Quote of the Day 8/10

@AntiSec_ AntiSec

#fuckyouwashington for becoming the evil people the same founding fathers overthrew.

(Anti-Sec tweet reported on accesstoinfo.blogspot.com)

UK riots: What exactly are the police for, if they cannot protect people and their property?

Good for nothing. 

Awesome, home run of a blogpost by blogger James Delingpole of The Telegraph (UK)

Verbatim post.

Glossary of British English: sharpish = right away.  twigged = realized.
(I had to look it up... ;-)... England and the USA, two peoples separated by a common language)

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In the Sunday Telegraph last weekend we learned that plans to improve London’s systematically useless police force the Metropolitan Police by appointing US supercop Bill Bratton to take it over and revamp it had been blocked by a woman called Theresa May.

By spooky coincidence, a woman also called Theresa May hit the headlines again more recently when she refused to give permission for young, unarmed, outnumbered policemen struggling – and mostly failing – to contain some of the worst riots in British history to use water cannon.

Is this Theresa May person really Home Secretary of one of the world’s leading economies? And if so, please can we have a new one, sharpish?

Sure, one can see why Theresa May was so keen to be seen ruling out the use of water cannon. Tripping around her pretty little head – as I’m sure it does in the pretty little heads of most loyal Cameroons – is a mantra that goes: “Mustn’t be seen as the Nasty Party. Mustn’t be seen as the Nasty Party. Mustn’t be seen as the Nasty Party. etc”. No doubt she imagined herself getting lots of brownie points from Dave and Steve and the gang for the way she had exploited this high profile opportunity – her first occasion, really, to show what she is made of – to help detoxify the brand and show that above all else the New Conservatives care at least as much as that nice Tony Blair’s New Labour did.

Problem is, what Theresa clearly hasn’t yet twigged is that the world has changed. For those of us who never got to experience the Second World War, this is the beginning of the most dramatic, turbulent and terrifying era of our lifetime. The rules have changed; the old keep-whistling-cheerfully-and-pretend-it’s-all-going-to-go-away political bullshit is no longer valid currency.

As an example of this, just look at the response to my colleague Daniel Knowles’s blog condemning Roger Helmer MEP for his recent Tweet suggesting looters should be shot on sight. I agree with Daniel that the Tweet was ill-advised; and, thoroughly decent man that he is, I don’t believe for a second that Helmer really believes that rioters in Britain now should be shot dead. Where I diverge sharply from Daniel – as, very forcibly do most of the commenters below his blog, I’m please to note – is that the most vital lesson to be drawn from Helmer’s Tweet is that David Cameron should expel him from the Tory party.



Duh...


Er, hello, Daniel. The streets of London are burning. The world economy is collapsing. Not one of the world’s leaders has shown him or herself remotely up to the task of dealing with the problems now facing us. And here you still are, stuck in the old world,  discussing how the Conservative party (if it can actually be said still to exist after its emasculation by the Cameron project) might present itself in a more favourable, snuggly, caring, inclusive, non-judgemental light.




Snuggle, snuggle. "Mustn't be seen as a nasty Party"


There are lots of reasons why we are where we are today: the takeover of the police force by politically correct Blairite apparatchiks like Ian Blair; the Macpherson report; multiculturalism; ludicrous, self-defeating slogans like (the Met’s motto) “working towards a safer London.” These are entrenched problems which will not easily be undone; they certainly require root and branch reform of the kind that an outsider like Bill Bratton is far better placed to achieve.
And I don’t believe the most of the young policemen and women now laying their necks on the line actually want to be working in the kind of PC police force we have today. I think most of them are thoroughly appalled at the way they are only allowed to perform their primary duty – protecting people and property – with one arm tied behind their back by PC regulations. I think what they want is for the kind of police force that does what most of us expect the police to do. Not to make us “safer”. But to make us actually safe.

The police can't even protect their own property, apparently.


link
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The UK riots are another great example of what happens when a population is disarmed.  An armed society is a polite society. 

You don't have to rely on PC police to "save" you, as if they ever would.  Anyway, they'll arrive in time to scrape you off the sidewalk and write a report.  You've heard it before: when seconds count, the police will arrive in minutes.

Delingpole, by the way, is the guy who had the scoop of the internal emails of the UK climate scientists, which showed collusion and falsification of data
(so- called Climategate), which started the Global warming skepticism that has been increasing ever since. 

