The Line Between Civilization and Mayhem

The line between civilization and mayhem is being tested every day lately:

But this double assassination is also a moment of clarity about how thin the line in any society is between order and anarchy. America is full of Brinsleys who no longer abide the norms of civilized behavior, if they even know what those norms are. They need but the slightest excuse to take justice into their own hands and go on a rampage.

Especially in urban America, the police walk that line between civilization and mayhem every day. Yet since the Garner and Brown episodes, the progressive leaders in New York and Washington have talked and behaved as if the police are society’s main problem.

They have honored with joint public appearances and private meetings such racial agitators as Al Sharpton who want to stop the “broken windows” policing that has done so much to reduce crime in poor minority neighborhoods. Mr. Holder has sent federal agents to second-guess grand juries and “reform” local police as if he assumes these police chiefs and prosecutors are biased. The New York City Council staged a “die-in” as fallen victims of police.

And progressives have failed to denounce protestors who have disrupted civic life, rampaged through stores, and even assaulted police who tried to arrest law-breakers. All of this has contributed to a public climate of suspicion and hate against police in which a man like Ismaaiyl Brinsley can in his deranged mind think it is justified to stalk and execute two cops on the beat.

New York’s police certainly believe this, as they turned their backs on Mr. de Blasio in an astonishing show of contempt when the mayor visited the hospital where the slain officers were taken. This is what happens when a mayor who is responsible for public order treats Al Sharpton with more respect than he does his own police force. The progressive campaign against police must stop before it has even uglier consequences.

A war between the police and urban blacks is not something that anybody could really want. A return to the chaos of urban America 1965-1979 is really not such a good idea.

So it might be wise for Holder, Obama, de Blasio, and Sharpton to shut up on all of this stuff and quit inciting people -- ostensibly in support of disaffected urban black youths -- to loot, destroy, and murder. But we all know they won't, even though that is a path guaranteed to lead to more disaffected urban black youths dying at the hands of other disaffected urban black youths, as we already see today.

Compare and contrast, PBS and Ferguson edition

Recently PBS put together a chart to be helpful to those too busy -- or too dim-witted -- to actually read and process the Ferguson grand jury testimony.

It helpfully explained that Michael Brown was, of course, murdered in cold blood while surrendering. Of course. Look at the chart - it's right there in the column entitled "Did MB put his hands up when fired upon?". Facts, bro.

Just glance quickly at a table of unknown veracity, and you are an instant expert on a case that took months and involved 60 witnesses!

Oddly enough, other summaries of the testimony that I read indicated that a certain segment of the witness testimony -- those who testified that "MB" was surrendering -- were deemed untrustworthy, since the forensic and autopsy evidence fully contradicted their version of events. The witnesses that corroborated Officer Wilson's story, however, told versions that matched the forensic and autopsy evidence.

Which seems pretty important, eh?

Later I encountered another chart that seems to pretty much pull the plug on the PBS chart:

Now I have not read the testimony yet either, so caveat emptor on this. Those who want to really know what they're talking about are pretty much required to read a lot about it. Relying on tables compiled by the media, or by others you might not necessarily be able to trust, is a bad idea.

Detail does complicate our lives, but it also informs us. It keeps us from turning into drooling morons who know nothing of any value except what others tell us to think. If you're too busy to read the testimony, but you have time to spend texting and trolling Facebook, you might want to quit pretending that your opinions on this matter are worth a bucket of warm spit.

Anyway, compare and contrast the tables yourself, but remember that people who filter out and condense details into neatly-compartmentalized story lines are making a lot of decisions on what is important to the story on your behalf. They might not be all that careful, or objective, and to the extent they remove or obscure key details, you, the consumer of that information, pay the price.

The media has spent decades trying to dumb down America - don't help them.

via Second City Cop

Mark Levin says to states: "take your power back" from "runaway" Obama

Examiner.com:

The building national movement for a constitutional convention of states to block President Obama’s executive orders got a huge boost Thursday when leading advocate Mark Levin urged state lawmakers to throttle all of Washington, including Republicans.

