Category Archives: Culture Wars

Will Europe wake up

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…about arming their police? In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, and after the anti-terrorist raids in Belgium and Germany, some of the nations are reviewing their ‘unarmed’ police policies. The UK has traditionally had unarmed Constables. Prior to WW2, if a Bobby needed a firearm in pursuit of a criminal, it wasn’t uncommon for them to borrow a pistol from a passer-by. Today’s Bobbies are still unarmed…except for those roving police cars with weapons in the trunk.

The French and German police had a reputation for low tolerance of law breakers. One apocryphal story has a French policeman stopping a car for a traffic violation and ministering swift corporal punishment—a punch to the face, on the spot. I don’t know if that’s true but I have heard variations of the story from many people and for a long time.  In the same vein, mouth off to an Italian or German police officer and you’ll meet his friends when they take you in to the station.

The reality of these stories is that the police, in many if not most, of Europe’s countries, are unarmed and when faced with rebellious or armed criminals, choose to look the other way, or flee the spot choosing discretion over valor. At least some governments in Europe are reconsidering those policies.

To counter terror, Europe’s police reconsider their arms

By Lori Hinnant – Associated Press – Monday, January 19, 2015

PARIS (AP) — One was a young policewoman, unarmed on the outskirts of Paris and felled by an assault rifle. Her partner, also without weapons, could do nothing to stop the gunman.

Another was a first responder with a service gun, rushing to the Charlie Hebdo offices where a pair of masked men with high-powered weapons had opened fire on an editorial meeting. Among their primary targets: the armed police bodyguard inside the room.

With the deaths of the three French officers during three days of terror in the Paris region and the suggestion of a plot in Belgium to kill police, European law enforcement agencies are rethinking how — and how many — police should be armed.

Scotland Yard said Sunday it was increasing the deployment of officers allowed to carry firearms in Britain, where many cling to the image of the unarmed “bobby.” In Belgium, where officials say a terror network was plotting to attack police, officers are again permitted to take their service weapons home.

On Monday, French law enforcement officials demanding heavier weapons, protective gear and a bolstered intelligence apparatus met with top officials from the Interior Ministry. An official with the ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing talks, said automatic weapons and heavier bulletproof vests were on the table.

Among the most horrific images from the Paris attacks was the death of police officer Ahmed Merabet, who can be seen on eyewitness video lying wounded on the pavement as a gunman approaches and fires a final bullet into his head. Merabet, who is seen alone on the street, had a service gun and a bullet proof vest, said Michel Thooris, of the France Police labor union.

“But he did not come with the backup he needed, and the psychology to face a paramilitary assault,” Thooris said. “We were not prepared in terms of equipment or mind-set for this kind of operation.”

One of the attackers, Amedy Coulibaly, said in a posthumous video that his plan all along was to attack police.

“We don’t want necessarily the arms that American police have. We need weapons that can respond,” said Philippe Capon of French police union UNSA. (Read more here.)

Many of us on this side of the Atlantic will agree our police are overarmed and too paramilitary, ready to exercise their power at any excuse. The police of Europe and the US appear to be at opposite ends of a wide separation, the Europeans on the unarmed end and the US on the overarmed end. Many would agree that the best approach is somewhere in the middle.

The armament policies are the results of disasters and political policy. The militaristic of American police can be traced to the North Hollywood bank robbery where the two bandits were armed with full-auto AK-47s and body armor. The police were armed with pistols, some of them .38s, that were ineffective against the body armor of the two bank robbers.

In Europe, the culture is still ruled by statists, the government above all. As such, the populace must be unarmed lest they rise up against governmental tyranny. The socialist policies, and the effects of armed state police organizations of WW2, drove Europeans police policies in the opposite direction. Their primary fear, supported by the French Algerian Putsch against De Gaulle, reinforced the fear of armed police.

The US and Europe went down two paths to their current positions. The recent riots in Ferguson and the shootings in Europe are ample proof of the failures of both policies. The lessons of Ferguson is not so much of an overly armed police, but the ineffectual use of those arms. The lessons of Paris is to not send unarmed police into a shooting arena where the criminals are armed to a military level and the police are defenseless.

Perhaps a better solution is the one in Britain. The standard Constable is armed with an asp or baton and a chemical spray. In each locale are roving armed officers, trained in the use of firearms and tactics. In addition, ‘special’ assault teams, similar to American SWAT units, are on call if needed. The Constable’s responsibilities are limited. They are officially known as ‘community police support officers’ and have limited powers of arrest. The armed police have full police powers and respond to armed incidents.The beat cop still exists in the UK and the local communities support them.

