I'm Stealing It, Too

From a commenter over at Cold Fury, comes a quote many plan to appropriate...

"Arguing with a Socialist or a Muslim or an anti-gun advocate is like playing chess with a pigeon. They will knock over all the pieces, shit on the board and then declare victory" -Dave

And, I couldn't agree more.  Why debate them?  If you know that tyrannical control is their objective, what could you possibly gain by winning, or even engaging in, an argument?

If you are inclined to fight for that in which you believe, talking only empowers or emboldens your foe.

The time for threats, warning-shots across the bow, chest-thumping rhetoric, and reasoned discourse is over.

Quiet.

Steely.

Resolve.

I Am Mike Spartacus Vanderboegh

Excerpted from Mike's speech, video below...

My name is Mike Vanderboegh and I'm a smuggler. I am from the great free state of Alabama and I am a Three Percenter.

If you need to pigeonhole my politics I consider myself a Christian libertarian. I believe in free men, free markets, the rule of law under the Founder's Republic and that the Constitution extends to everyone regardless of race, creed, color or religion.

I most especially believe in the right of the people to keep and bear arms as the ultimate guarantor of liberty.

I have also been called a "seditionist" by members of the current regime. If faithfully fulfilling my oath to the Founders' Republic and unrelenting hostility to those who would undermine and overthrow it makes me a "seditionist" then I cheerfully plead guilty.

Sipsey Street Irregulars.

As Natural As The Fingers On Our Hands

For all those who would like to exhibit Abe Lincoln as some kind of Republican role-model, witness Judge Napolitano saying he could devote a month's oratory on the frontal assault Lincoln performed on the Constitution, as its worst offender ever.

Constitution For Dummies?  Best speech of the year, perhaps.



Hat-tip to Brock Townsend at Free North Carolina.

Guard what is yours.  Trust your government at your own peril.  Resist.

Reading Materials

Kids!

I did not forget to dose out snippets of Evan Sayet's The Kindergarden Of Eden, as promised.  I just blasted through it and lent it out to some friends, when I finished.  True, that doesn't mean that I did actually live up to that promise of more excerpts.  So, as a way of making some amends, here's the interview that made me want to order up this book in the first place...even better than snippets, no?



When I get it back, I'll try to dispense some more nuggets from Mr. Sayet...but really, why don't you just go buy your own copy?

Finding time to read has been difficult.  But, over the past 10 days or so, I've devoured my way through the first 36 chapters of Matthew Bracken's Enemies Foreign and Domestic.  The Batfee splinter sect has Brad in the hurt locker at their psycho-Gman funny farm, and Ranya's plotting to spring him before he gets waterboarded and/or dirt-napped.  I'm betting she calls in reinforcements and makes a surgical extraction...we'll see.

Do yourself a real favor, and order up the EFAD trilogy.  Go to Bracken's website, and get signed copies, like I did.

Common Sense

If you're a moderate or left-leaning person, you may have considered the phrase "common sense gun violence solution."  Speaking just on your terms, the very simple nuts & bolts solution isn't a buffer  zone between guns and good people (like background checks and restricted ownership), or even between guns and bad or unstable people (like restrictions on ownership by felons and those with mental issues).  The "common sense" solution on those terms, would be a different kind of buffer: one between people who are violent criminals and the general public.  Another would be a buffer between the mentally disturbed and again, the general public.

These buffers already exist, or at least they used to:  Jails, prisons, psychiatric hospitals, and insane asylums.

No one seems to be talking about the naturally-predictable consequences of pardons, early parole, and lax law enforcement.  If there were proper deterrents and actual crime control, for example, young Trayvon might not have had a gang in which to belong.  And he might not have learned to self-medicate with dextromothorphan and Skittles and Arizona Tea.  And even if there'd been a gang, he might have been arrested for being in one, and been alive in jail, instead of picking a fight with anyone (much less an armed citizen).  The common sense lesson in that exchange is that George Zimmerman did the two things that Florida Law Enforcement could not or would not do: he tried to disuade crime, and then punished a violent criminal while being the object of a violent crime!

