Osama Hajjaj (Cartoonist) on Radical Islam
Hype and Fail-The Blog
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Monday, November 4, 2013
Sherman in the South
http://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2013/11/sherman-marching-through-south.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FZUzRG+%28Free+North+Carolina%29
A first-person account from a damnyankee soldier with Sherman's army in South Carolina in 1865.
"Unrestricted license to burn and plunder was the order of the day."
A first-person account from a damnyankee soldier with Sherman's army in South Carolina in 1865.
"Unrestricted license to burn and plunder was the order of the day."
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Racism in America-A Child's Perspective
http://politichicks.tv/column/racism-in-america-a-childs-perspective/
Great article about how little kids don't know from race, and how their attitudes and perspectives change as they grow up.
Great article about how little kids don't know from race, and how their attitudes and perspectives change as they grow up.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Banned from Facebook
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGrX3zbxd6Y&feature=player_embedded
Here's a link to Steven Crowder's video 'Retarded' (about THAT Florida witness) that was banned from FB.
Fortunately, it's still up on YouTube. Enjoy the tongue-in-cheek humor!
Here's a link to Steven Crowder's video 'Retarded' (about THAT Florida witness) that was banned from FB.
Fortunately, it's still up on YouTube. Enjoy the tongue-in-cheek humor!
Thursday, June 27, 2013
States Rights, the Demise of DOMA, and Topsy-Turvey arguments both Left and Right
Here's a little piece that I fired off yesterday. It's already been bounced by CanadaFreePress.com, but they were nice enough to send me a rejection email so I wasn't left hanging. CFP (which I highly recommend, btw; they're a fun site that's published my rants in the past) said that I got bounced because of the high volume of articles and the speed of posting of same...which is legit, 'cause I was a bit slow at getting this out (I had other things to do yesterday before I got around to this). I thought about sending it to a few other places, but then decided nah, why bother? After all, why have a blog if you're not going to use it, right?
At any rate, here's my little rant about the US v Windsor decision. It's not so much about gay marriage per se as it is about the flip-flop in the usual stances of the Left and Right vis a vis Federal power. I really haven't seen this angle talked about yet, and hope to get some good (non-idiot) feedback about it...and by that, I mean fulsome, gushing praise for my brilliant analysis, sparkling wit, and pithy comments.
Here it is, in all it's windbaggy glory:
State’s
Rights and the Demise of DOMA
The
Supremes have spoken, and now (if the fire and brimstone merchants are to be
believed) it’s only a matter of days before we have men marrying goats, women
marrying other women (who look like men), and the nation is consumed by the wrath
of Almighty God in such a way as will make the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah look
like a covered dish supper.
Having
seen the social approbation and censure that was brought down on the occasional
poor soul dumb enough to bring a sack of Krystals to a covered dish supper, I think
Sodom and Gomorrah got off easy. But
then again, I was born and raised Southern Baptist, and the TaliBaptists don’t
play about their church feedings.
Personally,
I’m not terribly worried about any of the abovementioned horrors. I suspect that either the social order or the
currency will collapse before God gets around to noticing that a small percentage
of our citizens are able to marry the person they love. No, it won’t be homosexuals in wedding
dresses or tuxes (for some reason, lesbians don’t generally go for the wedding
dress thing, go figure) and saying “I do” that does the republic in. It’s much more likely that the government’s
profligate spending, the overarching regulations of the nanny state, or the
creation of a permanent dependency class over the last few decades—or all of
these together—will bring the country crashing down around our ears before too
long.
That
being said, I will admit to a certain enjoyment of the sturm und drang the opinion in United States v. Windsor has created
on both sides of the issue. While the
social conservatives have been bemoaning the demise of “traditional” marriage, the
social progressives have been trumpeting the triumph of equality with a “gee,
ain’t this great?” smugness that is more than a bit annoying.
It
has been amusing these last few months to ask the social conservatives if, in
lieu of 50 silver shekels, I can give them pre-1963 dimes when I rape/marry
their virgin daughters, in accordance with Deuteronomy 22:28-29. Yes, I realize that I won’t be able to
divorce the girl afterwards—unlike many supporters of DOMA, who are on Wifey-Poo
#2 or #3—but hey! It’s ‘biblical’! Somehow, they haven’t really appreciated my
scriptural acumen, nor my honest question about the whole shekel/silver dime
conversion thing. But, I digress….
What
neither side seems to realize is just how the Windsor ruling turned the usual
Left-Right polarity on its head, and the obtuseness about of this flip-flop is
what I find so amusing.
To justify overturning DOMA, the majority opinion stated “DOMA is unconstitutional as a
deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth
Amendment.” While I agree with the Court that the Defense
of Marriage Act was constitutionally indefensible, I find the use of the Fifth
Amendment in this case to be a bit thin.
