I was Spartacus; I am Joe the Plumber

Joe the Plumber asked The One, The Messiah, Lord Barack Obama the Most Merciful, about his tax plans and how it would affect someone who was looking to buy a small plumbing business from its current owner. Now the modern Spartacus has been subjected to the Media’s and the Democrat Party’s, but I repeat myself, politics of personal destruction. They have started a hostile investigation of Joe. They are at war with Joe, just like they were at war with Bork, Thomas, Alito, Lieberman, and Sarah Palin before him. They chased down his voter registration, his apprenticeship papers, his back taxes, his plumber license, etc etc etc. Toledo is cracking down on him in the intent to prevent him from practicing his craft.

The left intends to threaten and frighten anyone who would speak against them into silence. They are truly the inheritors of the tactics of oppression used by the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis and Bolsheviks.

Everyone who speaks truth to Obama’s power is in danger of being attacked by Democrats and the Media. The perversely-named Fairness Doctrine is only one example of the Left’s deep hatred of free speech except for  speech they agree with. They intend to crush everybody’s rights to speak freely, not just the rights of radio employees and college students.

I am Joe the Plumber!

Try saying it yourself. Throw in some Howard Beall.

I am Joe the Plumber! I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!

I mean it. Try it. Oh to be Joe the Plumber, steadfast foeman of the neocommies.

Watch Joe’s offense against The One

Infanticide: The Video

Jill Stanek tells the story of her experiences as a nurse in an Illinois hospital with a baby who was delivered alive at 21-22 weeks and left without any treatment to die. The baby had Down’s syndrome and had other problems, and the doctor delivered the baby instead of aborting it. This was legal in Illinois at the time, and two Born Alive Infant Protection Acts were introduced into the Illinois legislature. As far as I know, it is still legal in Illinois. Obama voted against the first act three times. The second one, which was identical in wording to the federal act, died in Obama’s committee when he refused to send it to the legislature for a vote. How apropos, to kill a bill with willful neglect in the same way that delivered, living babies were left to die in Illinois hospitals.

Watch it. I dare you. I double-dare you.

Update: See this video with Obama’s argument in the Illinois Senate.

Appreciating Solzhenitsyn: The 1978 Harvard Graduation Speech

Solzhenitsyn turned his formidable skills as a prophet of doom first upon the Soviet Gulag terror system, and then when invited to Harvard to address the graduating class of 1978, on the American society of “despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness,” “TV stupor,” and “intolerable music.” In a post-9/11 world his criticisms of the loss of courage of Western elites, of the incorrigible mendacity and self-loathing of the Western press, and of the Soviet-style legalistic crusade against religion appear newly relevant. But his assignment of blame to the free market and humanism itself for these failings strikes a wrong note for (at least) two reasons.

First, the claim that the humanistic Renaissance inevitably led to classical liberalism, which inevitably led to Jacobin-style radicalism, which led to Prussian-style socialism, and finally, inevitably to communism, is a Marxist analysis of history. Those who reject Marxism do not have to accept such an analysis. They certainly need not accept the claim that a society cannot stop at classical liberalism or turn back from socialism to a less-intrusive, classically liberal government of, by, and for the people.

Second, Solzhenitsyn’s claims that corporations are at fault for Western failings such as excessive legalism, the welfare state, and the war against the soul are obvious nonsense. How exactly can corporations be responsible for legalism, the welfare state, or the government and legal repression of public religion? All three are expressions of state power. The common law is not determined by corporations but by the judiciary’s interpretation of traditional rights, while legislative law is determined by the sovereign government. The welfare state speaks for itself. And the legal repression of public religion is not the sort of thing any company seeking to please the mass of its customers would endeavor upon.

So while I cannot agree with Solzhenitsyn blaming humanism for modern, shallow materialism, or his prescription of a traditional, religiously anointed monarchy for what ails Russia and the West alike, I agree with his observations about the increasingly dangerous moral weakness of the West. And I suspect others will too.

Without any further ado let’s get into the speech.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn at Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercises
Thursday, June 8, 1978

I am sincerely happy to be here with you on this occasion and to become personally acquainted with this old and most prestigious University. My congratulations and very best wishes to all of today’s graduates.

Harvard’s motto is “Veritas.” Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter.