The Panic of 2011, and the response of our betters: You pay for it.

The crisis of the markets is as much a function of the European sovereign debt crisis as it is of American sovereign debt crisis.

The Chinese have high inflation, with 6.5% overall, and 14% for food items.  This will ripple out to the rest of the world that has Chinese products for sale.  Example: Wal-Mart. 

The market now expects the Fed to make another round of money printing, to be obfuscated under the title "QE3".  What does that mean for us mundanes?  Your dollar is worth less to buy "stuff" every time they print more of them.  Your same salary goes less and less far.  You are being squeezed without mercy for every bit of your labor to support the spending, entitlements, debt burden that you never wanted or voted for.

In Europe, things are no better for the average taxpayer:

...[European Central Bank head] Trichet just went ahead and sent the cavalry to buy another X billion worth of Irish 10 years to send a powerful message that European taxpayer capital will be used to purchase worthless paper that is cash flow bad, until morale improves.

(Emphasis added-HM)

Angry yet?

"For if the bulk of the public were really convinced of the illegitimacy of the State, if it were convinced that the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large, then the State would soon collapse to take on no more status or breadth of existence than another Mafia gang. Hence the necessity of the State's employment of ideologists; and hence the necessity of the State's age-old alliance with the Court Intellectuals who weave the apologia for State rule." -- Murray Rothbard

In our near future: Healthcare rationing. Government sucks.

For some utilizing our enlightened modern medical system, stupid federal rules are leading to delay in treatment:  

South Carolina health officials are petitioning the federal government to overhaul its "discriminatory" Medicaid rules after a local construction worker was denied coverage for breast cancer treatments because he is a man.
Raymond Johnson, 26, found out about his cancer last month. He visited the emergency room after a pain in his chest became unbearable. He already knew he had a lump there but, "being a male," assumed it was a cyst.


When the tests came back, "I found out I had cancer."
Thoughts flashed through his head, he told FoxNews.com. "Is this gonna be it for me? Am I gonna die?"
He stepped outside, he said, and "talked to the Lord." He resolved to do what had to be done to deal with the disease.
But when Johnson, who is uninsured, applied for Medicaid, he was swiftly rejected. The reason? He is a man.
"To me it's really dumb. ... It's not as common as a woman having breast cancer, but we do have it," Johnson said.
The state of South Carolina agrees with him. Since Johnson applied for coverage, the state Department of Health and Human Services has been in talks with federal Medicaid officials about the possibility of changing the rules. Tony Keck, director of the state health department, said in a statement that the federal position is "discriminatory" and urged the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to show some flexibility.
"This is a very clear example of how overly rigid federal regulations don't serve the interests of the people we're supposed to be helping," Keck said.

article here.


The way medicine used to be in this country, before Medicare started distorting how healthcare was delivered, people paid for their care for routine visits, and carried catastrophic insurance.  Doctors worked on a sliding scale, and did some patients for free.


The healthcare insurance applicants were vetted and risk stratified for coverage by their insurance company, as insurance companies do for any other kind of insurance.  Insurance companies competed for people to be insured.  Prices for both delivery of care and for insurance were much less, and we had the best medical care in the world.  


Fast forward through Medicare, Medicaid, Hillary's health care task force, the rise of the HMO's and Kaiser Permanente models, and progressive socialist legislation by both parties, and we are on the verge of a socialized rationed healthcare system, which will eventually collapse.  


Central planning cannot efficiently allocate resources. Only the market itself can do that.
Oh, and yes, government sucks.

Memphis 1878 = USA 2011; The Yellow fever economy

Most Americans' reaction to the economic mess and the Friday S & P USA credit rating downgrade:

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A long but very worthwhile verbatim post from the weekend edition of LewRockwell.com by one of my favorite columnists, Gary North.


Read it all:

Financial columnists of the sky-is-sagging perspective have searched for an accurate metaphor to describe the current economy. We have all failed.

"A slow-motion train wreck" doesn't work, because train wrecks as bad as what we are facing are high-speed.

Then there is the "car without brakes." But at least the driver can take his foot off the gas pedal. Congress is accelerating.

I have promoted "the burning trestle." But, again, the engineer could put on the brakes. No such luck. Congress is accelerating.

