Speaking of throwing people off the bus...

David Codrea links to someone who does just that. He has quite the visceral reaction to it too, which I share, but still I thought I'd elaborate.

While it may be true that many blacks and Hispanics vote for politicians who don't support individual liberty, I still don't think it's smart to unilaterally dismiss those groups. It only serves the enemy to do that; it makes us look even more like the racist reactionaries we're so often unjustly painted as, and it results in fewer people on our side. I might have said it before, but finding a poor black man like Otis McDonald to be the face of gun rights advocates in Chicago was a stroke of genius because it showed that the cause was not just the domain of old white guys. And just how chickenshit is it to say that enlisting minorities is only going to lead to the end of gun rights? I'm guessing that dipshit cop's not willing to use that fourth box, indeed, that he'd probably be one of the people going door-to-door rounding up the guns. And it strikes me that he'd probably even relish taking them from people like Otis McDonald. So who's really the sellout here?

The worth of the rule of law

Another letter-writer in today's San Antonio Express-News:

We have laws for a reason: to offer an environment of safety and prosperity for all citizens of this country. Should we all begin to rationalize which laws should or should not be obeyed, based on our own beliefs, and act upon those reasonings, we would, in fact, have no laws at all.

Yep, that really puts those agitating for the breaking of the new Arizona immigration law in a whole new light. They can say what they want, but the fact remains that illegal immigrants are breaking our laws. One wonders which other laws they will break, and how they'll rationalize that. I saw something the other day that made the comparisons to Nazi Germany look like the insanity they are -- if the law is THAT bad, why are people still clamoring to get in? It was the direct opposite for Nazi Germany -- most of those folks wanted to get OUT.

Quote of the YEAR here, folks...

...from my wife, in conversation, regarding the choirboy in the previous entry:

He was trying to be a hard-ass who doesn't listen to the cops.

You can't really do that without kevlar.

I just can't add anything to that but, ZIIIIING! She's all mine, yes she is...

The cops didn't know he was unarmed...

....so I'm having a really hard time working up any sympathy for this kid here, especially when his actions are taken into account. He didn't show his hands when the cops told him to, AND he charged them? What the hell were the cops supposed to do? He may have died for nothing, but it was his own damn fault.

And the grass-eaters speak...

...here:

“This is one time I'd be on the coyote's side. I'm not a Rick Perry fan,” said Nancy Williams. “Whoever heard of someone jogging with a gun? It sounds off to me.”

Yeah, whoever heard of that? Nothing bad ever happens to anyone out on the trail. Perry must have been feeling particularly small that day, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

On another note, I found it quite amusing that the wildlife protection groups offered Perry the same means of protection antis say women should carry instead of a gun. I never thought their outlooks would be so similar. Maybe they are willing to go out in the woods or on the jogging trail that unprepared, but I don't see why they have to be so smug and self-righteous about it. But then I suppose that sort of thing does get bred out to an extent when the rabid animals come down the trail. It's just a shame it takes so long.

Random music musings

Hearing a certain band, I am reminded of this, from Texts from Last Night:

You had sex with him even after he literally described himself as a "coldplay guy"? There's a line you just don't cross. There is a line.

 Seriously, that band is teh suck. They make 3 Doors Down sound like Pantera (and for the record, I actually LIKE a lot of 3DD's stuff). And as far as pretentiousness -- well, I've heard a lot of people bash Dream Theater (another band I REALLY like in spite of their naysayers), but Coldplay makes Dream Theater look about as pretentious as, say, George Strait. The addressee of that text must have been some kind of desperate. I wonder if the nook was worth it.

And I understand what Five Finger Death Punch was trying to do with "Bad Company." I understand they were trying to put their own stamp on the song. That does not mean, however, that I think it worked. Nobody can sing that song like Paul Rodgers.

If only the governor had given the coyote what it wanted....

everything would've been fine...

Perry says he needed just one shot from his laser-sighted pistol to take down a coyote that was menacing his dog during an early morning jog in an undeveloped area near Austin.
...

When the coyote came out of the brush toward his daughter's labrador retriever puppy on a February jog, he charged it and shot it with his .380 Ruger pistol.

And if bad went to worse, he didn't need to shoot that poor thing. All he needed was a pen or a rat-tail comb. Or maybe he could have just pointed and laughed at it. Yeah, that's the ticket.

In all seriousness, I have to wonder if anti-gun people have even a glimmer of an idea how stupid they sound when they say people don't need guns. Sure, that was a coyote, but I really don't think a criminal deserves any more consideration just because he is allegedly human.

How many standards...

...will there be here?

