Sunday - October 13, 2013

The United States of America looks frighteningly close to being ungovernable.

I don’t think you’ll believe it but, Max Hastings is not a left winger. He isn’t a liberal.
He’s a columnist (Conservative) for the Daily Mail and a noted historian.  I’ve read a couple of his books, and he is a good writer and well researched.
Which brings me to ….  our regulars here may get a mite PO’d at some of his comments on the doings of the great shutdown of 2013.

Hey … gives us something to think about or gripe about or both.

Meanwhile … I’d like to suggest you read the comments at the end at the link below.

This is just one of them.

James14, Basingstoke, United Kingdom, 19 minutes ago
Either you believe in democracy and the rule of law or you don’t. There is no middle line. Whatever anyone thinks of Obama, his healthcare plan was democratically passed by both Houses of Congress, upheld by the Supreme Court and ratified by his re-election. For the Republican Party to be allowed to overturn all of that on a whim would be wrong and counter to everything the US supposedly believes in. It seems to me the Republican Party only believe in democracy and the rule of law when it suits them.

America is becoming ungovernable: MAX HASTINGS’ chilling verdict on the visceral political hatreds behind the shutdown of the US government

By Max Hastings

Washington this week has basked in autumnal sunshine and bitter hatred. Like players in one of those Hollywood movies about a divided hick town with lynch mobs baying, the legislators of the greatest nation on earth trade insults about blame for the government shutdown, resulting from the stand-off on the U.S. budget.

The Senate’s chaplain, Barry Black, rolled his eyes skywards and said: ‘Save us from this madness.’

The ‘madness’ is, of course, the insistence of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives that they will vote to enable the federal government to pay its bills only if the White House agrees to suspend or scrap its national health scheme, which they loathe to the point of obsession.

Obamacare (properly known as ACA, the Affordable Care Act) is the greatest — cynics say the only major — achievement of this disappointing presidency. It provides subsidies and new regulatory procedures to bring health insurance within reach of the poorest Americans. Long-term, it is intended to lower the horrific costs of public healthcare.

Republicans hate the scheme because they claim that it will make medical care more costly for middle America, and extend the reach of the hated federal government.

Yet it is still an extraordinary step to attempt to blackmail the Democratic administration into dropping a measure that became law in 2010.
As a host of commentators point out, if Obama gave way on this issue — as assuredly he will not — the road would be open for his congressional enemies to pull the same stunt about any other law they dislike.

They could defy the intentions of the Founding Fathers of the constitution as flagrantly as the gun nuts who exploit the 1776 provision for militias to bear arms, to enable modern mass murderers to equip themselves with machine-guns. But the Republicans are seized with a self-righteousness which is impervious to reason.

In Britain, most MPs of all parties consider Westminster to be as much home as their constituencies.
But the United States is different. The senators and congressmen who fly into Washington on Monday nights and jet out again on Thursdays never cease to belong first and always to Kansas, Montana, Alabama or wherever else they hail from.

Tis a big country Max, and yeah. Many belong to the states they are from.  Come to think of it, we had an uncivil war about who belonged where, when the north decided they belonged in the south also.
Just couldn’t resist that.

Many of the legislators orchestrating the federal shutdown feel as foreign among East Coast smart-asses — as they would characterise Washington’s elite — as did the Tennessee frontiersman Davy Crockett when he was elected to Congress in 1826.

This is how the powerful Right-wing Tea Party, dedicated activists, have gained such leverage. Incumbent Republicans live in mortal dread of being ousted at election time not by Democrats, but by far-out Right-wingers on their own side.

Even if they would like to act temperately in this crisis, they dare not.

The grassroots are obsessed with firearms. I have sometimes struck up casual conversations about gun law in rural states such as Kansas or Wyoming; it is like holding a dialogue with Martians.

Many people out there sincerely believe the federal government may descend on their homes at any moment to confiscate their pistols and assault rifles, to appease the evil socialist anti-gun lobby. They insist that they must be ready to defend themselves. I have even heard one group cite a threat from extra-terrestrials.

