August 06, 2010

Remembering Omar Thorton, Thief, Murderer, and Would-be Media Victim

I'm still waiting for The Won to declare that Omar Thorton "acted stupidly" in going on a racist shooting spree after being caught on tape as a thief and fired, but you know that isn't going to happen. Not even after the murderer called 911 and confessed before killing himself.

Omar Thornton, 34, called 911 after shooting 10 co-workers -- eight fatally -- on Tuesday morning at Hartford Distributors. He introduced himself as "the shooter over in Manchester" and said he was hiding in the building, but would not say where.

"You probably want to know the reason why I shot this place up," he said, his voice steady. "This place is a racist place. They treat me bad over here. They treat all the black employees bad over here, too.

"So I took into my own hands and handled the problem," he said. "I wish I could have got more of the people."

Omar Thorton, Facebook fan of Barack Obama, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, beer theft and racism, is dead, but only after murdering eight others who weren't thieves.

The media wants to bend to his family's wishes to brand him a victim. No. Omar Thorton was a thief. Omar Thorton was a murder. Racism? A thug's petty excuse for mass murder.

Omar Thorton is going to rot in Hell.

I wonder how long it will be before the left puts him on a tee shirt.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:51 AM | Comments (22) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

August 05, 2010

Pre-Revolutionary

I was surfing by Ace's place and caught this extraordinary bit of video of Democrat Pat Caddell discussing the fracturing of his party, among far more ominous rumblings. Watch it all the way through. I'll wait.

Ace's reaction is dead on, as is Caddell's.

The Democratic Party has fractured (past tense), and the elitist extremists in the Democratic leadership are giddy at the thought of purging themselves of moderate Democrats. Waxman's admission is the symptom of a larger disease, an arrogant ruling class mentality that neither respects the will of the American people, nor the separation of powers, nor the Constitution.

Says Caddell:

The Democratic Party has essentially been hijacked by an educated—over-educated—elite group, who basically don't care about the people who constitute the Democratic Party...

[snip]
It's a much graver constitutional crisis. They believe we have a situation where 21% of the people believe that the government is operating with the consent of the governed, from the Declaration of Independence. 21. 68% say no. 57% of the people in a CNN poll a few months ago said they believe that the federal government is becoming a direct and immediate threat to their own freedom. Now, I'm telling you that is pre-revolutionary.

And in democratic—and what is happening is this sense of pushing people—'we're going to shove this down your throat, we're going to shove this, we know better for you,' the issue is very simple: who is sovereign in the country, the people, or the political class?

It is quite obvious that the elites believe that they are the sovereign powers and the arbiters of our fates. It is just as certain that they feel entitled to that power, are intent on keeping that power, and have shelved the Constitution in favor of making this a nation of men, not a nation of law. The have illusions of keeping that power to themselves, and have put only the thinnest of veneers over their attempt to create a nation where the people serve the ruling class.

Even more shocking? The don't seem to care and don't even try to hide their disdain for the people, the culture, or our shared history.

Ace vents:

When it was just a policy debate, it was intellectual.

But now they've gone and made it personal.

That was a mistake. Because you can sell people down the river if you can keep them asleep while you do it.

When you rouse them...? When you alert them...? When you incense them...?

Tougher.

And it's not just personal, but fundamental: Who decides in America? The people, as the books claim? Or the elite, as common practice seems to have it?

And so the rage.

And soon the fire.

What astounds me about our would be rulers is the utter contempt with which they hold their constituents. They act as if their power grab is complete and they don't even need to pay lip service to respecting the law or the people.

This will go badly for all concerned. It remains to be seen if it will go violently.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:01 PM | Comments (24) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

For the First Time In Her Life This Vacation, Michelle Obama is Proud to be an American Living Large On the Taxpayer's Dime

Let them eat flan:

While many of us are struggling, the First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her "closest friends." According to CNN, the group is expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms, more than a third of the lodgings at the 160-room resort. Not exactly what one would call cutting back in troubled times.

