Think it is well past time for our politicians to step up, answer questions, and take responsibility for their actions, whatever they might be? 

Well, this probably will not do anything to help either of those problems, but it might, and it costs you nothing (so long as you have a Twitter account), so give it a shot – apparently Presidential Advisors will be sitting down at their computers after the State of the Union address tonight to answer questions from various social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc., and Sean has assembled a list of questions from Bob Owens complete with the quick-and-easy post-directly-to-Twitter HTML magic, as quoted below: 

Who came up with the idea of allowing guns to be purchased by straw purchasers and then “walked” across the border by smugglers?

Who authorized Operation Fast and Furious in the Department of Justice?

Who authorized Operation Fast and Furious in the Department of Homeland Security?

Is Operation Fast and Furious the only operation of its type, or were there similar operations in other states as evidence suggests?

What did Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and Janet Napolitano know about Operation Fast and Furious, and when did they know it?

Just click on those links, press the “Tweet” button, and the question will show up happily in your stream, complete with the prerequisite “#SOTU” hashtag. 

I sincerely doubt that either Our Glorious President or any of his pet minions have the spine necessary to adequately address this abject failure on their part, nor the murders that resulted from it, but you can’t stop the signal, and the more people who see these questions as they watch the hashtag scroll by, the more people will question the administration about it in the future.  We can only hope, and know, that this will spread. 

Of course, I never imagined she was going to be this right this fast:

Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a "Reasonable Profits Board" to control gas profits.

The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a "windfall profit tax" as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit.

The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of oil and gas that ranges from 50 percent to 100 percent on all surplus earnings exceeding "a reasonable profit." It would set up a Reasonable Profits Board made up of three presidential nominees that will serve three-year terms. Unlike other bills setting up advisory boards, the Reasonable Profits Board would not be made up of any nominees from Congress.

The bill would also seem to exclude industry representatives from the board, as it says members "shall have no financial interests in any of the businesses for which reasonable profits are determined by the Board."

I am just about speechless. Just about.

Duly-elected Representatives Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers, Bob Filner, Marcia Fudge, James Langevin, and Lynn Woolsey should never be re-elected to their current positions – or any positions within any American government – but you and I both know they will be. Why? Because those petty bureaucrats are not the problem, they are just a symptom of the problem.

By dint of our very means of running it, we, the American people, receive the government we want and deserve. We just keep re-electing self-absorbed, megalomaniacal scum because our scum is better than their scum, because they promise our state money, because they help us with pork barrel projects, because they keep "social" programs alive, because we are told they are "electable" and other options are not; and then we have the nerve to act "surprised" when, predictably, scum exposes itself as scum. When someone shows a marked disdain for the Constitution, for free-market economies, for freedoms, for liberties, for all those things that once made America a great country, and you re-elect them, you are no longer permitted to be astonished that they just go on doing what they were doing before.

Which is pretty much exactly why I am voting Third Party in this coming Presidential election, as well as any other election where I am dissatisfied with both the incumbent and his/her challenger. I simply do not care any more if someone arbitrarily dictates whether or not a certain candidate is "electable"; I only care about what kind of job he or she will be doing in office. Honestly, if more people paid attention to / cared about that, our country would be in a lot less hurt right now.

Just to break out the partisanship, though, it almost goes without saying that all of the meddling authoritarians behind this proposed bills have "D"s after their respective names, and it is no surprise that this comes after Our Glorious President took it upon himself to kill not only a cheaper source of oil, but also a massive job creator.

And to completely switch tracks for a moment, does anyone see a problem with folks who may not necessarily understand anything about the oil industry being allowed to arbitrarily set "reasonable" profit levels for that industry without any oversight or actual direction as to what "reasonable" may or may not mean? Furthermore, given that $0.184 of every gallon goes to the Federal Government as an excise tax, when are we, the people, going to formulate a "Reasonable Taxation Board" to control government taxes, or a "Reasonable Income Board" to control congressmen’s income, or a "Reasonable Legislation Board" to strike down blatantly idiotic legislation such as this?

