A Little Perspective

Show of hands, how many folks on hearing about about the "VA scandal" immediately concluded: we need to throw a bunch of money at this?

 

Personally, I figured the VA was just an exponentially enlarged version of your everyday DMV, such that if there's not an official action box in which to file such-and-such document (of which there are a thousand varieties), the document gets filed in a does-not-compute box.  Dead end for you, and your tag/title application, and your ruptured spleen, you miserable plebe.

 

By my thinking, a single dime that goes anywhere near the VA bureaucracy is pissed away.  On the other hand, I might be persuaded to accept that there's a shortage of actual professionals.  But that said, 17 Billion Dollars could get you 17,000 doctors and nurses and radiation techs and anesthetists at 1 million apiece.

 

Reminds me of, what?...

 

"An empty desk is an efficient desk."

Then Sings My Soul (NSFW)

I don't know why I'd never seen this before, but mighty glad I stumbled on it yesterday.  My eyeballs were like a golf-course sprinkler system, each of six times that I watched it.

I showed it to Princess Nagsalot and dared her to watch it without weeping.  She tried and failed.  Miserably.

Elvis' version was great.  As was Johnny Cash's.  This was better.

Awesomer even than the Statler Brothers.  Yeah, I just made up that word.

If there's an officially licensed version of this video, I'm sorry that I didn't link it directly.  This is probably just the one with the most hits (24+million).  Apparently from a CBS production called Girl's Night Out.

To, I suppose, the one person out there who hadn't (like me and the Princess) already seen it...Not. Safe. For. Work.  Not safe, that is, if you overvalue your esteem.  Expand the video full screen, and crank up the volume.  I dare you.




"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea." -Isak Dinesen

New Firewall 14-0723

The Case For Israel

 

 

I stand with Israel, and hope they pulverize their enemies.

Welcome to Whomville, Peon

From Kevin D. Williamson, National Review Online

The foundation of classical liberalism, and of the American order, is not the rule of law, a written constitution, freedom of speech and worship, one-man/one-vote democracy, or the Christian moral tradition — necessary as those things are. The irreplaceable basis for a prosperous, decent, liberal, stable society is property. Forget Thomas Jefferson’s epicurean flourish — John Locke and the First Continental Congress had it right on the first go-round: “Life, liberty, and property.” Despite the presence of the serial commas in that formulation, these are not really three different things: Perhaps we should render the concept “lifelibertyproperty” the way the physicists write about “spacetime.”

If you'd like, dear friends, a brief essay this Sunday morning that clearly defines the anguish many of us feel over our government, then spend 10 minutes reading and 20 minutes contemplating this from Mr. Williamson.

I'm going to leave early for church...see if I can get a seat on the back row.

The Penman

I love stories that cast those rascals in more accurate, but less-favorable light than what my public indoctrination officials preached years ago.  Case in point, this from Tom Daniel and the Abbeville Institute:

That night, right there in that dark and cold cemetery, I launched into a fiery performance for the reasonable sensibility of state’s rights and the necessity of secession. I mean I brought that man up from the grave, walked him around, and pounced on each group that stopped by. Nearby, at another part of the cemetery, they were playing “Dixie” at the site of a mass grave for brave Texas volunteers who died in an Auburn hospital and never made it home, and it was the perfect surreal accompaniment for the temporary resurrection of The Penman of the Secession. I rapidly got pretty good at timing my remarks to the phrases of “Dixie.”

But by far, the best part of each performance came when I recited Samford’s original words of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” and concluded by telling each group that my words were stolen by that “skunk Abraham Lincoln.” The shocked gasps that erupted from each group was well worth it.

Where are today's fire-eaters and penmen of Secession, I wonder?

Dust Radio

A Film About Chris Whitley

Bracken Wants You

...To put the Enemies trilogy in front of "libs".  He says that he wants his books to be noticed by the other side, rather than just those of us in the choir.  So, please alert everyone you know:

 

 

Matt's prophetic fiction warned Americans about those dangers that were just ahead, and has proven, unfortunately, to be terrifyingly accurate.  If you asked him, he'd say that it's not rocket-science, that all he's done is applied the exact same historical trends to our current political and cultural climate.  He's an avid student of history, and he just plainly knows what to expect from "D", when A, B, and C all line themselves up.

 

I've read each of these twice, now, and I can't think of any work that I'd more enthusiastically recommend to any person who looks at our world and sees chaos or dysfunction.

