The Tyrants and the Pretender

Finally, for today, there is this post from Eternity Road, entitled The Tyrants and the Pretender. The Curmudgeon says it all, and very well at that, so I will just quote a few graphs and let you savor the entire thing.

Obama, a social-fascist, has no interest in anyone's freedom. His drive is for power. He finds the sentiments of tyrants more to his taste than the aspirations of would-be-free men. He certainly prefers the company of tyrants; he's spent enough time trying to charm them. Perhaps he hopes to learn from them.

Your Curmudgeon imagines that the tyrants of the world -- the ones who don't trouble to conceal it, that is -- are secretly amused. Obama can't possibly rise to their estate; Americans are too well armed, and his support is too precarious. A bad-enough false move would precipitate a second American Revolution, which could end with his bullet-riddled corpse hanging from a balcony. Of the bad moves in prospect, perhaps three would be bad enough: government-managed health care; the Employee Free Choice Act, and the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.

What might we who understand and love freedom do to hasten Obama's expulsion from the Oval Office, perhaps even from the country? Your Curmudgeon entertains the question every day. Do you, Gentle Readers? What possibilities have you been pondering? Bequeathing Air Force One to Iran, or perhaps to some unplumbed African hellhole, would be a tolerable cost, wouldn't you say?

"Only I am the president of the United States." -- Barack Hussein Obama, press conference, June 23, 2009.

Another Lautenburg Proposal

Classical Values has a great post on the Lautenburg proposal to deny guns to those on the "Terrorist Watch List." Thanks to Dave Hardy for pointing to it on his blog, Of Arms and the Law.

This is a horrible and unconstitutional abuse of government authority, by a man who simply hates the idea that the "little people" might defend themselves with a gun. The Terrorist Watch List has been controversial because you can apparently be placed on it by a bureaucrat without being convicted of any crime, you can not find out if you are on it or why, and there is no means to get your name cleared. Presumably, you could appear on the list because someone at TSA doesn't like you, and wants to harass you. Or, who knows, because you are a conservative blogger? Because I don't know the criterion for getting on the list, I can speculate all day about it. Nixon had his "Enemies List," but this is supposedly "official."

Now, let's also think about the practical effects of the proposal for a minute. Does anyone believe that a real terrorist is going to just walk into a gun store, select a Glock 19, fill out the paperwork, and carry it out of the store leaving a paper trail of the serial number, and empty casing, and the place where purchased? Anyone? Of course not. Like anyone bent on a criminal enterprise, they will obtain their weapons through the black market, or smuggle them into the country. They probably won't steal the weapons themselves because of the risk to the mission if caught. So who do you think this will affect? If you said the law abiding citizen, you are correct. Lautenberg is using the ruse of the current bogeyman, the terrorist (who by the way, is real) to craft a law to harass law abiding citizens who may feel the need of a gun, especially when police forces are being cut due to the economic climate.

Anyway, go read the who thing. The comments section is particularly amusing as well.

Cap and Trade Regulates the Essential Element of Life

Not especially well written, but certainly contains a lot of useful information, The Regulation of the Essential Elements of Life by Lonnie E. Schubert is in the American Thinker today. Schubert comes at it from a slightly different angle, but essentially it is the "giggle test" so extolled by my former boss. An example:

Please, the simple fact is that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is roughly in equilibrium with carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans. Carbon dioxide concentration will necessarily rise in the atmosphere as the average ocean temperature rises. To ensure I am clear, global warming causes a rise in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. The causation is the same in the laboratory. Again, think back to your freshman and sophomore physics labs. Carbon dioxide comes out of the carbonated beverage as it warms. If it is kept chilled, it retains much more of its carbonation. Solubility is inversely proportional to temperature for carbon dioxide in water. Colder oceans absorb more carbon dioxide removing it from the atmosphere. Warmer oceans will not hold the carbon dioxide, and atmospheric concentrations go up.

Perhaps it is nonintuitive that all of our fossil fuels came from carbon dioxide that was once in the air and was subsequently converted to biological material through photosynthesis. Our fossil fuels are simply carbon dioxide concentrated by solar energy and earth forces so we can easily use it now. It is simply unreasonable to suppose it to be catastrophic to place this carbon back into the atmosphere from whence it came.