It seems like that time is rapidly coming upon us.

(Courtesy of The Freeholder.)

Did you take the time to find out why? If not, feel free to watch this video now:

Or read this explanation:

What are SOPA and PROTECT IP?

The PROTECT IP Act (S. 968) and the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA (H.R. 3261) would devastate job-creating American technology companies and social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in the name of protecting Hollywood copyrights. These bills would create a “Great Firewall of America” by embracing the same Internet censorship tactics as the world’s worst human rights abusers, including regimes like communist China, Iran, Syria, and Burma. A number of technology experts have concluded that these bills would mean “the end of the Internet as we know it.”

What does it do?

• Allows any content provider to accuse a website of promoting infringing content and have that site blocked from the Internet.

• Gives Eric Holder and the Justice Department control over the process for shutting down websites.

• Guts the tried-and-tested Digital Millennium Copyright Act — which allowed Google and Facebook to thrive in the first place — by shifting liability for policing copyright to social media sites. Every tweet and status update would have to be pre-checked for copyright violations, rather than taken down upon notice of infringement. This would destroy the social networks that small businesses use to find new customers, members of Congress use to communicate with constituents, and the Arab Spring revolutionaries used to overthrow tyrannical regimes.

• Breaks Internet security by tampering with the Domain Name System (DNS) and encourages the development of an insecure, offshore pirate DNS.

Because this is the only material I am putting up for today.

Oh, and, yes, I am voting for the net.

Which means I will NOT be voting for either Lamar Alexander or Bob Corker for any future office at any level of the United States Government. The only way to stop stupid laws like this one from even being proposed is by voting out those morons who propose, support, or endorse them. 

Because of gos-se like this:

The really depressing part of that article is the comments section, which right now leans 90% toward chastising the man for not bending over and taking it like a patriot. “My safety is worth more than your inconvenience!” “Like it or not, we’re at war, and that’s the way things are now!” “If you don’t like it, walk!” “If you don’t like it, leave the country!”

To be certain, we are reading Marko’s interpretation of the comments, so go read them for yourself; after about five minutes, if you do not come to the conclusion that he was under-exaggerating the mentality on parade there, you were not paying attention.

As touched on briefly in a previous post, and tried to explain to Dennis on the way to airsoft last weekend, and have undoubtedly mentioned multiple other times in the past, "the government" is not America’s problem. Arguably, "the government" has never been America’s problem. Our country’s problem is, has always been, and will be (until we find / are forced into another form of government) those people who continue to re-elect the scumbag politicians who incrementally destroy our rights and freedoms, and, with them, our country.

Our country’s problem is those people who think bending over and accepting a warrantless, reasonless search of personal articles in the name of "security" is an acceptable practice.

Our country’s problem is those people who think the money they receive from the government through various "social" programs is "free".

Our country’s problem is those people who are firmly convinced that all of the other Representatives and Senators suck, but theirs are ok.

Our country’s problem is those people who thought Our Glorious President was going to make a fantastic President before the last election.

The list of problems goes on and on and and on far farther than I would ever like to record, and, so far as I can tell, the sum total of all of those "problem" people FAR outweigh those few folks like you and me and the rest of our likeminded brethren who are interested in such archaic, outdated concepts as "fiscal responsibility", "individual rights", or "freedom". So, as I said, the problem is not the "American Government"; the problem is the American people, and until such time as you can convince me how you are going to dissuade the majority of those folks from continuing to gobble up every dollar from the government they can get their grubby little paws on, do not talk to me about "voting our way out of this".