Redford: “you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye”

RUADHÁN Mac CORMAIC writes in the Irish Times:

IF BARACK Obama doesn’t win November’s presidential election in the United States, “you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye”, the actor and director Robert Redford told an audience in Dublin last night.

Yet another reason to vote for McCain, and to keep an eye out for Democrat vote fraud.

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Technorati Tags: Democrats, Vote Fraud, Culture War, Obama, Elections

Today’s Vocab Lesson

Israpundit teaches a good vocabulary lesson concerning Israel that I’ve paraphrased. Read his for more.

The West Bank should more properly be called Judea and Samaria, as those are the traditional names of the areas. The West Bank was a name that was imposed by the King of Jordan after his 1948 seizure of the areas.

The concept that Judea, which even has the word Jew for its
first syllable, doesn’t have anything to do with Jews is laughable. And
Samaria, is that named for Philistines or Samarites?

Palestine is a Roman variant for the Philistines, who were an ancient people who were hostile to the Jews who lived in Judea and Samaria in Biblical times. Palestine was the name the Romans imposed when they scattered the Jews out of Judea, leaving only the early Christians. Note there were no Muslims in Israel at this time.

Palestinians was first used in modern times to label the Jewish volunteers in WWI. Yaser Arafat seized it for his collection of eternal refugees in the 1960s and used it to describe an invented continuity between the ancient Canaanites and the modern Arabs who had moved into the area as the Jews bought up and improved the desolate areas of Judea and Samaria at the end of the 19th century.

The so-called Occupied Territory of Judea and Samaria was inhabited by Jews until 1948, when the King of Jordan drove all the Jews out. When Israel took it back at the end of the 1967 war it was actually Liberated.

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LiveLeak, Fitna, and the Base

This is an open letter to LiveLeak.

In these days of the globalized Jihad everyone must choose their allies, their customers, their base with care. Choices not made still have consequences.

A few days ago, Fitna hit the Internet. LiveLeak, which hosted it, became the target of threats and rage. About 12 hours after posting the movie, LiveLeak took it down.

This is quite ironic because LiveLeak, hosted in both the UK and USA, has long been one of the most reliable places to find jihad terrorist propaganda videos. For the past couple of years, YouTube and LiveLeak have hosted hundreds, thousands of terrorist propaganda videos featuring such horrors as Juba’s sniper attacks on American and British soldiers, IED and VBIED explosions, torture murders of captives, etc. YouTube initially resisted requests to take the videos down, but eventually began to comply. On the other hand, when requested by American and British citizens to remove the terrorist propaganda movies, LiveLeak always used free speech as a defense for letting the movies stay.

For several years, against the opprobrium of patriots from the English speaking countries, LiveLeak stood firm in its stand for the free speech rights of those who were profoundly opposed to free speech for those who were not as them. Its reputation grew among the terrorists and the terrorists’ fans, both from idolaters of Jihad and those with a nihilist, post-modern, Gramscian hatred of ordinary British and American culture. LiveLeak developed these haters of Britain, America, Christianity, Jews, and capitalism into its base.

So when Geert Wilders came along with his well-publicized project to face Islam with the idolatry of Jihad within it, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for LiveLeak to poke a stick in the eye of a new target. LiveLeak exists to stir things up like this. But this time it backfired. LiveLeak was threatened, not with scorn and indignation, but with bloodcurdling threats of violence against employer, employees, and their families. The threats were believable because the evidence that violent Muslims would carry them out was in color on LiveLeak’s very own site. Worse yet, the base of haters that LiveLeak had built up with great care was the heart of the revolt against it. Now LiveLeak felt the hatred and threat of violence that it had gleefully helped its own base aim at others for years.

It spooked LiveLeak. The company threw in its cards. It banished Fitna with the cynical excuse that the price of free speech was too great.

Now it was apparent to everyone what LiveLeak was. Its ethical stance was revealed as a rotting corpse. LiveLeak turned out to be a feckless organization that cheered on murderers against its employees, their neighbors, and the countries in which they lived. Were any LiveLeak employees killed in the 7/7 bombings? Were the brothers of any LiveLeak employees killed in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan? Perhaps not, but they very well could have been. But when LiveLeak itself faced a few threats it quickly gave up and censored one, carefully chosen video that it hosted.