Trayvon Martin is dead, not because of an inanimate object, and certainly not the wickedness in George Zimmerman's mind, but because of the unchecked wickedness in Trayon's mind.

In fact, if Mr. Martin had been thinking about a likely armed response to his thuggery, he'd perhaps have found some other exercise for working off his enthusiasm.  Like maybe some homework, or a job, or even a wholesome team sport!

But, as I've said before, "gun control" isn't about controlling guns.   It's about controlling people.  Specifically, controlling these good citizens who would, when push comes to shove, shoot those other bad people gang-banging our neighborhoods.  Those gangs include the obvious drug/turf gang examples like Trayvon's, but also self-legitimized versions swelling in rank and armament, sent by the tyrants who can only complete their dominion whence there's no longer the potential for resistance.

In a common sense debate, then, what really is the Bill of Rights?  Wherefrom did the 2nd Amendment come?

Well, if you believe that all of our rights come from our Government (and its mechanisms and structures, whether an imperial President, a 99:1 ratio in the Legislature, and "forward-thinking" Supreme Court or any similar collection of would-be tyrants), then you can't understand, or be made to understand, what the pure nature of these rights meant to those who wrote the Constitution.  They knew and firmly believed that there were rights which pre-dated their Document, and their Revolution, and Civilization, and all the rest of history.  And, one of those rights was the right to defend oneself...in any way seen fit.  They knew the dangers posed by wicked men in power would outstrip the dangers of sabre-tooth tigers, marauders, clans, thieves, and thugs named Trayvon.

And they knew that the only way for this new government of theirs to get out of hand, was an elimination of the citizens' means of self-defense.  Therefore, the common sense discussion begins and ends with the phrase, "shall not be infringed," and the understanding that God (or Nature, if you prefer) created and gave me this right, individually for my own benefit of self-preservation.  The Founding Fathers recognized that this right came from God, and they wrote it down as a manner of acknowledging so, taking care not to be seen as bequeathing it.

It's an infringement when any legislator or judge pretends to have any business defining what constitutes "allowable."  If I want a tank, or a samurai sword or a 30-round magazine clip (hahaha), that's between me and my Maker.  Same equation for you, if that's what you want and can afford or make.

It's an infringement if/when anyone, including an officer of the State, pretends it's his business whether I'm armed or not.  If and when I start shooting, then it's your business.  You'll be better off on my side, if this happens.  Spend your efforts to solve actual crimes or catch actual criminals.

It's an infringement if you, my presumed betters, scrutinize my credit history and insist on filing my fingerprints to assess my "carry-worthiness".

Any registration requirements, from pea-shooter handguns to bazookas?  Infringement.

Simply considering that anyone other than myself or my God has any voice in restricting my having or bearing, whenever and wherever I see fit any weapon I choose, is infringement of my right and an immediate violation of the 2nd Amendment, punishable also in any way I see fit.  And whether you're an imperial President, elected representative, appointed judge, sworn deputy, or Florida gang thug, once you've broken the rights given me (us) by God, your authority no longer has merit, and you are just another criminal.

Another criminal, like Trayvon, making mistakes about the difference between the laws of God and those laws of man.

Today is a beautiful day, even if it's just another day on the right side of the dirt.  I should be floating dries down the creek, or killing golf eggs, or riding my horse, or sailing my boat...or just playing couch-survivor in preparation for the ACC Championship basketball game.  But instead, I'm writing an essay about tyrants and then heading out to a gun show.  Because I'm a racist?

No.  It's because I'm afraid of what might happen if I'm not paying attention.

God bless you.  God bless America.  God bless Roy Williams and the Tar Heels.  And just as importantly, God bless me.  Happy St. Patty's Day.