In Britain, we sometimes deplore the decline of religion. But we should take heed of how malign its influence can be, not only in the Muslim world but also in much of the U.S. To be sure, American churches are packed on Sundays, but the gospel of intolerance which some espouse contributes mightily to today’s Washington political gridlock.

Fear is what a lot of this is about.
The Fox TV channel — the Wailing Wall of the American Right — currently advertises a hot best-seller entitled National Bankruptcy — Why The Middle Class Is Doomed. Most Republicans hate 2013.
They want to reset the clock to around 1955, when the world lived in terror of nuclear annihilation, but when Dwight Eisenhower occupied the White House, women and blacks knew their place, there was no swearing on TV, and sex was kept in its proper place under the carpet.

The British middle classes relish nostalgia: some root for UKIP because they fancy the weather would improve if we could leave Europe. But in our hearts, most of us accept that life moves on; even that some change is for the better.
But rural Republicans are not like that. They believe they have the right, duty and even power to roll back the 21st century. This week I chatted to a diplomat’s wife who attended both 2012 party conventions, who remarked on the contrast between them.

The Democratic event in Charlotte, North Carolina, featured delegates who were every colour of the rainbow, many of them young, all willing to hope.
The Republican get-together took place in a heavily-armed fortress in Tampa, Florida, and was attended almost exclusively by white-haired, white-skinned folk bereft of hope, moved only by their fears. If that seems a caricature, fast forward to now.
Those same Tampa dinosaurs have shut down large parts of Washington for 11 days. There is a real possibility that rather than give way, they will drive the jalopy over the cliff and subject the U.S. and the rest of the world to a traumatic debt default.
America has become the test-bed for a crisis of democracy.

There is a frightening debt chasm between U.S. government tax- raising and spending for which both parties share blame, but which Obama has made no real effort to address.

Even Democrats privately fume about the fact that their President may do some statesmanship, but he does not do much politics.
It is vital for all political leaders to privately meet, smooch and cut deals with legislators on whose votes they depend to implement their policies. Yet Barack Obama recoils from glad-handing.

This cool, even cold, man finds it hard to charm his friends, never mind his enemies. His natural habitat is a platform from which he can broadcast to a multitude. All successful reformers in U.S.  history, notably including Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, owed most of their achievements to backroom skills such as Barack Obama lacks.

He would argue: ‘Yeah, but that was before the Tea Party came along.’ That was also before a substantial minority of the American people became seized with such manic distrust of their own government that they decided that any and all means are justified to frustrate its purposes.
Their hatred of President Obama is truly frightening.

It is no exaggeration to say that though they call themselves Christians, a terrifying number would rejoice to see him dead. That is how poisonous is the political climate of the U.S. today.

Polls show that the American people hold the Republicans chiefly responsible for the current mess. The party’s moderates are desperate to extricate themselves. But behind them stand the Tea Party’s gunslingers, holding cocked pistols to their heads.

America remains the greatest society on earth, but its leadership looks sickly and feeble, for reasons that relate partly to this President but mostly to the fact that the U.S. constitution and its standard- bearers are failing their country.

The United States of America looks frighteningly close to being ungovernable.

there’s more here

Be cool Drew. Remember who else reads bmews.

Posted by peiper     on 10/13/2013 at 04:00 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • USA •  
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   Tuesday - October 08, 2013

Shun

Think I’m working up an essay.

There used to be a thing called ‘shunning’. The dictionary defines ‘shun’ as

“shun |SHən| verb ( shuns, shunning , shunned ) [ with obj. ] persistently avoid, ignore, or reject (someone or something) through antipathy or caution”

Usually for good reason: the ‘shunned’ object was a thief, rapist, murderer, scoundrel, lawyer, politician, or Democrat.

So while the Left wants us all to be ‘non-judgemental’ (I actually had a close family member throw that at me once) doesn’t ‘political correctness’ do the same thing?

We on the right should reclaim ‘shunning’. Shunning in pursuit of returning folks to morality and virtue is NOT a bad thing. ‘Political Correctness’, which is just ‘shunning’ in pursuit of immorality and vice, should be fought constantly.

Posted by Christopher     on 10/08/2013 at 08:53 AM   
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Is it just me?

Is it just me?