 

Or, how about this: Let's say you don't have a Kindle or other E-reader, but you'd like to know why I keep praising Bracken and his work.  For the first five persons commenting below who haven't read EFAD, I'll arrange to deliver you an autographed paperback copy.  100% free to you.

 

That goes for those of you who consider yourselves "lib", or otherwise.  Matter of fact, if you're Charles Krauthammer, Andrew Klavan, or anyone at Faux News who tend to be shocked(!) at the news you're reporting on or analyzing, or you believe there'll be a favorable natural correction looming just down the road, or you believe there's a snowball's chance of our voting our way out of this mess, I will buy you the first book.

 

Starting tomorrow, free on Kindle.  Starting today, free on the Livermush Guy.  Go.

 

Abe's Legacy Wasn't Freedom, But Slavery

And, it was the Southern man's freedom they sought to abolish, not the institution of chattel slavery.  For the South, there was no choice but secession.  They were already being treated as 2nd class citizens and effectively had no voice in the growing central government.

Brock does a great service for North Carolinians interested in the real history of our state and the real history of the War for Southern Independence, by frequently posting excerpts from "The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial".

 

An excerpt from a recent excerpt, highlights the contrast between an honorable President Jefferson Davis, and the scoundrel "Honest" Abe Lincoln...

 

By this cunning device and the unscrupulous employment of deception and falsehood in his interviews with the commissioners, Mr. Seward accomplished the double purpose of successful imposition upon the credulity of the commissioners and evasion of official recognition of the Confederate embassy. 

In the meantime . . . the Lincoln administration was secretly preparing hostile measures, and, as was clearly demonstrated by subsequent revelations, had never seriously entertained any of the propositions submitted by the Confederate Government. Resolved not to evacuate Fort Sumter, the Federal Government, while amusing the Confederate commissioners with cunning dalliance, had for weeks been meditating the feasibility of reinforcing it.

Read more at Free North Carolina.

 

Mr. Anonymous, hope you're still following along.

We Can Has Mellow?

No.  You cannot have mellow.  Because Mike sees it as his job to harsh it.

 

 

And harsh it he does.  A clip:

 

Insofar as he’s the first American president since Wilson who swore an oath to protect and defend a document he despised and had every intention of tearing to pieces from the git-go, Obama is damned near unique. I don’t think even Clinton bore as much hostility to the Constitution as this fraudulent Constitutional “scholar” does–not even close, really. I guess what we have to hope for now is that, in his historical distinction as a truly insidious Oval Office radical, he’s more of an anomaly than a portent. I regret to admit that I’m not Pollyanna enough to place any bets on that one; I’m gonna have to leave that department to Klavan and Krauthammer, and keep my money on rebellion and resistance instead.

 

I don't know how we'll ever convince our friends and neighbors how serious and perilous things really are, if folks like Klavan and Krauthammer, and others who are actually looking at the world through educated scrutinizing eyeballs, fail to acknowledge the sinister for what it is.

 

I'm glad Mike can, and does, though.

Comedy & Tragedy

I'd prefer to focus on the light-hearted and fun.  So, this post started as an effort to entertain.  A little moonbat mockery for your Sunday morning...

 

Epidemic Deaths in U.S. Caused by Abortifacient Deprivation - The People's Blog

 

 

A sample:

They're depressed. Defeated. And dying on account of being deprived. 

Newspapers from the day, back in July through November 2014, report sightings of bereft young women howling in the streets, desperate for some way to ameliorate their Supreme Court-mandated deprivation in that 0.25% of national companies whose provenance is religious Christian, such as that dastardly and uncompromising Hobby Lobby, which began the mysterious pestilence that felled so many millions of entertaining, enterprising, highly educated women of child-bearing and unbearable age.

"Woe is us!" mewled a toned customer coming out of Lululemon with stretchy pale pastel yoga workout clothing. "I am terrified I might suddenly find myself pregnant! Where can I go? My company offered only 16 varieties of birth control, not the four I particularly need for my blood type and afflicted mental status."

Pretty entertaining, if that's what you'd like for a Sunday.  Check it out.

But, my disposition keeps getting a gravitational pull more toward the tragic...From Kenny the Knuckle-Dragger, posted in its entirety, as requested at WRSA:

My Fourth of July Post - by Wirecutter

 

The Fourth has always been a special day for me. Anybody that knows me knows I’m not big on holidays. Christmas and Thanksgiving are a pain as far as preparations go and having to deal with family that doesn’t want anything to do with me the rest of the year, Easter – I’m surprised they still celebrate Easter seeing as it’s offensive to muslims and liberals, Veteran’s and Memorial day always rubbed me wrong because those are days for memories that should be thought of everyday, Labor Day is just an excuse for a barbecue, but the Fourth to me was always special because of the anniversary it represents.