About That Time

Hot Women, Loud Guns, and Fast Cars

Just because (A) I've been way too busy keeping all my fingers in all those dikes and have precious little time for real essay, and (B), the simplicity of the Virtual President is really enough in itself, here's some Bill Whittle for your edification.

Although he didn't say it specifically, the phrase that bumped its way into my head as he delivered this speech, was "natural anarchy".  That is, our leviathan by its very nature is about to get shed like a cocoon, just because of our very nature, individually, as we gravitate toward that which is more nimble and unencumbered.  And that is, of course, unless that same government, out of its own self-preservation, ratchets up the enslavement of its people.  And let us not discount that possibility.

The only exception I take is his presumption that the North's impetus for the War Between the States, was borne of some fairy-tale pure notion of emancipation, and their (dishonest) justification in acting on those notions.  Your thoughts?

Fiction?

Yes, to be sure.  But tell me which parts you find implausible.

A cousin of mine, before he voted for the Obamunist in round 1, told me with a straight face that "they'd never let that happen..." in response to my saying that Barry once said he'd have a civilian defense corps 500,000 strong that rivaled the strength of the US Military.

And I said, "Who is they?"

I can't more-highly recommend reading the longer excerpt of the following.  You can do so after the break, or even better, to its source at Western Rifle Shooters Association.  Please.  And don't forget that the comments are open.

From Mike Bracken's Foreign Enemies & Traitors:

“Next came the Freedom from Gun Violence Amendment, and that’s when the Second Amendment was annulled. So you see, we didn’t want any of it. Not regular Americans. We didn’t ever vote for it; it was all done at the con-con by mob rule. It was a complete circus by then, the kangaroo convention. But it didn’t matter what average Americans thought, the amendments all became law. They became the new constitution. When the Second Amendment was repealed, the delegates in the arena had a mass orgasm. We watched it all on TV. It was surreal, like a bad dream you get after food poisoning.”

Carson asked, “What did the gun amendment ban?”

“Just about every legal firearm that was left. After the Washington Stadium Massacre, the semi-auto rifles were already outlawed. The ones they called assault weapons.”

...and...

“Nope, I don’t, not at all. But the con-con didn’t end with the gun amendment. The economic amendment was the last one. That was on the final day of the convention. It was a rubber stamp, another voice vote. By then the con-con was like a religious revival meeting, so of course the EJDA passed. That’s what they call the Economic Justice and Democracy Amendment, the EJDA. It was another mass orgasm in the Philly sports arena. We were in shock by then, watching it on television at home. It all happened so fast! Only a few months before the con-con, everybody thought the Poor People’s Party was a joke. We thought the constitutional convention would never happen, and even if it did, it wouldn’t really count somehow. But it did, and nobody’s laughing now.”

“What’s this economic amendment do?” asked Carson.

“The EJDA guarantees jobs for everybody; it guarantees a living wage, it guarantees affordable housing, free health care, free college and free child care. I’m sure I left out a few things it guarantees, but you get the idea. Almost any freebie or handout you can think of, it’s in the EJDA. Basically, it’s communism, written into the constitution. And believe it or not, they sold it as the best way to fix the economy! The new constitution was going to get us out of the depression, and make life fair for everybody at the same time. With the new constitution, the president could enact the ‘New New Deal’ and get us out of the depression. Fat chance! That’s like taking arsenic to cure a stomach ache.”

And do read up on why you ought to oppose a Con-Con, now.  That part is not fiction.

Fitty!

Happy Birthday, Mike.

UPDATE: I couldn't disable the autoplay, so here's a link to the video, instead.

"Shrugged"?  Yeah, well, go with it.

Video from ACC All-Access.

For The Upland Journal Gentlemen

Know this: nobody wants to dispose of all the "political talk" any more than we do.  We don't like it anymore, and probably much less, than you do.

