Left Calling for Armed Revolt

An article published July 2, 2009 entitled "Glenn Beck: Extreme Left Calling People to Arms" points to a book by Leftists that point blank calls for armed revolt :

While the government warns that right-wing extremists could be domestic terrorists, and The New York Times, says I could incite those crazy conservatives to violence, the extreme left is actively calling for violence!

As world economies go down the tank and unemployment continues to rise, disenfranchised people are set to explode.

The dangerous leftist book that could spark this is "The Coming Insurrection." This is a call to arms for violent revolution, authored anonymously by a French group called the Invisible Committee who want to bring down capitalism.

Frankly, I have seen nothing to indicate that patriots who want a restoration of the Constitution are calling for armed revolt. Indeed, most do not want that if it can be avoided. But, more and more, they want to be prepared if it cannot. On the other hand, Leftists are actively calling for armed revolt. Perhaps the alphabet soup agencies, as representatives of We the People, should be going after them instead of us.

We have a President to fails to obey the law, even ones he passed, we have a Congress and a Supreme Court who subvert the law. We have alphabet soup agencies who lie, cheat, and sometimes steal to get convictions of members of We the People who are supposed to be presumed innocent. All of these scoundrels represent YOU. Would YOU do that? I didn't think so. Why are We letting Them get away with doing it. We must take political action now to restore the rule of law and the Constitution in this country. Without a rule of law, you have either anarchy or the rule of Strong Men. History shows that anarchy leads inevitably to Strong Men.

Restraunt Carry in Georgia

David Hardy over at Of Arms and the Law has a link to the Atlanta Gun Rights Examiner article by Ed Stone entitled One Year Anniversary of HB89 Arrives Without Dire Consequences. Here's a quote:

Sometimes it is helpful to remember what people like this say, especially when it is being repeated the next time a new piece of legislation is introduced. At what point do honest, logical people cease paying attention to it? At what point do we cease to ascribe the motivation for such speech to innocence and honestly good intentions? With one year of experience behind us involving hundreds of thousands of Georgia firearms license holders, any detached observer would have to conclude that these people have now lost all credibility by making such outrageous claims and predictions.

Indeed. But they never do. The gun grabbers continue to make wild predictions of blood in the streets which never comes true, but then another State takes up the legislation and low and behold, the same people are at it again, and nobody ever calls them on it.

Here in North Carolina, we have had similar bills several times, only to have them bottled up in committee by the anti-gun "Representative" Deborah Ross. Ross ran unopposed this last time, so she doesn't feel the need to actually...you know...."represent" the people. While States all around us seem to have no problem with carrying a gun into a restaurant that serves alcohol, as long as the person carrying doesn't drink it, Ms. Ross seems to feel that we in North Carolina are made of less stern stuff. Of course, criminals carry in restaurants and everywhere else. Things don't change because the only folks Ms. Ross is disarming are the ones who follow the law in the first place. You see, gun control is all about control.

Happy July 4th!

Things will soon be getting crazy, but I thought I'd take a minute to wish everyone who stops here a Happy July 4th Holiday. Here on the PolyKahr estate, for the moment, we can all pretend that we are still free people. No, I will not celebrate by going to the range, but by having friends and family over to eat a lot of food, play games, and enjoy the day.

I also thought I'd leave you with this essay from today's Townhall.com by Carrie Lukas entitled Government Growth Challenging Liberty This July 4th A quote:

We are constrained today because our government is already so large and over-extended. That problem will only get worse. Due to promises the government has already made—most specifically spending on Social Security and Medicare—the share of the economy that government will demand is going to continue to balloon.

This isn't just a matter of dollars and cents. This means that your children and grandchildren will have less control over the money they earn and their property because they will have to pay off liabilities accrued this year. That generation will have less to meet global challenges and each family will have less to meet personal ones.

She goes on to bemoan the tendency each of us has to say, in essence, "there ought to be a law!" and the zeal with which politicians seem to step over themselves making such laws. Its a bad bargain in which the people always lose, and the Government always wins. Stop asking for more from Government, and do more for yourselves. In the end, you'll be glad you did.

75th Anniversary of the Night of the Long Knives

The American Thinker has a great article on the 75th anniversary of Night of the Long Knives by Bruce Walker. Bruce reminds us that the goal of every totalitarian is always the same: power. No matter what ideology espoused, the goal is always the same, to acquire and maintain power.

The Night of the Long Knives was not an attack on the "socialism" in National Socialism, as it is so often suggested. Two weeks after the Night of the Long Knives, Graf von der Golz, Deputy Commissar in the Ministry of Economics in July `5, 1934 speech to businessmen said: "Any organization that represents the interests of the employer will be regarded as illegal and disbanded and the guilty parties will be prosecuted."[i]

and

As we watch our Leader's face everyone on television, his words as answers to every problem, and his inspectors general fired when they find malfeasance, his legislators asked to vote for bills they have not read, our media practically scripted in its treatment of him, is it not prudent to ask how little the lust for power has changed in the last seventy-five years?

