Offsite Comments

Okay, I'll sacrifice: I'll go feed the pesks. The morning thread should come up immediately. Somebody grab First for me, and I'll be back in a hundred comments.

Did that kill the thread? Or did everyone pause to join in prayer?

Before the storm.

"Shit, that could be noon."
Posted by: Case

I usually fed the cats after a look and a hello on the THC, but the little carnivores are really giving me the ol' hairy eyeball...

This hurricane thread is obviously a plot to divide the Horde. I won't fall for it. I'm in the ONT as the bloggods intended until there's a morning thread to unite us.

Hey, Mr Jesus, a friend is still in pain this morning. Please ask Our Father to bring her full healing, thanks.

Hey, Mr Jesus, Milady's still in anguish. Please ask Our Father to bring her full healing, thanks.

Hey, Mr Jesus, the family is threatened...

Hey, Mr Jesus, the nation...

Hey, Mr Jesus, those girls in Africa...

Hey, Mr Jesus, the faithlessness of humankind...

Hey, Mr Jesus, remember that scene in Bruce Almighty where he tries to handle all the prayer requests, and everything is covered with sticky notes? Yeah, we know you've got a tough job.

Please don't be too busy for us. Help soon! We'll try to bear out crosses with minimal whimpering in the meantime.

Some frank pleading from a random mortal.

Oh, yeah...

Notmywillbutyoursbedoneamen.

I see recent signs of morning people.

Hi, Carol. Hi, ManWhoCan'tParty.

Is this the line for the breakfast buffet, or is that in the hurricane tent?

"...put the papers in mailboxes"! Aha! I forgot that part... before they got all picky and required separate newspaper receptacles.

Every tax suppresses something.

A consumption tax suppresses consumption. As someone said, especially on certain types of purchases.

However, since a consumption tax does not suppress savings, investment, property ownership, or income, it would seem to have the most positive possible effect on consumption money being available.

And, you cannot beat the argument that nobody has to know your personal finances with the consumption tax.

I would like to see a bottom-up scheme, too, if it would work. Cities and counties finance the State, the States finance the Fed. The Fed gets its share last.

Um... newsboy knows who gets Playboy in the mail and 'borrows' it for a day... trying to figure how you know or do that. Not with mail slots, so it's mail boxes, but you to be on the street opening someone's mailbox... maybe it's just that I would've been caught for sure, or maybe it's how I was raised about violating Federal postal law...

Of course, being a 1%er, I didn't have to do that. I found where my much-older brother hid his Playboy collection.

He still blames the other brother.

I'm still in recovery.

To be honest, I only read it for the cartoons....

"There is a difference in kind between charm and smarm. People who are charming have class. People who attempt to be charming while lacking class are smarmy."
Posted by: alexthechick

Nice differentiation. Con artists work on folks who can't see the difference at first. "Ah did naw-ut have secks with that woomun..." Mister Bluster.

"Out before the libertarian flame war and/or tedious back and forth on the War on Drugs gets going...."
Posted by: S. Muldoon

Coward!

_______

AllenG, slightly edited:

"For libertarianism a free self-governing people to work, we must have a world of complete personal responsibility. You want to do drugs? Fine, do them. When you can't hold a job, can't afford food, and are dying from starvation and exposure- don't come crying to me."

The war is really the octopus of groupthink tyranny vs the right of living under Responsible Liberty; Big Brother/Big Nanny v Free Citizens. Always.

Drugs, gambling, booze, guns, Bibles, income, property, children... tyranny doesn't differentiate.

Cannot ordinary laws which protect us from government and from each other, properly enforced, effectively deal with all criminal trespass without resorting to prohibitionism, that tentacle of socialism? Do we not tolerate someone having a beer, but rightly intervene (as Government) when alcoholism or whatever weakness causes genuine trespass or clear threat? Are we Uncle Sam or Auntie Carrie Nation?

Yes, every socialist program and 'progressive' sentiment mitigates against the simple idea of self-ownership. So, ought we compromise the principle of Liberty to comport with their errors currently corrupting the proper order, or rid ourselves of the whole tyranny, at every level?

"No other first lady gets their traditional charitable emphasis pushed like its enacted law."
Posted by: ---

According to CNN, she does enact law.

How iz Made Law in United States of Amerika
Historic First as First Lady signs Act into Law
vid 1:10
http://mindfulwebworks.com/radical/how-iz-made-law-in-united-states-of-a...

http://tinyurl.com/mmvfdqh
Not a bad looking place. Check out their sign!
Posted by: EC

Glad you posted this. I didn't have the link handy.

Sherry McEvil > "I pushed my cart full of stuff at the clerk and said, 'I am done with Target.' and walked out.

*sniff* What a beautiful, moving ending. Good 4 u!

Betting your action had no positive impact on clerk or company, but yay 4 u.

Hrothgar > Sounds beautiful and like you are a very lucky man.

It is beautiful to me. One sib used to grouse I only wanted to live here because of nostalgia, even though one of the main reasons we live here is because Milady, raised in Chicago, always liked it here as much as I do.