But, as Bill Whittle says, "...politics has invaded everything.  And my friends, politics sucks."  It is our freedom to pursue happiness that is trampled upon.  You oldschool UJ'ers may be coming late to the party, in that some things that make you happy are currently getting constricted by the federal leviathan, but we've been getting "unhappied" for quite some time now.

You're not unlike those folks who'd previously been suckered into the Cult of Celebrity when they opened that first paycheck of 2013.  OMG, is right!

Fearful people are not happy people...



And we can all be happy, if we put...if we put this invasive, collectivist, ever-growing monstrosity of a State, back into the beautiful, competent, frugal, well-ordered, fiscally-responsible, government-sized box that it originally came in.

Thanks to NCRenegade for the video...which somehow otherwise slipped under the Livermush radar.

The Bicyclist & The Overmountain Man

The Overmountain Man is driving a truck
A big diesel pickup, looming, and not very nimble.
Overmountain Man drives aggressively, perhaps
But not rudely, he thinks
This is a busy college town.

Bicyclist rides in the road
It's his road, as much as anyone's, by gosh
He rides in the middle of a lane
And then toward one side of a lane, without mirrors
To aid him, and then the middle again.

As a traffic light turns red, just ahead
The Bicyclist slows faster than the diesel would prefer
The Overmountain Man, behind,
Slows slower than comfortable, for the Bicyclist.
Who stops abrubtly, angrily.

Well short of the vehicle ahead, at the intersection
The Bicyclist yells indecipherably over his shoulder at the
Overmountain Man, who returns a "What...Who me?" pantomime.
The Bicyclist pulls forward some,
So, of course, does the Overmountain Man.

The Bicyclist turns and pedals around behind that big diesel
And bluetooths a license plate number to an unseen savior
The light changes and everyone goes along
Without further disharmony, much
And without bloodshed

The Overmountain Man is overdue for feeding
And he's still looking, sniffing for a place that suits him
Backtracking across the college town he sees now again, and smiles
Toward the Team Post Office unitard of his friend the Bicyclist,
Sitting now in the median of a far busier highway

A minute later, Overmountain Man decides maybe this diner, but
After pulling into the lot, he changes his mind again
Before exiting, though, the big diesel is surrounded by Policemen,
Who ask him about an incident of road rage
The Overmountain Man would cast a long & broad shadow.

Overmountain Man says that none of the rage belonged to him
And that passive-aggression shouldn't command 911 attention
The Senior Policeman seems confused at the phrase,
"Professional Victim Beta Male" but not much amused.
The Overmountain Man is a brute, obviously, and not a poet.

The passive-aggressive beta male would not carry a gun
But, gladly, would use one that is wielded by someone else.
He is happy to pick a fight, so long as he is not in it.
There are no consequences to crying "Wolf"
So far as he knows or cares.

If the Indians had had bluetooth cellphones
They could've called 911 for someone to deliver a stern talking to
To those trains, and their brutish Conductors like Overmountain Men
Who'd be taught certain painful lessons, while horses would remain
Without poetry or progress.

LTG Boykin

H/T to Western Rifle Shooters Association.



You are witnessing a rogue, tyrannical government.  It has, by its lawlessness, delegitimized itself.

Whatcha gonna do?

Hanoi Jane Kerry

Briefly-

It is my opinion that any Senator who voted to approve John Kerry as Secretary of State, retroactively endorses his treasonous act of giving aid & comfort to the enemy.

It's one thing, and bad enough, if you're Massachusetts, and you think this scum is good enough to represent you.  But it's another thing entirely if you are willing to pretend a traitor is satisfactory diplomatic representation for all of the country!

Disagree?

Afterburner 1/31

I really don't want to hear any of you folks out there crying about how you just can't believe such & such is happening (gun ban/confiscation schemes, freedom of speech restrictions, surprise taxes, intrusive questions from your doctor, rising tides of violence and mistrust, inflation and economic woe, and so on), because when we tried to warn you, you dismissed us with an impatient wave.