A major difference is in traffic control. In the UK, traffic offenses have been decriminalized and are the responsibility of local community organizations. The UK is crowded. Most long-distance travel is still done by railways. The US is much different in that aspect and traffic control policies of the UK would be unsuitable in the US.

As I said above, perhaps the solution is in the middle of the two extremes. Americans have a long history of self-reliance and of a cultural emphasis of self-defense. The Europeans do not. Throughout their history, Europeans have been subjects…property, in essence, of the state whether that state is a monarchy or a pseudo-democracy. However much American liberals covet Europe’s welfare state, the traditional American culture will resist Europe’s assumption of state supremacy.

Europe, like the US, has allowed a potentially fatal infection to slip into their borders. In Europe, and to a lesser extent the US, the infection is Islamists. The larger one in the US is unrestrained illegal aliens. The infection is not necessarily an armed invasion, although the recent events in Europe may show a change of that direction. No, it is the conflict bewteen the imported cultures with the native culture that will destroy the traditions that built the US and Europe.

Consider, most of Europe is Catholic or Protestant, Christians, both. The history of conflict between Christians and. Islamists is centuries long. Just a few centuries ago, Islam was besieging Europe, outside the gates of today’s Vienna, Austria.

The United States grew from immigration—assimilated immigration. Today’s invasion across our borders has no interest in assimilation. They want us to assimilate to their culture, ignoring the fact that the three century old American culture produced the powerhouse that is the current United States.

When cultures clash, violence results. The culture clash is easy to see in Europe, not so in the US. The Ferguson riots is an example of a culture clash. On one hand you have the traditional American culture. On the other, is the liberal culture of parasitism known as the welfare state.

The working people in Ferguson did not riot. It was the unworking class and imported agitators who rioted. The traditional American culture consists of both blacks and whites, Asians and Hispanics, who work, raise families, and thrive. The direct opposite of the rioters. That is the American culture clash and it isn’t over.

Would a change in police policies alleviate future culture clashes? I don’t know. What we do know is that the current policies of a paramilitary police aren’t working. Those policies alienate both side of that culture clash. Paramilitary home invasions in the middle of the night overcome any possible resistance. But when faced with hundreds, thousands of possibly armed opponents, policy is ineffective due to the lack of resolve by political leaders.

That drives the question—would the police have responded differently if the rioters in Ferguson were white protesters against, say, abortion? Would liberal politicians have reined in their paramilitary forces? It’s a good thing that situation has not occurred. The results could have been much different.

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Escape

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It’s snowing at Casa Crucis…light snow mixed with a bit of sleet. It’s the middle of April! Yeah, it won’t stick, but still…

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http://www.americanthinker.com/assets/images/AT-ten-tears-large.jpg

The American Thinker

An article in The American Thinker echoed, to an extent, with an experience of mine. It was some time ago. I was a contractor working for AT&T on a software project. One of the people I had to work with was Mark (I don’t remember his last name now, the events occurred twenty years ago.) Mark was a Unix system administrator and a proud member of the CWA, the Communications Workers of America.

I was a database administrator and had to work closely with Mark to insure database changes were implemented quickly and accurately. In a usual work day, I would spend a couple of hours with Mark—listening to his continuous tirade of AT&T oppression against the union, unfair wages, too much work, long working hours, etc., etc., etc. It grew tiresome. By my second day, I was disgusted with his litany. As a contractor, I wasn’t union. Mark gloated that the union would soon force me to pay union dues.

It didn’t happen. The union went on strike, for other reasons, and all of a sudden, I was assigned to do Mark’s job. I did his and my jobs together. Not only did I keep pace with the project, I eliminated a back-log of tasks Mark had neglected.

Three weeks later, the strike was over. Due to wage hikes, some administrative positions at AT&T were eliminated. Mark was one whose job was eliminated. He had not been aware his position was considered, ‘administrative.’ His tasks were assigned to a contractor. Mark had two weeks to find another job or be laid off.

A by-product of the strike was my project. It was over-budget and behind schedule. It was canceled and I was off to another contract.

Fast forward ten years. I was now employed at Sprint as a middle manager. My group had to work with a team in Texas. My team would develop software, the other team would support the servers for the production system. I scanned the names and saw a familiar name—Mark’s.