Reports are calling the lodgings of Obama's Spanish fiesta, the Hotel Villa Padierna in Marbella, "luxurious," "posh" and "a millionaires' playground." Estimated room rate per night? Up to a staggering $2,500. Method of transportation? Air Force Two.

To be clear, what the Obamas do with their money is one thing; what they do with ours is another. Transporting and housing the estimated 70 Secret Service agents who will flank the material girl will cost the taxpayers a pretty penny.

Andrea Tantaros compares Michelle Obama to a modern-day Marie Antoinette, but I suspect that comparison is unfair. There is no evidence Obama favors another country as Antoinette did Austria, just that she has so little "like" for this one.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:46 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Edict-Makers

My inbox has been flooded with a stream of disturbing information overnight and this morning... and sadly, there seems to be a common theme.

The DNC Stimulus
James Pethokoukis warns of of a possible "August surprise" from President Obama. There are hints that the President may leverage the Bush-era HARP (Home Affordable Refinance Program) to forgive some mortgage debt for the millions of Americans that are upside down a total of $800 billion. The bailout would amount to a backdoor stimulus package, sidestepping bi-partisan opposition in the Senate to increasing the debt. The reason for the backdoor bailout? Utterly cynical.

The nascent recovery is already running out of steam. Wall Street economists just downgraded the government’s second-quarter GDP estimate of 2.4 percent to around 1.7 percent. And as even Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is warning, the unemployment rate may well begin to rise back toward the politically toxic 10 percent level given such sluggish growth. Many in the White House thought the unemployment rate would be dropping sharply by this point in the recovery.

But that is not happening. What is happening is that the president's approval ratings are continuing to erode, as are Democratic election polls. Democrats are in real danger of losing the House and almost losing the Senate. The mortgage Hail Mary would be a last-gasp effort to prevent this from happening and to save the Obama agenda. The political calculation is that the number of grateful Americans would be greater than those offended that they — and their children and their grandchildren — would be paying for someone else's mortgage woes.

The purpose of the possible debt-increasing backdoor stimulus is to pay-off millions of banking industry donations to the Democratic Party, while hoping to limit the damage to Democrats in November.

It does nothing to help revive the economy.

Backdoor Amnesty
Keeping up the theme of ruling class abuse originating in the Oval Office is a warning that the White House may attempt to use "administrative alternatives" to bypass Congressional opposition and create a stealth amnesty for criminal aliens:

Addressed to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas and tellingly entitled "Administrative Alternatives to Comprehensive Immigration Reform," the 11-page memo proposes a nonlegislative amnesty that uses executive orders and other legally questionable methods as the basis to circumvent congressional intent.

"It is theoretically possible to grant deferred action (i.e. non enforcement) to an unrestricted number of unlawfully present individuals," the memo cheerfully points out. Its four authors include USCIS Chief Counsel Roxana Bacon and chief of policy and strategy Denise Vanison, two former immigration attorneys who in effect are urging a modern version of the antebellum Sen. John C. Calhoun's nullification theory.

You'll note that we're finding out about these attempts to subvert the rule of law and will of the people from the conservative media... not Congress, nor their allies in the MSM. Both of these schemes usurp Congressional power for a corrupt and abusive executive branch, but as they serve the will of the would-be ruling class as a whole, congressional leaders are silent.

They aren't going to stick their necks out and risk the wrath of the people if they can feign ignorance or blame the President for doing what they want.

A Widening Gulf
Fittingly, Mark Tapscott rounds out today's discoveries with an editorial pointing out the obvious and growing gulf between the political class of would-be rulers and the majority of Americans:

Big majorities of Mainstream America also think the Political Class couldn't care less about what regular folks think, and most mainstreamers are embarrassed by the behavior of the Political Class. Mainstream Americans think cutting government spending and reducing deficits are good for the economy, Political Class members think doing that will harm the economy.

That the gulf between these two Americas is growing wider is seen most disturbingly in Rasmussen's finding that less than a quarter of Mainstream America now believe the government has the consent of the governed. Washington has a profound credibility crisis.

That Rasmussen's results are far from unique or isolated is seen in the Gallup Poll's most recent finding that only 11 percent of those surveyed have confidence in Congress and only a third have confidence in the presidency.

