Politics

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.

 I like to go on about the silliness of party politics, where people vote for the flag or the jersey without ever examining the particular issues in paticular context. It’s pleasant to have such tribalism in sports. But government is real violence on a societal scale, not just stylized violence limited to the voluntary participant-athletes.

John Pepple at I Want a New Left shares my view:

It’s been a busy day on the intertracks. The TJIC spur saw a wave of new visitors not in tune with the anarcho-capitalist ranting usually found there.

Regular TJIC rider “eddie” collected all the appeals to authority against the operation there:

“Shouldn’t the FBI or Secret Service look into this?”
“i have blocked and reported @tjic: to twitter”
“Well I just gave the FBI his twitter ID and a link to his website”
“I just reported you to the Washington field office of the FBI. You are worth checking out”
“I will make sure the FBI has your number. You belong behind bars”
“Feel free to FW this to a Homeland Security or FBI. Vilest #rwnj blog found (yet)”
“I’ve been grabbing screen-snaps of your site all ding dong damn day.”
“This dude needs reporting early and often for hate speech”
…

As a nice contrast to the factional finger-pointing today’s assassinations murders killings have inspired, Shannon Love predicts the shooter’s psychological profile:

The shooter’s outward and inward life has been dominated by the disconnect between his perception of his own worth in the world and his real accomplishments.

He believes himself more intelligent, more knowledgeable and more skilled than he actually is. He is incapable of accepting responsibility for the consequences of his own foolish actions. This exaggerated sense of his own worth leads him expect far greater rewards in all areas of life than he actually receives. He does not get the jobs, pay, authority, awards, social circle, romantic interest and overall social status he believes that he justly deserves.

I understand a couple of personages of minor political importance were shot at today. I’m sad for the others who were hit.

It’s been a great day for the internet. I’ve been scolded on Facebook and judged by total strangers in TJICistan. This because I have a mostly dispassionate reaction to what Big Media and those who toe line are calling a great tragedy.

I had to take time off from the intertracks to enjoy two fantastic NFL games. So, at the moment, I don’t know if the shooter was particularly politically motivated. When I parked my computer, I saw him having much in common with the TEA people.

I stumbled across Herman Cain a bit over a year ago while watching some righty convention on C-SPAN. The man knows how to deliver a speech. If only I could remember which one I saw first…

Cruising the intertracks today, I discovered that the Hermanator says he’s 70% likely to run for President in 2012.

From what I’ve seen so far, he is a smack in the mouth to many of the stereotypes lefties have against righties.

I would love to see both Sarahcuda and the Hermanator on the offensive against Barry Soetoro. I hope the country lasts that long.

Progressive radio was giddy yesterday over the current President’s signing the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. From what I heard, the old Obama was back! I guess Barry’s power zone is the rhetoric of delivering “justice” to some class of victims.

I was disappointed—but not surprised—that all the chatter in Big Media and most of my blogosphere regarding DADT paid little attention to the military consequences. It was primarily a political and symbolic issue. Given my position that there simply aren’t as many gays out there as we’re led to believe, and far fewer in the military, I didn’t think this was such a big deal either way.

Only a handful of people receive a genuine benefit. And an even tinier handful present trivial risk to U.S. military capacity. If they present any threat at all.

Thanks to the information pirates at WikiLeaks, lefty propaganda is exposed:

Cuba banned Michael Moore's 2007 documentary, Sicko, because it painted such a "mythically" favourable picture of Cuba's healthcare system that the authorities feared it could lead to a "popular backlash", according to US diplomats in Havana.

The revelation, contained in a confidential US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks, is surprising, given that the film attempted to discredit the US healthcare system by highlighting what it claimed was the excellence of the Cuban system.

…the only way a Cuban can get access to the hospital [shown in the movie] is through a bribe or contacts inside the hospital administration. "Cubans are reportedly very resentful that the best hospital in Havana is 'off-limits' to them," the memo reveals.

The article titles these as economic myths, but they’re not all economic issues.

Here’s the list:

10. GM Repayment Shows Taxpayer Bailout Worked
9. All the Economy Needs is More Stimulus
8. Soda is Like Cocaine and Ads Cause Obesity
7. Obama the Tax Cutter
6. The Tea Parties are Astroturf, but Green Groups Aren't.
5. Despite Largest Budget in History, Obama is Fiscally Conservative
4. Lack of Press Freedom in Gulf Doesn't Point to Obama
3. Nearly 10 Percent Unemployment Isn't So Bad
2. ClimateGate? What ClimateGate?
1. The Chamber of Commerce is Taking "Secret Foreign Money" for Election

Always keep in mind the news is not what’s happening, it’s just what they’re telling you.

If you like football, read this piece by Gregg Easterbrook. It’s long, but it is worth your time. It’s called Tuesday Morning Quarterback. He writes one these every week…wow.

If football isn’t your thing, he tucks in some other commentary. Like this:

Ships, bridges, spacecraft -- they should bear inspirational names of great men and women, leaders and artists, or of important historical moments. Instead, increasingly they bear the names of insiders and political hacks.

The aroma of California’s Central Valley will endure in my memory. The scent of lettuce with a gentle undertone of soil arrives as a stark contrast to motorists heading west out of the desert.

Apparently that overpowering lushness is disappearing:

Not in the greasy-pelican pollution sense, but in the magic of higher prices leading to increased production:

As an article last month in The New York Times observed: “Just as it seemed that the world was running on fumes, giant oil fields were discovered off the coasts of Brazil and Africa, and Canadian oil sands projects expanded so fast, they now provide North America with more oil than Saudi Arabia. In addition, the United States has increased domestic oil production for the first time in a generation.” Further still: “Another wave of natural gas drilling has taken off in shale rock fields across the United States, and more shale gas drilling is just beginning in Europe and Asia.”

A few years back, when oil was $120+ per barrel and gasoline was over $4 per gallon, the economically ignorant were concerned about the end of oil. Then the depression started and oil dropped back to the 60s for a while. The price of crude has drifted upward into the 80s over the past year. But the break-even price to make all those new fields viable was in the 40s.

So North American drillers kept working their plays.

With rising production from shale fields, the U.S. surpassed Russia last year to become the world’s largest supplier of natural gas.

Residents of Minneapolis are looking at a property tax increase approaching 20% next year.

The proposed tax increase is the city’s response to growing pension obligations, cuts to Local Government Aid (LGA) and recertification of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts that fund neighborhoods and pay Target Center debt. The hike is based on a 7.5-percent, $20 million levy increase, which translates to an actual tax increase of roughly 10 percent to 20 percent for most Minneapolis property owners.

As much a the Mayor and the City Council want to blame the State Legislature for not providing enough aid (LGA), this problem is the product of years of poor fiscal management.