Those folks are still in power, and drunk on that power.  They do not recognize any limit to their power nor any accountability to the rule of law.  They are above the law, and you are their subjects.

This ride is going to get bumpier, by far, before it smooths out.



Consider the possibility that next, they'll kick a feller's door in because he posted a Bill Whittle propaganda piece on his blog. Don't think it could happen? What's to stop them?

For Sale

JCPennys happily announce their new line of dress pants.  The Steve Kroft trouser.

Comes with padded knees and a zipper in the back.

In Their House (Updated)

Unless the Dhimmicrat Jackboots come kicking in my door to search for the offending high-capacity magazine clips, my whole Saturday gets to be planned around a televised skirmish, the UNC vs. NCSU basketball game, slated to tip off at 7PM.  Not because of who it is the Tar Heels are playing, it's the same at the House of Livermush for every game.

What time is the game?  Okay, that's take out the trash here, get tires here, write blog post here, eat here, here, and here, fend off unforeseen household drama (which isn't planned, but set aside time for it anyway) here.  And have Jones, Eric, Adam, et al giving me the pregame atmosphere by 6, then...action!

My red-clad friends with the little woofy hand-signals will behave much the same way, but not because this is the way they block out time for any game.  This is the only game that matters, or has mattered, for at least the past week and the following week, but possibly since the moment Gio broke their pitiful little hearts with his magical punt return a few months ago on the Kenan Stadium football field and onward for months, as well.

It must truly stink to be perennially defining your team's success by its outcome versus only one opponent.  Honstly, I can't imagine thinking that it was okay to lose four games, so long as we won this one game.  But, that very mindset of theirs is exactly why Adam Lucas warns you not to assume logically lofty expectations for tonight: Uh-Oh.

For little UNC-Raleigh, it counts as more than one game.  To Wolfpack fans, it may be a single move of the pawn, but it's the one step to the far end of the chessboard that regains them their queen.  Nevermind that nobody but them considers that single move "queen-worthy".  Oh, the unparalleled glory!...If only in their pathetic little minds.

It is their house, and there will be much venomous energy.  Well, their "rented" house, that is, the RBC-come-PNC Arena.  And the game is just a pawn, in the bigger game of a season's success.

Hope we can capture this pawn, anyway.  If we do, for us it's just another pawn...but for their season, it's Check and Mate.

Go 'Heels.

UPDATE: Nevermind.

NUTHER UPDATE: Told ya so.

Hillary Clinton

Secretary of Skank

Imagined editorial segment on Fox News...

Brit Hume: Thanks, Brett.  Today's testimony before the Senate No-oversight Committee on Blaming Things On An Obscure Flavor Of Jello Pudding, acting Secretary of Skank, Hillary Clinton said...

Brett Baier: Excuse me, Brit.  Don't you mean, Secretary of State?

Hume: Sorry, but no.  We're expected to believe from her testimony, that either she's so inept that she couldn't envision a need for basic security (much less enhanced security) in Libya, on 9/11, for the single American in that country most likely to need enhanced security...or she just did not and does not care.  What part of her skankified life holds priority over her doing this most basic part of her job? She's unqualified to be the Secretary of anything but Skank.

At the very least, the next time she's called to testify, I hope one of those Senators has the balls to say, "Instead of smiling and smirking Mizz Clinton, and before you start pounding your fist indignantly, weigh your impertinance against these two phrases: 1) treasonous subterfuge versus the American people, involving the death of an American diplomat, and 2) firing squad."

On other, seemingly unrelated, imaginary news happenings...

If you watch this Katie Couric interview with Manti Te'o, think about the likelihood that there was a recent production meeting that featured Mizz Couric saying, "If there's a massive hoax, involving a pillow-biting odd,  juiced-up reknowned football player from a Catholic school, why aren't we in on it?  Furthermore, how can we get in on it?"

Dear Dr. Thomas Sowell,

NO.

