Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Christie versus the welfare couch potatoes

New Jersey governor Chris Christie addressed the Bush Institute Conference on Taxes and Economic Growth in New York on Tuesday, and had some tough words for the couch potatoes littering our “paternalistic entitlement society.” A little video, courtesy of Politico:


New Jersey governor Chris Christie addressed the Bush Institute Conference on Taxes and Economic Growth in New York on Tuesday, and had some tough words for the couch potatoes littering our “paternalistic entitlement society.” A little video, courtesy of Politico:

“I’ve never seen a less optimistic time in my lifetime in this country, and people wonder why,” Christie said. “I think it’s really simple: It’s because government’s now telling them ‘stop dreaming, stop striving, we’ll take care of you.’ We’re turning into a paternalistic entitlement society.”

Christie warned this would bankrupt us both financially and morally, “because when the American people no longer believe that this is a place where only their willingness to work hard, and to act with honor and integrity and ingenuity determines their success in life, then we’ll have a bunch of people sitting on a couch waiting for their next government check.” Strangely, Politico chose to omit the “honor and integrity and ingenuity” part from their quotation of Christie’s remarks, but took pains to render “sitting” without the “g,” precisely the way the Governor said it.

It’s considered extremely rude for politicians to address Couch Potato Nation in such blunt terms, and Christie knows it. “I’m not looking to be loved,” he said. “You see, I think politicians get themselves into the biggest trouble when they care more about being loved than being respected. That’s why we run up these deficits we run up. That’s why we can’t say ‘no’ to anything. Because we care too much about being loved.” He went on to assure the audience that he gets all the love he needs at home, “on occasion.”

More @ Human Events


American income tax tyranny Our forebears rebelled over fewer insults than we must bear today

Americans, now 236 years removed from the Decla- ration of Independence, have acquiesced to far more tax tyranny - and I do not use that word lightly - than the British tax tyranny that ignited our revolt.

Modern-day apologists for the progressive income tax argue that it is just - because it is imposed by the “consent of the governed” - and that is merely their first lie. America was established as a constitutional republic to protect despised minorities from the tyranny of the democratically elected majority. Democracy and consent of the governed are distinctly different concepts. Once it becomes acceptable to divide a population into classes, majorities can easily take the right of consent from a minority. Did black Americans, despite living in a democratic country, consent to being forced to ride in the back of the bus before the civil rights movement? Democratic countries have been known to place higher taxes on religious minorities - without their consent. Racial, religious and ethnic discrimination may be out of fashion, but discrimination based on occupation and income is quite in fashion - and equally despicable.

More @ The Washington Times

Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen suspended for 5 games over Fidel Castro comments

A contrite and at times emotional Ozzie Guillen apologized for more than an hour Tuesday for having said “I love Fidel Castro,’’ categorizing the remark — which ignited a firestorm in Miami’s Cuban exile community and beyond — as “stupid.”

But just 100 yards from where the Miami Marlins’ fiery manager delivered his astonishing mea culpa, hundreds of protesters made it clear that for them, he can’t take back what he said. A raucous rally outside Marlins Park was the most visible evidence that Guillen and his employers still have much work to do to win over their most vocal critics.

The Marlins, whose new taxpayer-funded stadium sits in the heart of Little Havana, took the first step toward trying to heal the rift Tuesday by announcing Guillen will be suspended for the next five games, beginning with Wednesday’s contest in Philadelphia.

More @ The Miami Herald

Zimmerman's lawyers withdraw from shooting case

Via Legal Insurrection



Two attorneys for the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin said Tuesday that they have withdrawn as his counsel because they haven't heard from him in days and he is taking actions related to the case without consulting them.

Attorney Craig Sonner and Hal Uhrig said at a news conference they haven't heard from George Zimmerman since Sunday. They said that against their advice, Zimmerman contacted the special prosecutor who will decide if he should face charges. A spokeswoman for Angela Corey's office didn't immediately respond to an email and two phone calls.

Zimmerman says he shot Martin in self-defense after following the teenager in a Sanford, a gated community outside Orlando on Feb. 26. He said after he followed Martin for a time, he was returning to his truck when the teen attacked him. He shot the unarmed teen to death during the altercation.

Sonner said they legal team had talked to Zimmerman almost every day the last couple months.

"As of the last couple days he has not returned phone calls, text messages or emails," Sonner said. "He's gone on his own. I'm not sure what he's doing or who he's talking to. I cannot go forward speaking to the public about George Zimmerman and this case as representing him because I've lost contact with him."