AT&T was union. Sprint was not, except for the Local Division, the former United Telephone Company that was the end-user local telecom provider in several states. Mark was employed by Sprint in a non-union position.

Early in the project, we spent a few minutes catching up. Mark had not found another union position within AT&T—the union had all such positions locked by contract. Mark was laid-off a few weeks after my contract with AT&T ended and he found another UNIX administrator job near Dallas, TX, a non-union job. Suddenly, Mark’s outlook changed. He was being paid less than when he was employed by AT&T, but now his take-home pay was more. Texas was also a Right-to-work state.

Mark shifted jobs. Each one paying a bit more until he joined Sprint. His attitude had changed. The CWA still tried to unionize Sprint and each attempt failed. Mark was no longer a union advocate. Instead, he was now strongly against the CWA and unions in general. It was surprising the change in environment, moving from a union to a non-union job and moving to a Right-to-Work state can make in a person.

What has this to do with The American Thinker? This article.

Escape from Liberal Despair?

By Andrew Thomas, April 14, 2014

If you want to understand why there are so many liberals in New York City, listen to the story of a couple I know all too well.  Donna and Frank, earning six-figures in salary, lived in relative squalor in Brooklyn, NY, as I related to AT readers in February.   They resided in a dark, dingy, rat-infested one room apartment.  Their neighborhood consisted of streets of dilapidated industrial buildings and sidewalks littered with trash and makeshift habitats for the homeless.  This was punctuated by the deafening traffic noise and exhaust fumes from the elevated expressway that ran overhead.

Like flies in the proverbial vinegar jar, they believed it was the sweetest place on Earth.  However, there was a subliminal anger dwelling deep within them, a vague feeling that some outside force was waging war on their existence.

Frank joined the local chapter of ISO, the International Socialist Organization.  There, he learned to cultivate his anger and resentment, and focus it on a hatred for capitalism, evil corporations, and greedy CEOs.  Donna was easily drawn into this dark cloud of bitter antipathy for all things capitalist and conservative.

Here I have to confess that Donna and Frank are more than just friends, they are family.  I am stuck with them.

Whenever they would come over for a visit, there was tension in the air.  Although Donna was upbeat and loquacious, any mention of conservative values or beliefs would set her off.  Frank was always in a bad mood.  He would stomp into our house without saying a word, sit in a corner with his arms crossed and wait for someone to light his fuse. 

With teeth clenched, Frank once told me that he had been oppressed all of his life.   I couldn’t help but laugh out loud, since I knew that he had led a relatively blessed upper-middle class existence since childhood.   Note:  He is not a blood relative, so his oppression fantasies are not my fault.

…

In January, Donna received a job offer from a company in Orlando, offering approximately the same six-figure salary as she was making in Brooklyn.  She accepted, and they moved immediately.

All of this is prologue to our latest encounter.  A dramatic change has taken place with Donna and Frank since their move.  They appear to be genuinely happy, and at peace with the world.

My wife and I took a long vacation to Orlando in March.  We spent a lot of time with them, and I was struck by the absence of tension in our relationship. 

Their new apartment is beautiful.  Everything in it is brand new, clean, and brightly lit.  The view from their balcony of the Orlando skyline and Lake Eola is breathtaking.  Their rent is about half of what they paid in Brooklyn. 

We walked to the downtown Church Street area for dinner.  The streets were filled with young, upscale professionals dining at the sidewalk cafés and dancing at the clubs.  The environment was vibrant and life-affirming.  I have never felt so old.

At dinner, Donna talked about her new job.  The work ethic of Millennials is atrocious, said Gen-X’er Donna.  They demand shorter work hours and flexible schedules.  She was appalled by their lack of commitment, and has had to fire several of them.   As a Boomer, I had to chuckle at the irony.

Frank seems totally different, as well.  He hasn’t yet found a job in teaching, but he is definitely upbeat about the future.  He talked about the horrors of the Common Core curriculum, and the difficulties in dealing with the latest generation of students.

With an enthusiastic, positively energized voice, he spoke about the promise of Orlando’s future and the vast opportunities available for entrepreneurs and investors there.   Frank has developed a passion for real estate, and has done some intensive research on potential areas of growth and development in the city.  As we drove through downtown, he pointed out several properties he thought I should purchase for investment.

I was amazed.  The anti-capitalist angst and negative energy I had felt from the two of them has been replaced with an optimism and an inner peace that is a stunning transformation.