To me, the applicable bits of the Constitution are the Tenth and Fourteenth
Amendments. Nowhere in the Constitution
is ‘marriage’ mentioned as an enumerated power of the Federal government, and
to deny the more than 1000 Federal benefits of marriage to a subset of the
population based solely on gender clearly violates the ‘equal protection of the
law’ clause of the Fourteenth.
Be that as it may, the truly
interesting thing to note about the actual decision (rather than what the
various talking heads and televangelists have said about it) is that the core
of the majority’s argument is good, old-fashioned States Rights! Time after time in the opinion, the sovereign
power of the State is invoked against the Federal DOMA. Since DOMA stepped on the toes of New York
State, so the majority reasoned, it had to go!
Think about that, and the opposing
arguments of the DOMA supporters, for just a minute. Because they were determined to throw down
DOMA, the liberal Justices were forced to take what is (for them) a highly
unusual stance: namely, that DOMA
represents an overreach by the Federal government into an area that is exclusively
the province of the several sovereign States.
The Justices obviously realize this, and do what they can to deny the
logical implications of this stance with statements such as “it is unnecessary to decide
whether this federal intrusion on state power is a violation of the
Constitution,” and that “[t]he State’s power in defining the marital relation
is of central relevance in this case quite apart from principles of federalism”,
as Justice Scalia aptly points out in his dissent. This is crap, and they know it. Either a State is sovereign and the Tenth
Amendment holds, or not. A more clear
case of “either/or” would be hard to imagine…but the liberal majority in this
opinion would want us to do just that.
The same
discordant reasoning is heard from the supporters of DOMA. It’s interesting how the very same people who
insist the Federal government is too big, has too long an arm, and needs to
stay out of their business nonetheless scream for Leviathan to intercede to
enforce their own personal beliefs in all fifty States. Even worse, there seems to be a greater
degree of blindness about the inconsistency and illogic of these positions on
the side of the alleged conservatives than on the part of the progressives.
Let’s be brutally
honest here: the underlying reason that
social conservatives wanted DOMA is because of their religious beliefs. Everything else is window dressing, jazz
hands and glitter glue to distract from that simple fact. The truly conservative, Constitutional
position is that this is a matter for the several States to decide. DOMA assumed a power NOT given to the Federal
government in the Constitution, and did so in direct violation of the First
Amendment, by making what is, at its core, a religious decree. To counter this, the liberal majority of the
Court was forced to do what is generally anathema to them, and take the
position that there are some places where the Federal government may not go.
And that, in a
nutshell, is what I find so funny. To
get what they wanted, both sides had to take up positions which they typically
rail against, and thus show themselves to be the great flaming hypocrites they
truly are. The liberals have now been
forced to admit there are limits to what the Imperial Federal Apparatus can do,
and the social conservatives are butt-hurt that the Court wouldn’t give them
the theocracy they so desperately crave deep down in their black little
hearts. Neither side will admit this, of
course; which is why I intend to point it out to all and sundry as often as I
possibly can over the coming days. This
article is just my opening salvo, and I expect to be tipping sacred cows left
and right until the fun wears off…which it never will.
Feel free to join
the fun with me! Oh, and the whole ‘men
marrying goats’ thing? As all we good
little libertarians know, this is impossible because a goat is not a sentient
being, and thus unable to enter into a legally binding contractual arrangement
such as marriage. To suggest otherwise
is a specious argument (more jazz hands & glitter glue), or can be taken as
prima facia evidence of the unspoken
desires of the person making the statement…and I say that as an old retired
shrink with some degree of expertise in that kind of thing.
Feel free to
point that out, too. The goat
fornicators need to be called on it, ‘cause that’s just nasty…not to mention,
cruel to the goat.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Obama's Crash and Burn...and why the Republicans aren't benefitting from it
Yesterday, this interesting
piece came out in the Telegraph of London:
I find that I can’t really
disagree with the 10 reasons that are listed.
From the Imperial style of his Presidency to the continued lousy
performance of the economy and the ongoing, ever-increasing scandals
surrounding this administration, Obama’s Presidency is on fire, loosing
altitude, and shedding parts left and right as it plummets towards the ground. Can you say ‘crash and burn’?
Now, compare that to this
piece from the editorial page of the New York Times:
Two telling quotes from the
NYT piece: "The
administration has now lost all credibility on this issue." and
"Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who as chairwoman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee is supposed to be preventing this sort of overreaching,
was absurd. She said on Thursday that the authorities need this information in
case someone might become a terrorist in the future. Senator Saxby Chambliss of
Georgia, the vice chairman of the committee, said the surveillance has “proved
meritorious, because we have gathered significant information on bad guys and
only on bad guys over the years.”
The first is a blatant statement that the
love affair between the NYT and Obama is over, and implies that they're ready to
move on (and stop throwing chips into the pot for him). The second is
perhaps the most chilling, especially the 'might become a terrorist in the
future' and 'only on bad guys' parts.