(By the same token, until such time as you are comfortable with the notion of shooting your neighbors, do not talk to me about "revolution", "shooting our way out of this", "taking back the government", or any of that other idiotic, threeper crap. Sure, the first wave of fighting will probably be against the jack-booted thugs and their black helicopters, but once that initial melee passes and if the JBTs lose (hell of an "if", that), then comes the shocking realization by welfare queens, self-righteous Social Security recipients, slackers, and other leeches on the American people that the money they were receiving is there no longer. And tell me – how exactly do you think all of those recipients of "social" programs will take this revelation? How will those commenters at the news article above take the sudden removal of their security blanket? Thanks to superhighways, both informational and physical, the next American "revolution" will not be fought on clearly-defined borders, but rather house-to-house, office-to-office, and that never ends well for anyone involved.)

I still have not decided what else to say in addition to what I have already said in regards to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, but I do believe it is time to start checking your inventories, training levels, and willpower. We have no idea how the new powers granted by this bill will be abused, but the options are damned near limitless.

human to animal

outbreak

drill

strain

illegal immigrant

virus

recovery

deaths

collapse

trojan

That is all.

Originally the Guerena family filed an intent to sue hoping to get a $20-million settlement. That never happened so the official lawsuit was filed by their attorney and in it, 14 different people and agencies were named including Pima County, the Town of Marana, Town of Sahuarita and each individual SWAT member involved.

The Guerena family attorney Chris Scileppi said, the lawsuit is all about negligence ranging from signing the original search warrant, to the shooting itself and a lack medical attention shortly afterwards.

It won’t bring Jose Guerena back, but Scillepi said it will help the family. He said, “Vanessa, Jose, and Joel have suffered immense lose from the death of their husband and father. This lawsuit seeks in part to make them whole.”

The steaming pile of suck and fail surrounding the effective execution of Jose Guerena is not going to end well for the Pima County SWAT team and its defenders, but, amazingly enough, they are downright enthusiastic about this case actually going to trial. Unfortunately, I probably know the reason they are so uncaring – they know they will get off, because they are wearing cute little tin badges and cute little high-speed-low-drag uniforms, and our courts have been progressively reaching the opinion that such people can pretty much do whatever they please so long as it looks even vaguely, arguably, and hand-wavingly “official”.

Thankfully, locals are not likely to let the fury over an innocent* man’s death abate, and neither are those of us who picked up the story online, but that righteous indignation at what our country has become will only carry us so far. I still firmly believe that Jose Guerena’s death marks the end of our “American” experiment – now this court case will provide us the first datapoint as to whether or not that experiment can be restarted, especially in light of recent governmental events.

(* – Jose Guerena has never been convicted of the crime for which he was shot, even after death.)

United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2:

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

45th Congress, Second Session, Chapter 263, Section 15 of the Acts thereof:

From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section and any person wilfully (sic) violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment.

18 USC § 1385:

Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

18 USC § 375:

The Secretary of Defense shall prescribe such regulations as may be necessary to ensure that any activity (including the provision of any equipment or facility or the assignment or detail of any personnel) under this chapter does not include or permit direct participation by a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps in a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity unless participation in such activity by such member is otherwise authorized by law.

Tam:

Remember: Voting for John McCain is just more of George Bush’s war on the Constitution, with its indefinite detentions of anybody the government suspects of terrorism…

How’s that Hope & Change workin’ out?

John W. Whitehead:

In short, this defense bill not only decimates the due process of law and habeas corpus for anyone perceived to be an enemy of the United States, but it radically expands the definition of who may be considered the legitimate target of military action. If signed into law by President Obama, this bill will not only ensure that we remain in a perpetual state of war — with this being a war against the American people — but it will also institute de facto martial law in the United States. Although the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act placed strong restrictions on how and when the U.S. military may be used on American soil, the language of this bill supersedes Posse Comitatus, empowering the president to unilaterally impose martial law at any time of his choosing. This legislation signals the end of the rule of law in America.

Commander William Adama:

There’s a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.