So how do we explain these two Americas? Rasmussen says his data shows that "the American people don't want to be governed from the left, the right or the center. The American people want to govern themselves."

Americans are increasingly disenchanted with corrupt politicians, elitist media, and disconnected academics, precisely at a moment in history when these would-be rulers have chosen to become more overt in both their quest for power and their contempt of our culture, history, and laws.

A collision course seems imminent.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:54 AM | Comments (21) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

August 04, 2010

Judge Strikes Down Prop.8 in CA

The state's gay marriage ban is shot down... at least temporarily:

A federal judge in California ruled today that the state's same-sex marriage ban amounts to unconstitutional discrimination and should be immediately struck down.

"Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license," wrote U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker in a 136-page decision. "Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples."

Yawn.

I'm not going to bother reading the opinion for the simple reason that doing so seems pointless; the ruling is sure to be appealed and will more than likely find it's way to the U.S. Supreme Court within a couple of years.

B. Daniel Blatt has read the opinion and finds that the judge's ruling is wanting, which just reinforces my thought that getting too excited about the ruling is pointless.

I find that the judge makes some good arguments for gay marriage, but doesn't succeed in relating them to the constitution. His legal analysis is sloppy at best and dismisses the sex-difference argument for traditional marriage by flippantly referring to what he calls "discredited notions of gender" as if the assumptions about a supposed social construction of gender had been proven true when, in fact, all serious psychological, sociological studies have shown the opposite. Not to mention studies of the human brain.

He fails to cite a provision of the federal constitution which prevents states from making distinctions based on sex difference, primarily because there isn't one.

I suspect this is only going to contribute to the feelings of anomie for social conservatives (Democrats and Republicans) that are increasingly feeling disenfranchised by legislators and the courts.

Oh, we live in interesting times...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:30 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Angle: Beware False Idols

I have a confession to make. I haven't paid that much attention to the Nevada Senate race between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Republican challenger Sharon Angle. I've seen that from time to time she has made statements that can charitably be called "questionable" in nature, which you should translate as "what the heck is she thinking?"

Well, she's done it again, with an odd pronouncement that has driven the liberal bloggers on Memeorandum into an absolute hissy-fit.

Jon Ralston at the Las Vegas Sun found an April 21 interview Angle did with Rick Wiles of TruNews Christian Radio, and presented us with this gem (my emphasis below).

Wiles: Half of the country is working to produce and pay the taxes and pay the bills, the other half is living off the taxpayers -- they're living off the other 51 percent.

Angle: We're right to that point in the graph where it says, "government dependency." And we know that once we have a majority that are dependent upon the government, we will lose our freedom; it says we go into bondage. That's the next stage. Our Founders warned against this. They said don't... that your liberty is only as secure as the people are. Because once they, um, get the ability to vote themselves entitlements from the largesse of the government, liberty is done; freedom is over with. We were warned. We are there. We're right on the cusp of it, and you've identified those numbers. That's the war that we're in. You know, when I talk about a war and a battle and soldiers we have to take up our…our cry for freedom. And we can do it right now at the battle box… I mean at the ballot box. I'm not sure what continues on after 2010. I know people are very frightened about what's going on in this country. And these programs that you mentioned -- that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward -- are all entitlement programs built to make government our God. And that's really what's happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We're supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government. And you've just identified the real crux of the problem. I've also been endorsed by a PAC out of Washington D.C. and the name of that PAC is Government is not God. And I thought that that was so appropriate because that is really what's happening in our society and we need to take our country back.

We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government.

Very, very strong words... and very true.

Predictably, Greg Sargent, Alan Colmes and other progressives are promoting this with a "holy war" spin. As Angle was speaking to a Christian audience on a Christian radio show and is apparently herself a devout Christian, it may be a fair characterization of her feelings.

But the simple fact of the matter is that Angle is dead-on in accurate characterizing the mind-set of progressives. They do think that more government—not individuals, or God—is the solution to almost every problem. To be fair, this is also the mindset of many Republicans, and together, this would-be ruling class is responsible for our nation's addiction to big government.