I credit the “broken windows” theory.  A deleterious and toxic environment, such as the one Frank and Donna experienced in Brooklyn, is a cancer to the soul.  The result is a darkness that produces envy, frustration, and a hopelessness that is the foundation for a distorted leftist political philosophy.  As a growing, less-regulated and more free-market environment, sunny Orlando has been their repaired window.

Frank reminded me of Mark. Mark may not have been as rabid as Frank in the article above but they did have similarities. When we worked together at AT&T, Mark was at a hair-trigger, ready to take offense and ready to denounce any opinion that didn’t align with his.

Like Frank, when I next met, well, spoke with Mark, he had changed as radically as had Frank. A new environment, a new home in a conservative state, out from under the union thumb, Mark now had a new attitude, a new and much better life than the bitter one I had seen a decade earlier. I never met Mark again after we separated at AT&T but we spoke nearly every day while on that project and became friends.

Environment does impact life. Perhaps not in the way many assume. It is not the old ‘nature vs. nuture‘ argument, but similarities exist. It still takes an open mind to change. Unfortunately, given our government schools and massive welfare, all too many have no desire…nor need, to change while existing off the labor and money of others.

That life of dependency can and will change. At some point, to quote Margaret Thatcher, “You will eventually run out of other people’s money.” What will they do then?

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Cyber Attack!

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And it wasn’t from the NorKs nor the ChiComs. It originated from the territory of one of our NATO allies, the Netherlands.

I operate my own mail and web-servers. My systems are probed daily, usually from WesPac or North Korea. I was hit with a DoS attack Monday of this week. It wasn’t a strong attack. I did notice some slowdown of my servers but the real hit came from my Domain Servers. That was a direct attack. My firewalls resisted and foiled the attack as designed.

But there is another method that is popular by cyber-criminals that I cannot block. I don’t have a domain server. I contract with another company to host my domain names and to point callers to my home servers.

The larger attack occurred two weeks ago. It wasn’t to my systems but it affected the domain servers that I used—me and thousands of others. For a period of time, I couldn’t reach google.com, comcast.net, drudgereport.com and numerous other sites. When I tried to connect to them, my browser timed out. My query to the domain servers for the numerical address of those sites, was not returned.

The cyber-attack method used in the earlier attack was a DDoS attack against the primary site used to find spammers. SpamHaus, one of the sites I, and most email providers use to check for spam, was attacked by a spammer based in the Netherlands. It was a concentrated attack by one site, with hundreds of computers, against another single site—and it affected the entire internet, world-wide.

Web slows under ‘biggest attack ever’

Millions of people around the world have been affected by slow internet speeds after an unprecedented attack.

By Matt Warman and agencies, 1:41PM GMT 27 Mar 2013

A Dutch web-hosting company caused disruption and the global slowdown of the internet, according to a not-for-profit anti-spam organization.

The interruptions came after Spamhaus, a spam-fighting group based in Geneva, temporarily added the Dutch firm, CyberBunker, to a blacklist that is used by e-mail providers to weed out spam.

Cyberbunker is housed in a five-story former NATO bunker and famously offers its services to any website “except child porn and anything related to terrorism”. As such it has often been linked to behaviour that anti-spam blacklist compilers have condemend.

It retaliated with a huge ‘denial of service attack’. These work by trying to make a network unavailable to its intended users,overloading a server with coordinated requests to access it. At one point, 300 billion bits per second were being sent by a network of computers, making this the biggest attack ever.

The attack was particularly potent because it exploited the ‘domain name system’, which acts like the telephone directory of the internet and are used every time a web address is entered into a computer.

Patrick Gilmore, of digital content provider Akamai Networks told the New York Times that Cyberbunker did not believe spamming users was wrong. “These guys are just mad. To be frank, they got caught,” he alleged. “They think they should be allowed to spam.”

Calling the disruptions “one of the largest computer attacks on the Internet,” the New York Times reported today that millions of ordinary web users have experienced delays in services such as Netflix video-streaming service or couldn’t reach a certain website for a short time.

“The size of the attack hurt some very large networks and internet exchange points such as the London Internet Exchange,” John Reid, a spokesman for Spamhaus, said in an e-mailed response to questions by Bloomberg News. “It could be thousands, it could be millions. Due to our global infrastructure, the attackers target places all over the world.”

Spamhaus was targeted with a so-called distributed denial of service attack on the evening of March 15, Reid said.