Making Tradeoffs

It's getting crazy around here, what with guest coming in for the 4th of July weekend. Blogging will be light for a while, but when I get the chance, I will post a few things. I have a short window of opportunity right now, so I thought I would post Absolute Values and Growing Government published by the Townhall.com Staff yesterday. This was taken from a Townhall.com blogger named Andrew, who should be proud of some truly excellent writing.

Do you ever have one of those epiphanies where you just have to say "Huh"? I did yesterday, though because of the craziness going on now, I didn't have time to post about it. I had it when I read this Townhall.com piece. Go read the whole thing. A little taste though:

The truth is quite simple: All values are relative, and all are subject to a cost-benefit analysis. Though many arguments exist against this, and some may even sound plausible, a little bit of thought will show that, despite the seemingly plausible arguments, there really is no such thing as an absolute value.

I have expressed it differently. I have expressed the idea as worshipping the creation rather than the creator. Some of my readers are apparently agnostic or atheistic, and did not care for my formulation. This formulation should speak to them, then. It also expresses a conservative ideal of the golden mean.

For example, Life is precious, and we should not waste the great gift God has given us, and by extension we should not waste the lives of others. Thus self defense is an exception to the rule that you "shall not murder." Because the murderer has demonstrated by words and deeds his intention to kill, you have the right to defend yourself. Pacifism in the face of a murderous attack is just as wrong as initiating such an attack.

Peace is a good thing. With peace comes the prospect of prosperity, and in its absence, no prosperity is possible. Liberty is also a good, but some liberty must be surrendered to have peace. However, if too much liberty is demanded, peace is no longer possible for those who treasure their liberties. But the Declaration of Independence said it far better than your poorly endowed scribbler. The Continental Congress said:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Similarly, every person wants a clean environment, but at what cost? We in the United States have achieved a remarkably clean environment over the last 40 years. We have done so because we have been more prosperous than other countries. Less prosperous countries can simply not afford to put the amounts of money that we have into reducing the environmental effects of that prosperity. But we have come to the point of diminishing returns, and one has to weigh the costs of lost opportunity against the possible gains.

Frankly, I do not see the gains.

The environmental literature is littered with scare words. When you see someone say that this or that "might" cause a disaster, or "could" cause such and such to happen, it should send a red flag up in your mind to ask what are the actual probabilities of that undesirable thing happening.
For example, they say that if you smoke cigarettes, you "could" get lung cancer. To scare you further, they point out that smoking a pack a day doubles your risk. Wow, you better quit. But wait, what is the risk of getting lung cancer? Well, it turns out that the risk for a non-smoker is 7.5%, meaning that you have a 92.5% risk of dieing of something else. So, double that and if you smoke you have a 15% risk, meaning that you still have an 85% chance of dieing of something else. So, a smoker weighs the good of his life against the pleasure (a good) of smoking, and decides to take that risk. Now I am not defending smoking here, but pointing out a common way that society is buffaloed into spending money in support of Left wing causes.

So, what are we risking with Waxman Markey? Well here we are making a $9.4 trillion bet that "if" anthropogenic global warming exists, we will be able to cool the planet by hundredths of a degree in 2050. Does that look like a trade off you would make? After all, heating and cooling your home are goods, easy transportation is a good. Remember that there are no absolute goods, only relative values. Would you spend your hard earned money on a flim-flam scheme like this one? What opportunities might you be passing up in order to have this good? Is it worth it? I say it isn't.

Waxman-Markey: Porkulus Redux

Eternity Road has a post up by the Curmudgeon entitled simply Waxman-Markey. The Curmudgeon is Francis W. Poretto's alter ego.

There's no question that this bill will radically increase the price of electricity, and of every fuel other than uranium. Indeed, several of its backers have admitted that much -- and have touted it as a feature rather than a bug. The bill amounts to the largest and longest protracted tax measure in the history of the world. Just as bad is this: given the Obama Administration's hostility to expanded exploration for coal, oil, and natural gas, the supply of all the fuels that power American society is likely to decrease.

If this bill isn't somehow killed in the Senate, it will reduce America to a penurious, has-been power, whose citizens will swelter in the summer and shiver in the winter while paying a fortune for the privilege.

I have read estimates that electricity costs may increase by 90%, never mind transportation fuels. Summers get hot here. The day time high temperatures have ranged up to 100 degrees of late, with humidity to match. I remember Ohio winters when the day time high temperature did not get above zero. If your income is, say $20,000, does it become a struggle whether to cool the home or put food on the table? Can you afford to drive to your job even?