A few days later, LiveLeak restored Fitna. But it does not help LiveLeak, which now stands exposed as a cowardly, rabble-rousing, self-loathing organization without even the courage of its convictions. LiveLeak’s way forward will either be to self-destruct, or to take sides. Will it recruit its base from the peoples of the countries that nurtured it, that provided the environment in which the technology that allows it to exist was developed, countries that send brave young, all-too-young, men to dangerous places to protect LiveLeak from morally retrograde murderers and slave-takers, or will it recruit its base among those who would overthrow free speech, democracy, women’s and gay rights, scientific discovery, secular law, who would reinstate slavery and impose the burka, honor killings, second class citizenship, and clitorodectomies on women? That is the choice before it. The result of no choice will be a slow death of nihilism and irrelevance.

LiveLeak, it is time to choose. This is the moment that will make or break you. Take your stand or slowly wither away.

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Technorati Tags: Jihad, Moral Clarity, Sharia, Culture War

Minneapolis-St. Paul Radicals plan to have tasers just in time for Republican National Convention

In its own words:

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL – The RNC Welcoming Committee (RNC-WC), an anarchist and anti-authoritarian organizing body based in the Twin Cities, announced today that it has ordered tasers for each of its members and friends. The announcement comes on the heels of last month’s St. Paul City Council approval of a St. Paul Police Department (SPPD) request for 234 tasers. Due to a unique corporate-anarchist confidentiality agreement, the exact number of tasers or documentable evidence of this new order will not be disclosed.

Both the SPPD and RNC-WC taser orders are scheduled to arrive before the September 1 so-called Republican National Convention (RNC) in St. Paul.

Of course they claim the timing is coincidental. Wink wink. Right… To add to the winking, jocular tone of the press announcement, the RNC-WC adds:

Once the RNC-WC order is finalized, the St. Paul Police Department will no longer have a monopoly on the weapons that have been implicated in hundreds of deaths nationwide, including the killing of a Fridley man by Minnesota State Troopers in January.

The Welcoming Committee has no plans to purchase machine guns, rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, concussion grenades, batons, water cannons or helicopters, all of which will be at the disposal of local police and federal agents in September.

Aren’t violent anarchists tres amusing?

h/t: Pat Dollard

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Technorati Tags: Leftism, Neocommunism, Culture War, Anarchy, Politics

26% of teen girls have a sexually transmitted disease: digging into the numbers

Lindsey Tanner of the AP reports

• The study size is 838 teenage American girls, an analysis of girls aged 14-19 from a 2003-4 government health survey
• Projected population of teenage girls in the USA is 12.3 million, with 3.2 million infected
• Teens in the study were tested for human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, trichomoniasis, and genital herpes. These are the 4 most common sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
• They were not tested for more dangerous STDs: gonorrhea (the clap), syphilis (pox), hepatitis B, or HIV/AIDS. They didn’t test for pubic lice (crabs) or mononucleosis either.
• 26% of girls in the study have a STD
• 18% have HPV
• 4% have chlamydia
• 2.5% have trichomoniasis
• 2% have genital herpes
• About half the girls in the study acknowledged having sex
• Some girls define sex as coitus only, not oral-genital activity, much like Bill Clinton
• Among girls who admit having sex, 40% have a STD
• Nearly 50% of black girls had at least one STD
• About 20% of white and girls of Mexican descent had at least one STD

The startling statistic for black girls (50% infected) shows a population in peril. Something is very, very wrong in their world. I suspect it is the destruction of the black family and the popularity of gang-bangers, drugs and thugs in youth culture. Gramsci and the sixties hippies have a lot to answer for.

The incompleteness of the report also raises questions. What is the prevalence of gonorrhea, syphilis, and HIV/AIDS? These are dangerous diseases, far more dangerous than trichomoniasis or genital herpes, and they were not addressed at all.

• According to Wikipedia, between 3 and 18% of sexually active girls have gonorrhea, and 0-3% have syphilis. If we use a 50% rate of sexual activity for teenage girls, as they have self-reported in the CDC study, this works out to an additional 1.5%-9% with gonorrhea, and 0-1.5% with syphilis, for a total infection rate of 27%-36%.
• According to AVERT, 3% (1,434) of HIV infections in the USA were among teens up to age 19. This works out to an infection rate under 0.02%, or 1/50th of 1%.

