Does this make you feel safer? Of the 78 times police in Greensboro, North Carolina, fired their pistols in 2012, all but two were to kill someone’s pet.
Don’t you feel safer? A TSA agent confiscates the two-inch fake pistol of a monkey sock puppet.
Another news report suggests that Republicans are preparing to surrender in budget talks.
Senior aides familiar with the talks say the emerging agreement aims to partially repeal the sequester and raise agency spending to roughly $1.015 trillion in fiscal 2014 and 2015. That would bring agency budgets up to the target already in place for fiscal 2016. To cover the cost, Ryan and Murray are haggling over roughly $65 billion in alternative policies, including cuts to federal worker pensions and higher security fees for the nation’s airline passengers.
Republican leaders are also seeking additional savings to knock a small dent in deficits projected to exceed $6 trillion over the next decade. But the deal would do nothing to trim the debt, which is now larger, as a percentage of the economy, than at any point in U.S. history except during World War II. [emphasis mine]
To me, the biggest disappointment of this surrender is that Paul Ryan is negotiating it, proof that he too is no fiscal conservative and worse is far more stupid than I had thought.
Obamacare, where the liberal dream crashes and burns.
The botched website was an unforced catastrophe. But that’s not the real problem with Obamacare. The real problem, as dozens of thoughtful commentators have concluded, is the law itself. Obamacare is a massive policy experiment that seeks to remake one-sixth of the U.S. economy – a body that’s so fantastically complex, with so many players and so many moving parts, that nobody can possibly understand how they all interact. Tweak one part, and other parts will behave in unpredictable ways. Pull on a thread and half the sweater may unravel. Even Max Baucus, the Democratic Senate finance chairman, has warned that implementing a law so complicated could be a “train wreck.”
Generally, the way leftists and liberals have succeeded in gaining power is to work incrementally, in very small steps. This way, the link between their actions and the problems those actions have caused is easily hidden. They can then point to these new problems and demand another small incremental increase in their control and power in order to solve those problems, which in turn causes new problems that they can then use to justify another incremental step. And so forth.
Obamacare, however, broke this pattern. Rather than being incremental, it tried to do it all in one big massive attack. The result is that the policy is very clearly the cause of the disaster, the left can’t hide it, and their entire agenda for the past century now stands exposed as the fraud it is. The only way I can see them surviving this disaster is to try to seize power illegally, another typical leftwing technique that they use often when reality starts to go against them.
Tbe competition heats up: International Launch Services ((ILS) has successfully launched its Russian Proton rocket to put another commercial communications satellite into orbit.
This launch solidifies the recovery of the Proton rocket since the disastrous July launch. With the Russian government forcing a consolidation of all Russian aerospace companies into one government owned cooperation, however, it is unclear what will happen to ILS and Khrunichev (the Russian company that makes the Proton).
The stupid party strikes again! Rumors suggest that Republicans are moving to accept a budget deal that would end sequestration.
At issue are efforts to craft a compromise that would ease across-the-board spending cuts due to take effect in January, known as the sequester, and replace them with a mix of increased fees and cuts in mandatory spending programs.
As de Rugy notes:
The sequester, no matter how imperfect a policy, is arguably the only victory for fiscal conservatives in a very long time. Their victory is also president Obama’s biggest defeat (outside of the self-inflicted disastrous Obamacare rollout). It is also another opportunity to remind the American people that the alarmist predictions that we were all subjected to about the devastating impact sequestration would have on our economy didn’t materialize.
She adds:
So let’s sum this up: a massive and unnecessary surrender on the sequester, some tax hikes, and more unemployment benefits. It seems to me that the Republicans are learning their moves from the French army.
Not only do most Democrats have to be replaced, so do a significant number of Republicans. Too many of these politicians have no interest in serving the citizenry being crushed by this out-of-control federal government. Instead they serve that government instead.
Nelson Mandala: Getting the facts of his life right.
Like countless post-colonial African despots, Mandela could have bought off his supporters by stealing the resources of those he replaced to enrich himself and his followers. He could have done what almost all men who have nearly unlimited political power have done with it…kept it and ruthlessly used it.
But he didn’t.
In the end the story of Mandela is that he wasn’t like almost all men. He wasn’t perfect and he wasn’t without sin (almost no one in South Africa was). However, he changed and grew. When he lacked the power to change his country he used violent means to attempt to get it. But once he had the power, he eschewed violence. That is not the typical tale of history. He did not crush those who had crushed him and his people. Instead he recognized that no one would benefit from that and more to the point, it was morally reprehensible to him to do so.
