Posted on

(We Don’t Need No) Civil War

I wish this post was about a crappy and long-forgotten Guns & Roses tune.

Sadly, it’s not.

Nope, this is a post about the relentless jackassery of the European Union. Seems that their Ministry of Silly Walks (whatever, it doesn’t really matter – they’re all equally ineffective) has determined that to avoid harming the feelings of anyone who might’ve signed up for the Jackboot side of WWII, the Museum of European History will henceforth only present said history from 1946 onward. The armed unpleasantness that occurred immediately before the current era of sweetness and light will henceforth be referred to as the European Civil War.

Let that sink in a minute. Continue reading “(We Don’t Need No) Civil War”

Posted on

Once and Future Past

Gemini 9. Credit: NASA

The Atlantic recently posted a couple of really nice photo essays on the space program. The piece on decommissioning the space shuttles isn’t too surprising; that’s a big and fairly recent deal. The Gemini story is more surprising, as it happened nearly 50 years ago and is generally only thought about by space geeks like me.

Gemini was the gateway drug that hooked me on the space program, maybe because they were the first missions I was conscious of. I remember being fascinated by the big silver rocket with the little two-man tin can on top. And spacemen were cool. How could I not be drawn to something that looked just like my favorite G.I. Joe? Continue reading “Once and Future Past”

Posted on

Nothing to See Here, Move Along…

P.J. O’Rourke once wrote that “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” Keeping that in mind, ever notice how all of the really scary news remains out of sight until it just can’t be concealed anymore? Then it all pops up at once like crabgrass in your back yard…

Like the huge new Big Brother-ish NSA data collection center. If it’s transmitted, they’ll not only read it; they’ll store it for future reference. Combined with the CIA’s excitement about spying on people through their TV sets (I mean, really…did they just flat lift the idea from 1984?). It makes you wonder if anything is truly private anymore. Continue reading “Nothing to See Here, Move Along…”

Posted on

EU Death Watch, Part Deux

The EU continues its descent into Monty Python-esque self-parody.

In what must be the live-action adaptation of the invincible Captain Euro, here’s some lame propaganda an ode to Europe’s superior negotiating skills.

If you think the heroine is about to go all “Kill Bill” on these scary ethnic bad guys, guess again. These are the same people who learned absolutely nothing from Neville Chamberlain, after all.

As they say, you can’t make this stuff up.

Posted on

Serf’s Up

Some thought-provoking…thoughts, on our current state of affairs from National Review. Think you’re a free citizen of a government that exists for the will of the people?

Think again, silly person. Come see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help! I’m being repressed!

UPDATE: Think I’m exaggerating? Here’s a story about a private dinner in Nevada that was broken up by party-crashers from the health department. Yes, it was a very big party. So what? It was a private “farm-to-fork” dinner…i.e., organic. Makes you wonder how many partygoers may be reconsidering their ballot choices.

Hat tip: Samizdata.net

Posted on

They’ll Take My Les Paul…

…when they pry it from my cold, dead hands!

Reason TV reports on last summer’s raid by jackbooted thugs Federal agents on the Gibson guitar factory, in which armed law enforcement shut down the plant, confiscated about a half-million bucks worth of product, and as of yet refuses to charge the company or return the property.

The best part? It’s for supposed violations of Indian law (as in the actual country, and not native Americans). Anyone who thinks this isn’t political is fooling themselves.

Wonder what Les Paul himself would think? Looks like we may already have the answer:

Posted on

The Mask Finally Slips

…and the Left reveals their true intentions. Separately, any one of these stories would be just more dismaying evidence of the sorry state of our politics. But taken together, they paint a truly frightening picture:

Climate Changers Game Plan Revealed. Surprise: world domination! Worth considering when you read the ClimateGate 2.0 emails.

Obama’s True Convictions Revealed. Surprise: Marxism! Okay, so it’s not a surprise for anyone who’s actually been paying attention.

Occupy Wall Street’s Goal Revealed. Surprise: crush Capitalism!

Fast & Furious Objective Revealed. Surprise: gun control!

Democrats Abandon the Middle Class in favor of either extreme of the income-distribution curve: those who rely on government handouts and the very wealthy who supposedly pay for it all. In reality, all of us who actually work for a living are paying for it all. And our kids. And their kids…

And lest I forget, former SEIU thug-in-chief Andy Stern advocates for a Chinese Communist economic model in the Wall Street Journal, of all places. Before you dismiss that as having any relevance, don’t forget that the former head Purple People Beater has been the single most frequent visitor to the Obama White House.

