- Seems that Joel and the rest of the gunblogosphere aren’t the only ones who think Liam Neeson is even worse than the usual Hollywood anti-gun hypocrite. A company that supplied weapons for his films has a thing or three to say about it.
- Ding-dong, Google Glass is dead. Well deadish, anyhow.
- A simple explanation of what Swiss bankers just did. And a slightly more complicated one. I’m sure some of our resident money gurus will have views of their own. If you haven’t been watching, Switzerland threw the entire world into a financial tizzy yesterday. (Though IMHO, their real screwup was when they pegged their franc to the euro, not when they suddenly pulled the peg.)
- “That Tree.” To help himself recover after an injury and to meet a friend’s challenge, professional photographer Mark Hirsh found 365 different ways to shoot photos of a single tree — with an iPhone — over the course of a year.
- Finally, your awwwwww story for the day: cat saves abandoned baby from freezing to death.
Love the “tree” story! I do wish I could take better pictures. I’m just not patient enough, for one thing, but a camera with a better battery would help a lot. Hard to imagine those were all taken with a cell phone!
Got a bum link on the Liam Neeson story, Claire.
Hm. Both links work for me, Joel. Try again? If it still doesn’t work for you, let me know, and tell me which of the two is the problem.
No, the second link in your Neeson piece comes up bad every time for me.
Hm. Can’t explain that. But anyhow, it’s a short bit of copy on that page. Here it is:
Oh, I like linky day! Coincidentally, this just popped up in my news feed. It’s approaching stunning. Eric Holder Cuts Off Police Asset Seizure ‘Shopping Sprees’. I’m still blinking.
Obviously, that was not Grumpy Cat.
Meanwhile, what are the real-world effects for us low-end not-financier types? Should I have bought a spare Swiss Army Knife yesterday?
And here’s something neat.
http://www.cracktwo.com/2015/01/the-forgotten-giant-arrows-that-guide.html
I’m very sorry to learn about Liam Neeson. I had really liked him for his roles in “Nell” and “Michael Collins.” This reminds me of General “Vinegar” Joe Stilwell’s remark in his autobiography that after dealing with the British he understood why we fought the American Revolution.
Thinking of the Irish, one of the commentariat a while back recommended Tom Barry’s book, Guerrilla Days in Ireland. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_14/176-3599893-4557331?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=guerrilla+days+in+ireland&sprefix=guerrilla+days%2Caps%2C224 I found it remarkable. At one point about 100 men went out on an operation to fight the well armed British, and they only had four rounds of ammunition per man. They had no real way of communicating with the leaders in Dublin. They defied amazing odds. If they have a small monument to that revolution in almost every poor little town, they’ve earned that right with their blood.
I just can’t believe anything good comes out of anything Holder does, except by accident. Right now my guess is (1) a lot of blacks were finding their assets seized, which Holder would consider “discrimination,” and (2) Holder and Obama question the loyalty of local police departments in the event of martial law.
Regarding banks, a friend today told me about the mess in Iceland which he had learned of from watching BBC world news (not BBC UK). The Icelandics had a near paradise until Alcoa came in and contaminated the country and the banks were deregulated. I tried to look it up but the banking mess seemed quite complicated to me. Jefferson, of course, had said that central banks were of greater risk to our freedoms than the existence of standing armies.
Thanks Claire, for the link to the PARA USA story.
PARA has always been a suppoorter of the Gun Blogs – even to the point of producing a special Gunblogger pistol editions in 9 mm and 45 ACP.
I applaud their revocation of support from Liam Neeson. THis seems to be entirely consistent with the philosophy of the company.
Thanks PARA!
We are watching the Euro grind to an end. All Marxist inspired governments eventually crash and burn, it’s the Euros time now. The next thing to watch for is Greece exiting the Euro. Then things will really get fun.
After the Euro is done, our Marxist economy will be next.
The next dozen years are going to be quite interesting, in a Chinese sort of way.
ClarkS… horrible as it could get, I do hope this won’t drag out another dozen years. I’m tired of being in the meat grinder… Just cannot imagine why so many people are desperate to prolong this insanity. sigh
This insanity is prolonged, I suspect, because people are “comfortable”. With their big screen TVs, their good cars(that they’re still paying for), and their Smartphones, and their Entertainment, etc., etc.
I wouldn’t think that would prolong things, Jim B… but hurry it along. The credit and malinvestment pressure on the economy will crash it soon, and I don’t think there is anything that could slow it down now, even if the US government vanished tonight. The fallout from Switzerland will be most interesting to watch.