…

Sven Olaf Kamphuis, an internet activist who told the New York Times he was a spokesman for the attackers, said that Cyberbunker was retaliating against Spamhaus for “abusing their influence” as the gatekeeper of lists of spammers. “Nobody ever deputized Spamhaus to determine what goes and does not go on the Internet,” he claimed. “They worked themselves into that position by pretending to fight spam.”

Such attacks are growing in quantity as well as scale, according to Vitaly Kamluk, chief malware expert of Kaspersky Lab’s global research and analysis team. The two main motives for the disruptions are money through cybercrime and political and social activism, he said.

“This is indeed the largest known DDoS operation,” Kamluk said by e-mail. “Such DDoS attack may affect regular users as well, with network slowdown or total unavailability of certain web resources as typical symptoms.”

Cyberbunker claims that it has resisted a number of ‘attacks’ by Dutch police attempting to make arrests.

Have no doubt, these people, the ones behind the name of Cyberbunker, are criminals and should be behind bars. Cyberbunker has been linked to wiki-Leaks and the Anonymous hacker group. A hundred years ago, they would be bomb-throwing anarchists. Today, they are cyber-anarchists throwing digital bombs.

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Dinosaur Media Watch

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Over the last few years I’ve posted numerous times about the death of media dinosaurs—here, here, and here. The Boston Globe is one such. It was up for sale some years ago and there were no takers. It’s owned by the parent company of the New York Times who is also on shaky ground. The NYT is putting the Boston Globe up for sale, again.

New York Times puts Boston Globe up for sale again

By Jennifer Saba, NEW YORK | Wed Feb 20, 2013 6:06pm EST

(Reuters) – The New York Times Co is putting The Boston Globe on the auction block for a second time as it seeks to focuses solely on growing its flagship newspaper.

The company said in a statement that it had hired Evercore Partners to advise on the sale, which also includes the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

The sale is expected to come at a big loss. Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell Research, estimated that the Globe could fetch about $150 million. The New York Times paid $1.1 billion for the newspaper in 1993.

The New York Times is putting all its effort into being a global information source and “the Globe is a distraction,” Doctor said.

Morningstar analyst Joscelyn MacKay said in recent years revenue at the Boston Globe had declined much more than at the New York Times.

…

The New York Times first put the paper up for sale in 2009 as it struggled with losses. But it halted the sale process and decided to hang onto the paper after winning concessions from Globe’s unions and implementing cost cuts.

Most print media organizations in the US, and in Europe,  have umbilical cord ties to unions. The unions block modernization that would reduce production expense while demanding higher wages and benefits. The unions have been sucking the economic blood from their partners until, one by one, major metro newspapers are dying.

Given the fact that newspapers have devolved into liberal propaganda tools, their passing is a good thing. The internet—and bloggers, are replacing them. And that, too, is a good thing.

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Illinois tyrants are trying to kill free speech in the state. Illinois state Senator Ira Silverstein wants to prohibit the use of “anonymous” comments on websites. Now on one hand, I can sympathize. Ninety percent or more anonymous postings are spam of one form or another. Another six or seven percent are vitriol by opponents of the post or of the author and use “anonymous” to hide their identities. I’ve had a few of those on my website as well. The remaining percentages are those who don’t have an internet identity they wish to publicize.

It is the last two catagories above that involve free speech.  As much as I hate the rants spewed by liberals directed to my site by the Democrat Underground or the Daily Koz, they do have a right to say their message—just as I, as a website owner, have to right to remove their posts when they exceed the bounds of propriety.

Silverstein wants the state to enforce those prohibitions. Why? The site owner may approve of the statements and if/when those same statements offend Silverstein or his liberal buds, he has no recourse to force the removal of those statements.

His bill would grant him that authority regardless whether the website owners agree or disagree with Silverstein’s demands. It’s nothing more than another liberal attempt to stifle free speech.

Illinois state senator pushes anti-anonymity bill

3:42 AM 02/21/2013

A recently introduced bill in the Illinois state Senate would require anonymous website comment posters to reveal their identities if they want to keep their comments online.

The bill, called the Internet Posting Removal Act, is sponsored by Illinois state Sen. Ira Silverstein. It states that a “web site administrator upon request shall remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous poster unless the anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate.”

The bill, which does not ask for or clarify requirements from entities requesting the comment removal, would take effect 90 days after becoming law.

