We Live In a Free Country

Dear Leader says so: I believe it.

Except, of course, when I don't.

Ay, Chihuahua!

Go ahead: Do it. It'll make you feel better: Call me raaaayyyycist.

But check out the space pic at the link anyway.

That should make you feel better, too.

Hurricane Camille

I was down on Little Cayman during the summer of 1969, and had to delay coming home because of the bad weather Hurricane Camille caused there. As I recall, the winds weren't 90 miles per hour at Little Cayman, but when Camille hit the Gulf Coast there were sustained winds of 190 MPH and possibly higher. By the time Camille reached the Appalachians, it dropped 27 inches of rain in less than 6 hours.

Here is a 1971 Civil Defense documentary about Camille and the clean up:



No power, no water, no food.

It may be interesting to explore the Internet Archive site where I found it.

The Twighlight Zone: The Shelter

I remember seeing this on the broadcast in 1961. It's about how the owners of a bomb shelter and their neighbors react when a nuclear attack is imminent. Maybe it affected me:



Rod Serling talks with Bob Crane about the issue here:

Democrats' Utopia: The DC Police State

I can't summarize this story other than to say that DC has become a police state, run by Democrats who must respect the Gestapo.

We are not in danger of having a police state, nor are we developing one. We already have one. And DC is the Democrats' vision of what they want our future to look like. Ask Dianne Feinstein. Ask Michael Bloomberg. This is their preferred America.

Jon Stewart on Obamacare

No, You Can't Keep Your Insurance If You Are Happy With It

The President lied. According to Kaiser Health News:

Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state...

...Blue Shield of California sent roughly 119,000 cancellation notices out in mid-September, about 60 percent of its individual business.

Why? It will be illegal to offer those plans which people were satisfied with.

“The arithmetic is inescapable,” said Patrick Johnston, chief executive officer of the California Association of Health Plans. Costs must be spread, so while some consumers will see their premiums drop, others will pay more -- “no matter what people in Washington say.”

President Stompy Foot lied, health insurance died.

On Bullying

There is a column by Karol Markowicz in the NY Post about bullying, which I started to comment about on their site, but they wanted to peruse my email account. Nope.

She wrote:

The bullies of our youth could be stopped with a surprise punch. The ones of today have protection from that, thanks to our zero-tolerance policies. We’re raising a generation of superbullies.

We don’t give the good kids a fair chance to stand up to the bad ones.

Here is the reply I would have made:

Is the official policy to just quietly surrender when you’re being pummeled?

Yes. The consequences may well last a lifetime: Our schools teach passivity in the face of assault. Just how does one break through that lesson when one is later being attacked by a rapist, gay basher, or just plain nut? Answer: One usually doesn't. Learned passivity is a mental illness we demand our children learn, and learn well.

The best response to a bully is usually to punch him in the nose, and keep punching until he is either down on the ground or running away. Nowadays, of course, the head bullies run our school boards, and they are hard to beat. They like it that way.

You shall be passive, or else. You shall not take responsibility for your own safety, or else. If you defend yourself, you will be treated exactly like the bully, because you challenged the authority which says "Submit, or Else."

Schools are teaching children to submit to violent, criminal assault, and to wait for an authority figure to someday review the event.

Just soak up the violence, kid, or else.

Details

Congress kept spending money the Treasury didn’t have. This year’s deficit — the total added to the debt — is expected to be “only” $744,000,000,000, or 4.4% of GDP. The economy is expected to grow less than 2.5% this year. What that means is that although President Obama loves to take credit for shrinking the deficit he caused to balloon, our total indebtedness is still growing faster than the economy.

Don't bother the President with details. Some Other Dude Did It. George Bush, most likely.

Stephen Green has more here.

Victor Davis Hansen on Immigration "Reform"

...comprehensive immigration reform is the most illiberal legislation in a generation: it favors Latin American nationals over others entirely on the basis that they have already broken federal immigration laws, are residing here illegally, and share the same ethnic background as their leaders in the Democratic Party.

Like hospitals, schools, and colleges which receive philanthropic donations, rewarding illegal behavior encourages more of the same.

How could it possibly be otherwise?

Just as rewarding unwed parenthood produces an unending flood of illegitimate babies who grow up to be disfunctional adults, rewarding those who are here precisely because they have no respect for our laws will produce generations of lawbreakers.

Apparently the Democrats, and all too many of the Republicans as well, want those results. Why else work to achieve them?

More here.

Naughty Indoor Kitty

Saturn From Above

Very neat photo of Saturn.

US Rep: The Tea Party Are the Domestic Enemies We Take An Oath To Defend Against

US Representative Steve Cohen on the Tea Party: we take an oath to support the country against all enemies foreign and domestic, and these are the domestic enemies.

He also seems to have a low opinion of them because "a lot of those members...never worked in politics before". Yep: They aren't used to using regulations and subsidies to grease the palms of those who demand their hands be greased.

In case you need to guess Representative Cohen's party affiliation, he is a Democrat, from Memphis, TN.

Remember, when he calls Tea Partiers domestic enemies, he is implying that the government should use troops to put down the insurrection.

If you think that is a lot of hot air, just what does defending the country against domestic enemies mean to you? Besides sicking the IRS on them, of course.