With Mandala gone, I fear for civilization in South Africa. Mandala is no longer there to hold back the thugs there on the left.
Does this make you feel safer? When a man denied the police entry into his house because they didn’t have a warrant, one officer threatened to come back with a warrant and “shoot and kill” the man’s dogs.
[When the] police asked to search his house, Crinnian refused multiple times. He said they needed a warrant. Then he said one police officer started threatening him saying, “If we have to get a warrant, we’re going to come back when you’re not expecting it, we’re going to park in front of your house, where all your neighbors can see, we’re gonna bust in your door with a battering ram, we’re gonna shoot and kill your dogs, who are my family, and then we’re going to ransack your house looking for these people.”
How nice.
A new poll shows Democrats as out-of-touch extremists. Hat tip to Doug Ross.
The public overwhelmingly believes the country is headed in the wrong direction, that current economic policies aren’t working, that President Obama is doing a bad job, that government should be smaller and that ObamaCare should be repealed. But not Democrats.
On issue after issue, in fact, Democrats are the outliers by wide margins, according to an analysis of the December IBD/TIPP survey. They are, by and large, Pollyanna-ish about the economy, they can see no evil when it comes to Obama or ObamaCare, and they are extremists when it comes to the size and role of the federal government.
This close-mindedness is increasingly disturbing. How can we fix our problems if one significant portion of the population refuses to consider that they might be wrong?
Let the space price war begin.
Two money quotes:
This latest launch is bad news for Russia, Europe, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. SES paid $55 million to SpaceX for the launch; rivals typically charge $100 million to $200 million. SpaceX has a backlog of about $4 billion worth of launches, many for commercial customers that it can now begin to serve.
and this:
We’ll really get a sense of SpaceX’s abilities over the next year. The company plans to launch rockets at a much more ferocious clip, to refine their reusability and to prepare for sending humans to the International Space Station. You can also expect to see SpaceX tormented by politicians with ties to existing launch contractors and military suppliers. May we live in interesting times.
In a 376-5 bi-partisan vote, the House has approved a one year extension to the liability exemption of the 2004 Space Amendments Act.
Though this is helpful, it still leaves intact the regulations imposed by that 2004 law, all of which make difficult the future of space tourism. That this extension was passed in conjunction with an effort by Congress to overhaul the law is encouraging.
India has delayed the first test launch of its Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) from mid-December until the first week in 2014.
This delay appears to be simple prudence. They have no specific deadline for launch, and by giving themselves a few extra weeks they can make sure they have things right. I also have two additional comments.
First, I wish they would give this rocket a decent name. GSLV is not only hard to remember, it is ugly. A better name would help their marketing enormously.
Second, read the comments at the link. They are all from Indians, and the majority of them are very enthused. It will give you a sense of that country’s passion for technology and science.
Another great moment in local government.
The article also includes some links a entire collection of great moments, all sadly hilarious.
We’re here to help you: The Federal Trade Commission goes after piano teachers.
[T]he MTNA has existed since 1876 solely to advance the cause of music study and support music teachers. The 501(c)(3) has about 22,000 members, nearly 90% of them piano teachers, including many women who earn a modest living giving lessons in their homes. The group promotes music study and competitions and helps train teachers. Not exactly U.S. Steel.
The association’s sin, according to the feds, rested in its code of ethics. The code lays out ideals for members to follow—a commitment to students, colleagues, society. Tucked into this worthy document was a provision calling on teachers to respect their colleagues’ studios, and not actively recruit students from other teachers.
Such evil. Thank god we have Washington bureaucrats around to stamp it out!
Scott Walker’s epic battle to beat the unions in Wisconsin.
When they and Democratic legislators failed to prevent passage of Act 10 [the law that defanged the unions], they tried to defeat — with a scurrilous smear campaign that backfired — an elected state Supreme Court justice. They hoped that changing the court’s composition would get Walker’s reforms overturned. When this failed, they tried to capture the state Senate by recalling six Republican senators. When this failed, they tried to recall Walker. On the night that failed — he won with a larger margin than he had received when elected 19 months earlier — he resisted the temptation to proclaim, “This is what democracy looks like!”
Read it. It describes the way our country can defeat the fascists.
Pushback: Faced with an almost certain recall over her gun control votes, a third Colorado state legislator has resigned.
By resigning she allows the Democratic governor to appoint a Democratic replacement, thereby keeping control of the state legislature in Democratic hands. Had she been recalled the voters would have had the option to vote for a Republican replacement, as happened with the first two legislators who were recalled.