How about "the Titanic"? That's closer to it. But there was a specific timetable available. The ship's designer knew how long the ship had. There were some lifeboats. "Women and children first!" (Actually, the boats were not all filled. If a person had leaped off the deck, he might have swum to a half-filled boat. A few did.) The male passengers knew they were doomed. They adjusted mentally to reality. There was no yelling and screaming. There was no blame-shifting, since the captain planned to go down with his ship. There was a dull acceptance of reality. That's surely not Congress.

So, I have tried once more. I have dug into American history to come up with something plausible. I fear that it is too plausible.

MEMPHIS, 1878

In early summer, 1878, telegraph reports announced that yellow fever had broken out in the Caribbean. On July 27, it reached New Orleans.
Yellow fever was a dreaded disease. When it struck a city, many thousands of residents came down with it, and thousands died. It had hit Philadelphia in 1793, with devastating effects. There is a book about this: Bring Out Your Dead.
Physicians knew in 1878 the disease's symptoms and deadly effects. They just did not know what transmitted the disease. A Cuban physician, Carlos Finley, theorized in 1881 that a variety of mosquito was to blame, but this was not proven until Walter Reed's team conducted research two decades later in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War in Cuba.
In 1878, experts knew that it was a summer disease. It always ceased when cold weather hit. They knew that it was deadly. In the 1850s, New Orleans was hit four times. About 20,000 people died. In 1873, a quarter of the residents of Shreveport, Louisiana died from it.
They also knew that it was relentless. It would spread up the Mississippi River, day by day. There was no stopping it. It had done so three times before in Memphis: in 1855, 1867, and 1873, when 2,000 people died, a fearful 40% of those who came down with it.
What were the results in 1878? When the disease hit, 25,000 people fled the city. About 17,000 people did not. Of these, 80% came down with the disease. About 5,000 died. About 80% of these were whites. This was normal. In Africa, the disease had always killed a far higher percentage of whites than Africans.



The city collapsed economically. It lost its charter in 1879. The state took over the city's finances. It took 20 years for the city to recover.
But this is not the heart of the Memphis story. The heart of the story is this: the population sat, nearly immobile, as word reached it, day by day, that the plague was on its way north.
We know the phrase, "a deer in the headlights." For a few seconds, a deer is immobilized. But then it runs. People don't. You have heard that a frog will not jump out of a pot of water if the water warms slowly to boiling temperature. It's not true. But people will stick with hopeless projects and dreams for years, only to lose everything. Few events confirm this better than Memphis in the summer of 1878.
In a fine article, "Epidemic," published in 1984 in American Heritage, the author described the two weeks leading up to the plague.

Like someone alone at midnight hearing approaching footfalls on the stairway, Memphis waited while the disease came nearer. On August 9 word came of yellow fever in Grenada, Mississippi, only a hundred miles to the south. But boosterism whistled brightly. "Keep cool!" said the Memphis Daily Appeal four days later. "Avoid patent medicines and bad whiskey! Go about your business as usual; be cheerful, and laugh as much as possible."

That paragraph has stuck in my mind for over 20 years. I have watched the debt of the United States government ratchet upward relentlessly, just as yellow fever moved up the Mississippi in 1878. The boosters – on Tout TV, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and virtually all academic economists except for the Austrian School – have assured us that deficits don't matter. They have also warned us not to take patent medicine, such as a the twin ideas of a Federal budget surplus and a gold coin standard.
"Laugh as much as possible," they have assured us. "Don't worry. Be happy." Economic growth will let the government meet its obligations. No, it will not pay off the debt. The Federal debt is said to be eternal. But the Treasury will make the interest payments, keeping investors happy – rich investors.



Problem: for every dollar invested in government debt, the private sector is not funded. Capital flows to Washington and out again to the welfare-warfare state's constituencies. The government's percentage of invested funds keeps growing. But, the boosters assure us, "There is no such thing as crowding out." This is a corollary of their fundamental axiom: "There are government-supplied free lunches."
Back to Memphis. On August 13, the first yellow fever death was reported. The boosters stopped boosting. They ran. So did 25,000 others.
The word "ran" is a euphemism. They could not run. They could barely walk out. The roads were clogged with refugees.