Idolatry?

No doubt progressives are offended at being tarred with a religious term, but it does adequately reflect their fanatical devotion to ever-larger government as the solution to all the nation's ills. They even have hymns for their savior.

Yes, they did. And it's too bad he seems to have the governing skills of David Koresh.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:17 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Congressman: Execute Manning if Guilty

What else needs to be said?

Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told a local radio station on Monday that the charges against Pvt. Bradley Manning are worthy of capital punishment.

"We know for a fact that people will likely be killed because of this information being disclosed," he told Michigan-based WHMI. "That's pretty serious. If they don't charge him with treason, they ought to charge him with murder.

"I argue the death penalty clearly should be considered here," he said. "He clearly aided the enemy to what may result in the death of U.S. soldiers . . . If that is not a capital offense, I don't know what is."

That Bradley Manning may have committed treason because of his politics (he's apparently a huge Rachel Maddow and Media Matters fan) just makes me hope he's given a longer rope at the gallows.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:38 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Missouri Tells Dems Where to Stick Obamacare

Show Me indeed:

Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance, rebuking President Barack Obama's administration and giving Republicans their first political victory in a national campaign to overturn the controversial health care law passed by Congress in March.

"The citizens of the Show-Me State don't want Washington involved in their health care decisions," said Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, one of the sponsors of the legislation that put Proposition C on the August ballot. She credited a grass-roots campaign involving Tea Party and patriot groups with building support for the anti-Washington proposition.

With most of the vote counted, Proposition C was winning by a ratio of nearly 3 to 1.

It remains to be seen if the referendum actually has any legal standing.

Do any of you lawyerly types want to hazard a guess?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:25 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

"I killed the five racists that was there that was bothering me."

The other three he murdered, and the others he tried to kill? I guess they were just for fun.

After being presented video evidence that he stole beer from the company he worked at, Omar Thorton pulled a gun and murdered eight co-workers before holding authorities at bay. He spoke to his family, and then finally turned the gun on himself.

I wasn't there, and don't know all the details, but I suspect that Thorton wasn't fired because the company he worked for and the union he was a part of were a cabal of racists out to get him.

I suspect it had far more to do with him being a thief.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:00 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

August 03, 2010

We Get Letters!

The deceptive efforts of Media Matters finally duped one of their gullible readers to respond. This gem comes from brian75752003@yahoo.com.

Subject: You Are a TRAITOR

I hope you chickenhawk cowards do try to revolt against our government. Please try it. I want to be the first in line to shoot the traitors of America. You think people are afraid of you??? You are a complete coward Owens. I hope you rot in f*cking hell you piece of sh*t TRAITOR. This veteran will defend his country to the end against traitorous pukes like you.

Eloquent, don't you think?

I responded:

Interesting.

The overwhelming majority of veterans I've talked to honor their oath to the Constitution, and look on the current elitists (Democrat and Republican) with sadness, for they know that these elitists and their continual power grabs represent the domestic enemies that our Founding Fathers and even later day Presidents have warned us as being the greatest threats to our republic.

I regret that conflict may be a possibility if the electoral process cannot purge the sickness from the system.

You, apparently, relish the thought of killing your fellow citizens, just as you misunderstand your oath and who the traitors to this republic actually are.

Somehow, I'm less than impressed.

Anonymous threats are easy to make on the Internet. Coming up with a compelling intellectual argument defending the attempts of the ruling class to usurp our rights is far more difficult.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:02 PM | Comments (24) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Closer to Midnight

When I wrote A Nation on the Edge of Revolt Saturday morning, I knew that it would be taken out of context by some and well-received by others.

Perhaps the most interesting feedback I've received this far was in the comments of that blog entry, where a commenter calling himself TN_NamVolunteer wrote:

Bob/CY
I would like to ask you a question and do not need/require a personal reply, just answer here or perhaps better a reply in new post.

I've read you for a number of months (years) primarily because you have been a 'level head' or a 'voice of reason' even re. other conservative blogs; and, here, once before - you said the time was not now.

the question: What has changed your mind? What event or piece of information has happened or transpired that has moved the hands of the clock of destiny closer to midnight? What has changed your mind that you now "advise" us to: "prepare for war"?