Erin Palette:

President Obama has now declared that he will sign the NDAA into law — a bill which authorizes the indefinite detention of anyone suspected of being a terrorist. What’s the definition of "terrorist"? Why, it’s anyone who has guns and ammunition, or has more than 7 days of food and water in their home, or who is missing fingers:

So when this passes, you can say goodbye to the 4th Amendment, and probably the 5th, 6th and 8th as well.

Christopher Burg:

Fascism is here ladies and gentlemen. Our “representatives” are voting on declaring our nation a battlefield, which will allow military personell to detain anybody without so much as charges being declared. The mere fact that senators of this country are even entertaining this idea demonstrates how far we’ve fallen from the original ideas of liberty this country was founded on.

Me:

I always thought it’d be interesting to watch a civilization collapse first-hand. Now that I am, I’m not so sure. #ndaa #sopa #fail

And on a related note, given the "bipartisan support" for the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, I continue to see no difference at all between "Republicans" and "Democrats".

I really do not know what else to say… Once upon a time, I took an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic", and now, in the process of holding the funding for the military I served hostage, our Congress is undermining that oath, our Constitution, and our very nation. What the hell is there to say to that?

Rick Perry could not find his own ass with both hands, a map, and a flashlight… repeatedly.

Mitt Romney is a big-government-loving, gun-control-supporting, Obamacare-inspiring Obama-Light.

Herman Cain cannot handle a scandal – even a potentially fabricated one – if his future career depended on it (which it might), which makes me seriously doubt his ability to handle a country.

Michelle Bachmann is a certifiable loon.

Ron Paul never stopped being a certifiable loon.

Newt Gingrich is still living down the complete and total disaster that was the “Contract with America”.

And none of the rest so much as stand a chance.

Screw the Republicans. This election was theirs to lose, and they are showing every indication of intentionally doing just that. I cannot say as though I relish the idea of another four years of Our Glorious President, but I have yet to see a compelling reason to vote for Romney – the likely Republican nomination – while I do see more than a few good reasons to vote third party.

And you cannot vote them off the island.

As the saying goes, we get the government we deserve – those politicians finding ways to control, limit, and outright destroy our freedoms and liberties would not be doing such things if people had not elected them into an office capable of doing such things, and, worse, re-electing them to the same. The sad truth is that the majority of Americans either want our country to be the way it is right now, and headed down the path it is right now, or they simply do not care enough to do anything substantial about it in the voting booth; what makes you think they would do anything substantial about it anywhere else?

Which brings us to this outstanding post, culminating in the following quote of the day:

I am responsible for my actions and my inactions. If I do not extend my hand to help you, I deserve no better when I’m down on my luck. It is in my own selfish interest to help others. It is in my best interest to not allow the government to choose the winners and losers by granting them the authority to punish and reward those who help or hinder their campaigns. My life is easier when I expend the effort necessary to better my environment and community.

Far too many people of far too many political bents seem to be of the erroneous belief that "I do not want the government to help X group" is logically equivalent to "I do no want to help X group at all". Obviously, this is not the case, any more than "involuntary redistribution of wealth" is equivalent to "charity". However, it is that exact mentality, among thousands of others, that has encouraged people – either through believing it themselves, or allowing themselves to be influenced by it – to craft our country into the current state we find it in, despite the simple truth that helping our community is something that is both our own individual choice and our own individual responsibility. If you do not want to help your community, then knock yourself out, but do not be terribly surprised when the community does not want to help you. Alternatively, if you want to help the community, help the community your own damned self – getting the government to force other people to do what you want them to do is neither charity nor indicative of your own supposed "good will". 

So, no, we are not voting our way out of this. What that means in the long run, I have no idea, but I do know that history will look back on this era and wonder why we squandered such a wonderful country in some moronic effort to recreate that which caused us to found it to begin with.

(As a brief aside, this belief is why I tend to regard anyone who advocates a shooting war to "return America to what it was" or whatever the hell those folks are going on about with a certain degree of amusement, if not outright disdain. The people you are advocating shooting are not "the government", they are not "the cops", and they are not "the military"; you are advocating shooting your neighbors, your friends, your family, and all those other folks who wanted America to be how it is now, and want it to continue that way in the future. You up for that?)