Thus we discover that the actual, overall infection rate could very well pass 1 in 3 teenage girls. More and better research needs to be done to determine the actual infection rates.

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Technorati Tags: Family, Demographics, Culture War, STD

A strong and disturbing link between severe child abuse and non-traditional family environments

Back in November 2007, Ed Katz responded to an AP report that concludes that “there is a strong and disturbing link between severe child abuse and non-traditional family environments.”

• Children living in homes with unrelated adults (these children are “50 times more likely to die inflicted injuries as children living with biological parents”); and
• Single parent homes or children living with stepfamiles (these children “have a higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents”).

Lastly, the studies found that “girls whose parents divorce are at a significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father.”

The studies seem to show that even children in adoptive environments seem to be ok with two parents. The report goes on to tell in painful detail however the brief life stories of little toddlers who were beaten, drowned, thrown across rooms, and buried under cement – all victims of what Plato called “democracy’s insatiable desire for what it defines as the good”: freedom. In this case, it is our freedom to choose “alternative” family environments and be “affirmed” every step of the way.

Yet more evidence that a functioning marriage is the best environment in which to raise children, which is the obvious purpose of marriage, which is the obvious reason why marriage should take the traditional form, maximized for reproducing the species.

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Technorati Tags: Culture War, Marriage

The 2nd Amendment is an Individual Right, no doubt about it

The question under consideration is what does it mean? Is the right under question an individual right that cannot be generally voided by the government or is it a corporate right only for members of a militia such as the National Guard?

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. [link]

First we notice there are more commas than Strunk & White would recommend. Obviously, the commas were inserted by someone with a different set of rules for commas, perhaps the writer believed in inserting commas whenever the reader might take a breath. Given that the commas are in weird places, we will have to discount comma placement somewhat when we analyze the text. I make this argument up-front, even though it will not have anything to do with the way I parse the language, because there are those who make a big deal of the commas in the argument. Consider this a prophylactic measure against obsessive comma-parsing.

Then we notice from the other 9 amendments in the Bill of Rights that they are all amendments that apply to individual rights, not corporate rights.

Then we ask ourselves, why was the amendment written? Let us assume for a moment that the amendment was meant to apply to corporate rights. It only applies to militias: Armed militias. Given that armed militias are bands of armed men established by the government, would there be any doubt that a militia would be allowed by the government to bear arms? Why would the Constitution need to be amended in order to allow members of an armed militia established by the government to bear arms? The government under question would guarantee this right as a matter of course. Even the tyrannies in China and Myanmar allow their militias to be armed. Wouldn’t this be a nonsensical amendment, written by idiots, passed by fools, only challenged by the likes of Humpty Dumpty intent on redefining the meaning of an armed militia, or armed, or militia?

Or perhaps the amendment was written by a poor speller with a petty focus, and the amendment guarantees the right of people to bare their arms in short sleeves? I apologize for the joke, but it’s almost impossible to stay earnest when surrounded by so much silliness.

We could presume that the founders of the USA were not fools and idiots and petty-minded jokers, and that they wrote this Amendment because it protected a controversial right (to be armed) that was granted to all free men (and women) which future governments might wish to void through legal action? In fact, that is what the government of Washington DC has done with its gun ban. Mr. Heller, who filed the lawsuit challenging the ban, is allowed to carry his gun when he is at work to protect the local nobility in Congress. But he is not allowed to carry it when he is at home with his own non-privileged family. The Washington DC ban is a profoundly anti-democratic law that discriminates against people who don’t have all the juice of a standing Senator or Representative.

That’s why there can be no doubt whatsoever among the serious minded that the 2nd Amendment is an individual right.

The WSJ lists some things the Supreme Court said in DC v. Heller.

Chief Justice John Roberts asked why the Framers included the word “people” if the Amendment only applied to militias. Justice Antonin Scalia discussed the importance the Framers attached to providing citizens the means to protect against tyrannical government. Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the Court’s swing vote, informed all in attendance that “In my view, there’s a general right to bear arms quite without reference to the militia either way.”

Counterarguments are welcome. Please, give it your best shot!

Heh heh.

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Technorati Tags: United States, Bill of Rights, Second Amendment, Gun Rights