Oh, I know. Screw with their ability to buy things, even on Credit, it’s all over. For now, especially with the fuel prices dropping, things will be a little more prolonged. With the thing in Switzerland and rising food prices, it probably won’t be too long.
I’m afraid it will take this long since the collapse will be worldwide. Because it is a worldwide problem and because every major government in the world is resisting the inevitable with every power they’ve got, it’s a slow process… it’s like a slow speed train wreck. The wreck may happen slowly but it’s gonna be a hell of a wreck when it finally occurs. There are also spiritual reasons for this.
Once it is over it will be time to try to pick up the pieces. My largest concern is what happens on the other side of this train wreck. Will us baby boomers and our kids, who largely created the problem, simply erect another Marxist society…or maybe something worse? Or will our grandkids refuse to be victimized by Marxism again and demand a much more libertarian society?
If you want to influence a better world, it is my firm belief that we must somehow reach our grandkids. It has been my experience that most all people older than that are not going to change their mind about anything. They are too rooted in theft and to them, Marxism and empire are good things, even though they won’t directly admit it.
[Will us baby boomers and our kids, who largely created the problem, simply erect another Marxist society…or maybe something worse?]
If they want. I don’t care as long as they leave room for liberty lovers. That’s Panarchy for ya.
Of course that implies that liberty lovers will be providing a credible deterrent to their impositions, but I suspect after the upheaval they will all have a pretty good idea how to use a rifle.
Goes a lot farther back than the post WWII generation, Claire. That generation didn’t create the “constitution,” Washington and the whiskey rebellion, Lincoln or the war of Northern Aggression, or even FDR, etc. and all of their attempts to destroy liberty. I seriously doubt anyone had a chance to “vote” for or against any of those things at any point, even if they understood them at the time. You probably agree that if anything might actually change things to curb the “controllers,” it is never going to be put to any sort of popular “vote” at all…
So no, I do not accept any responsibility for creating this problem. I have, in fact, spent at least 50 years fighting it. And so have many others, such as you. I am convinced totally that “most” people simply don’t understand and have bought the greatest lie in all history… that any non-voluntary government has some legitimate “authority” to do whatever it does… and so they are caught in the giant meat grinder just like the rest of us. The actual “controller” bunch and marxists are a minority – and depend on the false authority which brings them the seeming “consent” of the majority.
I’ll go along with Paul here. When the dust settles and that “authority” is shown to be total fiction, “panarchy” will be a likely outcome. Those who survive can agree to disagree and leave each other alone. If not, we’ll probably still need the rifles.
Or, it could all just go back to the way it is eventually, I suppose. Nobody has any way of knowing.
“Goes a lot farther back than the post WWII generation, Claire.”
Think you mean Clark?
Oh my, YES! How did I miss that? I’m sorry. No idea why I thought Claire wrote that. Losing my mind…
Just get so exercised when I see that – and lots of people with very good intentions and thinking otherwise make that claim… that all “baby boomers” are somehow responsible for the mess we are in.
My very bad bad.
No sweat, ML. If that’s the worst goof you ever make, you’ll be way ahead of me. 🙂
MamaLiberty
I think you might have misunderstood my point. I didn’t say nor do I believe that ALL baby boomers caused our problems. I also don’t think I caused it. And I don’t think you did either. Like you and probably most of Claire’s followers, I have been arguing for liberty and limited government for about as long as I understood the meaning of the terms…. at least since early high school.
But most of our peers are not like us. I bet you have noticed that. For example, pretty much every single one of my “conservative” friends think GWB is a modern day hero who saved the day by rescuing us from evil terrorists. I totally disagree with this idiotic view and I think you might agree with me. While I don’t have many liberal friends, they fervently support our Marxist government and I don’t agree with their theft based beliefs either. I think you will admit that these two groups are a large subset of the baby boomers. In my opinion they are totally responsible for the destruction of the middle class, doubling the money supply, rise of the bankster class, and institution of the police state, among other things, all of which have occurred post 1960.
You make a good point that our problems started well before the baby boomers were born. It’s my opinion that our country began deviating from its intended course somewhere in the mid to late 19th century and has been rapidly moving further off course each year. But like an airplane off course, it could have been put back on course at any time. It wasn’t simply because the people living at that time didn’t want to make a change.
Our most serious problems began appearing in the early 60’s, got worse in the 70’s, worst yet in the 80’s and 90’s, and horribly grew even worse at the beginning of the 21st century. I believe that the 8 years of GWB were by far the worst years of our country. His awful legacy will be with us for a long long time.