1. I should do this because if I do not, I will be punished.

2. I should do this because it is the law.

3. I should do this because it is the right thing to do.

I am, of course, grossly oversimplifying the theory, but if you want to do your own homework on it, and look up the six total, individual stages, you are more than welcome to.

Why am I bringing this up? Because we are slowly realizing that our government, at all levels, has never progressed past level one. We are effectively being governed by children who do things because they want to and because they think they can, and in the rare instance where they realize they cannot do something yet, they go ahead and “legalize” it for themselves, even if that course of action is blatantly unconstitutional. Why? Because they know there will be no consequences. Thanks to things like “qualified immunity”, governments can get away with what amounts to be murder with nary a slap on their wrists – do you really think they will be concerned with things as inconsequential (to them) as your individual rights?

Well, like Joe says, it is time to change that:

Governments (actually people in general but the present context is government) will not abide by the law (or contracts) unless there is some punishment they fear if they fail to comply with the terms. When people in government spent other peoples money (OPM: pronounced “opium”) they have virtually no incentive to spend it wisely.

The sad reality is that the vast, overwhelming majority of politicians simply do not care about you, they do not care about me, they do not care about their constituents, and they probably do not even care about the country; the only two things they absolutely care about, in all cases, is “staying in office” and “expanding their power”. So how does one reign in politicians who think they can get away with blatantly illegal shenanigans “under the color of law”? Simple – you hit them where it hurts: their pocket books, and their re-election prospects. More optimistically, they should face criminal charges for passing laws that were known to be flawed at the time, but something tells me society is not quite ready for that yet.

Hopefully it will be soon.

So go over there and read it. Be that way.

On the other hand, I am always looking for quick-and-easy blogfodder, especially that no one else has touched on before.

And on the gripping hand, I never would have found this quote of the day otherwise:

My parents taught me that a dollar is not given to you, it is earned or paid back and that dear readers is the problem with my generation. Not all of course, but most. It’s the open hands that bother me. Entitlement is a disease, no, an epidemic and as far as I can tell, there’s not a cure in sight. Welfare is higher than ever, the government hands out more than ever, and we are in debt more than ever. Coincidence that we’re broke? I don’t think so. Sooner or later China’s gonna want their money and I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not have them break America’s legs.

(Emphasis added.)

To be certain, J.C. said some poignant things earlier in his post, as well as some things I disagree with*, and there is another topic I want to touch on in his closing, but this paragraph is what this whole situation boils down to in its essence.

In and of itself, our modern "money" is intrinsically worthless, and, personally, I think we are the worse for it. However, those little dollars and bills and coins and whatnot else serve as placeholders – tokens that represent fractions of our lives. How much do you make an hour these days? Take that amount and divide it by sixty – that is what a minute or your time is worth. How much is a loaf of bread these days? Take that previous number and divide it into the price – that is how much time you spend to buy that loaf of bread.

In essence, you are saying, "It is worth X minutes of my time to not have to grow, process, and bake my own wheat and various other materials to make this loaf of bread." This generally works fairly well for exchanges of money for goods, but the problem arises when someone/thing simply gives a person money – at that point, the money has no equivalent value of time, and something that has no value to a person is generally treated as such. Likewise, as the other face of the same coin, money that simply sprang into being by means of governmental fiat has a horrific tendency of devaluing not only itself, but also every other dollar floating around the economy… where do you think the term "fiat money" came from?

All of this is dancing around the cold hard truth of reality, though: there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Period. "Free" health care is not. "Free" public transportation is not. "Free" clinics are not. "Free" education is not. You may not be personally, directly paying for that munificence, but someone, somewhere is. That welfare check you are receiving was paid for by someone, and if the money actually came by way of "quantitative easing", then everyone, including you, are paying for it through the devaluation of the American dollar.