"On any road leading out of Memphis," one survivor recalled, "could be seen a procession of wagons, piled high with beds, trunks, and small furniture, carrying, also, the women and children." The male refugees walked alongside, either despondent or excitedly shouting to each other. Boats and trains were jammed. People forced open windows and doors and fought their way aboard. "The ordinary courtesies of life were ignored," recalled John M. Keating, editor of the Daily Appeal and one of several who would write books about that appalling summer and autumn. "There was only one thought uppermost … an inexpressible terror."
Inside of ten days, some 25,000 people poured out of the city – anyone who had kinfolk or could afford to rent accommodations in places as far off as St. Louis, Louisville, and Cincinnati. Passage was neither easy nor unobstructed. Nearby towns set up quarantines, backed by gun-toting enforcement committees. Many who fled were turned back or forced to camp in the woods. A few unlucky steamboat passengers spent the whole epidemic trapped on board, refused permission to land anywhere.

This has played out in crises as far back as there are records of social crises. People sit calmly, self-assured. Then a great fear grips them at the same time. They try to get away. But the cost of getting away is high. Not everyone can escape.
So it was in Memphis. About 11,000 blacks stayed behind. Of these, fewer than a thousand died. "Virtually every one of the 6,000 white men and women still in the city fell sick, and there were 4,024 deaths – almost a 70 percent mortality rate. The number of deaths rose in September to nearly 200 per day."



The author goes on to describe hellish scenes. I shall mercifully skip over them. But this description is memorable.

Yet what left the strongest impression on some was not these grisly sights but the overpowering emptiness. Keating recalled that "an appalling gloom hung over the doomed city. At night it was silent as the grave, by day it seemed desolate as the desert. There were hours . . . as if the day of judgment was about to dawn. Not a sound was to be heard; the silence was painfully profound. Death prevailed everywhere. . . . Even the animals felt the oppression and fled from the city. Rats, cats, or dogs were not to be seen."

There were stories of heroism, of physicians and nurses and nuns who stayed behind to nurse the ill and dying, and who died for having stayed. Some 54 physicians came down with the disease – about half of those who stayed behind – and of these, 33 died. There were also stories of cowardice, drunkenness, and theft. In other words, in the crisis, people's character became clear to others. This is normal.
There was even a "prostitute with a heart of gold" story. One local madame sent her staff away and turned her house into a hospital. She served as a nurse. She died. The upper class citizens, on their return, buried her in Elmwood Cemetery, where members of the upper class were buried – and still are, a walled-in garden spot in the midst of a very poor neighborhood. (It was within walking distance of the church I attended.)
You can read the entire article. I recommend that you do.
UP THE RIVER IT COMES
This week, the U.S. government came to a last-minute agreement to increase the debt ceiling by at least $2.1 trillion. That is supposed to tide the government over until January 2013.
Think about this. The Federal government plans to spend at least $2.1 trillion more than it takes in over the next 17 months. This is no secret. It was the basis of the deal.
A bipartisan committee will be set up that will identify spending cuts ("no" will vote the Democrats) and tax increases ("no" will vote the Republicans).
If the committee fails to propose solutions – if! – there will be automatic cuts by the President in January 2013. Note: even if a new President is elected in 2012, Obama will preside over these allocated spending cuts. He will still be in office for three weeks.
Then, with a new Congress and maybe a new President, the Federal government will have to eat the famous S-sandwich – or else borrow more. The debt ceiling debate will come to the forefront again.
We can see where this is headed. Think of New Orleans in late July of 1878. The plague has hit. The deficit will eat into the debt ceiling, month by month. Up the mighty Mississippi of government spending will come the plague, city by city.
Obama hopes to get this issue out of the campaign in 2012. Maybe the boosters will be successful again. After all, they were successful until August 13, 1878 in Memphis.
Maybe we are farther up the banks of river than we think. (I know we are up the creek without a paddle, but that is a different metaphor.) Maybe the Federal Reserve System can keep the party going beyond 2013. But there is no early winter in this scenario. There is no day of deliverance. It's summer from now until the plague hits.
About 17 years ago, Agora Publishing invented a new advertising tool, the bookalogue. It replaced the then-fading magalogue. A bookalogue was a cheaply printed paperback book that was mass-mailed to mailing lists. It sold newsletter subscriptions.
The commercial bookalogue was modeled after the highly successful paperback book by Rear Admiral Jeremiah Denton, When Hell Was in Session (1976). That was the autobiography of Denton's years in a North Vietnamese prison. It was mass-mailed as a fund-raiser. It got him elected U.S. Senator from Alabama in 1980.
Agora's bookalogue was The Plague of the Black Debt (1994). It sold a lot of newsletter subscriptions. It also informed millions of people who read at least part of it. It was the right title. But it was premature. Here we are, 17 years later, still watching the Federal debt climb like a rocket – a booster rocket – yet with the 90-day T-bill interest rate at six-one-hundredths of a percent. That was not conceivable in 1994.
TODAY'S BOOSTERS
Today's boosters take comfort from the fact that national government debt is still being funded at low rates, at least outside of Greece, Portugal, and Spain. They proclaim that, in theory and in all likelihood, it will always be funded at low rates.
Boosters are everywhere. They have dominated the media throughout my lifetime. Boosterism became the favored outlook after 1945. It was appropriate back then. Social Security was not yet a source of red ink. Red ink arrived in 1977. Carter hiked FICA rates and promised that this would last until the year 2000, but the program was busted again in 1983, when Reagan and Congress raised the tax again. It is now in red-ink mode again. More money is flowing out than is flowing in. The Trust Fund is selling its IOUs back to the Treasury, and the Treasury is using money from the general fund to make up the difference.
Medicare arrived in 1965. It will bankrupt the government if it is not changed. So, it will be changed. We know when: in the midst of a monumental crisis, called "The Can Is Too Big To Kick."
If "kick the can" is not the phrase of the year for 2011, there is no justice.
The boosters know the can is growing. But, for as long as Congress can keep kicking it, they will continue to boost.
This is merely the Federal government's debt burden. There are state and local burdens. Then there is the massive debt burden of consumer debt, which must be rolled over. It is never paid off, any more than government debt is.