Pseudonymous and anonymous comments have long been a critical part of U.S. public discourse, though, and the bill may be on shaky legal ground.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) noted on its website that the “right to anonymous speech is also protected well beyond the printed page.”

“Thus in 2002 the Supreme Court struck down a law requiring proselytizers to register their true names with the mayor’s office before going door-to-door,” wrote EFF, noting that the Supreme Court protects Internet commentary as it does pamphleteering.

The bill is part of a larger trend of lawmakers seeking to censor anonymous online speech.

Of course we must realize this is Illinois.  New York tried to pass a similar bill last year by establishment ‘Pubs. They failed.

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This last item needs no added comments. It speaks for itself. New Yorkers, the British are coming. Where is your militia?

Report: Prosecutors to pursue felony charges against ex-soldier for possessing high-capacity magazine

New York prosecutors will pursue felony criminal charges against retired special forces soldier Nathan Haddad, who was arrested in LeRay, New York in January for allegedly possessing five 30-round AR-15 magazines, according to conservative law blog Legal Insurrection.

Prosecutors had reportedly offered Haddad a plea bargain that would spare him jail time if he admitted to five misdemeanors, according to Legal Insurrection. But Haddad’s attorney told the blog that Haddad, who currently works at the Department of Defense, will not accept the deal.

It is unclear how Haddad was arrested or discovered with the magazines.

Haddad was deployed four times during his ten-year Army career, and was once injured during special forces training in South Korea. He was discharged in October 2010.

A website established to pay Haddad’s legal expenses has collected more than $35,000.

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Attack of the Leftists

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220px-NormanSchwarzkopf

General Norman Schwartzkopf

So many things have appeared today. Hobby Lobby told Obama to pound sand on their contraception mandate. General Norman Schwarzkopf died (how did he get to be 78!?). Hypocrite Diane Feinstein, who possessed a concealed carry permit…lapsed she now says, wants to ban semi-automatic weapons and place the existing ones under the 1934 NFA act and require them and their owners to be registered—plus pay a federal tax. Finally, a story appears on the CNBC website that suggests that millionaires on death’s door be given a push to spare their heirs the higher inheritance tax that arrives next week with the new year.

Gah!

The leftists plan at nibbling away our rights under the Constitution is working. With Justice Roberts betrayal last summer on Obamacare, we no longer have a conservative majority on the Court. If this latest gun-grabbing scheme fails in the House, Obama will use his regulatory “powers” to enforce some provisions of Feinstein’s plan.

Of course, the leftists know that gun control isn’t about curbing crime. Chicago has had the nation’s strongest gun control laws for decades. As this story shows, gun control doesn’t stop children from being killed.

446 school age children shot in Chicago so far this year with strongest gun laws in country – media silent

The cesspool known as Chicago probably has the toughest gun laws in the country, yet despite all the shootings, murders, and bloodshed, you never hear a peep about this from the corrupt state run media. In Chicago, there have been 446 school age children shot in leftist utopia run by Rahm Emanuel and that produced Obama, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, etc. 62 school aged children have actually been killed by crazed nuts in Chicago so far this year with almost two weeks to go. So why isn’t this news worthy? Is it because it would embarrass those anti second amendment nuts who brag about Chicago’s tough gun laws? Is it because most of the kids who were shot and killed were minorities? Or is it because the corrupt media doesn’t want to show Chicago in a bad light? Amazingly, no Obama crocodile tears either.

For those of you too dense to get the point of this post, it’s to make the point about gun laws. No matter how tough the gun laws are, the crazed, nut jobs will find a way to get them and if they so chose, use them. No draconian law can stop this, no matter how well intentioned the law is, or if it’s just about leftists grabbing power from citizens and taking away their constitutional rights.

If any of Feinstein’s proposal is passed, or if Obama ignores Congress again and issues another edict, I expect many across the country will follow Hobby Lobby’s lead and just ignore the law.  I wonder how many FFLs will have unexpected fires in their 4473 archives?

We know Obama, now that he’s won his second term, has no restraints. He’s told us so. More and more, I wonder if the country can survive these next few years without another civil war.

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A whiff of secession

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The subject of secession has been popular since the election. I think there is a secession petition filed on the White House website from every state. Several states, like Texas, have reached that magic 25,000 signatures.

Does that mean Texas will secede? No. The petitions are meaningless gestures. There are others, however, who are serious about secession. Catalonia, for example…a segment of Spain.