As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

In other words, the Goofball Wormening proponents want you to believe them, and not your own lying eyes. A little known factoid included in the above article is that the increase in fossil fuel use can be attributed solely to the increase in population. Interestingly, with our population being so large, we experience dense traffic every day because most of us live in or around cities. We get a distorted view of how much fossil fuel is being used. But in the United States, only 6% of the land area is developed, meaning has buildings and such on it. In Illinois and Indiana several years ago, I traveled for miles on interstate highways without seeing an on coming car. Out west, there are roads where one could wait for days for another traveler to come by. I once read a statistic that if all the oil that was ever pumped were to be put in one spot, it would fill Lake Tahoe. I could go on, but you get the point.

The point is that the cry of Goofball Wormening has nothing to do with science, or common sense. Gaia is not mad at us, and will not punish us. Instead, this is a power grab by people who want to control our lives, to control how much and where we can travel, form where we can get goods and services, and so much more. In the process, they plan to profit mightily on our backs. Don't let them.

Update: One of the facts pointed out in the above article is that the percentage carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rises and falls in response to average temperature of the oceans. It is a lagging indicator; or the earth warms and then carbon dioxide rises. As the earth again cools, which it is doing now, carbon dioxide goes back down. So here's a prediction. If cap and trade is implemented, the earth, already cooling, will continue to cool, and CO2 will go down. This will be pointed to as showing the success of cap and trade. It will not be true, but "the people who care and are empathetic" will want to believe it because it shows their sacrifices have saved the planet. Once again, conservatives will be the bad guys for pointing out the facts. Conservatives will have no credibility because "the people who care and are empathetic" don't want to hear facts.

Conservatives in the Wilderness

Thomas Sowell has good news for conservatives in his article today entitled Republicans in the Wilderness. The money quote:

In a country with more conservatives than liberals, it is puzzling-- in fact, amazing-- that we have the furthest left President of the United States in history, as well as the furthest left Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Republicans, especially, need to think about what this means. If you lose when the other guy has all the high cards, there is not much you can do about it. But, when you have the high cards and still keep taking a beating, then you need to re-think how you are playing the game.

This tracks well with a Glenn Beck bit I saw last night. Glenn is promoting his new book "Common Sense," and went out to test whether his common sense ideas resonate with self described liberals if there is no ideological tag associated with it. He had someone from Fox News read a series of statements from his new book to each of them. Interestingly, they all agreed with them in this small sample of liberals in Manhattan. Then of course, Beck had the person tell them who made the statements. At that point, several of them were shocked and horrified. If Glenn Beck said it, they were against it. In my family, if I tell them I heard it on Rush, or read it on the Drudge Report, it is instantly suspect, and I have to gather other competing sources to prove I am right. But if Katie Couric says the same thing, they take it all in without question. Ann Coulter, during the campaign, endorsed Hillary Clinton. She kept the joke running for several weeks, figuring her endorsement would be the kiss of political death for Hillary. I have tried this same thing with liberals in my family. I might read something Jonah Goldberg has written, or repeat something Rush Limbaugh has said. They often agree, until they find out who said it.

I think many liberals view themselves as being caring and empathetic. They want to root for the underdog. Along comes the left, using language to confuse the issue, and makes oh so reasonable sounding proposals that anyone who "cares and is empathetic" would naturally agree with. Of course, with a nation as rich and blessed as we are, how can any child go hungry at night, how could anyone in need not have the health care required because of lack of insurance. The list is endless. To counter that, the Right has had to expend countless words, research, and having just the correct messenger on each and every issue. And while the Left can fudge facts, the right must be correct about everything. The left never loses credibility, and the right seemingly never has any.

Take gun rights as an example. The left comes up with a throw away argument, based on nothing, but it sounds good, that fewer guns means we will have fewer deaths. Of course that is easily countered, so it became fewer gun deaths-as if gun deaths alone were of importance. On that one issue, countless tons of ink were expended, performing peer reviewed studies, writing scholarly legal treatises, scholarly Constitutional treatises, writing books for the general reader, and so on, all leading up to one case, the Heller case, which was decided as we knew it should be all along. 40 years, and possibly longer.

All this explains G. W. Bush's "Compassionate Conservatism" which turned out not to be very conservative, but it did get Bush elected twice. So, from all this I conclude that conservatives, to win elections, need to make their ideas sound "caring and empathetic," things anyone who is "caring and empathic" would agree with. They need to have an articulate messenger who is not known to be conservative, and who eschews publicly any known conservative thinker or personality. They need to have a great personal story of struggle and hardship, and eventual success. Then, when they get elected, they need to suddenly put in place ruthlessly conservative policies.