Let's look at energy independence, so beloved by the left as a campaign slogan. This bill will mean we will explore for, and extract less fuel than we do now here at home, and thus we will be importing more of our energy under a cap and trade regime than we are now. If they think we are being blackmailed into unnecessary wars in the middle east now, what will they think when we are being blackmailed into wars in more places because we have to import more fuel from around the globe. All this while the country has abundant fuel sitting in the ground.

Then there is the question of whether you are truly being "represented" in the Congress, or are these relatively wealthy men and women (a Congressman makes $174,000 plus benefits any one of us would love to have) are just in it for themselves? If your Congressman had to live under the same rules as you do, do you think they would pass this sort of economic travesty?
I have not heard the figures, but I would imagine substantial numbers of people called the Congressional hotline to voice their opposition to this bill. Why weren't their concerns taken into account? What was so urgent about this bill, that it could not wait until after the July 4th holiday? Would one more day of delay have made a difference in the global temperature 100 years from now? Really? And we know the Congressman who voted for this bill could not have read or understood it. There we 300 pages of changes to the bill that were included by the Rules Committee at 3:00 am that morning. They did not even have a single completed copy of the bill before voting on it. Where's the outrage?

This is another Porkulus Bill, passed in a hurry, in the middle of the night, before Congressmen took off for July 4th so they wouldn't have to face the anger of the electorate.

I think I need take a page from Francis Poretto, and create an alter ego for these little rants.

Inmates in Charge of the Asylum

So today we will see which Democrats value more: their own political skin, or paying back the environmentalists. I have a feeling I know the answer. Congress is not listening to or representing We the People anymore. They are not listening to facts. Instead, they seem to be in the thrall of the Gaia worshipers. The Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill appears likely to pass despite its huge cost, despite that fact that it will do almost nothing to solve the problem it nominally attempts to solve, despite the fact that we are in a recession, despite the fact that Europe has already tried it an shown it to be a dismal failure on every level.

First up is Michelle Malkin whose piece EPA's Game of Global Warming Hide and Seek in today's Townhall.com brings up some evidence EPA didn't want to hear:

The free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington (where I served as a journalism fellow in 1995) obtained a set of internal e-mails exposing Team Obama's willful and reckless disregard for data that undermine the illusion of "consensus." In March, Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, asked agency officials to distribute his analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases. EPA has proposed a public health "endangerment finding" covering CO2 and five other gases that would trigger costly, extensive new regulations of motor vehicles. The open comment period on the ruling ended this week. But Carlin's study didn't fit the blame-human-activity narrative, so it didn't make the cut.

The role of the EPA should be as an honest broker. They should not be trying to fix the results by telling half the story. That is what advocates and activists do. It's fine for private activists, with an agenda and an axe to grind to tell only half the story. We expect it of them, and there are always counter voices to listen to and find the other half. But when an agency of the Executive branch silences legitimate voices because they have already made up their minds, facts be damned, it is We the People who end up paying dearly for their incompetence. Of course, this is not new territory for the EPA, but it is troubling none the less.

Next up is David Limbaugh's article Throw the Bums Out, also at Townhall.com today. David points out that in addition to not reading the 1,200 page bill before passing it, Congress has not done any other due diligence required before implementing such a monster:

...Doesn't it make sense that before enacting legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the purpose of reducing man-made global warming, Congress would investigate whether significant man-made global warming is occurring (as opposed to watching Al Gore's propaganda film and simply declaring, by fiat, that scientists have reached a consensus on the issue when they clearly have not)?

And if, after a thorough and balanced inquiry, they determine that it is occurring, shouldn't they next examine whether their proposed legislative remedy is likely to significantly ameliorate the problem?

But they not only have not conducted a bona fide examination of the man-made warming issue but also have not attempted to examine, in any remotely scientific way, how much their proposed bill would reduce global warming (assuming it exists to the extent they contend) or whether any such reductions would make any difference at all to humanity's short- or long-term health or happiness or anything else.

All of this would be outrageous enough if there were no economic costs associated with their proposal. But in fact, the costs would be astronomical and way beyond the calculations they are presenting -- fraudulently -- to the American people to stunt the opposition they'd encounter if the truth were revealed.

I frankly do not think we can likely stop this in the House. Maybe we can stop it in the Senate. I would suggest going off the grid, and living in your car, but with Government Motors "smart" cars, there isn't enough room for the reloading bench.

Update 6/27/09: As predicted, the House indeed passed the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill. Glenn Beck reported last evening that some big names appear ready to profit big time. Algore may become the first cap and trade billionaire (big surprise there.) Goldman-Sachs stands to gain, as well as AIG. These last two, being now arms of the Government through the bailout process, makes the whole rot smell most distasteful. And then there is GE, owner of NBC and MSNBC. That of course explains the cheerleading from the media we have been hearing. Keep in mind that all these guys hope to make a killing of our your now strained pocketbook. Every item you buy will have a small cap and trade tax attached, though it won't be listed as such. Once again Congress has picked winners and losers. Guess who has been chosen to play the chump?