The lucky part is relative. You know, like that climber who was lucky to be alive because he cut off his hand? There was a price, and its not yet fully repaid. Not complaining, just saying. Everything is temporary.

How are you holding up, Hrothgar?

When my grandparents lived, this property had ten acres fenced off as living area. That's a lot of lawn, a lot of oak and pecan to trim around. Grandfather kept a big garden patch between the two houses. Grandmother also had chickens, and I barely remember when she briefly kept peacocks (in memory as big as my toddler self). There was also a big swimming pool. We spent a lot of family days out here before death and divorce destroyed our family.

Fourth of July was extra special. Out just over the fence in the main pasture, there is still a small low wall with two mortars buried in the ground for big-time fireworks. I remember crates with Chinese markings. Dad would invite the local volunteer fire brigade and their families to join his employees, friends and family for burgers, hot dogs, and a big evening fireworks show. (Remind me sometime to relate the story of how my brothers tried to kill me with a firework.) Dad's been dead since '68 and people still gush about 4ths we had. This time of year, the nostalgic wistfulness is particularly heavy.

I only acquire the place after it sat idle and rotting in sibling stalemate for a quarter-century. The pool was destroyed right after Dad's death. The chickens, the gardens, died with my grandparents before that. Nowadays, a rider mower has replaced the crew of young men with pushmowers my grandfather paid. Half the living area we now let go to hay, rather than maintain as lawn. Which is really why I started this tale:

It's been a good year, for rain. Grass has grown faster than it has in many years. Old Defender Dog has taken to only going up to the edge of the tall grass to bark at the deer (thank goodness not plunging into that sea of ticks and burrs). The deer, heads peeping up above the grass, play along by bounding a few feet through the tall grass when he barks.

Then the entire texture of the place changes when the hay gets mowed, as was done yesterday. Everything is leveled. It's like the tide went out or something. From high fields waving in the breeze, we now have low, lumpen ripples waiting to dry and be baled.

Repeat. Until they come for us.

Morning, Glories. Gotta go feed the pets, then read what I missed because this blather spewed out. Might not "be back." Lucky you.

Oh.My.Heavens. of all Tricky Dick's crimes in office, how could I have forgotten those uniforms? Blocked it out. All. Out.

As I will this post in a few minutes.

Good even ing gollib bbbb doctor sr strange keyboard isn't m

Um, can someone edit my comment to close the first link? Looks like I messed that up.

Aaaand, since I seem to have another comment slot going...

Obama’s calm baritone can make anything sound reasonable, even a frustrated lament that “the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth” and disappointment that “as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical.” …

But in the cold form of text, one recoils from a potential President uttering the words that he is frustrated that the Warren Court “didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution.”

Those constraints are there for a reason.

Obama says, “Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.”

—Jim Geraghty, National Review

Oh, but Barry Soetero is a student of the Constitution, though. He has studied it in a manner different from how you and I might, however. Sort-of the way the 2001 Sep 11 terrorists studied the World Trade Center towers.

President Obama talks about the 'flaws' in the U.S. Constitution to students at Barnard College in New York City:

"The Constitution … had flaws. Flaws that this nation strove to protect [sic] over time. Questions of race and gender were unresolved. No women's signature graced the original document. Although we can assume there were Founding Mothers, whispering things in the ears of the Founding Fathers. [cheers, applause] …

"What made this document special was that it provided the space, the possibility, for those who had been left out of our charter to fight their way in. It provided people the language to appeal to principles and ideals that broadened Democracy's reach. It allowed for protest. And movements. And dissemination of new ideas that would repeatedly, decade after decade, change the world. Constant forward movement that continues to this day. Our Founders understood that America does not stand still. We are dynamic, not static. We look forward, not back."

Now, you don't get any more Constitutionally scholarly than that.

It's not about creating a government of checks and balances, limited in its scope, and protecting a self-governing people from institutional excesses. It's not about upholding law and providing stability. Not for Barry. No, government is all about moving forward and being dynamic and broadening Democracy's reach, which obviously means including the whole world in the American umbrella, so open the borders and let everybody vote!

September 2001 Chicago public radio program

“Barack Obama, what are your thoughts on the Declaration and Constitution?”

“I-I-I think it’s a remarkable document –“ he began haltingly.

“Which one?” Helfrich interjected.

“The original Constitution as well as the Civil War Amendments,” he replied. “But I think it is an imperfect document, and I think it is a document that reflects some deep flaws in American culture, the Colonial culture nascent at that time.

“African-Americans were not -- first of all they weren’t African-Americans -- the Africans at the time were not considered as part of the polity that was of concern to the Framers. I think that as Richard said it was a ‘nagging problem’ in the same way that these days we might think of environmental issues, or some other problem where you have to balance cost-benefits, as opposed to seeing it as a moral problem involving persons of moral worth.

“And in that sense,” Obama continued, “I think we can say that the Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day, and that the Framers had that same blind spot. I don’t think the two views are contradictory, to say that it was a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now, and to say that it also reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”

Obama did not elaborate on the “fundamental flaw” that persists.

I'll stop there. Two-link limit.