Or has Barackade Obama painted himself into a corner? Anything that he agrees to now will be seen as a ‘win’ for Republicans. Or, if he takes it ‘to the limit’, he’s forced the government to default. Just like a follower of Saul Alinsky. I would like to remind our current @sshole-in-Chief that Alinsky never had a chance to try his theories… but then, Obama has never actually done any useful work for a paycheck. He’s never run a business, much less a nation. His own ‘autobiography’ says the one time he did work for a private company he felt like he was ‘working behind enemy lines.’

Posted by Christopher     on 10/08/2013 at 07:57 AM   
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   Saturday - September 28, 2013

Glad I made step-son pack his lunches

Back when I married my wife her youngest son was a sophomore in high school. I made him pack his lunch. We’d both pack our lunches the night before. The school principal kept sending letters begging me to enroll him in the school lunch program. I wouldn’t do it. Now I know why—the school got more money for each kid enrolled.

So it is with great glee I present Yuck!

My fondest school lunch memories are back in the late 60s: We lived across the alley from the school, so me and the sisters would just sashay home and Mom would usually have soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for us. Boring? Nope. The soup was always different, and nobody gets tired of a good grilled cheese sandwich.

Posted by Christopher     on 09/28/2013 at 08:11 PM   
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   Thursday - September 05, 2013

back for a brand new season of laffs and guffaws. the three stooges reborn. thank you.

Seeing this in today’s paper , I wondered what some really goofy looking photos of Cameron and Obama might look like alongside the president of France, shown here.  The Three Stooges, circa 2013.  I’d have liked to make it four but, believe it or not, even tho I searched, I couldn’t find a really silly or stupid looking real photo (not phtoshop) of John “Lurch” Kerry.

Well anyway ....  President Hollande of France says he will not take France into a bombing campaign against Syria all on its own.  He says if America goes in then so will France. 

So here. For your amusement and ridicule, and snide remarks too.  Ladies and gentlemen of bmews may it please you. I present our glorious wartime leaders for the year of our lord 2013.  The Three Stooges are baaaaak.  Yuk,Yuk

Who looks stupid now? Bid to ban picture that made French President look like a grinning idiot backfires as bizarre shot goes viral

Picture of Hollande gurning was released by French agency AFP
It was quickly withdrawn, sparking a censorship row
AFP is state-funded, but insists it was not asked to pull picture

By Daily Mail Reporter

This unflattering picture of Francois Hollande sparked a censorship row yesterday.

It shows the French President with a gormless-looking grin at a school to coincide with the start of the new term.

The image was released by a photo agency. And when the agency tried to withdraw it from circulation, the photo quickly hit social media sites like Twitter and went worldwide.

The photo shows Hollande grinning in front of a blackboard on which is written: ‘Today, it’s back to school.’

The photograph was taken on Tuesday during Mr Hollande’s visit to a school in Denain, northern France, to coincide with the start of term for hundreds of thousands of French pupils. It appears he was pulling a funny face to make the pupils laugh.

The original image came with the caption: ‘During a visit to the school Denain Michelet, September 3, 2013, Francois Hollande smiles, chairing a panel discussion on the reform of school timetables established by the government.’

AFP initially posted the picture on its website as available for downloading but – apparently concerned it was inappropriate for a head of state – both later issued a ‘mandatory kill’ notice, meaning the photo must not be used.

AFP wrote: ‘Due to an editorial decision this photo has been withdrawn. Please remove from all your systems. We are sorry for any inconvenience and thank you for your cooperation.’

Despite the ban, however, the image quickly hit social media sites like Twitter, and sparked a flurry of comments.

One wrote: ‘Here is the new official photo of François Hollande. Please put up in all town halls!’

Another wrote that no amount of Photoshop editing software ‘can make the president look more intelligent’.

article source

Posted by peiper     on 09/05/2013 at 12:16 PM   
Filed Under: • CULTURE IN DECLINE • Editorials • Eye-Candy • FRANCE • Fun-Stuff • Obama, The One • Scary Stuff •  
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   Saturday - August 24, 2013

Bored

I’m appalled!

