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Archive for June, 2011

Dr. Rice gives an important history lesson

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Originally posted on my old blog back in May 2005, but certainly worth the repost.   This quote is from the Washington Times Inside Politics column from May 12, 2005.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recalled last night for CNN how her father took up arms to defend fellow blacks from racist whites in the segregated South and said the constitutional right to keep and bear arms is as important as free speech and religion.
In an interview on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” Miss Rice said that her minister father and his friends armed themselves to defend the black community in Birmingham, Ala., against nightriders in 1962 and 1963.
She said that if local authorities in segregated Birmingham, where Miss Rice was born in 1954, had lists of registered weapons, she did not think her father and other blacks would have been able to defend themselves.
Miss Rice said, “We have to be very careful when we start abridging rights that the Founding Fathers thought very important.”
She said they understood “there might be circumstances that people like my father experienced in Birmingham, Alabama, when, in fact, the police weren’t going to protect you.”
“I also don’t think we get to pick and choose from the Constitution,” she said in the interview, which was taped for airing last night. “The Second Amendment is as important as the First Amendment.”

This is history that most so called “liberals” don’t want taught in government run public schools. It gives the wrong message, i.e. that the government can’t solve every one of your problems and should.

Time Epic Fail

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

In a recent article in the so-called “news weekly” Time about the Constitution of the United States of America, the author, who is also the Managing Editor, managed to make no less than thirteen (13) factual errors.

The Constitution is written in a fairly clear and straightforward manner, and has been the subject of much scholarly research. So for a ‘veteran’ reporter like Richard Stengel to make over one dozen errors in an article on the Constitution implies that he is either massively incompetent, or intentionally promoting an agenda that is not supported by the Constitution, which would require him to misrepresent the clear intent of the document.  The latter choice also implies that Mr. Stengel assumes that the majority of his readers have not read the Constitution, nor are they going to. A position also held by Rachel Maddow of the far left extremest “news” organization, MSNBC.

Aaron Worthing has an excellent article listing all thirteen (13) factual errors made by the Newsweek Managing Editor, Richard Stengel.  You should read the whole thing, which details exactly what is wrong in the article, and provides the correct facts.  I’m just going to list the thirteen (13) errors here.

  1. The Constitution does not limit the Federal Government.
  2. The Constitution is not law.
  3. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment emancipated the slaves.
  4. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment granted the right to vote to African Americans.
  5. The original Constitution declared that black people were to be counted as three-fifths of a person.
  6. That the original, unamended Constitution prohibited women from voting.
  7. Inter arma enim silent leges translates as “in time of war, the Constitution is silent.”
  8. The War Powers Act allows the president to unilaterally wage war for sixty days.
  9. We have only declared war five times.
  10. Alexander Hamilton wanted a king for America.
  11. Social Security is a debt within the meaning of Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment.
  12. Naturalization depends on your birth.
  13. The Obamacare mandate is a tax.

You should do what Mr. Stengel clearly doesn’t want you to do, read the US Constitution. It’s not that long, and is written in clear English, unlike most legislation written today.

Update: The error count is still rising.

Obama administration cuts back on fraud prosecutions

Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

Remember how “Obamacare” was supposed to “pay for itself” by cutting $50 Billion in fraud and waste?  You haven’t heard much about that lately either.  Probably because our Dear Leader and the congressional democrats never planned on implementing it.

The truth is that they have done exactly the opposite.  USA Today reports that there has actually been a 20% reduction in the number of criminal prosecutions for defrauding federal benefit programs since our Dear Leader took office. It is almost as if the democrats want to promote fraud and waste in government benefit spending.

Once again we find that what our Dear Leader promised has nothing to do with what he actually planned on doing.  Remember this come November 2012.

Monday Book Pick: Phoenix Rising

Monday, June 27th, 2011

Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris

The first in a new Steampunk action/adventure/romance series. Not a bad first outing for the writing team of Ballantine and Morris. Good solid formula adventure, the kind Lester Dent made a very nice living writing during the Golden Age of Pulp. That is a favorable comparison by the way.  This novel, which takes place in the 1890’s, complete with airships, Analytic Engines, steam powered bar bots serving beer and a mystery filled “Ministry” protecting the British Empire.  This series follows two agents of that Ministry, a studious “Archivist” aptly named “Books” and the uber-field agent, Ms. “Braun”, who wears a bullet proof corset (Ministry issue of course), is a crack shot with her two customer revolvers and has a fondness for explosives.

Stop groaning! The plot flows well and has enough twists and fight scenes to keep you engaged.  In all a good, fun read.  I’ll be looking forward to the next installment in this Steampunk series.

Monday Book Pick Archive

Yet another example of how Liberals are really, really bad at history

Monday, June 27th, 2011

The current case in point, the so-called “Top Cop” in democrat political machine controlled Chicago claims that current federal “gun control laws” are “racist.”