As said by the chief technology officer of one of the world’s largest satellite communications company, in reference to today’s scheduled 5:37 pm (Eastern) launch of Falcon 9’s first geosynchronous satellite payload. As this man and Elon Musk also added,
» Read more
The Washington Times and the journalist whose confidential files were taken illegally during a house search on an unrelated matter are suing Homeland Security.
The suit is also demanding that they be allowed depose the Homeland Security agent “who attended the raid and was involved in collecting the reporter’s materials to determine how widely information from the newspaper’s documents was distributed within the government.” That agent appeared to be on a fishing expedition to get these files, containing the names of several Homeland whistle-blowers, and then pass that information along to higher-ups in the agency.
An update on the arrest of a father for wanting to pick up his kids and walk them home from school.
Key quote from the boss of the thuggish police officer, Avery Aytes, who made the arrest:
Aytes’s boss, Cumberland County Sheriff Butch Burgess is described as saying he “hasn’t seen the video and doesn’t need to, because it won’t tell the whole story. He says Aytes was just doing his job.”
One point I didn’t make yesterday about his story. Exactly what crime was the father committing that justified his arrest? If you watch the video, all he was doing was expressing his disagreement with the school’s policy. And he was doing it quite calmly. Since when is that a crime?
Thugs: A father is arrested merely because he wants to pick up his kids from school and walk home with them.
Watch the video below the fold. It ends with the police officer physically hitting the person with the camera.
I can think of no sane reason why a school would not release this man’s children to him. What difference does it make whether he leaves on foot or in a car?
» Read more
Working for the Democratic Party: The Census Bureau apparently faked the unemployment numbers prior to the 2012 election to make it appear more people were employed.
In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington. The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.
And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it. Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy. And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.
The world of English freedoms.
Read it. Daniel Hannan outlines exactly why freedom has prospered first in English-speaking nations.
Sixteen different foreigners describe things they couldn’t believe about America until they moved here.
Almost all the reactions are positive, and practically all the items named exist because of freedom.
Virgin Galactic has signed a deal with NBC to televise the first commercial flight of SpaceShipTwo.
I note that with this announcement Virgin Galactic has backed off from its previous schedule for launching this flight this year. They now say it will happen in 2014.
A Texas-based company has printed the first 3D-printed metal pistol, a 45 caliber Model 1911.
Video below the fold. The gun clearly functions, though I noticed that in the video they never loaded more three rounds in a magazine, and that the gun seems to cycle weakly. I suspect that they had some feeding problems when they tried to fire a full loaded five round magazine.
Nonetheless, this achievement further illustrates that 3D printing is about to become a major method of manufacture.
» Read more
The Obama administration has issued an order forbidding Navy Seals from wearing on their uniforms the Navy Jack, which includes the words “Don’t Tread On Me”.
They’ve been wearing the Navy Jack for the last two centuries.
After reading the email, I first wondered, ‘why?’ (Actually, first I headed to the gym to take out my frustration and anger on some unsuspecting weights with the fury and intensity only a former Navy SEAL can exert.) Why would our leaders sell out our heritage? Why would they rob present and future sailors of our battle cry?
When a friend of mine asked his leadership the same question, he was told, “The Jack is too closely associated with radical groups.” We must assume that this thought policeman embedded in the SEAL community is speaking of the Tea Party, whose flag (which also dates from the American Revolution) depicts a snake with the same defiant slogan as The Navy Jack.
The Obama administration’s objection isn’t because the slogan is associated with “radical groups.” It’s because that slogan is now associated with their political opponents, who just happen to have more in common with this nation’s heritage that Obama and his ilk.
The FAA has lifted its ban on the use of cell phones during take-off and landings in airplanes.
The ban on mobile devices has been in effect since the early 1990s, when cellphones began to crop up, and the FAA and airlines summarily freaked the hell out for no good reason. Despite no direct evidence that the use of mobile phones or other electronic devices would interfere with the plane’s systems, the ban continued — even after the FAA hired an outside safety agency to find if anything could go wrong. They didn’t. But the FAA and airlines decided to continue the policy. Until today.
The requirement to stow laptops during takeoffs and landings remains, however, as the FAA fears these larger objects could too easily become dangerous projectiles should something go wrong.
Pushback: The man whom the Justice Department and Homeland Security threatened with prosecution because he was selling mugs and T-shirts ridiculing those agencies has now sued them over those threats.
Free speech in modern America: Protesters shout down New York police commissioner Raymond Kelly at Brown University.
I don’t particularly agree with Kelly’s policies, but I am even more strongly offended by these protesting thugs. Kelly came to give a speech. They should be respectful and let him speak.