While I disagree with his limiting his objections to solely his (and probably my) generation, J.C. is exactly correct – the American people has forgotten this simple truth, and we are all going to start paying for that oversight in the very near future.

"But wait," some halfwitted morons are already exclaiming, "If the rich just paid their Fair Share(TM), then all of these problems would be FIXED! Duh." Uh, yeah, turns out, not so much. Even if you soaked "the rich" for 100% of their income – every single penny they ever earned – you would only cover less than a third of our country’s deficit. Less than a third. Remind me how that is a "solution" again? Also, kind of scary how large our deficit is, is it not?

Anywise, J.C. has a few books out on Kindle (I wonder if publishing houses have yet been able to come to terms with how that little device is changing their landscape right underneath their feet…), and while they are not exactly my cup of tea, unlike a disturbingly increasing number of American people, he can look back and say he actually produced something someone else was willing to pay him for.

(* – I do not view "conflict" as an intrinsically bad thing, nor do I view "compromise" as an intrinsically good thing. So far as I can tell, there can be no equitable "compromise" between a murderer and his victim, a rapist and his victim, and so forth, while a conflict between those parties would be eminently desirable.)

The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security on Tuesday partnered with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and several other federal and state agencies for a safety enforcement and awareness operation on Tennessee’s interstates and two metropolitan-area bus stations.

The agencies conducted a Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) operation at scale complexes where trucks and large vehicles are weighed. The VIPR operation was also conducted at two regional bus terminals in Nashville and Knoxville.

Yes, this "VIPR"* bullcrap is currently confined to weigh stations and bus terminals, but there was a time not too long ago when it was confined to airports – how long before "weigh stations" get expanded into "inspection stations", and all vehicles are subject to "enhanced screenings"? The slippery slope can only be a fallacy if it is not rushing past you…

What really irks me, though, are statements like this:

"Somebody sees something somewhere and we want them to be responsible citizens, report that and let us work it through our processes to abet the concern that they had when they saw something suspicious," said Paul Armes, TSA Federal Security Director for Nashville International Airport.

The Tennessee Highway Patrol checked trucks with drug and bomb sniffing dogs during random inspections.

"The bottom line is this: if you see something suspicious say something about it," Gibbons said Tuesday.

Not to Godwin myself, but do you know what that reminds me of? Nazi Germany. Or, to avoid that particular internet meme, Soviet Russia. In both of those cultures, significant amounts of their citizens’ time was consumed keeping an eye on all of the other citizens so that if anyone slipped up in the smallest, most inconsequential fashion, they could turn them in. Why? Well, on the one hand, it was viewed as a way to curry favor with their governmental overlords, and the only way your situation ever improved was if someone above you liked you, but on the other hand, it was also due to the ingrained knowledge that everyone else was watching for you to slip up to, so if you could take them out first, that is one fewer pair of eyes to worry about. It go so bad in the former society that children were turning in their parents for trivial, but verboten, offenses.

And here we go, happily skipping down the same blood-splattered path.

And no, do not even dare to say, "The terrorists did this to us". We, the American people, have allowed this to happen on our own soil. We, the American people, have tolerated the groping, sexual assault, and abuse of our citizens in the name of "security". We, the American people, have allowed unsafe, dangerous, and cancer-inducing machines to be spread across the country. And now, we the American people, are tolerating gorramed checkpoints on our own soil, limiting our freedom of movement and travel.

I guess I should not be surprised – checkpoints have been commonplace in Kalifornistan for years, now…

* – How much effort did it take to come up with that high-speed-low-drag acronym? And do you really want to "prevent" intermodal freight? Idiots.

(Courtesy of Oleg Volk.)

But I did want to take a moment to highlight a quote from an "Occupy Wall Street" supporter, as seen below:

fun trick: give #iamthe53 people an injury that will force them into a hospital stay. suddenly the system doesn’t work anymore

(For those unfamiliar with the "I Am the 53" movement, see here, or just remember that 47% of Americans pay no federal income tax.)

