Negative Railroad A Collection of Breaks in the Line

Minnesota lefties are quick to profess shame and outrage that Michele Bachmann represents their State in Congress. She’s our little Palin.

Both local and national lefty radio had their dander up when Bachmann gave a TEA Party response to the State of the Union. It didn’t strike me until I read this, but much of lefty radio is just pretend-smart gossip:

Howard Kurtz makes fun of MSNBC complaining about CNN airing Michele Bachmann's response to the State of the Union and then spending several days talking more about Bachmann than about Paul Ryan's official GOP response. Ridiculing Bachmann is much easier and more entertaining to the people at MSNBC than actually tackling the issues raised in Ryan's speech.

Rachel Maddow or Nancy Nelson talking about Bachmann isn’t much different in depth or import than TMZ talking about Lindsay Lohan.

Ann Althouse (lifted directly from Borepatch):

Remember when lefties were all about free speech? When did that change? Why did that change? Perhaps the answer is: Free speech was only ever a means to an end. When they got their free speech, made their arguments, and failed to win over the American people, and when in fact the speech from their opponents seemed too successful, they switched to the repression of speech, because the end was never freedom.

The privacy you're concerned about is largely an illusion.

Quoted from: Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle Corporation.

===

And a two-line corollary from Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems:

You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.

The fascist model embraces state control of industry while maintaining private ownership of industry. Favorite corporations are allowed favored treatment under the rules. Granting special status—and the profits that follow—is the major means by which government gets corporate management to go along.

It works like this:

MaxedOutMama has read the judge’s decision that ruled UnicornCare unConstitutional. Her analysis is focused on the legal aspects instead of the political or economic. On the legal points, MOM doesn’t see either side with an an advantage. It depends on how the Supremes might decide to reconcile conflicting precedent.

Contradictory to what I heard on righty radio, the ruling doesn’t require the current Administration to immediately halt implementation of the legislation. There was no injuction issued. The ruling may, however doom the legislation for both legal an economic reasons if it is left to stand. But I have no difficulty envisioning Barry charging ahead, letting the consequences sort themselves out after his Reign Presidency is over.

MOM does touch on politics within the legal system:

In her recent post about UnicornCare, MaxedOutMama notes the law puts lawyers and judges out of their element. They’ll have to make economic decisions:

The new health care law ignores all these [fiscal impossibilities], and just mandates that Medicare payments not be increased past a GDP limit. The only way to actually achieve that goal would be to kill expensive older patients, as far as I can see. The problem is that modern medicine works pretty well, but not treating older patients can often be far more expensive than treating them. Also, hospitals are mandated to treat them. And what about nursing home care? If you let an older person degenerate to the point to which the person can no longer live independently, they'll end up in a nursing home on Medicaid, which is going to cost us all a lot and which is not limited under the law.

Yesterday a local radio host played a sound bite of Commissioner Mike Opat saying that the Constitution is not relevant in Hennepin County. The context was whether the county was prepared for a scenario where ObamaUnicornCare was declared unconstitutional. He didn’t quite blithely dismiss the highest law of the land. He just seemed focused on making government do the work he thinks government should do.

The bite, in two versions, surely sounded hostile to the concept of government by the people. Opat sees things that need doing, and by god he’s going to bend or ignore the law for the good of the people.

Vox Day offers a different pathway toward a brief period of violent upheaval in the United States:

The American middle class is on the verge of collapse, at which point it will almost certainly revolt in some manner. It will likely be less spectacular than the burning buildings in Cairo, but there is no way that the confluence of collapsing bubbles in real estate and education are not going to have a significant effect on middle class behavior once it becomes sufficiently obvious to everyone how they have been played for suckers and financially raped by the banks with the full connivance of the state and federal governments. The middle class revolt is going to start with a refusal to continue paying its debts for mortgages, credit cards, and college degrees.

Sarah Palin’s Facebook column in response to this week’s State of the Union speech is excellent. Not merely because she argues from a perspective I embrace, but also because it is simply good writing. To whatever level the words are hers and not her copywriters’, and to whatever level she can use the same kind of language without a script, she is a great communicator.

Twenty percent of the public would never agree. In advertising, one of the commandments is to speak to your audience. That implies that your message doesn’t have to be tailored to people not in your audience. Political talking heads like to chatter about how rhetoric might influence the middle people. But their analysis usually takes the form of pointing out how the message will be regarded by staunch opponents. That’s irrelevant.

Mr Obama Soetoro seems trapped in an abusive relationship:

But why? An Israeli blogger asks—and answers—the question:

The current President has claimed a college education should be available to every American kid. And he says he has signed into law changes that help college become more affordable.

