Seriously. Here you have it, my friends. The vast power and stunning grandeur of government, all summed up in one act. This is the thing we’re taught all our lives to revere. This is the thing that claims to defend us against the horrors of anarchy. This person, this deed — and millions more like them every day — are what makes the grand institution to which we are expected to bow in wonder and cowering obedience.
This is the little man* behind the curtain of government.
And I’m not referring to the sock monkey.
(H/T G.)
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* Who in this case is a woman. But it hardly matters, because no matter your sex or preferences, you wouldn’t want to get intimate in any sense of the word with one of these … things.
Bystander sees masked robber holding store clerk at gunpoint. Bystander pulls pistol and shouts, “Don’t move!” Robber turns. Bystander shoots. Family member of this (chronic) robber whines, “If his (the customer) life was not in danger, if no one had a gun up to him, if no one pointed a gun at him — what gives him the right to think that it’s okay to just shoot someone? You should have just left the store and went wherever you had to go in your car or whatever.” As sick, depraved, cruel, irresponsible, and Snopes-clan inbred as that sounds, what’s even sicker is that that’s precisely what anti-gunners would have us do.
Yes! It’s about time that the federal government found the courage and integrity to go after those greedy monopolistic … er, piano teachers.
People who fall for lottery scams. Some spend their whole life savings and still don’t believe they’ve been duped. Hm. Does that remind you of any good taxpaying citizens anybody else you know?
“My First Mistake.” Hint: It involves a corpse. And a drainpipe. And is a terrific, if weird, little read.
I was going to use this (and may still use it) in a Deep Thought blog. But for the sake of tab clearing and personal evaluation: “The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People.”
You already know this, don’t you? Nevertheless, it never hurts to be reminded of the four magic statements to make to the police when you’re stopped and they want to poke around and see what they might be able to pin on you.
Mostly for the nerds hereabouts: Rethinking cloud storage (and in particular, rethinking SpiderOak).
Solid scientific evidence for intelligent design! Erm, that is design by fish.
Finally, Chaser — the famous border collie who can identify more than 1,000 objects by name and understands simple sentences is now the subject of her very own book. (Link is to an interview with Chaser’s owner/trainer, who’s pretty exceptional himself. Windsurfing and biking at 85!) You can of course get the book here. Video below and at the interview link.
“What to do if and when Obamacare collapses.” Jim Powell reminds us once again that Obamacare set out to do virtually the opposite of everything that actually needs to be done to restore sanity and affordability to medical care.
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Back later with more, including Deep Thoughts, serious questions, and another Amazon Christmas shopping list. For the moment, I’m off to clean kitty cages at the local (private) shelter.
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Oh, and here’s a bonus. The wiseass site Cracked.com has long had a freedomista slant. Lately, though, they’ve been getting pretty serious about it. The latest: “5 recent trends that make it hard to trust police.”
There’s little there that’ll be news to Living Freedom readers. But consider that Cracked’s audience goes waaaaay beyond us.
In the meantime, assuming you can buy insurance at all, maybe you can get it for free! It seems that the U.S. is developing a kind of ideal income level where you can a) live reasonably well while b) maximizing your tax-provided benefits. Millions more will surely aim for this welfare-state version of “success.” Cockapoo nation!
But some proud traditionalists will not go happily into that EZ future.
Anybody could have predicted that the so-called Consumer Finance Protection Bureau would end up as yet another spy agency. But who would have been cynical enough to think that would be among its main missions from the get-go? Uh. Well. Only people with a brain.
Uh oh. The old assassination market idea gets new life in the age of TOR and bitcoin. Somehow, I don’t think this is going to go any better than it went for Jim Bell.
Looks as if Catching Fire is going to be as good as the first Hunger Games movie. Interesting, too, how this reviewer automatically uses terms making parallels with today’s USA.
Yet another devoted Obama supporter laments his fate under the wheel of Obamacare.
Some good news in that regard: The percentage of poll-answering Americans who think that the fedgov should be responsible for health care vs the percentage of those who say no way has flip-flopped nicely. Let’s hope permanently.
Finally, here’s a bit of strange cheer: The Heidelberg Project brings outsider art to some of Detroit’s worst places.
The Dallas Buyers Club is in my Netflix queue for sure. From everything I’ve read or heard, it’s a spectacular indictment of big government (specifically the death-dealing FDA) and a celebration of Outlaw entrepreneurism. That it stars Matthew McConaughey is merely a plus.
Another long-time outdoors writer and sportsman who’s shocked to learn that laws passed against eeeeeeevvil gun owners also — oops! — apply to him. (H/T to LA)
Well, is this gonna cause more melodrama in the security theater, or what?
Unbelievably, British police make a plausible case that a spy guy whose decomposing corpse was found locked in a gym bag died by a self-caused accident. Definitely news of the weird.
Alas, the Puppycide documentary folks did not make their Kickstarter funding goal — though nearly 1,000 donors and a last-minute push put them over $60k. The good news is, that with the strong support and urging of those donors, they’re aiming for a relaunch this week, this time to fund a 30-minute doc rather than a feature-length film. I’ll keep you posted when that happens and hope everybody who pledged before will jump in again.
As we speak, Dear Leader is about to announce that — lucky you! — you can keep your inferior, inadequate, cancer-covering, less expensive, lower-deductible health insurance after all. For a while.
Except that, as even NPR understands, that’s mostly impossible due to all the hurdles insurance companies had to go through to be “allowed” to cancel old plans and the hurdles they’ll have to go through to be “allowed” to keep them. Not to mention the millions — billions? — they’ve spent making internal changes and notifying policyholders. And what’s their motivation undoing it all and doing it all again a year from now?
The “Obamacare Schadenfreudarama” has been entertaining (horrible though it is, in fact). But this adds yet another dimension of suckage.
Whatever the details of what O. is about to announce, the whole heap of s*t appears to be nothing but more noisome politics: “See, I’m letting you keep your plan. If those evil-bad-monster insurance companies still cut you off on January 1, it’s only because they’re so greeeeeeeedy and don’t care about you.” Also a desperate attempt to save Dem pol asses.
How many do you suppose will fall for it?
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But at least there’s one encouraging sign. ZeroHedge reports that Americans are 34 times more interested in buying guns than buying Obamacare. (Dispute the motivations and the reasons for the difference in stats; it’s still a hoot of a notion.)