(for the vets here my oath was on 17JUL1968, my father's 31JAN1943)

What has changed my mind? What has transpired that makes me feel that patriots should gird for a possible revolution? What, as he asks, "has happened or transpired that has moved the hands of the clock of destiny closer to midnight?"

These are all fair questions, and I do not have a simple answer to any of them.

For example, I'm not sure that my mind has changed. We live in a nation with the longest continually-functioning government in the world. The Founders were brilliant men who set up a system of checks and balances that has kept any of our three branches of government from easily seizing power for themselves, and just as importantly, has made it difficult from them to collude with one another. It is a system that has worked better than any other for several hundred years.

But just as there are no perfect people, there are no perfect governments, and all governments over time seek to grow. Governments crave power and control the way plants seek light and nutrients. The more they grow, the more they need to survive, and the more they need to take.

Inexorably, this taking comes at the price of our individual liberties.

Angelo M. Codevilla's recent America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution brings us nothing revolutionary in and of itself. What Codevilla does best is bring a bit of synergy to the fractured thoughts many of us have harbored in part or in whole as we witness our nation's perilous state and the megalomania of those who have both caused so many of our problems and who simultaneously claim to be our saviors.

The greatest disagreement I have with the author is that he thinks that Democrats represent the elitists and that Republicans, almost by default, represent the best hope for the rest of us.

I respectfully disagree, and suspect that many who read the Codevilla article will come away with the realization that there is very little difference between Democrats and many Republicans. I also think they will agree with the author that the elitists that are entrenched in both parties have far more in common and are far more driven by the desire to further their lots in life than they are to serve their fellow citizens. As a bipartisan group, this would-be ruling class exists to increase their power, at the expense of the rest of us, the so-called "country class."

But specific membership aside, the author correctly notes:

The ruling class's appetite for deference, power, and perks grows. The country class disrespects its rulers, wants to curtail their power and reduce their perks. The ruling class wears on its sleeve the view that the rest of Americans are racist, greedy, and above all stupid. The country class is ever more convinced that our rulers are corrupt, malevolent, and inept. The rulers want the ruled to shut up and obey. The ruled want self-governance. The clash between the two is about which side's vision of itself and of the other is right and which is wrong. Because each side -- especially the ruling class -- embodies its views on the issues, concessions by one side to another on any issue tend to discredit that side's view of itself. One side or the other will prevail. The clash is as sure and momentous as its outcome is unpredictable.

One side or the other will prevail. The clash is as sure and momentous as its outcome is unpredictable.

We have moved "closer to midnight" not because of any singular act , but because of inertia of a political class that does not respect or enforce the laws, or this nation's sovereignty. We have diametrically opposed views of how our nation can and should be run, and it appears that there is very little room left for negotiation.

Propagandists for the elitists at Media Matters seem troubled by A Nation on the Edge of Revolt. They portray it as a threat when "Conservative media figures openly discuss armed revolution."

I hope they do feel threatened. Attempts at peaceable protests have been met at turns by feigned ignorance, then mockery, then attacks on the character and motives of those would not sit quietly by. Perhaps it will take a serious review of our capacity for violence to get them to realize we shall not surrender our individual liberties to their lust for power.

I have not yet been swayed to the point of view that an armed conflict is inevitable, TN_NamVolunteer. But we are close enough that one would be wise to prepare for a possible conflict, just as one would prepare for any coming storm.

Update: Media Matters responds with the sort of "objectivity" you'd expect.

08/11/2010 Update: Brad Reid at the aptly named Crooks and Liars has joined the shrieking liberal chorus. I invite his readers, like those of Media Matters and Daily Kos, to read my response, Defending Liberty.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:10 PM | Comments (55) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Worse Than the Klan: Exposing the Real Sherrods

Far from being an advocate for black farmers, Charles and Shirley Sherrod abused them mercilessly, treating them in ways that the most ardent racists would have found appalling (h/t/ Instapundit).