The boosters scream for more government spending whenever consumers slow their spending. That is the Keynesian mantra. They are dominant in the media. "Consumers must spend!" This requires more debt. The boosters recommend more consumer debt.
Consumers are willing, but their budgets are tight.
Banks are not lending. They are sitting on top of $1.2 trillion of excess reserves at the Federal Reserve.
Small businesses are not borrowing, either. Same reasons as the bankers: fear of the future.
Keynesianism is visibly failing. But Keynesianism's 75 years of unpaid bills have not come due yet. They will.
Red ink will produce yellow fever. We can see it coming up the river of Federal spending.
Anyone who pays attention can see this. The vast majority ignore it. They do what 25,000 residents of Memphis did until August 13. They sit tight. They hope for the best.
In panic, they will run for the exits. There will be few, and they will be a lot more expensive than they are today.
CONCLUSION
Agora in 1994 called this the plague of the black debt. I call it the yellow fever economy. It is the same economic problem: massive debt.
The U.S. government is a sub-prime borrower. The major credit-ratings agencies do not admit this, any more than they admitted it with respect to low-income real estate borrowers in 2007.
There were boosters in 2007. Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial was a booster. Chuck Prince of Citicorp was a booster. Stanley O'Neal of Merrill Lynch was a booster. They are all gone now – very rich, but gone.
There will be other boosters who will be long gone after this strain of yellow fever has killed off the dreams of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. These boosters will not be buried in the equivalent of Elmwood Cemetery after the plague has departed. I am working on my list. You should work on yours. One name is sure: Ben Bernanke.
The news reports are clear. The yellow fever economy is coming. But most people sit tight. They listen to the boosters. "Keep cool! Avoid patent medicines and bad whiskey! Go about your business as usual; be cheerful, and laugh as much as possible."
Don't.

August 6, 2011

Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.

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Best of luck to us all:

The Broken Window Fallacy: Learn it well

Written for my 12 year old, and shared with you.

In your political education, you need to learn the lesson below and always consider it, every time a Statist politician talks about "creating" jobs, internal improvements, etc.,. This is a key lesson to learn, one that I cannot emphasize enough:

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The broken window fallacy
excerpts from ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON by Henry Hazlitt
Chapter II, "The Broken Window"
_________
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A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window of a baker’s shop. The shopkeeper runs out furious, but the boy is gone. A crowd gathers, and begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window and the shattered glass over the bread and pies. After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection. And several of its members are almost certain to remind each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune has its bright side. It will make business for some glazier. As they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it. How much does a new plate glass window cost? Two hundred and fifty dollars? That will be quite a sum. After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business? Then, of course, the thing is endless. The glazier will have $250 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $250 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum. The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles. The logical conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor.