Here’s a more concrete example of how bad its gotten in recent history. Look at a chart of the money supply sometime. It hardly grew at all from 1920 to 1970. But after that…WOW!
Frankly I have a hard time blaming that on anyone but the people who were alive and and actively supported the politicians who were performing this financial rape of our county.
I would certainly be interested in reading any comments you might wish to post.
Clark, the entire problem is actually far, far more complex than that, and no one political party or politician had or has any more to do with it than any other in the long run. Trying to fix blame on LBJ or GWB or anyone else is as useless as blaming any generation of ordinary people.
Do you actually believe that any other person has the authority – legitimate authority in any measure – to FORCE you or anyone else to do anything at all? Do groups of people actually have a legitimate authority to decide things (vote), and therefore impose their will on others who do not agree? Ever? Why would they?
If you initiate force against someone else, your victim has absolute authority to repel your attack and use deadly force to prevent harm to himself or others. Why do so many people accept the insane idea that some political body or other has any authority to prevent that defense, or “regulate” the tools necessary?
It is this belief in government and voter “authority” that is responsible for the continued rape of the human race everywhere. In a way, we’re all doing it to ourselves all the time, every day, each time we agree to accept that bogus authority and fail to take personal responsibility for our own lives and future by becoming actual self owners. And yes, in that respect, we are ALL responsible for the problem, to one degree or another. We pay the taxes and make sure to get our “license” for this or that.. do we not?
I’m no different than most others in that respect. I am not prepared to go to jail for driving without a license, or to lose my home because I won’t pay the county “rent” in taxes. As long as we’re all willing, more or less, to do those things, the controllers will retain the power they have over us. The only way to take that power and bogus authority away from them is for each of us, most of us, to decide to stop kissing their butts…
I don’t know how in the world to make that happen.
Read “The Most Dangerous Superstition”: http://tinyurl.com/of6vps3
Larken Rose expands this theme remarkably well.
Re: The Swiss de-linking their currency from the Euro.
I think the Swiss National Bank (SNB) had a shot across their bow and didn’t like it.
The recent Swiss referendum in Switzerland would have forced the SNB to keep 20% of their reserves in gold. The SNB was alarmed, as they stated (correctly) that it would curtail their power. Printing money is about power.
The referendum went down 22% to 78% against. But few noticed that it was about anything but gold. There was also a draconian immigration limit and a new tax on wealthy non-Swiss residents. Most Swiss are pretty tolerant of immigrants, and nearly all are deeply suspicious of new taxes.
The Swiss are pretty unhappy with the SNB, with many good reasons. Despite the huge SNB propaganda campaign and scare tactics, more than 1 in 5 Swiss voted for the referendum.
If there had been no link to immigration and no new taxes, the referendum would almost certainly have done much better.
The SNB knows this. Central bankers are evil but not all of them are stupid. By de-linking the Franc from the Euro, the SNB avoided another huge increase in their Euro holdings, which would have required a lot more creation of Swiss Francs. So they avoided giving still more reasons to reduce their power, and reduced the odds of facing another, more targeted referendum in the near future.
Thanks for chiming in, S. I knew you’d have something interesting to say about this.
I also read that the Swiss National Bank, unlike other central banks, isn’t entirely a government-owned bureaucracy. If what I read is true, it’s owned by a combo of private investors and the canton governments — which makes it much more answerable to real people with real peoples’ interests.
[In my opinion they are totally responsible for the destruction of the middle class, doubling the money supply, rise of the bankster class, and institution of the police state, among other things, all of which have occurred post 1960.]
This has a flavor of “blaming the victim” to me.
Most folks just rub along, trying to live their lives, take care of their kids, get a little entertainment from a football game or a bottle of beer and a barbeque. Most of the time, their actions are as unaggressive as the rest of us anarchists. If you think about it, they do pretty well, considering the amount of indoctrination they have been subjected to.
I guess I just don’t go along with the collective guilt view. For one thing, it is too collectivist for my taste; I prefer to relate to people as individuals. For another, there is the “mea culpa” factor.
The human animal is what he is. We keep going in these big destructive cycles of war and rebellion and slavery, but if you look at the really big picture it is possible to see slow improvement over time, aided by liberty technologies such as battle rifles and the Internet.
I like this quote by Robert E. Lee:
“My experience of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them, nor indisposed me to serve them; nor, in spite of failures, which I lament, of errors, which I now see and acknowledge, or, of the present state of affairs, do I despair of the future. The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient, the work of progress is so immense, and our means of aiding it so feeble, the life of humanity is so long, and that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave, and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.”