At this point, it’d make perfect sense for Dr. Evil to surface off of Washington in his hidden submarine lair to demand one trillion dollars. And we would laugh collectively as Geithner and Bernanke happily roll up with a dump truck’s load of freshly-minted bills, as Dr. Evil certainly wouldn’t appreciate what a screw job they’d just given him.

After decades of hiding their true intentions, the radicals who’ve taken over the Democratic Party have finally dropped any pretense of hiding what they’re really all about. It’s a sign that they see this as the end game, all or nothing.

Well, thank God for that, however infuriating they may be. So bring it, you Commie pukes. And I mean that in the true sense of the word, as that’s the ideology you’ve aligned yourselves with. It’s nice that you’ve finally admitted to it. 2012 will be one of the most consequential elections in our history, equal to 1860 or 1932. It’s only fitting that we know what our choices are really going to be.

Of course, that assumes the Republicans get their collective act together and present us with an actual choice, and not just a less-scary version of what the Dims have been pushing since the Sixties. Hint: that probably won’t be coming from the Mittster.

Posted on

History Repeats Itself

First as tragedy, next as farce.

And that, my friends, is the only thought Karl Marx ever expressed that I would even halfway agree with (assuming I’m correct in attributing that to him).

So what’s got me wound up on such a topic? Current events, as usual.

At the top of the list would be supposedly intelligent people believing we can solve the world’s financial problems by just printing more money. And where, exactly, has that worked whenever it’s been tried? Think Wiemar Germany or Zimbabwe can’t happen here? You can’t ignore the laws of economics any more than you can physics. The effects just take longer to materialize.

Next, an administration which foolishly encourages Israel’s enemies (and by extension, our own).

Just for fun, how about the rise of the “Fifth Reich“? (No one expected the Spanish Inquisition!)

Finally, our pathetic inability to understand or appreciate our own history, which just cements the deal. I’ve never been one to think like a tin-foil-hat survivalist, but the likelihood of a global catastrophe just keeps growing . 1914 or 1938, pick your year, because I fear we’re about to find out what that was like.

Posted on

Are You Smarter Than a Wall Street Occupier?

Judging by the results of this survey, I’d say your average single-celled organism might have more brain power.

This whole sorry movement is really just the end result of decades of undermining our education standards. Add to that far too many young people who go on to major in absolutely useless subjects only to end up saddled with massive debt and no job prospects. This quote from a NY Times story is priceless:

In Boston, a hub of colleges and universities, a higher education theme emerged among protesters. “What did I spend the last four years doing…Fluent in Mandarin and French and no one wants to go for that? And it’s like, now what?”

Yes, the economy’s in the tank. But jobs are not non-existent, and you might be more competitive if you’d majored in something useful instead of Medieval French Literature with a minor in Transgender Victim Studies. What stands out in the above piece is how many of them seem to be from the artsy-crafty crowd. Strangely, I don’t see many stories about newly-minted engineers being out of work. Check the websites of Boeing, Lockheed, SpaceX, etc. and you’ll find they’re still hiring in droves.

Look, my degree’s in English. I get it. I likewise didn’t give serious thought to what good it’d actually do for me in the marketplace since I was headed for the military. And that was 25 years ago, when the Reagan Boom was in full swing. When the economy is barely avoiding depression, employers can afford to be a lot more choosy. They have to be.

What’s sad is that this crowd just doesn’t get it. They don’t understand where their anger really needs to be focused because they’ve come up through a system that left them completely unprepared for reality.

I feel sorry for a lot of these people, seriously. This guy, not so much:

Posted on

A Nuke Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

If only that were so, but apparently The One felt the need to apologize for dropping the big ones that ended WWII. Fortunately the Japanese saw the folly of it and headed him off at the pass. You’d think they’d have been the first ones to be okay with it, but no dice.

I spent a good deal of time in Japan as a young Marine, and was able to visit Hiroshima. It was an amazing city, and the memorial gardens were sobering. Seeing the remnants of such violent history up close should make anyone with a brain in their heads think about the consequences of war.

In no way does that mean we shouldn’t have done it. Truman’s decision saved millions on both sides. Anyone who says otherwise is willfully ignorant of the realities of the period. Consider we had to nuke them – twice – before they  finally surrendered.

It also established the United States as one country you absolutely did not want to screw with. We’ve sadly frittered away that legacy over the intervening decades.

One of the memorial’s main halls held an enormous guestbook for visitors to sign and leave their thoughts. It was full of the predictable twaddle about tolerance and world peace and how-terrible-this-must-never-happen-again-please-forgive-us flapdoodle. It was thoroughly dismaying.

So what was my entry?

“They started it.”

Website Powered by WordPress.com.