An Arizona congressman urged the Obama administration not to cooperate when illegal immigrants are picked up by local police if a tough new state immigration law survives legal challenges.
U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat, and civil rights activists spoke on Sunday to thousands of people gathered at the state Capitol and called on President Barack Obama to fight the law, promising to march in the streets and invite arrest by refusing to comply.
"We're going to overturn this unjust and racist law, and then we're going to overturn the power structure that created this unjust, racist law," Grijalva said.

We see Rep. Grijalva going on and on about this law and overturning it, but we see not word one from him here about coming up with a better alternative to the law that would still protect the citizens of Arizona from the depredations of illegal border-crossers. I guess the congressman doesn't really care about them, which shows he really doesn't care about the oath he took either. Were I a family member of Rob Krentz (the rancher killed by drug smugglers on HIS property), I would be doing everything I could to see to it that Grijalva was ousted from office. I wonder how many of those halfwits doing things like telling the tea partiers to come up with a balanced budget are going to go to the folks in the Arizona Legislature and Congress who oppose this bill and tell them to stop wasting time flinging word vomit and come up with a better alternative. I'd guess it won't be many, considering they apparently don't understand the jobs of elected officials.

Another couple of points to ponder: Mexican flags being sold? Exactly where do these people's allegiances lie? If not with the United States, then what the hell are they doing here? And how about the "overturn(ing) the power structure" remark? How does Rep. Grijalva propose doing this? Imagine that comment coming out of the mouth of a tea partier. Or Mike Vanderboegh. How would that be spun in the media? And why is it not even treated as an aside here?

Protecting the privileges of whom, again?

Yes, E.J. Dionne really said this:

Let's remember that the truly “elitist” judges are the ones who protect the privileges of the powerful over the right of Congress to legislate on behalf of workers, consumers and the environment.

However, as we have seen before, he sees no problem with "the powerful" being the only ones entitled to their choice of the means of self-protection they wish to employ. He also sees no problem when "the powerful" see fit to deny those with less power their fundamental rights. The Citizens United decision has already been covered in numerous words here; but I still must say that I found it pretty funny that Dionne would imply that the Founders would not have known what to make of larger corporations, just as he and his ilk say the Founders would not know what to make of Glocks and M16s. Yet, again, Dionne said nothing of the fact that he was typing on a computer and that his witless screed would be seen by a multitude of people, by way of an invention that the Founders probably didn't anticipate any more than they did ExxonMobil or the 15-round pistol magazine -- an invention that may be used to spread all sorts of abhorrent, deadly ideas far and wide -- the Internet. And of course you remember the old Stalin quote:

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?

And of course you know that those ideas can be implemented with the most primitive of weapons, with a frightful toll even without the Internet. See: Darfur, Sudan or Saudi Arabia.

Back to the screed at hand, though, it strikes me that E.J. Dionne thinks that democratically elected officials' decisions should ultimately be the last word; and I find that to be more than a little bit frightening. Seriously, does he not know what the function is of the judicial branch of government? Or does he think said branch is only necessary to say that certain planks of the leftists' platform are constitutional? Whatever the case may be, it looks to me as if the Supreme Court as of late is only erring on the side of liberty -- at least in the cases in which leftists lament that the Founders could not have known the impact of the issues at stake in said cases -- and that E.J. Dionne thinks that erring on the side of liberty is a bad thing. And, once again, I guess I shouldn't be surprised; but I just get more and more disgusted with the American left every time one of its pundits opens his or her mouth. Is there no depth to which these creatures will not sink?

Ooooh, burn!

Maya Angelou gets absolutely pwned in today's letters to the editor in the San Antonio Express-News:

Re: poet Maya Angelou's visit here to raise funds for Planned Parenthood:

I wondered if she knows the background of that organization. Does she know that Margaret Sanger, its founder, created the Negro Project designed to sterilize unknowing black women and others she deemed undesirable to society?

I guess that's another of those uncomfortable truths about the policies that many blacks support that they don't want to face. I'd hate to think that Maya Angelou did know about that but would excuse it. Either way, though, her PP association doesn't speak well for her.

Something's missing here.

If this is true:

I see (illegal immigrants) as human beings, and I respect the fact that they want liberty. So as a Republican, I look at the Democratic Party that plays them (illegal immigrants -- ed.) like pawns on a chessboard for collectivism. And I see them as individuals who are conservative to the core and they want to be treated as individuals — and we're the only party that can offer that to them.

...that is, if illegals are this huge potential constituency for Republicans because they're liberty-loving individuals, then why is it that the Democrats are in such a rush to grant them legal status? IS there a "silent majority" of Hispanics, both legal and illegal, who want to be free and treated as individuals instead of members of a collective who are expected to surrender their freedoms and fruits of their labors to the good of the collective? If there is, then the members of said majority need to speak up and tell La Raza, LULAC, etc. that those organizations don't speak for them.