But really, he’s just bought support from Big Ed by making sure tuition stays high while making student debt nearly permanent.

H/T: Vox Popoli

I’ve argued around the intertracks and in the meat world that the United States is already in a state of civil war. There’s been no organized violence. Or at least none perpetrated by anyone outside current governments. But physical combat is only one aspect of war.

I see several factions with irreconcilible differences. They’re currently waging rhetorical and legal battle to bring the force of the state to bear on their enemies. I say the so-called uncivil dialog we’re being lectured about is not a precursor to war, but evidence that war is at hand. Because we’re hiring lawyers instead of Hessians to fight on our behalf certainly makes day-to-day living easier, but there’s a bullet waiting behind every legal brief.

The factions are not perfectly aligned into two camps. But as the differences become more obvious, polarity will increase. My forecast sees manifest violence precipitated not by the anti-government factions. Instead, I see all the dependents of the government getting unruly when the state can no longer afford the handouts and the structure of protective favoritism collapses.

Via Borepatch:

We've all seen what happens when you combine crazy gun laws with possibly politically motivated government.  A bunch of folks took this kind of personally. People have been asking what they can do.

TJIC himself has been pretty gracious about the whole thing, saying that he's in good shape (so far) and recommending that people toss another sawbuck in the plate on Sunday if they want to help the world out.  Fine advice for all of us.

I noticed a day or few ago that TJIC.com was down. I thought it was either a hosting problem or something related to a site upgrade.

It was not:

Police Captain Robert Bongiorno said Monday that police suspended Corcoran’s firearms license on the grounds of “suitability” pending the results of an investigation into whether a comment Corcoran allegedly made online was intended as a threat in reference to the Jan. 8 shooting in Arizona that left six people dead and 13 wounded.

After U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head in the rampage, Arlington Police Captain Robert Bongiorno said police received information that Corcoran posted a comment online saying “one down 534 to go” in reference to Giffords and the other 534 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

Gabrielle Giffords is not the only person in service to the United States who has been shot in the head. Does she merit daily—almost hourly—updates on her condition?

She is alive and progressing because her surgeon got many opportunities to practice on soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. The public is seldom told of the medical miracles performed on, and the courage exhibited by those troops. Big Media gave us only a daily body count.

It irks me.

Globalistical warmening has left too much snow in Georgia. So much that the kids haven’t been able to get to school. They’ve lost nine class days in some districts.

School officials suggested turning MLK Day into a school day, to make up for lost learning time. The race pimps were having none of that:

The superintendents from the districts said they had little choice to start making up for nine days missed because of the foul winter weather this school year. But civil rights leaders said the decision was an insult to King and shows disrespect for the holiday in his name.

"It's an opportunity for people, black and white, to reflect on what King's dream meant for blacks and whites," said Georgia State Conference NAACP President Edward DuBose. "And it's humiliating to hear that school districts want to take a snow day rather than to honor Dr. King's legacy."

Fuck off.

Fuck that
I’ll say what I want to say
the First Amendment made it that way

…
Sure
It would be nice to eliminate violence
but you can’t
so you must get it straight
and I hate
when people try to block it out
ignore a situation
you know what I’m talkin’ ’bout

Ironically, the video is set to a censored PG-13 version of the song. The real version does not hold back.

Are you familiar with a Congresscritter’s proposal to ban guns within 1000 feet of electeds and other pseudo-nobility?

If you are, then you must read Denninger’s frothy fisking of the idea:

Hmmmm..... let's think about the other manifestations of idiocy that would come from this:

• A Judge goes into a liquor store to buy a bottle of booze on the way home.  The liquor store owner, in many jurisdictions, can legally have a weapon behind the counter.  Liquor stores are often robbed, you see.  The liquor store owner just violated federal law.

• A Congressman owns guns.  He likes to hunt.  He goes hunting with some friends.  Get out the felony indictments folks, all of his hunting buddies just violated federal law.

• A Congressman believes in the Second Amendment. He goes to a gun range. The gun range owner, who has dozens of weapons behind the counter, just violated federal law and so did all the other patrons at the range.
  …
• A Congressman walks into a WalMart.  There are three dozen people in the store legally carrying openly or concealed.  All of them just violated federal law.
  …
• A Judge drives down his street in Suburbia USA on the way to the courthouse.  Every citizen who lawfully owns firearms and has a house less than 1000' from the street just violated federal law - each time he passes their home.

The Daisy spot from Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 Presidential campaign is legendary:

As soon as the ad aired, Johnson's campaign was widely criticized for using the prospect of nuclear war, as well as the implication that Goldwater would start one, to frighten voters.