Attorney Hal Uhrig said that his legal team is still concerned about Zimmerman, who he said is "not doing well emotionally" and may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

More @ CBS News

Van Jones Somewhat Retracts Libertarian ‘Bigots’ Statement After Confronted by…Russia Today

Yes, dorkhead, that's the Libertarian view.

“I’ve met libertarians who say that Dr. Martin Luther King, Dr. King, is somebody they can’t support because someone should have the right to exclude people in this country from being able to go into a restaurant, or go into a hotel, or go into a place of business solely based on the color of their skin.”


Via Don

The Blaze was the first to report on the stunning remarks made by Obama Czar Van Jones at an Occupy Rally over one week ago in Los Angeles. At the time, he blasted Libertarians saying they hate, among other things, “brown folk.” But everyone must, at times, answer for the things they say, and Jones is now retracting, sort of, his Libertarian criticism from his speech, “All In For The 99%”.

Here’s the full quote from his earlier remarks: “They say they’re Patriots but they hate everybody in America who looks like us. They say they love America but they hate the people, the brown folk, the gays, the lesbians, the people with piercings, ya know, ya’ll.”

Not surprisingly, that made Libertarians none-to-happy. Mike Riggs, associate editor at Reason magazine, suggests Mr. Jones has perhaps a case of mistaken identity:

More @ The Blaze

Debunking Civil War Myths – Long Proven Wrong

The Victors Write the War History, but Should Their Lies be Immortal?

[Editors Note: I was 46 before I learned that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave anywhere ....Jim W. Dean]

… by Steve Scroggins

The most persistent and pernicious Big Lie regarding the so-called “Civil War”— more properly called the “War to Prevent Southern Independence”— is this:

Noble and saintly yankees fought the war to abolish slavery; evil Confederates fought to preserve it.

The historical record incontrovertibly refutes this Big Lie and yet it lives on, repeated incessantly by many who know better, and by many, many more who accept without challenge what they were taught in government schools.

The proverbial phrase “the victors write the history” was well-known well before the war.

In fact, General Patrick R. Cleburne, arguing for freeing slaves in exchange for military service, warned what would happen should the South’s bid for independence fail:

More @ Veterans Today

Deportation to Mexico: Escapes 3 felonies

Via NC Renegade

Two weeks ago, Juan Carlos Santos-Hernandez was sitting in a Forsyth County jail cell after being charged with three felonies in connection with the molestation of a 10-year-old girl.

A written plea offer prepared by prosecutor Kia Chavious spelled out the likely path for the 21-year-old: Plead guilty and the state will agree to let you be sentenced for one felony instead of three. You might get out in 25 years. Wait much longer or take your chances with a jury, you may die behind bars.

Now that's moot, thanks to an ill-advised policy being followed by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Within a week or two, Santos-Hernandez could be lying on a beach in Acapulco, a free man sipping cervezas in Mexico.

"He very well may get a pass on these charges," Chavious said in court last week. "(ICE) understands our position, but there is no mechanism to stop it. Once the ball is rolling, nothing is going to stop it."

Road map to a loophole

More @ Winston Salem Journal

Debbie Wasserman Schultz's War On Americans

When Doug Tudor, a twenty-year Navy vet, challenged the Republican Adam Putnam in Florida, for example, he went to Wasserman Schultz for help in seeking financial support. Tudor wrote:

When I met her in Denver, she immediately told me that she couldn’t support me, saying I hadn’t raised enough money. I told her that I had raised $100K, that I was a military retiree, that my family is living on my wife’s Air Force E6 pay, and that I wasn’t able like other “viable” candidates to drop a quarter of a million dollars into my own campaign. I then told her, “Congresswoman, I am one of those working-class guys that our party claims to represent.” Her response was “Don’t pull that populist stuff with me.”

The Democrats aren’t populists, and they’re not standing up for the little guy. They’re exploiting Americans in order to achieve their own political power. That’s a war on the American people.

More @ Breitbart

Bunkers, Food, Armor: Disaster Prep Hits Mainstream

I’m not sure when the tipping point occurred, but at some point recently the “prepper” movement exploded and became mainstream.

Preppers are folks who detect the possibility of calamity and decide to increase their odds of surviving it by putting aside supplies. “Putting things by” — essential throughout most of humanity’s existence — was common in the United States up until advances in transportation logistics brought about the “just in time” shipping model. Suddenly, we could get almost any supplies delivered fresh and year-round to massive community stores. What our grandparents called “lean times” became a thing of the past for even the poorest Americans.