So, three teens in Oklahoma gunned down an Australian college student while he was out jogging. Why?

They were ‘bored’.

That’s an actual quote from the perps in a news story after their arrest.

Bored.

First time I ran into the ‘bored’ teen syndrome was in the 90s. A black teen male knocked on my door soliciting funds for summer programs ‘to keep kids like him off the streets’. That’s a quote. I was so shocked I’ve never forgotten it. After asking this young man what programs, who was running them etc, and finding he had no answers, I told him to pull his pants up or buy a belt. Then I told him I pay taxes so he can have access to the library and the city parks.

How can you be bored with both of those?

Did he have a bicycle? Yes.
Could he bike to the library? Yes.
Could he bike to the library, check out a book on plants and trees and go to the park and learn to identify them? Sounds boring.

So thank you NEA (National Education Association) for teaching kids that learning is boring. Thank you Department of Education for reinforcing the notion. I’m so glad I graduated high school the year BEFORE Jimmy Carter created the Dep. Ed.

So what can bored teens do besides gun down innocent joggers, foreign or otherwise?

Read a book
Play chess
Read a book about chess
Hike in the parks
Hike in the parks with a book from the library and learn to identify trees and plants
Volunteer at the museum
Volunteer at a hospital
Get a summer job

I could keep going but add your own ideas.

I still find the concept of being bored enough to kill a stranger foreign. In fact, the concept of being bored is foreign to me. My problem is I want to learn everything before I die. They say you can’t take it with you, but I can take everything I learn with me.

Posted by Christopher     on 08/24/2013 at 07:51 AM   
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   Saturday - August 03, 2013

message for mr. heffer of the mail. mind your own damn business, not ours.

I never thought I’d be so disappointed by someone that I liked and read and agreed with so much.

I never thought someone who I knew to be a conservative, ok, I’m further to the right but still, he is not a left winger. Anyway, I read this by Simon Heffer of the Mail today and if I had any hair left, I’d probably have pulled it out by now.

There’s almost nothing I hate so much a foreigners telling us what we should do to be liked, and especially I hate the criticism of Guantanamo.

That is our business, not theirs.

Now comes the trial and the sentencing of that faggot Manning.  He betrayed his country and the trust placed in him. Why is that so damn hard for these bleeding hearts to understand?  And why is it thier business anyway?

I’ll be honest here.  My attitude re. sucking up to the world in an effort to be loved makes my blood boil.  Heffer speaks of our standing in the world. Oh yeah? Well if the frackin world doesn’t like what we do, declare war once and for all so we can clean the clock of America haters and the left.

He says we are unpopular across the globe due to Iraq war and Guantanamo Bay.  What planet is Heffer on?  We are ALWAYS unpopular.  We have a few friends, a few.  Mostly we have business arrangements and partners and security agreements with people.  We haven’t too many friends.

I wonder how unpopular we are where send billions of dollars to buy friends?  We’ve gotta be popular with whoever pockets the cash.

Oh btw .....  It has been discovered and reported today that there is some money missing in the sum of approx. £250,000 ( $382,175.00 ), from the comic relief Ugandan charity.  It was money donated by Brits to aid the starving and the kids yadda, yadda.  The Ugandans were given £450,000 of which about 250 is missing.
You don’t say.  Now that is hard to believe.  Does anyone believe that the money is missing or stolen. Nah.

Mr. Heffer Sir, With NO respect intended in any way, Get Bent. Take your damned opinion and shove it where the sun don’t shine. And get yourself on a diet while you’re at it.

By Simon Heffer
s.heffer@dailymail.co.uk

Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier convicted of espionage for supplying information about some of his country’s less creditable activities to WikiLeaks, faces up to 136 years in jail.

He is clearly guilty. But the severity of his sentence will profoundly affect America’s standing in the civilised world.

The U.S. is deeply unpopular across much of the globe as a result of the Iraq war and Guantanamo Bay. It is even viewed with suspicion by traditional allies.

An excessive prison term for Manning would make it look as barbaric as the countries it opposes in the cause of freedom.