The swirling controversy over the racist dismissal of Shirley Sherrod from her USDA post has obscured her profoundly oppositional behavior toward black agricultural workers in the 1970s. What most of Mrs. Sherrod’s supporters are not aware of is the elitist and anti-black-labor role that she and fellow managers of New Communities Inc. (NCI) played. These individuals under-paid, mistreated and fired black laborers–many of them less than 16 years of age–in the same fields of southwest Georgia where their ancestors suffered under chattel slavery.

Read the entire article. It is short and to the point, and exposes Charles and Shirley Sherrod as monsters more than willing to play the race card to exploiting what they might have called "their own kind," for both power and profit.

No wonder she made such a perfect speaker for today's NAACP...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:49 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 31, 2010

A Nation on the Edge of Revolt

Ernest S. Christian and Gary A. Roberts wonder aloud whether the power grabs of the Obama Administration and the ruling class mentality of entrenched Democrat and Republican political machines will lead to a second Revolutionary War.

I'll lay it out bluntly for you; either the American people—not extremists, but good and decent patriots like your neighbors and yourselves—will revolt and destroy the ruling class and reform our government based upon first principles, or the United States we know as our forefather conceived it is dead.

I do not state this as hyperbole. I do not state this to incite violence. I state this as nothing more or less than an observation of both history and current events. While we are a relatively young nation, our government is the oldest on the planet. Since our founders met in Philadelphia, the French have gone through five republics. Every nation in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America and North America has seen governments rise and fall, but our resilient democratic republic, the "Great Experiment," has soldiered on.

All cultures and governments, however, rot. This inevitably comes from inside, as a cancer. Our politicians view the people as rubes and subjects, and treat them as such. They imagine themselves a ruling class that exists for their own edification, at the expense of the nation as a whole.

When nations reach this point, they either collapse, or the people reform or replace their governments.

We have arrived at that time. Reform increasingly seems to be a fleeting option. Republicans and Democrats differ only in how they plan to loot the public coffers. Our present Congress and Administration are merely more transparent in their corruption and disdain than their predecessors.

Our would-be ruling class has abandoned the principles that founded this nation. They are attempting to establish a state of affairs where the people serve the government and the government determines your success or failure. Corruption no longer matters. Sovereignty no longer matters. The rule of law no longer matters.

They have won in a bloodless coup.

Or so they would like you to think.

Whether they actually win or not depends upon how much you love your family and your nation and the principles that made this nation great. Our founders themselves believed in the right of revolt, and knew better than any of us that governments must be replaced from time to time. They were wise enough to provide us with a constitutional framework that will outlast any government, including this one. We can dispose of this government, and restore the Constitution that has served us and the rest of the world so well for so long.

We stand at the brink.

We are on the right side of history. Our would-be rulers, fat on self-appointed largesse and drunk on their own purloined power, imagine us subjects, not free men and women.

Revolution is a brutish, nasty business. Innocents will fall along with patriots and the corrupt, and success is not assured.

In a letter to James Warren in 1789, Samuel Adams foresaw our current state.

A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.

The question for you, my fellow Americans, is simple.

Will you fight, or will you surrender your liberties?

I pray for peace.

But I prepare for war.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:07 AM | Comments (87) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 30, 2010

Dilbert Nuked

Like many bloggers, I've toyed with monetizing my blog... though not in any serious way. All the advertising I've ever done is because advertising have gone out of their way to contact me. Within the last week, I was contacted by a new advertiser (very nice folks, actually) and decided to try their flash-based ads.

You hated it. Auto-playing flash-based ads with audio that can't be stopped is apparently not the way to keep your readership happy. Who knew?

Hey...I screwed up. I apologize.

The lure of easy advertising dollars perhaps financing my next toy blinded me to the annoyance these ads caused you.

I have used and will continue to use BlogAds and I'm proud to represent both the Conservative and Military advertising hives, and encourage you to advertise with them. I've recently partnered with the VAMortgageCenter.com, have always run my share of Google Ads, and have a tip jar for those inclined to use it.