Also, I recall some folks raising hell here and there about people coming to Texas, Georgia, Florida, etc. from places like New York and California and those expats bitching and wanting to make those states more like the states they left; it got to the point in Texas, apparently, that Texas singer-songwriter Brian Burns wrote a song about it. Why should we believe the influx from Mexico will be any different? Was Mike Vanderboegh really that far off when he said this?

These folks, God bless 'em, are used to nationalized industries, gun control, soldiers walking the streets dispensing their own rough "justice" with machineguns, identity-grievance politics and, above all, the undefeatable evil synergy of crooked politicians and drug lords controlling events. They are used to being ruled by a godless oligarchy of the privileged rich who know what's "best" for them. You know, they're Democrats.

I suppose those who go through the proper channels would be more amenable to the American way of life as the Founders intended it to be, as they demonstrate at least some respect for the rule of law; but that's a moot issue, considering the fact that we're talking about the people who don't go through the proper channels and basically giving them a pass on their flouting our rules. We haven't yet even addressed the phenomenon that Sabra pointed out to me in conversation of legal AND illegal immigrants being encouraged to adhere to their native cultures rather than assimilating into American culture. We've already seen some of the values of said native cultures adhered to that conflict with our own a few times, with immigrants from Iraq and Liberia; what makes us think that the case with Mexican immigrants is going to be any different? It may not be as extreme, but it's still something that needs to be confronted, lest we find out firsthand what "balkanization" is really all about.

You just keep telling yourself that, Gene.

Just like Leonard Pitts does nearly every time he puts fingers to keyboard, Eugene Robinson shows himself here to be utterly clueless:

The overhyped tea party phenomenon is more about symbolism and screaming than anything else. A “movement” that encompasses gun nuts, tax protesters, devotees of the gold standard, Sarah Palin, insurance company lobbyists, “constitutionalists” who have not read the Constitution, Medicare recipients who oppose government-run health care, crazy “birthers” who claim President Obama was born in another country, a contingent of outright racists and a bunch of fat-cat professional politicians pretending to be “outsiders” is not a coherent intellectual or political force.

Fat-cat professional politicians? Really? I seem to recall exactly those people being a target of the tea partiers' ire. And where are these lobbyists and tax protesters? Tea partiers actually pay their taxes; they only protest taxes to the extent that they're too high.I guess I shouldn't be surprised that some Beltway media slimeball like Eugene Robinson would choose to tar the whole movement based on the attitudes of a few that the movement as a whole chooses to disavow, but that doesn't make him any less wrong, and it doesn't make him any less of an asshole. As far as him saying they're not a "coherent intellectual or political force," well, that's just him whistling past the graveyard. If the tea partiers weren't a coherent political force, then there wouldn't be so much media attention directed on them or energy spent on making them look worse than they really are. As for the intellectual  part of it -- well, I really don't think an intellectual midget like Robinson is the least bit qualified to make that assessment.

Someone who respects individual rights? Really?

Barack Obama, on his next Supreme Court pick:

One area that Obama on Wednesday said was important to him: women’s rights. “I want somebody who is going to be interpreting our Constitution in a way that takes into account individual rights, and that includes women’s rights,” he said at the Oval Office while meeting top senators to discuss the forthcoming nomination to replacing outgoing Justice John Paul Stevens.

 I'm sure you understand my cynicism here, considering Dear Leader has shown himself to have little if any respect for at least two fundamental rights of the individual, specifically free speech and self-defense. And it's arguable that anyone who advocates a strong, activist central government as Obama does can't honestly position himself as a champion of individual rights, considering said government's inherent property of infringing on those rights. Such shame that anyone would actually take what he says as evidence that he really cares about said rights.

Goodness, she picked a real prize...

...didn't she?

DEAR ABBY: My boyfriend will not let go of my past. I didn’t level with him about a couple of relationships because I knew he was a racist. He found out, and now all I get is teasing and comments almost every day. If he sees a talk show about a liar, he says, “Oh! There you are!” It’s the same if the subject is a whore.

She was still with the guy and apparently was at a loss as to what to do. So not only is love blind, but it's also pretty stupid in some cases. You have a racist boyfriend who implies none too subtly that you're a liar and a whore. What do you do? Don't give him an ultimatum, just fucking leave! The dude CAN'T be that good in bed. Nobody is so good that one should tolerate such glaring character flaws. Really. Is it EVER that difficult or that complicated?

An interesting point for discussion.

Jonah Goldberg, in the Chronicle:

Many conservatives muted their objections (to GWB -- ed.), in part because they liked the man personally or approved of his stances on tax cuts, judges, abortion and the war on terror (we can see a similar dynamic with so many anti-war liberals who still support Obama).
Conservatives didn't necessarily bite their tongues (remember the Harriet Miers and immigration fiascoes), but they did prioritize supporting Bush — often in the face of far nastier attacks than Obama has received — over ideological purity. Besides, where were conservatives supposed to go? Into the arms of John Kerry?