Posted by peiper     on 08/03/2013 at 01:26 PM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • Politically Correct B.S. •  
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   Sunday - July 07, 2013

the beneficiaries of treason

Someone writing in something called The Standard (which assumes they have one)
has written about the American traitor Edward Snowden and suggested the following.

Among much else he said.

This country (Britain) has a proud record of offering refuge to dissidents whose lives are in danger.  So, as country after country denies Snowden refuge, it would be a sign of how civilized Britain is to invite Snowden to claim asylum here.

Actually, it would be a sign of total stupidity as we here know. But hey bmews readers, take a look at the name of the brain dead fool who wrote that. Says it all really.

Peyvand Khorsandi

Here is what a pro American and Conservative Brit has had to say.
I think you’ll agree.

Edward Snowden is a traitor

The beneficiaries of his betrayal are not civil liberties, but those who wish to embarrass us

BY Charles Moore, Telegraph

In traditional accounts of Hell, sinners end up with punishments that fit their crimes. Rumour-mongers have their tongues cut out; usurers wear chains of burning gold. On this basis, it will be entirely fitting if Edward Snowden spends eternity in a Moscow airport lounge.

Having betrayed his own state, the man who revealed the secrets of the US National Security Agency (NSA) needs to find out what it is like to live at the mercy of other states. Acting in the name of a morality which disdains allegiance to the rule of national law, he deserves to see what life is like beyond its protection.

When he thought, last week, that Ecuador was going to give him political asylum, he wrote an oily letter to its president in which he declared that the US system of surveillance was “a grave violation of our universal human rights”. Now let him find out how hollow those rights are when not guaranteed within a democratic legal order. Let him eat the free peanuts in the transit lounge of life, and learn, too late, what is needed to defend a free people.

I gather that Wikileaks worshippers have been disappointed that the citizens of Britain and the United States have not acclaimed Snowden’s courage or been shocked by his revelations. Public opinion seems to have given a worldly shrug and said, “Obviously, our secret services spy on us in cyberspace; what’s all the fuss?”

But if that is the only public reaction, it is inadequate. In the Cold War era, when men such as George Blake or Michael Bettaney were convicted of handing secrets to the Soviet Union, they were reviled as traitors. They were assisting a hostile totalitarian power. Edward Snowden is not apparently working for such a power, and so he is not seen in this way. He is criticised as vain or silly or naive. Not enough people see the degree of his betrayal.

First, he has broken his oath. He has betrayed colleagues. From now on, all contractors like himself will be seen as suspect.

He has also betrayed individual officers and agents.

He revealed, for example, that a bug had been planted in the crypto-machine of the EU mission in Washington. So now everyone who got near that machine will be under investigation.

Worse still, Snowden betrayed methods. If it is known that, say, a particular means of getting bulk access to undersea cables is used, that means is compromised. Disclosure also betrays allies. One of the positive developments in intelligence since September 11, 2001, has been the concept of “dare to share”. Countries which previously had little contact have seen the benefits of exchanging information. Now they will see its perils.

The obvious beneficiaries of all of this are not civil liberties. They are those who wish to embarrass the West – the Chinese, who can now push back against US attempts to expose their cyberattacks on American government and industry, Vladimir Putin, German Leftists, South American populists and the sort of rent-a-mobs who are so confused that they burn the French flag in La Paz.

Whatever the precise intention, the actual effect of the Wikileakers and Snowdens is always to make life harder for the West. The web, which they love so much they make it their God, is hated and feared by countries such as China. Yet Wikileaks never furnishes us with Chinese “whistleblowers”.

There is a heresy about the web, which is that it emancipates its user from his duty to his neighbour and his country. In reality, it is the product of free countries, not a replacement for them.

Edward Snowden is a devotee of this false doctrine, not a martyr for the truth.

read complete version

Posted by peiper     on 07/07/2013 at 10:31 AM   
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   Saturday - June 22, 2013

the liberal bigot

I wish I had the room to post all of it here. Please go to the link.  It’s pretty darn good and nails things as they are.
Not that it will save this country, sadly.  Demographics are against, the enemy (and to me they are that) simply will out-breed us.  Unlike other immigrants in the far past, in both the UK and the USA, the generation born to immigrants became Brits or Americans and did their very best to become integrated.  Alas, what we see too often from members of the rop is the exact opposite. 