 

Not anymore. The Fourth is nothing but a reminder of what a mess our Nation has become. Our Founding Fathers and the Citizens of that period sacrificed everything to ensure Freedom for their descendants and immigrants coming here to seek a better life for themselves and their families. There were provisions in the Constitution to prevent the new government from becoming what they were trying to get out from under. The Bill of Rights came later naming our basic human rights so that future generations wouldn’t pervert the Yellowed Paper in order to grant them powers that weren’t theirs to begin with.

 

Now I get up in the morning and read what the government wants me to read. If the press isn’t in lockstep with the president then they aren’t allowed in his press corp. If you file for something under the Freedom of Information Act, you see only what the government wants you to see, everything else is blacked out.

 

(Read it all, please.)

Happy Independence Videos

New videos from Bracken and Whittle.  How fireworks-worthy is that?



I'm going to have me a couple of those toys.

I never knew that Washington had lost his eyesight, but if he were alive today, I bet he'd gouge his own eyes out at the sight of what his country (and his pains to make it) had become.

"Hast Thou Seen The White Whale?"

 

 

I had read or heard that William F. Buckley once said after reading Moby-Dick at the age of 50, "To think that I might have died and never read it."  Now, I can't find that quote attributed to him or anyone else.  Odd.  Frustratingly odd.

 

I'm now 51, and have just finished reading Moby-Dick this past weekend.  It took me longer than it should have, due in part, I'm quite sure, to the inherent distractions of being a 51-year-old.  Do I recall correctly that Buckley had read it on a transatlantic sailing voyage?  If not, can we blame age itself, for mixing up literary allusions as a prank?

 

I was captivated and mesmerized in the early, let's say, third of the novel, by the basic richness of every sentence.  But, somewhere in the middle, that same richness got to be a little fattening.  By the final third, I'd grown weary of cross-referencing every allusion (and the novel is chock slam full of those), that I was mainly reading to cross the finish line and be done with it.

 

Now, after having done the finishing, and looking back on it, I can only say that I hope to live long enough to read it again.  Which, of course, implies the leisure to do so.  On a sailing voyage, perchance.

 

From Wikipedia, a phrase on its style that gets straight to the heart of the Moby-Dick reading experience, I think: Most of all, the book is language, or, as Bryant and Springer sum up: "nautical, biblical, Homeric, Shakespearean, Miltonic, cetological, alliterative, fanciful, colloquial, archaic, and unceasingly allusive."[36] The last two words are the most significant, for they describe the most Melvillean of the characteristics of Melville's prose. Yet Bryant and Springer mention another one: "Most amazing are the paragraph-long sentences that defy the gravity of normal syntax, and yet stay grammatical and alive."[36]

 

Allusive...unceasingly so...indeed.  I wonder if anyone has ever quantified the allusions in Moby-Dick.  That would truly be quite a feat.  Perhaps I'll even have the leisure to do that when I read it the second time.

 

Worth noting that I read the entire novel online via Bartleby.com and the experience was surely impacted by the limitations thereupon.  A second reading will hopefully be of a more portable and natural medium.

 

I can say that hunting the Leviathan didn't kill me, or even cost me a leg.  And, I shall hunt him again.  As should you.

Vigilance Committee Responds to Roadside Gang Rape

With deadly consequences for those rapists

That's a fictional headline and subtitle today, but perhaps not for tomorrow or the very near future.

Because, when you legal gang-bangers "catch" the wrong guy with your DUI bat-mobile and exercise your presumption of "implied consent", my imaginary wrong guy's consent is going to get him a few clicks up the road, on the phone to his friends, to his gun-safe and back to settle things up in the most gruesome fashion conceivable.

The "evidence" you collected from his blood or saliva or urine sample will burn along with your very flesh and your bat-mobile, Mr. State Terrorist.  And those of us who've had enough of your thuggery will howl with glee.

Or, maybe he doesn't call his friends.  Maybe he doesn't have any, and maybe only his self-respect and his concept of Liberty remain for him on this earth, with nothing else to lose.  And his armor-piercing rounds will heartily scoff at your qualified immunity!

Concerned American said to disseminate the following far and wide...

If America were, to any extent, a country worthy of the heritage we celebrate on Independence Day, a proposed “No Refusal” traffic enforcement campaign would provoke an armed mass uprising. Our colonial patriot forebears drew blood over impositions much less offensive than this.

 How many times must they be warned?