“Take your power back,” he demanded of the hundreds of lawmakers attending the American Legislative Exchange Council convention on Capitol Hill. “You are the last line of defense of liberty.”
Levin got star billing because a focus of the winter meeting of the limited government group is pushing for a convention of states, a project of the Citizens for Self-Governance, who sponsored the top talk show host who recently wrote a book laying out constitutional amendments the nation should consider. The process is offered in Article V of the Constitution.

He described a nation that is morphing into a “post-constitutional” crisis where state legislatures are “irrelevant,” and the president and Congress do whatever they want, and nobody in Washington provides checks and balances.

“We have a president of the United States who says, ‘Hey, Congress won’t act. I will.’ Excuse me? Well what’s that? Sounds like a runaway convention to me,” he said.

Ditto for Republicans. “Throw out the establishment Republicans and others who are stopping you from doing what you need to do,” Levin urged.

This does seem like a natural next step for those who value and defend liberty. Washington sure as hell doesn't. Exactly the opposite, in fact.

via Instapundit

Dick Durbin compares voter ID laws to poll taxes

In related news, Dick Durbin is a craven, opportunistic, lying scumbag

Politicians say an awful lot of stupid things, but my very own Senator Durbin is easily one of the worst. A few years ago he compared our interrogation techniques at Camp Gitmo to the tactics of Stalin, the Nazis, and Pol Pot.

Now comes the clueless dipshit once again, to make this ridiculous comparison: the sensible and integrity-protecting requirement that voters must show ID, to the quite despicable use of poll taxes by Jim Crow-era racists which were invented solely to disenfranchise blacks for a hundred years.

Because those are like totally the same thing.

The details:

Senators ask GAO to probe voter ID laws as poll tax

Four senators have asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate state laws that leave voters “unreasonably hindered or burdened” while trying to prevent voter fraud.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sens. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) asked GAO Comptroller Gene Dodaro in a letter today to conduct the study on an “alarming number” of voter laws — 19 — that have sprung up in 14 states.

The senators cite an unspecified study that found “the enactment of strict voter identification laws directly impacts the 21 million citizens who do not have access to a government-issued ID, the majority of whom are young voters, African Americans, Hispanics, those earning $35,000 per year or less, and the elderly.”

"Unspecified study". And with good reason, I'm quite sure.

Do we really need to go into why requiring ID to vote is not a "poll tax", and why comparing it to one is insulting to each and every Jim Crow era victim of racism?

And are we really sure that "citizens" is the right word there? Or am I supposed to believe that the 10-20 million illegals now living here somehow--it's a miracle!--have proper legal identification, and that this whole discussion is not actually about them? 'Cuz I'm having a hard time with that one.

And 21 million people, WOW, that is a lot of no-ride-having folks! What is the problem here, for these people, exactly? Can somebody help them out, maybe a friend or relative? Is asking them to have legal ID really that big a burden? Maybe government should fetch their pipe and slippers, too?

Also, should we expect voting to be completely effort- and hassle-free for the voter? But wouldn't that, I don't know ... encourage fraud?

Regarding the use of the loaded phrase "poll tax", Durbin, Nelson, Sanders, and Leahy ought to be ashamed of themselves. Poll taxes were imposed by racist Southern Democrats in positions of power, like police and election judges and the like, to prevent blacks from voting. These were the very same people who, in many cases, donned white robes and murdered blacks for fun on Saturday nights. So that, friends, is a hell of a long way from expecting somebody to spend a couple of hours, on a Saturday, once every few years, acquiring a basic form of ID that the law requires them to have anyway, especially if they expect to cast votes in our elections. If it costs a few bucks, well, life is like that sometimes. If you can't afford to pay for basic identification, I think you probably have bigger problems than voting. And people in Iraq risked their lives to vote in their first elections in the post-Saddam Hussein era.

More of this insanity from Durbin, et al:

The letter adds that state measures requiring proof of citizenship place “extreme burdens on third-party registration efforts.”

“We know that many hard-working Americans cannot afford the costs associated with complying with these laws, from the hundreds of dollars in documentation fees required in one state to register, to the time an individual living in a rural state needs to take off from work to travel to the nearest DMV which is hours away and is no longer open late or on weekends,” the senators write. “It is clear that these state requirements can and do become de facto poll taxes for many low-income individuals.”

The senators call “voter impersonation fraud — the purported justification for these unnecessarily burdensome requirements — reportedly minimal.”