Check out this site.

H/T Liberty GB

THE LIBERAL BIGOT

Written by Robert Henderson

Like all organisms the liberal bigot is an evolved creature, although the character traits which made him – hypocrisy, the wish to create the world in his own image, paternalism, a sense of moral superiority, a desire to gratuitously interfere with the lives of others, false humility, self-indulgent masochism and a pathological refusal to accept evidence which contradicts emotionally based beliefs – are as old as civilised man. Those who know their history will readily recognise the basic personality of the liberal bigot, for it is that of the Puritan.

Very primitive types existed in the ancient world – Plato’s Socrates has much of the liberal bigot’s smugness and ability to ignore the facts of human nature – but it was not until the eighteenth century that creatures displaying most of the modern liberal bigot’s general features emerged in the shape of men such as William Wilberforce and Jeremy Bentham.

But Wilberforce and Bentham still had some moral sense and it is Shelley who perhaps first displays the peculiar humbugging amorality of the modern liberal bigot with his continual prating about his love for ‘mankind’, whilst behaving abominably to all and sundry.

The nineteen thirties saw the first indubitably modern liberal bigot – described by Friedrich Hayek after he found one called Harold Laski at the London Schoool of Economics. To be sure Laski did not have certain of the detailed traits associated with the liberal bigot of our time – for example the hatred of academic success in the working class – nor did he possess the instinct to dissemble his paternalism. But he had that quintessential quality of the fully developed liberal bigot, an intellectualised pseudo-morality or, to put it more exactly, ethical rules without moral context.

Since the discovery of Laski, liberal bigots have become increasingly common and they are now a very widely spread pest. They are particularly fond of habitats such as politics, the arts, universities, the media and the social services. They can be found in all Western societies, but nowhere do the creatures have such success as in the Anglo-Saxon world, where they have captured political control of their societies.

The liberal bigot’s ideological and psychological starting point is the fantasy, which he maintains in the face of all the evidence, that man is a generally malleable creature who can be changed by social engineering to create a world fit for liberal bigots; although in so thinking the liberal bigot misunderstands his own psychology for he would find such a place supremely uncongenial. No more would he be able to posture in the public eye because there would be no matters occasioning expressions of liberal bigot moral outrage or excuses for paternalistic action. Even more alarmingly, in a realised liberal bigot society, he might be forced to match his behaviour to his words. However, he may rest easy in his bed for such a world is but fit for dreams.

The liberal bigot has but one general principle, but what a principle it is, being so all-embracing that no other is needed. He holds as an article of faith that no discrimination should be made between human beings, regardless of man’s natural inclinations and Nature’s distinction by sex, sexual inclination, race, colour, culture, class, talent, intelligence, education, personality, physical condition and age – unless, of course, the person judged is female, homosexual, non-Caucasian, poor, stupid, uneducated, old or crippled. Then the liberal bigot may discriminate to his heart’s content, although in the weasel-worded manner of Lenin’s ‘democratic centralism’ he calls it ‘positive discrimination’ and thinks it not in the least ‘judgemental’. This he has institutionalised in a totalitarian system called political correctness.

Above all things the liberal bigot delights in what he calls ‘racism’, which in practice means the white man defending his own interests or extolling his own culture. This the liberal bigot has raised to the status of the great modern blasphemy. Just as once the Holy Office caused men to be burned for denying the literal truth of transubstantiation, so just as surely does the liberal bigot wish to immolate those who distinguish amongst their fellows on the most natural grounds of all, a sense of kinship, of shared culture and experience. So central is this tenet to modern liberal bigotry that the liberal bigot has moved in the past forty years from believing that racial discrimination is bad to asserting that multiracial societies are a positive good.

Posted by peiper     on 06/22/2013 at 02:12 PM   
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   Friday - June 21, 2013

H.L. Mencken ……… that’s all ya need

So I’m still clearing out my inbox. Yeah, still at it.  There’s so much there I can’t read it all.  I have to get better at checking the mail.  OK, I will!