But I'll accept no more auto-playing flash ads with unstoppable audio. That was a bad decision on my part. I won't do that again.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:34 PM | Comments (22) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

That Sweet, Sweet Scent of Desperation

Steny Hoyer? He haz it:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said on Wednesday that the expiration built into the Bush tax cuts is a "Republican tax increase" for "working Americans" and the Democrats have "no intention" of allowing it to go into effect.

"We have no intention of allowing the Republican tax increase — that their policies would lead to — to go into effect for working Americans. Period," he said. "We're going to act and make sure that the Republican phase out and increase in taxes does not end as they provided for in the laws they passed."

This is the same Steny Hoyer who said in late June that the Bush cuts must eventually be rescinded so that Democrats could continue their free-spending ways:

Hoyer also suggested that tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush will eventually be rescinded. He said that it is necessary in order to help pay for the nation's mounting deficit and that permanent tax cuts would be too costly.

"As the House and Senate debate what to do with the expiring Bush tax cuts in the coming weeks, we need to have a serious discussion about their implications for our fiscal outlook, including whether we can afford to permanently extend them before we have a real plan for long-term deficit reduction," Hoyer told a forum on deficit reduction.

Is over a month too long ago to consider Hoyer a hypocrite and opportunist? Perhaps his position has "evolved" over time.

If so, it was a short time.

Here is Hoyer a week ago today.

In a speech on the economy and jobs, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Friday reiterated his party's call to extend the Bush middle-class tax cuts and deemed Republicans' call to extend breaks for the wealthy a "mistake [that] would be putting ourselves even deeper into debt."

Hoyer is now and always was against the "Bush tax cuts," a phrase he's uttered like a curse since they were first enacted. Hoyer's ultimate plan is to raise taxes—or as he says, "raise revenue"— on the middle class, just as soon as it is politically feasible. But he can't raise those taxes if House Democrats get pummeled in the fall.

Steny's terrified, and changing his tune today for one reason, and one reason only.

He can see November from his house.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:01 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Nice work, Blutarsky

Administration spokesman Robert Gibbs ranted about Rush Limbaugh and how the government takeover of GM and Chrysler was a good thing, then made the kind of gaffe that we've come to expect from this administration of dunces:

"I'll let those that sat in the cheap seats a year-and-a-half ago and wanted to walk away" from a million workers, he continued, "explain to every one of those workers why they made that decision."

Finally, he wrapped it up: "And then you should ask Mr. Limbaugh — I don't know what kind of car he drives, but I bet it's not an F-150."

Ford, which makes the F-150 pickup, didn't take the bailout, and was the first of the three companies to turn a profit.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:19 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 29, 2010

Bo Dietl Doesn't Know His Butt From a Hole In The Ground

Why being a retired NYPD detective earns someone the right to be called a "gun expert" is anyone's guess, but Edgar Sandoval and Samuel Goldsmith of the N.Y. Daily News called Bo Dietl one, and he promptly returned their thanks by making all three of them look like idiots.

Anna Fermanova has been accused of attempting to smuggle three high-end night vision rifle scopes to her husband in Russia, a gross violation of export laws that could result in serious jail time for the native Latvian. Fermanova is the second very attractive young woman accused of being a Russian spy in recent months after Anna Chapman, and the media wasn't about to miss a chance to sell advertising, so they decided they needed another story (presumably as an excuse to post her pictures).

The Daily News then decided Dietl was just the gun expert to interview about these scopes, and it all went to Hell from there:

"These are used specifically for an assassination," said security consultant Bo Dietl, a former NYPD detective. "You're not going to hunt deer with a super scope. That's crazy.

"You could take someone out with one of these scopes in the dead of night from up to a mile-and-a-half-away," he said. "I have friends in Iraq who use these. These are the real deal."

The optics—which the Daily News grossly over-valued by $1,000-$1,500—are indeed marketed as having a range in excess of a thousand yards, but the simply fact of the matter is that these Raptor scopes (when they were available to the public) were only available with short- to mid-range 4x or 6x power magnification. This magnification range is popular among sportsmen and the military to ranges of perhaps several hundred yards even during the daylight and twilight hours, but for Dietl to claim "you could take someone out with one of these scopes in the dead of night from up to a mile-and-a-half-away" is, to put it mildly, a load of crap.