Separatists winning in Catalonia, Spain: early results

BARCELONA, Spain | Sun Nov 25, 2012 6:43pm EST

(Reuters) – Four separatist parties in Spain’s Catalonia looked set to win a majority in regional elections on Sunday, partial results showed, but the main one was on course to lose some seats, possibly undermining its bid to call an independence referendum.

With half of votes counted, the ruling Convergence and Union alliance, or CiU, was winning 48 seats in the 135-seat local parliament, well down from its current 62 seats.

The separatist Republican Left, or ERC, was winning 20 seats, with two other smaller separatist parties taking a total of 16 seats, giving the four parties 60 percent between them.

Regional President Artur Mas, of CiU, had campaigned on a pledge to hold a referendum on independence, in response to a resurgent separatist movement among Catalans who are frustrated with Spain in a deep economic crisis.

Opinion polls had forecast that CiU would retain 62 or more seats in the local Parliament and that all four separatist parties would have more than two-thirds of the seats. Neither of those projections was met as the results began to come in.

Without the psychological backing of a two-thirds majority, analysts have said, it may be hard for Mas to defy the constitution and the central government in Madrid and try to hold a referendum.

Our experiment with secession failed 150 years ago. Other attempts around the world such as the Ukraine and Belarus has succeeded, albeit not without some blood being shed.

The talk in the US about secession has been just that—talk. The state of the nation, the economy, federal interference, the overall feeling of governmental tyranny, hasn’t yet reached the level where secession is being seriously discussed.

Yet.

There are some opinions that it could be done…by Texas, for instance. Texas has always had an independent streak. It, and California, were Republics before merging with the United States. The Republic of California was a joke. A side show, really, by a few Americans at the beginning of the War with Mexico in 1846. The Republic of Texas, however, existed for a number of years before succumbing to debt and internal divisions.

There are some today who think Texas could bring it off this time.

Secession, y’all: Why Texas can pull it off

Bob Smiley, Author, “Don’t Mess with Travis”

When Thomas Dunne published Don’t Mess with Travis in May — my comedic political novel about a freewheeling Texas governor who becomes fed up with a Constitution-stomping president and decides to secede — I knew I had landed on something relevant. I didn’t know it was this relevant.

As of writing, the Texas petition to peacefully “withdraw” from the United States via the White House’s open petition webpage is up to 62,481 signatures, on its way to tripling the required names needed to trigger a response from the Obama administration. No doubt Texas’s desire to break free is a source of amusement inside a White House that has mastered the art of belittling the opinions of its challengers, but there is one not-so-small problem here: Texas could pull it off.

Here’s why:

–Resources. Texas currently sits on one-quarter of the nation’s oil reserves and one-third of the nation’s natural gas reserves. Even more, fully 95% of the country receives its oil and gas courtesy of pipelines that originate within Texas. This is what one might call leverage.

–The Texas Economy. This is well documented but worth repeating. In the last decade, even with the Great Recession, Texas has expanded by one million jobs. One million. That’s more than every other state … combined. Because of its friendly business climate, Texas is home to more Fortune 500 companies than anywhere else. If Texas were its own country, it would have the thirteenth-highest GDP in the world, just behind Canada and Russia. Or think about it this way: For every dollar Texas taxpayers send to Washington, they currently get only about 80 cents back. Theoretically, they could transfer those funds to the state’s coffers and still give every Texan a 20 percent tax cut.

–Utilities. Texas is the only state with its own power grid. Developed over the course of the last 100 years, the Texas grid covers the majority of the state and is fully state controlled. Translation: Texans could rest assured that the federal government doesn’t have the power — literally — to turn off their lights.

–Defense. While no match for Uncle Sam’s firepower, Texas does have a significant defense presence, namely in the Texas State Guard (which answers only to the governor), the Texas National Guard, the Air Guard and the legendary Texas Rangers. Texas is also home to two of the nation’s largest military bases — Fort Hood and Fort Bliss — and being able to control those two installations is nothing to sniff at. But let’s not forget the firepower of the citizenry itself. There’s a reason burglars don’t waste their time in Texas.

–History. Texas has done this before. Twice, actually. First in 1836, when it seceded from Mexico and became an independent country. Second in 1861, when it joined the Confederacy. And while the South did lose the Civil War, it didn’t lose it in Texas. In fact, by the end of 1864, the North didn’t have one square foot of Texas soil under its control despite many attempts. Even a full month after Robert E. Lee surrendered at the Appomattox Court House Texas was still fighting. Texans love their state and they love a fight. That is a lethal combination.