You are wrong, sir.  Not in the presentation of, or solution to, your argument, but primarily in the basic answer to its title: Do Gun Control Laws Control Guns?  And secondarily, to your notion within that argument that "the over-riding factual question is whether gun control laws actually reduce gun crimes in general or murder rates in particular."

As with most other news and editorial pieces regarding the issue, you make valid points to rearrange deck chairs on a sinking ship.  And miss the opportunity to make a more-vital point.

Start with the question in the title, Do gun laws control guns?  And, instead of treating the symptoms, look at the sickness, get to the very real meat of the matter for your answer.  And it is this:

Gun control is not about controlling guns.  It is about controlling people.

To paraphrase your supposition, the over-riding factual question is whether the rights of government can abridge our natural rights.

I have as much respect for your political aptitude and Constitutional scholarship as I do anyone's.  So, it is my hope that you will redirect your focus on the genuine issue, rather than dance around the edges like most of the other editorialists.  There are plenty of folks ready to take the easy road, centering the dialog over my right to hunt and your right to fend off a burglar.

Those are valid and important uses for our guns.  But they have nothing to do with the 2nd Amendment.  Criminalizing guns is part of their victory.  Another part of that victory is fogging the issue on the Conservative Right.  Don't let that happen, please.

They'll come for my guns, and then for your voice.

It's about controlling us.  You and me, both of us.

Thanks to William Grigg at Pro Libertate (with a H/T to WRSA), here's the solution to your argument.  Well, not your argument, but what your argument should have been.  See here: it's not the gun being controlled; it's the citizen.  Regardless of his rights.  Regardless of his actions.  Regardless of his intent.



Dr. Sowell, we need you to keep your eye on the ball, sir.

These Will Stand

These North Carolinians will stand, and they will fight like they have Tar in their Heels.

Consider this from LT, NC Renegade:

But I am a soldier, and I know what must be done; and so I shall put away my sadness and I shall harness up the bitter steed of war, and gird myself up for the battle; and I shall ride out to meet the enemies of Liberty; not in rage, not for anger sake or the hope of vengeance; but because I swore an oath before God, to jealously guard our Republic and its Constitution against all enemies; Him I shall not disappoint, for He is my Hope and my Trust.

And this from Bob Owens:

From NFA ’34, to GCA ’68, to FOPA ’86, and the ’94 Crime Bill, the federal government has chipped away at the rights of gun owners in the name of “public safety.” Tellingly, the safety they’ve sought to protect in each and every one of those laws has been their own, attempting to defang the people so that when the people finally realize they have been cornered by their would-be masters, they have nothing left with which to strike back in their own defense.  

Not one step more. That is what I pledge to my children.

It is a crossroads we approach.  Our army from one direction.  Theirs, in opposition, from another.  And if I suggest that you will soon have to decide into which camp you'll make your allegiance, which one will it be?  If you haven't thought much (or any) about the possibility of having to choose, please go read those two linked essays, and get back to me.  Or, don't get back to me...but at least, start thinking about the ramifications of such a decision.

Their tyranny is not something on the horizon.  It is here now, and almost fully realized.  It is something with its cancerous tentacles already insinuated into our fabric.  The necessity for an incision is practically unavoidable.  Their tyranny and our Liberty cannot coexist, not peacefully or otherwise.  Sooner or later, one side or the other will have to be eliminated.

"Harnessing up the bitter steed of war."

Oh yeah.  I'll stand.  The Old North State is as good a place as any to start this thing up.  Not like it'll be the first time we picked a fight against a tyrant.

Looking at the folks on our side...I really like our chances.  God bless America.

Tactical Assault Rock For Sale On Ebay

The guy is getting bids at $37 right this minute: Tactical Assault Rock from CroMagnum Arms Int'l.

This is a market that is FAR from saturated, and I have lots of rocks.  Matter of fact, I know where there's a cache of Ancient Indian Throwing Stones.

Ka-ching...

(H/T to Sipsey Street Irregulars)