As for Dietl's claim that "These are used specifically for an assassination," well, he's astoundingly ignorant about that as well.

The primary use for night vision (NV) scopes hasn't changed much in the 50+ years they've been used. NV scopes and googles are primarily used by soldiers to identify the enemy, either while out on patrol or while guarding static positions. They are not "specifically used for assassination", unless Dietl wants to label the thousands of U.S. soldiers using this sort of technology every night in Afghanistan and Iraq as assassins.

If someone did know a little bit about this kind of technology, and had a grasp of history, they would come to the much more reasonable conclusion that the Russians would be interested in obtaining the latest U.S. technology so that they could reverse engineer it and then build advanced night vision scopes for export sales and/or use this tech to equip their own soldiers.

For the record, Russian soldiers aren't assassins either, and know hell of a lot more about night vision gear than some self-aggrandizing media whore retired New York cop.

I'd also point out that night vision rifle scopes are used in the taking of various animals including wild hogs in Texas, where Fermanova lives. I'd also point out that wild boar hunting is a sport in Russia and other parts of the former USSR as well (though I still find her story more than likely a bad cover story).

I would mention that night vision scopes are also used for predator hunting and predator control.

But that would just be piling on.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:23 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Oh Pretty Please... Shirley Sherrod Announces She Will Sue Andrew Breitbart

I suspect that this will end badly. For Sherrod.

Note the creative writing in the AP story (my bold):

Ousted USDA employee Shirley Sherrod says she will sue conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, the Associated Press reports.

Sherrod made the announcement Thursday in San Diego at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention.

Breitbart posted a heavily edited video of Sherrod speaking to an NAACP group and appearing to admit that she had deliberately refrained from giving full assistance to a farmer because he was white.

The political fallout from the posting eventually prompted the Agricultural Department to fire Sherrod to resign.

First a few words about the narrative that the AP writer is trying to further.

The video was not heavily edited... it wasn't edited at all. It was merely an excerpt proved to Breitbart from a much longer speech. That speech, viewed in its entirety, seems to suggest that Shirley Sherrod does in fact continue to struggle with racism. Some of her more recent comments (post-firing) also show Sherrod to be a woman fighting a battle against her own racial biases.

The other amusing claim is that the video led to her eventual firing. Eventual? The Administration was so eager to see her gone that she was driven to pull over to the side of the road and resign on her Blackberry... they didn't even let her get to the office.

But now let's back to the story, and away from the narrative.

Sherrod claims she wants to sue Breitbart. I don't see him being the kind of guy to back away from a challenge, so there is a pretty good chance he won't settle, and they'll wind up in court.

Frankly, Sherrod seems to have a lot more to lose during legal proceedings than Breitbart. She and her husband have profited immensely from race-baiting, and they both have racist and or race-baiting comments caught on video that they cannot deny. Discovery and a cross-examination by a good attorney are not something I think either Sherrod would want to address.

I think she's bluffing, but I kinda hope she isn't.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:47 PM | Comments (20) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Blue Falcon Bradley Manning Confirmed As Primary Suspect in Wikileaks Afghan Doc DumpAfghan

So tell me, gentle readers... when is the last time a member of the armed forces disgraced his uniform, his fellow servicemen, our allies, and his country this much? He's the anti-Audie Murphy.

The Pentagon is focusing on jailed Army Pfc. Bradley Manning as the main suspect in the leak of tens of thousands of secret U.S. military documents related to the war in Afghanistan, a senior Pentagon official told CNN Wednesday.

Manning, 22, is believed to have accessed a worldwide military classified Internet and e-mail system to download tens of thousands of documents, according to the official, who did not want to be identified because of the ongoing criminal investigation of the soldier.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:02 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Breaking: Second Missing Sailor in Afghanistan Found Dead

No details yet, or any indication whether he was killed in the initial ambush, or later. Will update as more information comes in.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:42 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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