Via Borepatch, here’s the happiest story you’ll read on Memorial Day. Or all week.
Category: War
Once again, the U.S. government is making noise about going to war (oh sorry, “intervening for humanitarian reasons”) in a Mideast country on sketchy evidence. If gov-o-crats decide to side with Islamist rebels in Syria, the choice could cost us all — in more ways than one. Some of the costs are unforeseeable. One is obvious: The U.S. is going broke and will go broke faster. Well, the U.S. is going broke no matter what, and We the People — or They Our Grandchildren — are going to pay. And pay. And pay. So this seems a good time to…
Well, now we know what happens when police cordon off a neighborhood, declare it a Fourth-Amendment-free zone, send SWAT teams house-to-house, and hover helicopters overhead. People cheer and applaud. They turn out in the streets to wave little American flags. And next we can watch as they condone demand and slaver over illegal treatment of Suspect #2 (an American citizen). We can “enjoy” a new round of anti-immigrant and anti-Islam hatred. We can observe bobbleheads nodding from Los Angeles to Hartford as Good Citizens agree with all the new promises politicians and the state-security apparatus make as they concoct onerous…
Remembering the first battle. (H/T Jim Bovard, whose blog recently acquired a shiny new look) And fighting the battles still. The Lexington, MA, board of selectmen revoked Oath Keepers’ permit to muster on the green tomorrow, citing (groan) “public safety” in the wake of the Boston bombings. Stewart Rhodes says he’ll be there, anyhow, and David Codrea will let the world know if he needs bail money. Whatever happens tomorrow, yesterday went pretty darned well. And got some enemies of freedom really frothing. Captain John Parker: “Stand your ground. Do not fire unless fired upon. But if they mean to…
“Cannabis: The Audacity of Dope.” When Reefer Madness goes legit. Another gun-maker joins the rebellion — and does it in no uncertain terms. (H/T JG) Basset hound and “dad” reunited after 10 years. At the end of December, Bob Owens looked around his local gun stores and wrote, “This isn’t a society stocking up on certain guns because they fear they may be banned. This is a society preparing for war.” (H/T BW) And he mentioned something I can’t recall ever hearing about, though it was an important precursor to the American Revolution: The Powder Alarm. Yep. That’s a good…
Police get banned from a Vermont shooting range. And the FBI gets banned from Iceland. We can only go on wishing the ATF would get banned from the universe. And that the Pentagon could be kept out of the world’s computers. I fear this is much more ominous than it seems. OTOH, maybe we can foil snoops in part with the idioms we use. I never thought I’d side with the operators of red-light cameras. But in this case … But of course, the USPS is certainly not all bad. Finally, Jim Bovard borrows a marketing spiel from The Onion.…
In light of what I wrote about earlier today, I strongly recommend that everybody — every one of us — read John Steinbeck’s short, and now almost forgotten, 1942 novel The Moon is Down. Here’s the only free copy I could find online. Not a great one. UPDATE: That indefatigable archivist, Bill St. Clair, has put a much more attractive and easily readable version online. According to commenter Woody, Bill’s version can also be ported to Kindle and other devices (if you have Caliber software). Thank you, Bill! And here it is from Amazon in Kindle, hardback, paperback, and even…
I’ve been trying to return to Saturday’s theme. My aim: to celebrate a few great, inspirational reasons not to be afraid — to be hopeful. I intended to write about how “these are the times that try men’s souls”, but how they are also times of great creative defiance. But as I try to write about those reasons, I find post after abortive post going in a different direction. Not because the reasons to be hopeful don’t exist, but because they all lead to a conclusion I don’t want to conclude. It’s not a new conclusion. Others have reached it…
Via BW. —– I’m not sufficiently paranoid to believe things like the following. But that may be because I’m not sufficiently paranoid. An anonymous friend (who is not notably paranoid, either) writes: Bless me, Father, For I have sinned. The news I saw this AM was that the next global warming report by the UN IPCC had been leaked. Leaking blows their favorite tactic out of the water. SOP is to release a heavily politicized “summary” written by politicians and parasites for politicians and parasites. The press and .gov types lap it up. Three months later, the actual report written…