The expectation that we could always get whatever we wanted whenever we wanted it took a couple of hard jolts around the turn of the 21st century: predictions regarding the “Y2K bug” created a resurgent interest in self-sufficiency, which was further rekindled by the 9/11 terror attacks. A decade later, fears of nuclear terrorism, misunderstood popular views about the end of the Mayan calendar, and ginned-up fears of catastrophic climate change, economic collapse, and violent weather patterns have grown what was once a fringe culture.

I didn’t realize how mainstream it had become until Costco sent me an e-flyer: “Get Your Home And Garden Stocked For An Emergency And Save!” It promoted emergency preparedness, the top suggestions being a month of food storage supplies and emergency garden seeds.

Modern prepping has come a long way from the survivalists of the late 1990s.

More @ PJ Media

Gawker interviews John Derbyshire

Very surprising that he sent his children to publix skools.

This is a surprisingly straightforward interview of John Derbyshire by Gawker's Maureen O'Connor:
Is racism—yours or other people's—a problem?

Depends what you mean by a problem. The mild and tolerant racism I've owned up to, and which seems (from these Implicit Association studies) to be very common, is not usually a problem in people's personal social lives. It's never been a problem in my life. I've always got on pretty well with persons of all races, excepting those individuals nobody can get along with—we've all met 'em. But then, of course, as an individual, one can "navigate" through life, making choices that avoid difficult quandaries, by just the kinds of strategies outlined in my article.

Those irenic results don't scale up. Entire societies don't have the "navigational" freedom of individuals. The natural preference most people have for some races—usually their own—over others means that multiracial societies are plagued with stresses that you don't see in monoracial societies. The tendency in modern times is to separation. Look at residential and educational patterns in the U.S.A. I discuss these issues at length in my book We Are Doomed.

A friend of mine who is an academic social scientist likes to say that if you want to know what people believe, there are two methods of inquiry: (A) ask them, or (B) observe their behavior. It's a depressing fact about human nature that if you apply both (A) and (B) to a given situation, the answers you get will not necessarily be the same. Whether we are, as our current Attorney General said, a nation of cowards about race, I don't know; but looking at those residential and educational patterns, it's awfully hard to deny that we are a nation of liars.

More @ Vox

State to feds: We won't cooperate

Good news. I was worried he might not sign it.

A Virginia proposal that declares state workers and resources will be unavailable should Barack Obama decide to exercise provisions in the newest National Defense Authorization Act regarding the detention of U.S. citizens has begun moving forward again.

House Bill 1160 was adopted by lawmakers last month, and the deadline for Gov. Bob McDonnell to address the controversy arrived last night. A spokesman in his office told WND today the governor recommended some adjustments to the proposal, and its chief sponsor in the statehouse says those will be made, and it then is expected to become law.

More @ WND

New Black Panther Party Member Teaches ‘Black Survival’ Tactics With Guns and Machetes…to Kids

Via San Jacinto County Outlaw

Disturbing new YouTube videos have surfaced allegedly showing notorious New Black Panther Party member King Samir Shabazz teaching “black survival” training to a small audience — with children sitting in the front row.

In each of the three videos, uploaded June 6, 2011, the man identified as Shabazz graphically demonstrates self-defense tactics using a variety of weapons, including a handgun, a machete and a baseball bat:


More @ The Blaze

Color Me White, Even If I’m Indian?

The media calls George Zimmerman white. And the media calls Jake England white. Zimmerman’s mother, however, is Peruvian, according to the New York Daily News. The Council of Conservative Citizens says England is Cherokee Indian, but the media is calling him white.

Are American Indians and all Hispanics now “white”? (Nicholas Stix asked the question Sunday, April 9.) The media is certainly calling them that. Any race, any ethnic group of the Mongolian or Caucasian race, any human group that is not Negroid, is now referred to in the media (and in police reports) as “white.” This is pushing racism beyond the pale. Does the Negro define all race? You’re either black, or white? If you have a problem with blacks, that means you’re white?

More @ Bad Eagle

City of Roswell, GA, bullies Andrew Wordes to death over his backyard chickens

Via American Apocalypse

An innocent man who had legally been raising a few dozen chickens and other small birds in the backyard of his suburban Atlanta home is now dead, following a crusade of terror perpetrated against him by the City of Roswell in Georgia. Andrew Wordes, who died during a recent raid on his property in which county marshals tried to illegally evict him, was the obvious victim of a rogue state gone mad — and his blood is now on the hands of the Roswell City Administrator, the Roswell City Council, and the Roswell Police Department, all of which robbed from Wordes his property, his livelihood, and ultimately his life.