I read this and thought of all those back during the last campaign for president who were supporting RINOs of various stripes. They were all saying, albeit in different words, "this guy agrees with 80 percent of the conservative platform; don't throw him away for the other 20 percent." Yeah, well, the devil's in that other 20 percent, as we see Goldberg point out here. No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, amnesty, and the list goes on. And as has been mentioned before, there was the GOP standard-bearer's abysmal record on the First Amendment, which should have shown that he wasn't fit to be elected to public office PERIOD, let alone the highest office in the land. Maybe ideological purity doesn't win elections, but when the guys on the blue team implement the same 20 percent of the strategies the red team player would have implemented (and DID implement), it really makes the folks supporting the red team look foolish. I hope to hell small-government advocates won't get fooled again, but the fact that anyone who suggests Mitt Romney is a good contender for 2012 doesn't get laughed out of the room is not an encouraging sign.

At least he isn't being overtly beyond the pale today...

...but Leonard Pitts shows himself to be as clueless as ever, yet again. John McCain's integrity is dead just now? The notion that John McCain had any integrity whatsoever should have been throttled by 2002 at the latest, after the BCRA and his defense of it by saying "I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I'd rather have the clean government." It would seem Leonard Pitts thinks as little of the oath John McCain took as McCain himself does.

I used to like this song...

...but now, it just makes me roll my eyes:

...A friend of mine was a-workin' hard, savin' all his pay
Like Jesse James the IRS stole most of it away
Then he got chased by a street gang and he finally found a phone
He called up the police and they put him on hold
What he needed was a real good, feel good song...

 No, dude. What he needed was a gun and the willingness to defend himself. On second thought, the guy could have been in Chicago or New York City, where the right of self-defense still isn't recognized as it should be...but then, as they say, better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.

News flash: It's not their job.

I bet this guy thought he was being pretty clever:

It's much easier to criticize leaders than to lead. Let's see them do some of the work. Tea partiers, write a balanced budget.

but actually, that's a really ignorant thing to say. It's not the tea partiers' job to come up with a balanced budget. That's the job of our elected representatives in Washington. It's the entire point of why we have government. Dollars to doughnuts this writer has never read that document or he'd have never said that. Would that we lived in a better world. Thomas Lee could campaign for higher taxes on a platform of "making the tough choices that have to be made for South Texas and the country" and the media could sit down and thoroughly investigate all the money the aforementioned elected representatives throw away (and that Thomas Lee doesn't think should be cut) on things not explicitly authorized by the Constitution. (Yeah, dream world, I know.) But no. These people won't run for office and they won't get off their asses into the streets and protest for what they believe in. They'll just sit at the house and write poorly-thought-out letters to the editor wagging their fingers at those who actually do those things. I guess it's naive of me to actually expect any better than that, but I still think real Americans should be more intelligent and motivated than that.

Sorry, but I don't agree...

with this. If we're going to sit on our hands, THAT is how we're playing into theirs because in a way we're letting them define us as "a bunch of racist rednecks upset over having a black president." I would think the truth about the tea partiers at the least is already getting out, namely, that they're not a bunch of racist mouth-breathing rednecks -- and this is revealed even to certain liberal columnists who, you know, actually GO to the tea parties:

Based on what I saw and heard, tea party members are not seething, ready-to-explode racists, as some liberal commentators have caricatured them.

Even without this particular phenomenon, we don't have just the Big Three networks and big-city coastal papers telling the story anymore. Even if we did, though, well, does it really matter that much -- considering that the public's trust in the media to get the facts right and report them in a balanced fashion is at its lowest "in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows"? In other words, does the media narrative matter when said media's audience doesn't think they're shooting straight OR speaking the truth?

Similar insults, eh?

Oh yes, quite similar indeed:

Ralph Peters called President Barack Obama's mother a “screwball” and Michael Medved called Obama a “liar” and “narcissist.” Mike Gallagher says he's an “idiot.”

To be fair, Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher have used similar epithets towards Sarah Palin, John Boehner and Michelle Bachman.

Yep, everyone knows "liar" and "narcissist" are similar to "inbred snowbilly" and "Whore of Wasilla." I should note that both of the above slurs were leveled by bloggers as opposed to talk show hosts, whose audiences aren't so big, but I'd bet money you will find much more of that sort of thing on the left side of the political spectrum than on the right. As for Rush Limbaugh tapping his console, I'd say that anyone citing that "clear evidence (of) anger" is pretty clearly grasping at straws. But then I am just a bitter, gun-clinging Texan. So what do I know, right?