In short, Lowenaffchen‘s bloodthirsty tweet sums up the entire "Occupy" movement in 140 characters or less – you have something they want (whether it is your support of them, your money, your property, your skills (especially if you are a doctor / teacher / lawyer / etc.), or something else), and they are completely willing to use predatory violence to force you to provide that "something" to them, free of charge. And if you do not agree with that cause? Well, see above.

And that is what this entire "Occupy" movement boils down to – raw, naked, unapologetic force. Granted, such a thing can sometimes be necessary, and sometimes even arguably useful, but when that force is being employed to separate law-abiding citizens from their lawfully-owned property that they spent portions of their lives to be able to purchase? Yeah, you can politely go to hell… that is not America – that is mob rule by a bunch of entitlement-addicted children.

Lest you think I am pulling a single quote out of the air and making a mountain out of it, Gun Free Zone has been doing an outstanding job documenting more of the bloodthirsty desires being expressed (and possibly acted upon) by "Occupy" dissidents, as have others. Are all "Occupy" protesters and supporters violent people? Arguably not. But they are adamantly and publicly endorsing a political and social structure that would and could only be enacted and perpetuated through the use and implementation of violence – after all, what happens when those bankers, doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, business owners, and so forth "go Galt", so to speak, and take their money with them? What happens when they refuse to turn over their property to the government / mob? What happens when people like you and me refuse to tolerate increased taxes so freeloaders can continue to leech off society? That road inexorably leads to violence, whether they are willing to perpetrate that violence themselves or not.

I guess I should thank Lowenaffchen for having just barely enough of a spine to embrace his destructive nature and declare his intended violence to be "fun", unlike most of his compatriots who continue to cower behind claims of "social equality" or whatever-the-hell it is they are whining about today.

Yes, there is some limited ground between us that we can declare to be "common", but until such time as the "Occupy" movement can consolidate and express a coherent, cohesive cause/message/purpose, and until they abandon their idiotic notions that more government is the solution and that other people’s property is theirs for the taking if they want it, I will continue to regard those agitators and their abettors as a very good reason to purchase more ammunition and firearms.

2. No party primaries occur.

3. The country holds a write-in ballot. You may write in the name of any person on your slip; however, votes for ineligible persons (per Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution) will be thrown out.

4. Whoever receives the most votes is contacted and asked if he or she would be willing to serve if elected. If yes, proceed; if no, the next person on the list is contacted, and so on.

5. The top four wrote-in-and-willing-to-serve individuals have one month to campaign, if they so desire, and choose their Vice Presidential candidates.

6. On November 2nd, the “normal” vote proceeds with those four individuals comprising the ballot. Whoever gets the most Electoral College votes wins.

—–

… And that is what happens when Better Half and I have three hours to burn on our way up to Kentucky. There are, of course, flaws with this plan (most notably, how do you tell one “John Smith” from another?), but one thing is for certain: the outcome would be entertaining! And I am hard-pressed to see how we could do worse…

Fortunately, that lack of additional radiation in my life will continue for the foreseeable future, but unfortunately, Knoxville will be getting millimeter wave scanners:

McGhee Tyson Airport will soon have full-body imaging equipment to screen passengers, a Transportation Security Administration spokesman said Tuesday.

Sometime in the next few weeks, a millimeter wave advanced imaging technology machine will be installed at the Knoxville airport, TSA spokesman Jonathan Allen said.

A specific deployment schedule has not been determined, but TSA will provide advance public notice.

Being a rather small airport, Knoxville only has the one security checkpoint, so your odds of being shuffled through this machine are relatively high. To be fair, this system will implement the new "enhanced privacy" display systems that do not involve private viewing rooms and instead employ a "generic human outline", but you can bet your happy arse I will opt out just for the principle of the thing.