Meanwhile, I don’t know if Doc Jeff sent this because he knows I like Mencken, but more likely he matched the quote with his favorite president. lol.
Sorry Jeff.  Couldn’t resist.

H/T Doc Jeff

A Brilliant Prophecy From 93 Years Ago:

H.L. Mencken (born 1880 - died 1956) was a journalist, satirist, critic, and Democrat.
He wrote this editorial while working for the Baltimore Evening Sun, which appeared in the July 26, 1920, edition:

“As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissisticmoron.”
----H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

Posted by peiper     on 06/21/2013 at 10:59 AM   
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   Sunday - May 05, 2013

the problem with the west is, is doesn’t have enough home grown problems

Activists said that more than 100 people, including women and children, were killed in the Sunni village of al-Bayda and the nearby coastal town of Baniyas.

Activists say. Activists say. It always the same damn thing. Activists say this or that and we even hear it on the news on radio.  EVERY DAMN DAY!  Activists say.  Oh yeah?

Why is it we hardly ever hear from the other side? Why is that? The last word in truth is whatever, “activists say.” Well I’m sick of what they say and try and pay as little attention as possible. It’s not always easy. I mean heck, I can’t be reaching for and switching the volume on and off all the time.

I think it is true that there are al Qaeda elements fighting Assad. So if he is overthrown, will there be another civil war between the folks who are and are not terrorists?

Does the west not have enough home grown problems, economy, jobs, crime etc.? Aren’t there enough civilian casualties in our own back yard to be concerned with? Guess not because reports are that Obama might up the stakes and support Syrian rebels with arms, and Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Wm. Hague, has been calling for direct intervention against Assad for some time now. 

Can’t we just buy the oil and otherwise mind our own darn business?

Posted by peiper     on 05/05/2013 at 04:53 AM   
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   Wednesday - April 17, 2013

More on my Gun Show Weekend

I must have ambled past that dealer a dozen times. Each time I stopped to look longingly on his 9mm P-226. No other dealer had one. I’m sure he was getting annoyed. One dealer had a P-229. It has a shorter barrel and the frame is wider than the P-226. And it just didn’t feel right when the dealer let me handle it.

Thirteenth time I walked past the West Chester Guns table, I sat down and asked for the P-226.

Dealer: “A man who knows his firearms!”

Actually I know nothing! But after a decade of reading or listening to the Deathlands series, where the main character, Ryan Cawdor, carries a 9mm P-226 with the suppressor, I felt like I knew this firearm already. Not that I’m ever influenced by a fictional character… but Cawdor almost always gets his scrambled brains together after a mat-trans jump by reciting the specs of his weapon.

Then the dealer handed that P-226 to me. And magic happened.

That gun fits my hand perfectly! I didn’t realize this before, but I bought my revolvers to suit my wife. They really are too small for me. The P-226 just fits. Weight and balance are perfect. I can’t quite describe it, but I knew I was not going home without one. Maybe Drew will understand. My wife keeps telling me to quit playing with it. I can’t. It feels too much like a part of me. The P-229 didn’t come close!

So Michael, when are we hitting the firing range? Drew advises I run at least 500 rounds through her, ‘observing proper barrel break-in procedures’, whatever those are. Drew, please elaborate.

Posted by Christopher     on 04/17/2013 at 12:54 PM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • Guns and Gun Control •  
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   Monday - March 18, 2013

…Kicked this Aussie’s @ss…

What did I ever do?

I just finished playing an Aussie on Chess.com. He has something against Americans. He accused me of…

1) murdering Viet Kong
2) raping Vietnamese women AND children.

Once I informed him I was too young to have been in ‘Nam, next I was raping and killing women and children in Iraq. Once I informed him I was too old by then, he switched gears… now I’m raping Native Americans!

Well, my wife and I are both Native Americans, and neither has ever accused the other of rape. Can’t rape the willing.

Just for the record, I kicked this Aussie’s ass on Chess.com. Game available upon request. Shame the game comments aren’t saved…

Posted by Christopher     on 03/18/2013 at 12:06 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials •  
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   Saturday - March 02, 2013

Conservative leadership has never been so divorced from its supporters

There isn’t any reason I can think of, that an article about a Brit by-election would be of any interest to anyone outside the UK.  (I don’t know why I continue to use the term UK when they might not be any more united than the US. Hmm. Old habits I guess.)
Anyway .... there was an important election yesterday in our area, and what interested me was not so much that, as this piece in today’s paper.