Oh, wait a minute...isn't that what the Left does? Flying under a false flag until they reach their goal, then showing their true colors, using people like so many toothpicks, and as easily expendable, using people's weaknesses against them, enslaving them while claiming to empower them? If the Left told the truth about itself and its goals, nobody would want anything to do with it. But the Right never has credibility, no matter how many times, on how many issues we have shown ourselves to have been correct.

And that is why conservatives are in the wilderness.

The War on Guns: Prior Restraints on Speech and Guns Enable Tyranny

The War on Guns: Prior Restraints on Speech and Guns Enable Tyranny

David Codrea has an excellent link up to his Gun Rights Examiner article. A quote:

And like it or not, just as we can't require a permit for you to speak your mind, or impose a waiting period before you can purchase a newspaper, or demand that you register your video purchases, just as we can't pass laws prohibiting concealed crucifixes, the same holds true for guns--or at least should.

But that's not the same, cry the gun haters. The only purpose of guns is to kill!

Demonstrably not true, but so may words and ideas, unless you think the despots of the past and present have rounded up and dispatched their victims by themselves. And just as words can also provide deliverance, so too can guns. They do in this country on a daily basis, to the tune of up to 2.5 million times* a year.

This leads us to the final flawed premise; that any of the 20,000* "reasonable" infringements constructed in the minds of headline-seizing politicians, and enacted to date at the federal, state and local level, have made society safer, or have kept the predators among us from wreaking carnage at will.

Is there anyone who seriously thinks law number 20,001 will be the one that finally works?

All of us, in our own way, keep saying the same things. Why is no one listening?

The Confusion of the Pagans

Sandy Rios has an article on Townhall entitled The Confusion of the Pagans, in which she delivers some sharp words concerning the murder of George Tiller. She is commenting on Dr. Carhart's eulogy for Tiller:

“What I want to assure the press and reassure the women of America is that we will somehow, somewhere continue to provide abortions later in gestation.” Who exactly is assured by that statement? Who is comforted … happy … relieved? And what kind of man would spend his days dismembering live, kicking babies and delivering them part by part? What kind of man would assure women he will continue to perform the heinous act of stabbing a baby in the back of the head with scissors, suctioning its brains, crushing its skull as the lower body, already delivered, thrashes in pain, removing the head last so as to fool himself and the law into thinking it is not infanticide? What man is proud of that? What man lives and breathes that mission and what woman or member of the press applauds his assurance not to worry? It can happen to their baby or grandbaby in the future too?

Go and read the whole thing. It is very powerful.

Customs and Border Patrol Sneaking One By Us

John Longenecker has a good article on what I am calling the "Great Pocket Knife Scandal" over at the Los Angeles Gun Rights Examiner. You can find the article by clicking on Gun Rights Examiners on the side bar to this blog, and going down to John Longenecker and clicking on "Pocket knife ban models gun control formula." A little quote to whet your appetite:

You see, the agencies charged with deciding ultimately decide against the will of the people. Instead of taking No for an answer, they invite comments, but will still not reject the idea as an interference with our liberty. This is soft tyranny. They’re going to get their way instead of our getting our way.

Soft tyranny.

Why it’s a mistake to make guns and pocket knives illegal is because they just telegraphed this exact blueprint to America that our fears are coming true. Soft tyranny is here. In the United States, you can see the second amendment’s function against this kind of tyranny at work; the armed citizen totally discredits many anti-crime policies which don’t work because that is not where crime is fought. Crime is fought the moment it strikes. Crime is caught after it has struck and done its damage. This may speak the language of Justice, but it does not speak the language of safety and sovereignty. Forty-eight states affirm your right to carry a handgun, but the big cities punish it. It wouldn’t do if the big city populace got the idea they didn’t need so much of what the government wants to ‘give’. Gun control obfuscates one’s authority to act; crime grows and dependency on officials grows. Unwelcome. Unconscionable

When I was in my teens, my Dad taught me how to make a knife from an old file. An old saw blade works well too, or if you want to hammer and forge, old lawn mower blades can by put into service. There are, of course, many ways to make a knife, and a serviceable one can be made without a great deal of skill required. My Dad learned as making a knife was his introduction to a high school class in forging. My point is that pretty much anyone with a modest amount of machine tools can make knives. With more tools and a well equipped shop, it's easy to make either guns or knives.

My recollections aside, as hard as it is to fight everything that is coming down the pike at us, we need to write our Senators and Congressmen about this. The administration is testing our resolve, looking for weaknesses. Perhaps it's knives, or eating greasy burgers. Maybe if they don't ban it but tax it, we'll sit by complacently. But the Left wants to control you and your behavior (for your own good of course) and they don't sleep. Ever.