Precrime, anyone? The editors of the
Times realize that this could easily be applied to them...and pretty much
anybody else. In fact, since the alphabet soup agencies have been using
a ladle and not a strainer, the 'only on bad guys' bit applies ONLY if
EVERYONE is considered a potential 'bad guy'. No presumption of innocence,
no due process, just 'you might become a terrorist at some time in the future'.
And who will determine just who's a
terrorist? Hmm....
My guess is that's what has the NYT so
upset. If all it takes is the stroke of a pen to make that determination,
given that Obama has already established the precedent of 'Bring me
his head' (actually, 'Blow his head and ass in different directions with a
drone strike') without all that inconvenient mucking around with trials and
stuff, then aren't we all at risk?
Truly, these are interesting times. However, the odd thing is…as bad as Obama is
doing in the polls and elsewhere, the Republicans can’t seem to do much better,
and this is…strange. At least, it seems
so on the surface, but if you look a little closer, you can understand why.
Charlie Cook, who writes his own political
report and also for the National Journal, has written several articles on and
around this topic in recent days, the most telling of which is this one:
Basically, the Republicans who are
attacking Obama, by and large, have even less credibility than he does. Mitch McConnell? Please.
Not only does everybody know he’s been there since, like, Roosevelt (the
first one, not the one with the jaunty cigarette holder), but he stutters and
has jowls down to his nipples.
Boehner? Not quite as ancient,
but also stutters and comes across as less likable than the average rabid pit
bull. (Here I must apologize to
non-rabid pit bulls, having known several in my time that were very sweet, fun
dogs.) That Boehner is still vividly
remembered for reading a scripted voice vote result at the convention (yep,
Johnny Boy, we still remember that, and will remind you of it when we come for
YOU with pikes!) gives him ZERO credibility with a large chunk of his own base.
Remember when the Republicans had not only
the White House but both Houses of Congress, as well? Did they reform the tax code? Winnow down Federal regulations? Reign in the EPA? Cut spending?
Trim government?
Let’s see…no, no, no, no and no. In that order.
In other words, “compared with
congressional Republicans, [Obama’s] the pick of the litter”. People still remember the Bush years (really,
how could they forget? Old Media, Comedy
Central and MSNBC remind them every night) and the Patriot Act…and No Child’s
Behind Left…and the Medicare Drug Plan…and…and….
That Obama has, by and large, continued
any number of Bush’s policies (and suddenly, all we hear from the Left are
crickets, but that’s another topic altogether) has seemed to slip under the radar
somehow. At least, in terms of the Idiot
Voter (hell, they’re not uninformed, they’re just idiots and I refuse to call
them anything but what they are) Squads.
Combine them with the small-l libertarian Republicans, the Paulbots and
the Tea Partiers who have been urinated on by the RINOstablishment for years
now, and you begin to understand why the Republicans can’t seem to gain any
traction.
But, there may be a bit of light at the
end of the Republican tunnel. The
College Repblicans have just released a scathing analysis of the GOP and why so
many people hate it (a good article about it is here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/05/college-republican-national-committee-report-has-grim-findings-for-gop.html). ‘That’ 2013 CPAC survey on Personal Core
Beliefs (the complete survey results can be found at http://www.scribd.com/doc/130778343/CPAC-Straw-Poll-2013)
shows very clearly that the vast majority of CPAC attendees (77%) view their
“most important goal is to promote individual freedom by reducing the size and
scope of government and its intrusion into the lives of its citizens”. This is more than FIVE times the number of
people who said they were most concerned about “traditional values” (no gay
marriage or abortion, 15%), and almost TEN times the neo-con “secure and
guarantee American safety at home and abroad regardless of the cost or size of
government” (8%). Even more telling, 52%
of CPACers were 18-25, and a whopping 74% were under 40. That means they’ll be around and voting for
some time to come…unlike the last two Republican candidates (and the scum who
anointed them) for President…and most of those fossils in Congress today.
So, here’s the situation we now find
ourselves in: a President about whom few
questions were asked by the MSM now finds himself loosing their support while
scandals swirl about him…and an Opposition that is perceived as being as bad
(by their own base) or worse (the rest of the country).
If that’s not a recipe for revolution, I
don’t know what is.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
The Last Rolling
The final rolling of the Toomer's Oaks during Saturday's A Day celebration. Today the trees were removed, and the revamping of the corner begun.
Harvey Updike (may he ever burn in Bammer Hell!) thought he'd strike a blow for Bammeration when he poisoned the trees. What he did was to (a) prove himself an idiot, and scum (b) show the world what kinds of people Bammers are and (c) bring the Auburn family together as never before. And, it showed us that there are a few decent Bama fans out there. Not many ('cause they're, well, Bammers), but a few, and we cherish them.
The original oaks are now gone. The Auburn Spirit hasn't even been dinged. In a few years, new oaks will rise over the Gates of Auburn once more, strong and proud...and occasionally covered in toilet paper. Because that's how we Tigers roll!
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