Yes, Texas could make a go of it as an independent nation…if the U.S. would let it go peacefully. But let’s be realistic. That won’t happen. Obama and the libs need Texas. They need the taxes from Texas and they cannot allow the precedent of secession to be successful. Alone, Texas cannot withstand the power of the federal government.

Yes, there has been a number of pieces of fiction where secession succeeded. A more likely outcome would be something like that in Tom Kratman’s A State of Disobedience. The scenario at the beginning of Kratman’s book is eerily like that we find ourselves today.

If secession is to succeed, it must be by a coalition of states. Single states would not have sufficient power and defensive forces to win against the FedGov.

Like I said above, we’re not at that state yet and I pray we never find ourselves with that choice as our only option. The United States will not dissolve peacefully.

Why, then, are we discussing it? Because the credible threat of secession may force changes within the FedGov to resolve some of the differences between us, who revere the constitution and personal liberty and the statists who lust for power of government over people. Secession, then, is a tool—a last resort tool to be used to coerce the government to mend its ways and to restore some of our freedom.

It is a dangerous tactic. If secession is threatened, our options limited to two choices if we don’t get the concessions we demand: knuckle under to the FedGov or secede. Know then that with secession comes civil war because the FedGov needs us more than we need them.

When you hear talk of secession or participate in it, be aware of what you truly mean. There are consequences of such actions.

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Take that!

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If there are two politicians that I have less use for than John McCain and Ron Paul, I can’t think of them at the moment.  Well, OK, Lindsey Graham is close. John McCain and Ron Paul finally said something that I can “like.”

John McCain was speaking to some reporters about the Benghazi investigation when a reporter attempted to divert the conversation to Patreaus’ resignation. McCain, as he has before on occasion, let his temper flare.

John McCain To Reporter: ‘That’s One Of The Dumbest Questions I’ve Ever Heard’ (VIDEO)

Posted: 11/14/2012 1:21 pm EST Updated: 11/15/2012 1:55 am EST

Wednesday seems to be a testy day for press conferences.

John McCain smacked down a reporter following his remarks on the Benghazi investigation.

In response to a question about whether classified documents found leaked in the Gen. Petraeus scandal posed a greater national security threat than the Benghazi attack, McCain quickly responded, “Well I say with great respect, that’s one of the dumbest questions I’ve ever heard.”

He continued, “There’s 4 dead Americans. There’s 4 dead Americans. Not a socialite.” The reporter attempted to interrupt but McCain quickly stopped him. “I’m answering your question. Ok, do you want me to answer your question or do you want to interrupt? Which do you want?”

After a short pause he continued, “There’s 4 dead Americans. The lives of other Americans were put in jeopardy. This is a matter of 4 dead Americans. I think that the other issue raised is very serious and I think it deserves a thorough and complete investigation. But it does not rise to the level of an attack on an American consulate that took four American lives.”

 The reporter failed in his attempt to divert attention to Obama’s failures and mismanagement of the Benghazi attack. McCain rightly slapped him down.

The second occurance was during Ron Paul’s farewell speech to the US House…a speech long overdue. Be that as it may, Ron Paul finally said something that agrees with my views—the coming extinction of the MSM.

Ron Paul: Internet is the alternative to ‘government media complex’ that controls the news

November 14, 2012 | 3:33 pm

During part one of his farewell speech to Congress, Rep. Ron Paul insisted that the internet remain free, as it is an important alternative to the “government media complex.”

“The internet will provide the alternative to the government media complex that controls the news and most political propaganda,” Paul stated. “This is why it’s essential that the Internet remains free of government regulation.”

The media is not our friend. At best it is a some-what useful tool to be understood and used when appropriate. Unfortunately, the MSM does have a captured audience who are oblivious of alternate news and information outlets. If we are to be able to present our views and arguments over the MSM propaganda outlet, we must find a means to infiltrate into those areas of the internet where that “captured” MSM audience can be found…Facebook, YouTube, twitter and other social sites. The trick is to find a method when you cannot force your audience to join you or read your posts. We need a means to attract that audience to us.

Frankly, I don’t know how to do that. But if we are to reclaim our government, end the runaway spending and taxation, we’ll have to find a means to attract more of the nation’s population to us and to join us. Waiting for the collapse of the economy and government is NOT a viable plan.

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