Substitute Republican (USA) for the Brit word Tory, who are supposed to be the conservatives over here, and you’ll soon see what I mean. 
While the Lib/Dems sadly won, with the help of lefty labour voters angered by their own party, as well as very good organization by the Libs, which seem to be their forte’, the party of some very serious conservatives fed up with the Tory party and their conservative lite agenda, made a very good showing.  They in turn had lots of support from disgruntled members of the Tory party. In fact, they received more votes then the party in power.

Nothing really new I guess.  Just a different locale with the same kind of problem due to inattention. Among other things better covered by Drew here at bmews yesterday.

The hapless Tories were doomed from the start

By Andrew Pierce

SATURDAY MAIL

The omens were not good for the Tories from the first day of the campaign. An advance guard of four MPs arrived in Eastleigh buoyed by opinion polls which showed they could recapture the seat from the Lib Dems making it the first by-election victory of its kind for a governing party since 1982.
The MPs rang the intercom buzzer at campaign HQ to get into the first-floor office. And waited...and waited. There was no one in. So they walked into the town centre and passed the Lib Dem HQ on Eastleigh High Street.

The building was festooned with balloons, windows were plastered with posters of their candidate, and a constant procession of people was going in and out.
During the three-week campaign the Lib Dems ruthlessly exploited the fact that they hold every council ward in the constituency.
Armed with local knowledge and canvassing records, the Lib Dem volunteers ran a disciplined operation which focused on issues relevant to each neighbourhood.

Their strength mirrored the Tories’ weakness. The Tory association is moribund.
The leader of the four-strong Tory group on Eastleigh council (the Lib Dems have 42 councillors), Godfrey Olson, is 83.

Telephone calls to the Eastleigh association HQ go through to an automated voicemail message which makes no reference to the Tory Party or the by-election. Since winning by-elections depends on getting your vote out, the Tories were fatally wounded by the disintegration of their activists’ base.

The campaign team, led by Stephen Gilbert, who is Mr Cameron’s political secretary, also made a serious error of judgment in the way they deployed their candidate, Maria Hutchings. 

She was effectively gagged by her London media minders who feared she would stray off message.
Yet Mrs Hutchings was a candidate with a rare quality: authenticity.

Her outspoken opposition to gay marriage and hardline views on immigration and Europe may have jarred with the metropolitan cabal of advisers that surround the Prime Minister, but they would have played well on the Eastleigh doorstep and helped neuter Ukip. 

There were practical problems too. The Tory computer system – the vital link between local associations, their electoral registers, their known supporters, and Tory HQ in London – crashed in the first week. At the Lib Dem HQ money flooded in every day with donors given a name check on the party website.
While Eastleigh was fleetingly mentioned on the main page of the Tory HQ website there was no by-election donations’ button. Every Tory MP was ordered to the constituency at least twice but they were ignorant of local issues.

All the early signs suggested a Tory victory was possible. The by-election was triggered by the resignation of Chris Huhne, a serial liar and philanderer. In the last ten days Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, has been engulfed by criticism of response to scandal surrounding Lord Rennard.

And, at the start of the week the Lib Dems slumped to a record low of eight points in a national opinion poll. Yet still the Tories could not win.

The inquest is already under way with one senior strategist saying: ‘For two years we knew that Huhne might have to resign so we… should have been crawling all over the constituency to make our presence felt. But we did nothing.’

The real significance of the result is the fact many more local Tory associations are in the same state as Eastleigh.

Party membership is plummeting but instead of trying to reconnect with his grassroots Mr Cameron antagonises them. By continuing to support higher spending on aid, threatening to build on the Green Belt and, most of all, by backing gay marriage, he is ensuring membership falls still further.

Eastleigh is the most graphic evidence to date that the Tory leadership has never been so divorced from its supporters.

-30-

Posted by peiper     on 03/02/2013 at 10:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • UK •  
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