Category: Uncategorized

by Smitty

One of the challenges in Afghanistan is that there just isn’t a competent workforce to do, for example, wire a building. You’ve just had a building built. Your likelihood in the winter of turning on the heat and not having your new building, itself, become the heat source is just not where most insurance companies would like it to be. Not wanting to get too pejorative here.
Now, after the smoke has all been let out of your building, and you build another, and the same people come back and offer to wire it again, where is your trust? Is your trust down in the abused spouse range? Are you the sort of punishment glutton that figures you’re just funding OJT for these genuinely nice, but incompetent folks?
Senatorial hopeful George Allencopies a National Review article about the GOP and the balanced budget amendment:

A Balanced Budget Amendment must be included in any agreement to raise the debt ceiling. Helping our economy grow and create jobs needs to start with binding steps to exercise fiscal restraint. The reckless and wasteful spending in Washington is out-of-control, and it’s time that lawmakers take a stand and force our country to get its fiscal house in order.

What sort of stand should these politicians make, George? Lemonade? Could they run such a stand? Could they prove their capacity to do so, before we extend more trust?
I’m working hard to be constructive here. What will be new about this balanced budget amendment that will give our government a lasting shot of common sense? Will there be an emergency spending loophole? Will we see budgeting, itself, become a purely emergency evolution?
In short, again-prospective-Senator Allen, if we’re going to waste time amending the Constitution to say we should balance the budget, we should also amend it to force Congressmen to sign papers with their real names. They would still behave as cartoon characters, one suspects.
No, one suspects this shall amount to nothing more than political theater. Here are some suggestions for what to do to regain some credibility:

• Axe some executive departments. Snuff some Congressional committees.
• Implement a one page tax code. (A call to axe the IRS outright might be seen as extreme.)
• Reduce non-military federal jobs by a percentage equal to jobs lost since BHO was sworn in.

Show some leadership, George. Tell us how you’ll liberate Americans from the thrall of Atrocious Congresses Past. We’ll love you for it.

He wanted to make a statement:

A New York man died Sunday while participating in a ride with 550 other motorcyclists to protest the state’s mandatory helmet law.
Police said Philip A. Contos, 55, hit his brakes and his motorcycle fishtailed. Contos was sent over the handlebars of his 1983 Harley Davidson and hit his head on the pavement.
He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

That’s a pretty profound statement.

by Smitty

If we believe the Progressive swindle that the General Welfare + Interstate Commerce + Necessary and Proper = the Constitution, then we can boil down the next Constitutional Convention to a single Tweet.

I’m so glad that these Progressives are the smart ones, and I am the knuckle-dragger forced to rely on them to understand matters. The obfuscated Smitty approach to puzzling out why the Founders bothered with enumerating the powers of Congress, when GWICNP (pronounced ‘gwick-nip’) was all that needed to be said, clearly indicate why people like me should be whisked off to places like this.

by Smitty

The shiny new blog Political Clown Parade is a welcome addition to the dextrosphere. Check this excellent bit of Thaddeus McCotter juxtaposed with The Gipper:

Blogging is a rush, but you can’t have peaks without valleys. We are all members of the chorus of self-government. We succeed or fail insofar as we show up to work as Presidents of our own lives. The pressure to ‘compete’ is a bit of a distractor; you remain a welcome member of the chorus. More is better. We don’t all get the solo moment, but the whole of the chorus is far more important than whichever soloist is varying the theme of liberty at any given time.
It is a historical accident that the buck must stop somewhere. That is, admitting we require a President to accept the blame, or credit, for events is a sad existential epedience. The stuck-ee for being President after the election settles is less important than whether or not the person stands for Liberty.
But don’t spend all day reading me; get your doggone blog on, you Curmudgeon!
Warm regards,
Smitty

P.S.: pay no attention to the Prince of the Malodorous. He daft.

Update: Nice Deb has video of Thaddeus McCotter announcing. Go, Thad!

by Smitty

Yet another scurrilous cheap shot from the Trog bog over my enthusiasm for a Thaddeus McCotter candidacy. For such abuse to be unexpected, there would have to have been some element of surprise. The Troglopundit never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to comport himself in a civilized fashion.
How could the state which produced a Paul Ryan have also emitted such a sad bloviator as Trog?

by Smitty (via Drudge)

Among the greater Progressive farces is the notion that raaaaacism is acceptable when carried out by the goverment.

A federal appeals court has struck down Michigan’s ban on the consideration of race and gender when enrolling students at public colleges and universities.

In a 2-1 decision Friday, the court said Michigan’s Proposal 2 is unconstitutional because it burdens minorities. It was approved by voters in 2006.

So, it’s a two-fer: the federal appeals court both upholds raaaaacism, and denies self-government to residents of Michigan. Brilliant!
 Is it time to develop some legal theory that says the Equal Protection clause means what a reasonable person may think: Affirmative Action is a pile of hooey?
Betcha a slurpee that the two empathy-mongers worried about the burden to minorites were Democrat appointees.

The people mostly threatened by meritocracy are:

• The raaaaace baiters
• Beaurocrats whose livelihood is spent doling out the patronage.
• Scumbag politicians elected by patronage networks.

Haven’t the citizens of Michigan been sufficiently wrecked by Progressivism? The UAW? The abject idiocy of this kind of legal drivel?

One hopes that this policy of failure can continue to fail upward until the SCOTUS crushes it like the cockroach that it is.

And now, some beauty sleep.

by Smitty

Hot damn!, via Hot Air. I’m totally a fan of this guy: a wonkish chap who serves up a pure stream of liberty-oriented thinking with dry, understated humor. Probably there would be some of the usual politician ego (UPE) in him somewhere, but one suspects you’d have to look harder than in most people to discover UPE in him.
I admit that I have not read his book, Seize Freedom for two reasons:

1. Not available on Kindle yet.
2. Too busy Enduring Freedom to seize it, IYKWIMAATYD.

Mad pr0pz to teh Thad!

by Smitty

The Pledge of Allegiance is a simple, yet ironic litmus test in contemporary America. Protein Wisdom notes that the Pledge, designed to bring Americans together, is divisive.

And who is rejecting this pledge? Is it those who want to preserve liberty?

Why, no. No, it’s not. The people rejecting the Pledge are those who would take liberty, binding Americans together with laws, to quote Zappa

. . .carefully described in tiny paragraphs, so as not to conflict with the Constitution . . . which, itself, is being modified, in order to accomodate The Future!

When a Progressive gripes about the pledge, it’s just another superficial attempt by liars to distract from their subterfuge. I think they seriously believe people are stupid, sheepish, and incapable of seeing through the distraction offered.

It would probably be funny, if not so corrosive and threatening to the moral fiber of the country.