Surrendering our privacy in the name of "security" was a failed proposition to begin with, and I will be damned if I make the lives of those who knowingly infringe on the Fourth Amendment any easier just because they want me to.

(Courtesy of Michael Silence.)

No, seriously. If there is any message discernible in the hailstorm of nonsense being spewed forth from that… auspicious… gathering, it is, "Rich people suck, and they should give us money/jobs/etc."

Yeah. Good luck on that.

Doubly good luck with that when you quit your job to protest over economic inequality:

Wiljago Cook, 33, of Oakland, Calif., who joined the protest on the first day, said "exposing police brutality wasn’t even really on my agenda but my eyes have been opened."

She and her boyfriend and two neighbors all quit their jobs to come and planned "to stay as long as it seems useful," said Cook, who had worked for a nonprofit theater group.

Really? You quit your job to come and protest about… people not having jobs? *headdesk*

Another common theme I have been seeing on Twitter is a complaint amongst the "Occupy Wall Street" statists that corporations do not pay taxes. Uh, no kidding, moron. Corporations, in fact, do not pay taxes – they simply pass the charge on to you, the consumer, or stockholder, or employee, as a "cost of doing business". The very notion of requiring corporations to pay taxes boils down to nothing more than an idiotic, self-inflicted, with-malice-aforethought gunshot wound to your other foot… you know, the one the Federal Government does not already have a shackle around.

The one semi-message of the "protesters" I can definitely agree with, however, was the misappropriation of federal tax funds to pay for corporate bailouts – there is no such thing as a "company too big to fail", and spending your and my money to keep those companies afloat when the market dictated their death was a horrible abuse of government powers, and an egregious misuse of our funds. But, sadly, that complaint is all-but-buried beneath the non-stop stream of "Rich people shouldn’t be rich" or whatever the hell it is they are going on about today.

Look, I get that times are tough and that the economy has been trodding all over a lot of people’s dreams, but the simple truth is that standing around in a street in New York City is not going to change any of that – you are not going to find a job that way, you are not going to employ anyone else that way, and you are not going to correct any of the injustices you perceive… mainly because those "injustices" are entirely in your head and stem from your own personal greed and inveterate sense of entitlement. Hell, the "official" site for this shindig* (inasmuch as there is one) is claiming that they are "currently low on food." Maybe that is because you are depending entirely on the largesse of whatever supporters you might have? Or maybe it is because you are so insufficiently organized that you do not even know specifically what you are protesting about?

Oh well. No skin off my nose, and any American citizen is free to peaceably come together with any other American as they both so desire… but I am also free to point out just how stupid they are being.

(* – Speaking of, I guess an event comprising hundreds of protesters and demonstrators advocating "resistance" and "American Revolution", and which has already had hundreds of arrests, is not "insurrectionist" enough for some people.)

(9 News story courtesy of Glocked and Loaded.)

And if, for some reason, you believe that the Gibson situation has absolutely nothing to do with you, think again: SWAT teams raided Gibson’s facility and confiscated their property, all because they might have violated another country’s laws (even though the other country says no laws were broken). SWAT teams. The guys whose initial mission profiles typically included the words "terrorists" or "smugglers" or "hostages" or "drugs" or "violent" or "armed" or something of the like… not "guitars". And what exactly would have happened had anyone at Gibson resisted? Would they have been shot if they resisted "enough"? All over pieces of wood?

And, unfortunately, the fact that the Federal Government felt it appropriate to take this non-event to the level of employing a heavily-armed, aggressive, and dangerous quasi-military police force to confiscate pieces of wood from non-violent shop workers is just the tip of this inordinately disturbing iceberg. We know where this road of using SWAT teams to serve warrants goes, and I do not want to see our entire country headed down it.

If it sounds this stupid when we, the people, say it, how it is any less stupid when the government – and, specifically, Our Glorious President – does it?

(And, yes, pictures/cartoons can count as quotes – that whole "thousand words" thing…)

(Michael Ramirez drew it, though I cannot find it on his page.)