Now let us take another look. The crowd is at least right in its first conclusion. This little act of vandalism will in the first instance mean more business for some glazier. The glazier will be no more unhappy to learn of the incident than an undertaker to learn of a death. But the shopkeeper will be out $250 that he was planning to spend for a new suit. Because he has had to replace the window, he will have to go without the suit (or some equivalent need or luxury). Instead of having a window and $250 he now has merely a window. Or, as he was planning to buy the suit that very afternoon, instead of having both a window and a suit he must be content with the window and no suit. If we think of him as part of the community, the community has lost a new suit that might otherwise have come into being, and is just that much poorer.


The glazier’s gain of business, in short, is merely the tailor’s loss of business. No new “employment” has been added. The people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, the baker and the glazier. They had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor. They forgot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene. They will see the new window in the next day or two. They will never see the extra suit, precisely because it will never be made. 


They see only what is immediately visible to the eye.

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One of the principle fallacies of big government economics: Job creation by central planning and redistribution of wealth.

The example below is related to the broken window fallacy as far as the lesson of what is seen and what is not seen:

(Looking at this cartoon, think about Congress' and Obama's spending hundreds of billions [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] on "shovel ready jobs").

What is seen: The temporary shovel ready jobs, and the satisfied local union workers that got them, you know, the ones in the SEIU.

What is unseen: All the money utilized without efficiency in the making of this job creating machine, and all the things that the taxed people cannot buy themselves that would improve their lives, and support other industries and other peoples jobs). This is a cost in your money, and your freedom to choose what you'll do with what you've worked for.

NOW, having been armed with the lessons above, you are better equipped to read, understand, and criticize this kind of article, by  Commissar (er, I mean Congresswoman) Nancy Pelosi, of the People's Republic of San Francisco.

Knowledge of economics should determine your politics.

We earn less, AND can afford less for the same labor.

"The vast majority of tax return filers – more than 97 percent – reported incomes of less than $200,000. The average income was $54,283, a drop of more than $3,500, or 6 percent, from 2008. That put the average income at its lowest level since 1997."

Link to Politico

What does that mean, exactly?

From The Inflation Calculator:

What cost $3500 in 2008 would cost $3541.78 in 2010.
Also, if you were to buy exactly the same products in 2010 and 2008,
they would cost you $3500 and $3385.41 respectively.

Not only does the average wage earner earn 3500 less, in 2008, the extra income of 3500 would have bought that much more than what the same $ buys two years later.  This is how you are robbed of your wealth. Dribs, drabs, a thousand papercuts, boiling frog, and all that.  Too slow to see in action until it's too late.

Guess what? It's too late.

If everyone realized this, it should unite right and left against the root causes: Central banking, fiat currency, Big Government, and crony corporatism.

Anybody as angry as I am?

Welcome to the Gulag, my friends

"Turn your head to the left, and cough."

Verbatim post:

I just opted out of the porno fucking scanner at Detroit Airport, and I was molested by a female agent of the totalitarian state. She put her hands into my pants (INTO), grabbed my boobs, felt my vagina, and checked me over in every nook and cranny. She even spent an inordinate amount of time unraveling my shirt collar and playing with it. My traveling companion – who has traveled very little in recent years – looked on in horror. I took the smartass approach most of the way. This truly was a sexual violation.

Welcome to the gulag, my friends.

I intentionally snuck over to the line with old-fashioned metal detector scanner thing, as always. Three or four folks in front of me went through unimpeded. As soon as I stepped up, the man pointed at me and then pointed at the porno scanner. I said “no way.” The calls went out: “Female assistance needed! Female assistance needed!” They made me wait ten minutes, and of course, the gal asked if I wanted a private room. I said nope, I want everyone to see this*.
I must admit – I had a female agent that was probably as good as one is going to get at the TSA. She was a “Mom” type, and not one of these Janet Napolitano clones who are suited well for jack boots and male trousers. She actually seemed uncomfortable doing it.

As to the question of what to do should you find yourself in this position – absolutely, and always, opt out of the tactic to control you and keep you at bay. Chertoff’s porno scanners are not only perilous to your health – that is, if you value great health – but they are the state’s reminder that your freedom is a privilege that it arbitrarily hands out on occasion, and don’t you dare forget it.

8/4/2011, Karen DeCoster

(*emphasis added. Also, wondering if the female TSA agent felt balls, cause this lady's got a pair)

This is for all you dems and progressives out there.