In order for Congress to “take the action necessary” against voter-ID laws, they need “an accurate picture” from the GAO, the letter states, including what percentage of eligible voters have necessary documents, broken down by race, gender and socioeconomic status, and which states have curtailed early voting to comply with new laws.

If we absolutely must run some damn taxpayer-funded program to allow legal residents of the United States to get proper ID -- that they are legally required to carry anyway -- then reduce these so-called "exorbitant" fees, and encourage friends and family to help, and just get the damn thing done. For crying out loud, it's a friggin' ID card, it's not like we're asking them to crawl forty miles over broken glass.

But we all know this is really just a dog and pony show, and these are mere excuses cooked up by the unbelievably craven and cynical Dick Durbin, who wants the illegal alien vote, and the vote of people too addled or confused to manage to acquire an ID, and they want to make fraud as simple as possible, so they use stupid arguments like this to pretend it's about all those "21 million citizens" -- again, wrong word -- "who do not have access" -- again, wrong word -- "to a government-issued ID".

via The PJ Tatler » Senators Ask GAO to Probe Voter ID Laws as ‘Poll Tax’.

All We Are Saying ... Is It's Over and We Won

... (crickets chirping) ...

Zombietime says the war in Iraq is over, and we won. This is a very dangerous thing to say in today's America. It goes against all the existing narratives that our helpful media dishes out daily, ie., that the war was lost a long time ago, and only a moron or a President who doesn't listen to his advisers -- but I repeat myself -- would continue the charade.

Turns out, the war was not lost a long time ago (though it was trending that way). But winning wars requires a Commander-in-Chief with both fortitude and judgment to, ahem, listen to the advice of an adviser, Gen. David Petraeus, who is an expert on counter-insurgency, and who convinced President Bush in December 2006 that changing our strategy was worth a shot, even though it would require another 20-30,000 troops to make it work. So President Bush, to his great credit, and despite just having been rebuked by the November 2006 elections, and despite constant calls for swift withdrawal by poll-watching Congressmen, decided to up the ante, and send more troops, and make Gen. Petraeus the commander of the Multi National Force Iraq to implement his strategy.

This was a very daring move. And it worked. And here we have an object lesson in why the military is under the command of the President, and not Congress.

I know all this because I read military and pro-defense blogs. And it would be awfully nice if more people knew why we won the war. They'll study the Petraeus doctrine in military schools for decades, because it was a revolutionary solution to an age-old problem, but the American people are too ill-informed and self-absorbed to notice; yet they know how much money Sarah Palin's wardrobe cost.

Can you say "culture in decline"?

So Zombietime is declaring November 22, 2008, Victory in Iraq Day. I'll gladly participate, keeping in mind those who have died to make this happen, and the leadership of President Bush in committing to winning the damn war.

But lots of people don't like President Bush, so by their tortured logic, that means we didn't really win, after all. Or if we did, it isn't very important. After all, he talks funny.

So never-you-mind that today, Iraq is mostly peaceful, due to both the change in strategy and the people of Iraq finally turning against Al-Qaeda in Iraq about two years ago, after realizing that terrorists care about nothing except killing innocent people by the truckload in order to gain power. And give the people of Iraq credit -- lots of credit -- because they risked their lives (including the lives of innocent women and children) in order to actively start fighting against terrorist scumbags who blow up little kids running for candy and strap bombs to kids with Down syndrome and then detonate them via remote control.

Just don't expect much comment on this historic victory over the terrorists and the unmitigated evil they represent. Nah, we live in a post-modern bubble here, where such things can be ignored, because they don't fit the narrative. It's cool. You just make up the facts you wish to be true, and ignore the true ones, and voila! A new reality is born.

So no front page headlines in 72 point type announcing victory, no victory parades, and no admission from the 20-30% of the country that suffers from Bush Derangement Syndrome, that they were wrong. That would require intellectual honesty, and in a post-modern world, well ... who has time for that silliness?

And they fought so hard, for the other side, these rabid Bush-haters in the media and Congress and various leakers at State and CIA. During wartime, too! How exhausting for the poor dears. Of course, normally, this is borderline treason, but somehow we've gotten to a place where it's "the highest form of patriotism". Um, sure. OK.

Despite their efforts, we won anyway. And we'll remember who puts petty political squabbles over the nation's interests. And we'll teach our children all about the shameful conduct of the various factions that worked against our ultimate victory, and the way they advanced the cause of terrorists the world over for political gain at home. And how they then tried to spin it later, and then learned to avoid the topic when it wasn't a political winner for them.

Once we started winning, lots of people stopped pretending to care about the war. When we were losing, it was vitally important to them. Does that sound like patriotism to you? Me neither.

And we all know people who belong to this club. I'm not sure what to say to them, except that arguing about being lied into war is silly, because every war starts due to lies of some sort or another. Even a benevolent government has no real duty to tell the full truth to its people, in matters of war. Calling a press conference to announce that the real reason behind the Iraq war -- to increase pressure on neighboring countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and their terror-supporting ways -- is just giving away strategic information for free. And this was, in fact, the long-term goal, and so far, at least in part, it's working. If you didn't like that plan, what was your plan? Continue to pursue terrorists as individual criminals, in the courts, instead of the organized para-military force that they are? That doesn't work, for all kinds of reasons, and it led to 9/11.

And the best thing to do -- when you yourself are safely at home while others are fighting in a war you don't support because you don't understand it, or because you don't like the President -- is to keep quiet and support it anyway, at least outwardly. Do everything you can to keep national morale up, so we can win quickly, both to honor the memories of those injured and killed in that war, and to send messages to our enemies that yes, there is a serious price to pay for messing with us. War is like a classroom, and everybody in the world is learning from it; you want those lessons to be to your advantage in the future. Which also means, conversely, that giving up and running away when the going gets tough emboldens those who in the future, might not otherwise attack. This is basic Geo-Politics 101.

One more thing: undermining the Commander in Chief during a war works to accomplish the goals of the enemy during wartime, by actively killing morale and sapping the national will. Whether intended or not, that's what happens. So knock it off; we're lucky enough to live free due to the sacrifices of others, and so we owe them at least that little bit of gratitude, that little bit of humility, to do what we can to help them, so we can pay them back by quickly bring them home, victorious.

So, to all those elected officials, bureaucrats, and other lemmings who took principled stands that undermined our cause, congratulations. This means you, Dick Durbin.

And, to all the private citizens who took a principled stand, and refused to let a lack of good information stop them from trying to re-live 1969 all over again, congratulations. Someday you'll figure out that anti-war protests are nearly always full of crap.

To some of us, it looked an awful lot like putting partisan politics before the national interest.

But hey, if you say it was a principled stand, I believe you. And since taking a principled stand is about principles, not image and politics, I anxiously await all those drinks and meals you're going to enthusiastically buy when you run into somebody in uniform.

Or, you could admit it was all about trying to gain political advantage. Totally up to you.

Like a Canary in the Global Warming Coalmine

When somebody posts a global warming climate change thread to fark.com, and I can read the first 40 or 50 comments without wanting to put a bullet in my brain, this tells me something.

And what it tells me is this: that global warming, as a Pressing Issue That Will Kill Us All, Unless Brave Government Bureaucrats Save Us by Slowing Down Our Economy -- or, PITWKUAUBGBSUSDOE, for short -- is just about done with its 15 minutes of fame.

Do they ask for Nobel Peace Prizes back, ever? 'Cuz it just might be time for that.

Polling tells us that most people don't buy man-made Global Warming theories, and now we have evidence from places like fark.com -- hardly a bastion of conservative science-haters -- that folks are starting to see it all as a big joke.

Preserving the environment is, of course, an important goal. And we here in the West are doing a pretty decent job of it, in fact. Some places in the world, not so much. Something about needing to develop an economy first, to feed their people. What-ever.

But then, of course, we still have some True Believers, like those who insist that "Only We Can Change The Climate", as shown by the yard sign I saw the other day.

"ONLY"? There are no other factors driving climate change?

What about the Sun? The oceans that cover 75% of the Earth's surface? The atomosphere? The rain forests? The winds and ocean currents?

What about the fact that we still don't understand enough about weather, much less climate, to build accurate weather models, or climate models?

What about all the climate variations in the past, before the Industrial Revolution? The world has only been partially-industrialized for about 150 years now. The climate has been around a lot longer than that, and yes, even warmer than it is today. If man-made CO2 is so important, how did that happen?

What about the latest evidence that we are entering a new minimum in sunspot activity, the level of which we haven't seen in like 300 years? There is pretty strong correlation between these periods and cold weather, such as lower crop yields, brutal winters, etc. In other words, it's as close as you can get to proving something without being able to recreate an experiment over and over.

I'm not sure how we got sold on this, but the idea that our cars and lawnmowers have a bigger impact on heating up our planet than the Sun is a little goofy. Think about it. When you are outside on a hot summer day, and you are in the sunlight, you get hot. When you move into the shade, you get noticeably, distinctly cooler. In fact, that's exactly why we like the shade.

The Sun puts so much energy on this planet, even at a distance of 93,000,000 miles away, that the temperature difference between sunlight and shadow is at least 3-4 degrees, and often more. All. Over. The. Earth.

Add all that energy up, for me. I'll wait ... (cue jeopardy theme, dah dah dah dah, dah dah dah, dah dah dah dah DAH dah-dah-dah-dah-dah ...)

Ok, whatever, forget it, it's A LOT of energy. Furthermore, we like it, because it helps our crops and trees grow.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that every other established climate factor is bigger than human input. In other words, no matter what we do, we couldn't impact it to any measurable degree. OK, maybe if we detonated every nuke on the planet at the same time, some bad stuff could happen. But you get the idea: the amount of energy that is created by the interaction of all the factors above -- mostly driven by the Sun -- is a staggering sum, not fully appreciated by most people. It's like, a gazillion joule-newtons, or something. Srsly.

To think that we humans could compete with that, as a factor in changing climate, strikes me as, well, vain. We aren't really all that.

But just for discussion purposes, let's grant the point that man is causing CO2 to go up. So even with our supposed catastrophic impact on the climate, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has only risen from .00035 to .00038, or from .035% to .038%. So we need to freak out about that, because that change in .003% of the atmosphere is going to cause great ruin and devastation, but the other 99.997% of the atmosphere is nothing to worry about? Really?

Hey, I'm on board with taking care of the environment, and I do think we waste too many natural resources. But I need better evidence than that.

You'd think our fearless leaders in government and NGOs would be a little more skeptical as well. And you'd be wrong!

Those of us who live in the real world don't compete for federal and international grants. We don't put lipstick on our research pig, in a desperate attempt to convince small-brained bureaucrats -- who provide no useful service to taxpayers, but do hand out government largesse, i.e., our tax money we've so generously provided to them at the point of a gun -- that a CRISIS is upon us.

These good "scientists" and "researchers" and government/NGO lackeys all know that no matter what the cause of a given climate problem -- the Sun, perhaps, or La Nina, or other atmospheric shenanigans we still don't understand, and couldn't change even if we did -- the correct fix for that problem is always more money. Money fixes everything, even if the lack of money was not the cause of the problem in the first place. Money is magical.

Got that? So when the planet warms up, temporarily, well, this is just further proof or two things: (1) man is at fault, obviously, don't be an idiot, and (2) money is the obvious way to fix it. You big dope, you.

That is some pretty vain thinking, right there. But scientists who push this hype on us, and the government types that push this hype on us, they at least have an excuse for buying into it: $$$.

Us? Not so much.

And never mind that historically, it has been much, much warmer than it is today -- why do you think they call it Greenland? -- which would point to natural causes, and which would imply that could happen again. Never mind that generally, warmer is better for the planet and the people on it, especially for growing crops, which sustain us in the form of food. No, we need to ignore all that established fact, and focus instead on wild, unproven schemes that will definitely restrict our economic growth.

So you'd better rush out, and buy your carbon credits now, before the government forces you to, at a higher price. Even though they are an obvious scam, designed to line the pockets of charlatans and snake-oil salesman like our friend Albert Gore Jr.

Listen, I've gotta run, but really, this has been cool. Thanks for all the info, and, no kidding, if I was in the market for a crisis, I'd be so all over this one. But I'm actually trying to cut down on my enviro-crises, because I've learned over the years that they're always wrong, and often in exactly the wrong direction.

So I'm just really trying to cut down on my crises. Maybe next time though!