What makes this interesting is that his statement is actually correct, but his attempt at reasoning is completely and utterly wrong base on actual historical facts.

Yes, so-called “gun control” laws, especially the federal ones, are race based policies designed to deny black (and other minority) citizens their Second Amendment Rights, and the majority of them were passed by democrats.

For the whole story, read The Racist Roots of Gun Control, which was originally published in the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy back in 1995.

Here is the executive summary:

The first so-called “gun control” laws passed in the United States were in Southern states right after the end of the Civil War.  They were implemented to protect members of the KKK from being shot by citizens the Klan members still considered uppity property when the Klan showed up in the middle of night to string a few American Citizens up by the neck as a warning to other black Americans to ‘keep their place.”

Even before the Civil War, the Tennessee state constitution had the following line in it: ” “That the free white men of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defense.”  Note that free ‘persons of color’ were denied the basic Human Right of effective self-defense.  They were to be at the mercy of ‘their betters.’   Yes, even then, those who today would be self-labeled “progressives” were closet aristocrats.

Sunday SciFi: NPR’s looking for the Top Five SciFi books

Sunday, June 26th, 2011

OK, not really, since they are lumping fantasy in as well.  So you have crap written by George R.R. Martin listed along really good SciFi.  Ya, I am biased here.  I am much more of a SciFi fan than a fantasy one, and perhaps GRRM may be able to be write decent Elf porn or whatever passes for mainstream fantasy these days, but his attempts at SciFi that I have read have been utter drek.

You can enter your top five books or series under comments for this NPR story on their quest for summer reading. Fair warning, you have to register to post.

The five I entered were:

  1. Space Viking – H. Beam Piper
  2. The Probability Broach – L. Neil Smith
  3. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress – Robert A. Heinlein
  4. To Your Scattered Bodies Go – Philip Jose Farmer
  5. The Mote in God’s Eye – Dr. Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven

This list could change on any given day by one or two entries.

Clearly reality isn’t the left’s strong point

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

The left keeps repeating their talking point, that Gov Sarah Palin, who currently is running rings around the mainstream media, is “stupid” and an “idiot.” In the meantime, the left’s anointed leader, Barack Hussein Obama, who they keep referring to asthe smartest President evah!“, can’t string a basic sentence together without a string of ummms when he isn’t reading directly off a teleprompter.  Even with his precious teleprompter, he twice referred to Navy Corpsmen as “corpsemen” in a prepared speech honoring Navy Corpsmen!

This is the “genius” who thinks there are 57 states, that Asthmatic kids should get a breathalyzer, and said the Constitution was written “20 centuries ago”.

Clearly, the collected shared reality of rational adults is not the space inhabited by leftists to whom the message is more important than reality.

Monday Book Pick: The Hot Gate

Monday, June 20th, 2011

The Hot Gate by John Ringo

The third in his latest series, which is “old school SciFi Space Opera”. Ya, we got your epic space battle right here, and in case you forgot no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. They have their own battle plans, that is why they are called the enemy. Sometimes you don’t win, but not losing can still carry the day. A damn fine read. May Mr. Ringo continue providing his ‘reader crack’ a pace that destroys laptops but pays for many new ones.

Monday Book Pick Archive

Quote of the Day

Sunday, June 19th, 2011

“Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible.”

Obama White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley at a meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers. The topic, “the wholesale assault by Obama on the free enterprise system and the private job creators who make it run.”

Our Dear Leader openly criticizes the ‘private sector economy’, something he has absolutely zero experience with, for not creating new jobs in the harshly anti-business, anti-growth, economic environment created by President Obama and the congressional democrats. Then he sends out his new Chief of Staff to attempt to the “defend the indefensible.”

Kudos to Mr. Daley for having the guts not to stand there and openly and blatantly lie about the effects of the Obama economic policies as other members of this administration have done in the past. I can’t help but wonder if our Dear Leader will toss Mr. Daley under the bus, as he is doing to Kenneth Melson, the current head of the ATF.

Update: Doug Powers points out that it’s the one-year anniversary of Recovery Summer™.  How is that working out for you?  If you aren’t sure, try this simple experiment.  Drive around your local community and start counting the number of empty store fronts.  Are there more or less than last summer?  How many new businesses have opened up in your local area in the past year?  That should a good meter stick to measure the, ahem, “recovery” the Obama economy has brought us.

Quote of the Day: Althouse on Palin edition

Saturday, June 18th, 2011

“This intense eagerness to get Sarah Palin for whatever it is she might have done on line unfolded concurrently with all the attention that had to be paid to Anthony Weiner for his on-line antics. What we can’t see is the agony the poor journalists must have endured as Weiner’s wienerisms hurt the Democratic Party just when they stood ready to damage the Republican Party with Sarah’s misdeeds. And then — oh, how awful! — they got nothing from Sarah. Nothing but hard work and — urrrgghhh! — good government and — damn! — family values.”

Ann Althouse