Quote of the Day 8/4

General Jackson and Little Sorrel

"Military men make short speeches, and as for myself, I am no hand at speaking anyhow.

The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon; and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard."

Professor Thomas J. Jackson, Virginia Military Institute, April 13, 1861

Deo Vindice

Hey Obama, pay your f*ckin' bills

Tellin' it like it is.  Hilariously funny and totally depressing at the same time.


This guy sounds like a southern racist teabagger...don't tell Rachel Maddow or Janeane Garofalo. 

 H/T to the Humble Libertarian.

And so far, the American people have wasted time rearranging the deck chairs...

When do we try to re-take the ship?

Quote of the Day 8/2

To define the nature of a government truly, I would say, that a power of distributing property, able to gratify avarice and monopoly, designated a bad one; and that the absence of every such power, designated a good one.

John Taylor, 1820, Virginia
Leading proponent of Jeffersonian principles of States' rights and limited federal powers.

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Modern English translation: 

If a government can take away personal property for redistribution, to satisfy greed or aid monopoly, [and I would add: aid other individuals, corporations, or governments], that's bad.

If government has no such power, it's good.

Our government today: Bad.

Photoessay, my trip to Greeneville, TN and Lexington, VA

Hey y'all

I just got back from my weekend in Tennessee.  I wanted to see the progress on our house in Tennessee.  It took a direct hit when the tornadoes that hit Alabama when on up through Tennessee and Virginia on the night of April 27-28, 2011.  Three months later, my dad working almost non-stop, with the help of literally dozens of Church volunteers, day camp kids, and neighbors, the property has taken on the look that it had the day before the tornado hit. Of course, a lot fewer trees.

We had a great weekend together.  Great food, great time with family, ice cold creek water on a hot summer day.  I had a nice day at the range (see below :-)).  

View of the house from the road above. What looks like a green shrub just to the back of the car in the foreground is actually the 3 month growth of the re-rooted sycamore stump, that missed killing my dad by a couple of feet.  His truck was the wedge that prevented the full weight of the tree from crushing the house and him with it (he stood against the wall inside, in line with the falling tree).  Thank the Lord for his protection. New roof, new joists, new view (used to be that you couldn't see the house from the road, or the view of the mountains from the house).  The mountains are part of the Cherokee National Forest.
Literally 3-400 meters up the road a house was completely destroyed, and is being rebuilt by volunteers from the ground up. All materials donated. Our next door neighbors (directly descended from Robert E. Lee, from what I'm told) donated all the windows. My dad donated insulation.    The family had no insurance, and no reserve to re-build.  One of the tents outside the house proudly displayed the battle flag.  I wanted to take a picture for the blog and to share with Mr. Tuggle at Rebellion Blog (Flags of the Rebellion), but I didn't want to seem intrusive in their time of stress.  

Icy cold spring fed creek skirts the property.

Remington 798 (700 stock made with a Mauser bolt made in Serbia) in .243 @ 100 yards, from the bench with a Caldwell sandbag, and a Leupold VX-II 3-9 x 40 scope. Humid, 95 degrees, no wind. 1.06 inches.

That's for you, Dutchy--my best group! ;-)


Rifle recently glass bedded, trigger job (factory trigger re-set at 2.5 lbs pull weight) done by gunsmith Bill VanFossan, Dandridge, TN. I was very happy with Mr. VanFossan's work--highly recommended.

On the way back today, I stopped in Lexington, VA, to pay homage and say a prayer at the burial site of  Lt. General "Stonewall" Jackson. 


As promised, Brock, I kept you in mind while I stood beside the General's resting place.


 There are 144 Confederate veterans also buried in the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery.  It was a misty morning this morning in Lexington, adding an aura to the visit.

Oh, if you'd only lived a little while longer...

Lemons left in front of the tombstone by visitors familiar with the General's well-known habit. 

Mist covered web nearby, about 2 feet across

Deo Vindice

Crosses and flags mark the graves of the veterans of the CSA.

The quaint center of Lexington:

The round sign: "Virginia, Born and Bred"

Many quaint colonial and antebellum buildings are well preserved in downtown Lexington, VA

The rear and garden of Gen. Jackson's house when he lived in Lexington during the time he taught at the Virginia Military Institute.

Here is the music I listened to when I was leaving Lexington, heading North on Interstate 81, "Jackson in the Valley", played on original period instruments by the 2nd South Carolina String Band: