Take It All

According to the Wall Street Journal Obama's tax plan is based on bullshit and lies not based on the reality of the economy. If the government took every penny made by everyone making more than $200,000.00 they still would not have the money they need for their budget.
They are going to raise taxes on us. Maybe not directly in income tax, but it is still coming. Whoever you are, whatever salary you make, it's coming. Telling us that he is only going to raise taxes on people making more than $250,000.00 sounds ok to people making $30,000. Go ahead, soak the rich. But if that "rich" businessman has to downsize his business to meet his tax burden, and it's your $30,000 job he downsizes, exactly whose decision was that?
Taxes are a burden on the economy. Like putting bricks in the bed of a truck. You don't notice a few, but if you keep tossing them in, sooner or later, your fuel economy goes to hell, the truck won't accelerate as fast, and you don't have enough room to carry other things. Keep it up long enough, and the extra burden will break something. We are reaching the breaking point, and trying to collect more taxes with the mistaken idea that the economy can sustain it, well, scroll down and look again at the Hindenburg.

An economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance our budget, just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits.
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy

We knew this was coming, too.

A trillion dollars in new taxes coming in the next few years.

"President Obama's budget proposes $989 billion in new taxes over the course of the next 10 years, starting fiscal year 2011, most of which are tax increases on individuals..."

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
--Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

We Knew It Was Coming

Here it is. The elephant in the room. The Obama administration will seek a new assault weapons ban in it's first term. From ABC NEWS.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!
--Leonidas

Fail Harder, Fail Faster

As a service to all of you, I traveled into the future and brought back a picture of the economy of the United States after the recent changes take hold. Every time a politician speaks about the economy now, the stock market drops 100 points. Given the power of Pr. Obama to effect Hope'nChange, I think the results I brought you are unsurprising.

We can't expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.
--Nikita Khrushchev

Comparing the President to a Chimpanzee

Now the NAACP want the editorial cartoonist for the New York Post fired because somehow they have decided that a cartoon referencing a chimpanzee actually is referring to Pr. Obama, and that makes it racist, threatening and generally bad. It looks to me like a big stretch, but hey, they went for it. So, to be courageous, as the Attorney General has asked us to be, let's talk about this.

For eight years, Pr. Bush has been called Chimpy McHitler. He's the open subject of websites like BushorChimp, ChimpBushGotHumped, and this from the Huffington Post. Not subtle, not innuendo, an open insult to the President of the United States.

The 1st Amendment, the same one that makes it safe for all us to speak out on political issues, makes this sort of commentary legal. I am in favor of it. For all of us, in all directions. I think no politician should be immune from insult and satire.

I am willing to agree that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. I consider it every patriot's duty to follow the example of the fine people I have linked to in the previous paragraph. In fact, if we were going to be truly race neutral, the sites I linked to would add new pages, with comparison pictures of all the Presidents.

Why just chimps? I think TeddyRooseveltIsAWalrus.com would be a fun little project. Or LyndonJohnsonIsAHounddog.com. Why just Presidents? Let's just insult all the politicians by comparing them to animals.

Maybe Bush isn't the only chimp. There seem to be quite a few in Congress
--Phillip Slater, in the Huffington Post, Sept 7, 2007

Who wants to live like that?

On another site, I answered a question posed in another comment. I decided it was worth posting here.

In answer to your first question, “Should I buy a gun?” Buying a gun is in some ways like buying a car. There are lots of choices, size, power, riding comfort, and so on. There are also a lot of things involved besides the car itself. You have to learn to drive. There’s skills, maintenance, storage, extraneous expenses for tires, oil changes, breakdowns, etc.
So too with firearms. Rifle, shotgun, pistol? How powerful? What type of action? Asking “Should I buy a gun” is a starting point to deciding which gun or guns am I really considering. Find some experienced shooters and a well regulated range. Try various kinds of shooting. Only you can decide if gun ownership interests you.

Our club sponsors days every year for non-shooters to come free and try everything from .22 pistols to 12 gauge shotguns. Ask around. I think you might be surprised how willingly people that shoot will share what they know.

On your second question, “Who wants to live like that?” I would ask the reverse question. “Who wants to live totally dependent on others for their own safety?” If you hear someone breaking in tonight, what is your course of action? Call 911? Then wait, hoping you are still alive when the police arrive?

I have a great respect for law enforcement, but they cannot be everywhere. Even if they come immediately, it will be several minutes before they arrive. When they do, they will set up a perimeter and access the situation before acting. Their first priority, and rightly so, is their own safety. You will be inside. Here's a commercial that sums it up.

If you don’t like guns, and think it wrong to have them, but are willing to call 911, what have you done? You have shifted the responsibility for your safety to someone else. Someone who has to come to you with a gun. I not only want to live armed, I consider it both a privilege and my duty as a citizen to do so.

Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense.
--John Adams

What Did We Learn?

Stewie from Family Guy always makes me laugh. Never more so than the episode where he offers to trade a baseball for a souvenir bat, then hits the kid with the bat and takes the ball back, and says "What did we learn?"

Here's a link to the video clip.

While the serious injuries that the victim in this attack endured are not funny, the question is still a valid one. Mauled by a pet chimpanzee, she has life changing injuries. The owner of the chimp tried to intervene with a knife and a shovel, but was unable to stop the attack. 911 was called and the police arrived. With guns.

When an officer was threatened by the animal, he shot it several times with his service pistol. The officer is uninjured. The chimpanzee is dead.
________________________________________________________________________________
UPDATE

More information has come out. Here's the link to today's article.

And here's the first line from the article:

The chilling screams of a crazed chimp mauling a Connecticut woman were captured on a 911 tape - along with the animal's owner begging, "Send police with guns!"

What did we learn?
--Stewie

Gangs

From USA Today comes a report of a federal investigation that found that gangs are behind up to 80% of U.S. crime.

So when BHO finds his excuse and disarms us all, do you think the gangs will give up crime and take honest work? Or do you think they'll celebrate that the last sheepdogs have been defanged and they can ravage the flock?

It is denial that turns people into sheep.
--LTC (RET) Dave Grossman

Honor Killing in the US

Here's the news that's guaranteed to disappear in about two days. Seems that up in Buffalo New York an Islamic TV Executive Beheaded his Wife.

Wanted a divorce, she did. So he did what any rational fellow would do. He beheaded her. Ya' know, because she besmirched his honor. My quote of the day will come from the news article itself.

Hassan is the founder and chief executive of Bridges TV, which he launched in 2004 in hopes of portraying Muslims in a better light.
--AP News

A Sudden Attacker

This incident happened a month ago. On the same day that the plane landed in the Hudson, a police officer was called out to subdue a mentally ill man that was behaving erratically. Now the headline reads NYPD prays for city cop stabbed in eye.

He has lost an eye, and the bleeding in his brain has left him with stroke-like symptoms. Things happen in an instant. The officer had an armed Taser in his hand when the man charged through the doorway, and was still stabbed. At that range, I'm not sure that a firearm would have made the difference.

My hope for today is that Sgt. Timothy Smith makes a good recovery and is able to go on with his life. It is his kind of quiet heroism, the kind of service that tens of thousands of police and firemen provide every day, that we rarely have have chance to notice.

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.
--May Sarton

Why is Pr. Obama Leaning on the GOP?

Recently Pr. Obama has been speaking out against the Republicans that have not been supporting his proposed $1T legislation for the recession. Why? He has the votes in Congress to pass it without any Republicans. Pass the thing. Then he and the Democrats can take all the credit when their spending fixes everything. The rest of the Republicans can be voted out in the coming Congressional elections and all will be right with the world.

I think he wants the Republicans on board because he knows this thing is going to fail, and fail big. Adding another trillion dollars to the debt and throwing money at everything won't fix anything. But if he has some Republican votes, when it goes down like the Hindenburg, he'll be able to say, "It seemed like the right choice at the time, it had bi-partisan support."

Then he'll do more of it.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
--Albert Einstein

Breda nails it

Here's the money quote for me:

The Second Amendment is only one part of that freedom. It is freedom's last resort, its guarantee.

You can read the rest of her Monday post here.

Islam group urges forest fire jihad

From an Australian newspaper comes the news that Jihadists are using wildfire as a weapon.

US intelligence channels earlier this year identified a website calling on Muslims in Australia, the US, Europe and Russia to "start forest fires", claiming "scholars have justified chopping down and burning the infidels' forests when they do the same to our lands".

The website, posted by a group called the Al-Ikhlas Islamic Network, argues in Arabic that lighting fires is an effective form of terrorism justified in Islamic law under the "eye for an eye" doctrine.

The posting — which instructs jihadis to remember "forest jihad" in summer months — says fires cause economic damage and pollution, tie up security agencies and can take months to extinguish so that "this terror will haunt them for an extended period of time".

The fire you kindle for your enemy often burns yourself more than them.
--Chinese Proverb

Guns and Pianos

Col. Jeff Cooper once said: "Having a gun and thinking you are armed is like having a piano and thinking you are a musician."

I think a more accurate metaphor would be: "Having a gun and thinking you are a shooter is like having a piano and thinking you are a musician."

When you have a piano, you have the tool, what sort of music you can make is the question. When you have a gun you are armed, you have the tool. What you may or may not have are the skills to use it.

It's why I go to the range and practice. It's why I shoot USPSA pistol matches. It's also why I am practicing Aikido. I want to have as much practice as possible for various situations, because if something ever happens, you have to face it cold. You won't get time to make ready. Your pistol will be concealed. You will be thinking about something else. It may one or multiple threats. They will be moving and they will be anywhere in 360 degrees. Your body will have mainlined you the adrenalin and your motor skills will be degraded. And you will only get one try.

In that situation, I may not be able to play Bach's Minuet in G, but maybe, just maybe, being able to to plink out the melody line for Camptown Ladies will be enough.

The purpose of training is to tighten up the slack, toughen the body, and polish the spirit.
--Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido

Old Cars

I've never owned a new car. Worse than that, most of the cars and trucks I have owned, I was the last owner. When I was done, they went to the salvage yard. It has given me a different relationship with automobiles than a lot of people have.

A list of cars, and what I spent on them tells a lot:

A 1973 Mazda RX-2 $1500, a 1960 Ford pickup truck $650, a 1976 Dodge van $1200, and then a 1970 MG Midget $1750. After this point, I did not have a car or truck for several years. We had one car together. When I finally bought a pickup again, it was a 1970 Dodge pickup $450, then a 1976 Ford F250 pickup $800, and the truck I drive currently, easily the nicest vehicle I ever had, a 1995 Ford Ranger $5000.

Mixed in here overlapping are her cars and our cars, and a couple of cars the kids have owned. A nearly complete list is : a 1970 Ford Maverick, a 1972 Fiat sedan, a 1972 Dodge Dart, a 1971 Oldsmobile station wagon, an 80 something Ford Escort station wagon, a 1970 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser Station wagon, a 1985 Pontiac station wagon, a 1983 Chevy conversion van, a 1991 Ford Escort, a 1976 Volvo station wagon, and currently her 1996 Taurus and my son's 1996 T-Bird.

Just running through that list in my mind makes me tired. I probably missed something. But no matter, the primary list is complete. The prices tell you what sort of machinery I was buying, and how much work I must have done to keep them on the road. All these vehicles are part of the history, all of them broke down, got dents, got older, got towed away. Some have epic stories, some are almost forgotten.

I still have a (I think I remember the size) 1 7/8" socket to remove the nut on the front of the crank shaft on an MG Midget. I definitely remember removing the radiator so I could get the socket on the nut, and removing the oilpan so I could block the crankshaft with a 2x4 so that the ratchet didn't just turn the motor. All so I could replace the front seal on the motor.

I remember swapping out the motor in a '73 Mazda RX-2. My first real automotive repair adventure. Considering my lack of skills and lack of tools, it's amazing it ever ran again. You really do learn from your experiences, painful though it may be at the time. More importantly, you learn how things work, and that leads to learning how to troubleshoot.

Breakdowns lead me to carry tools. In my new bride's 1970 Ford Maverick, we broke down the evening of our wedding day in a small town in western Maryland. So, instead of making our destination, we spent the night in a roadside motel, and had the car towed into town the next day. All because I wasn't prepared. So now, there is a fair sized toolbox, a manual for the vehicle, and spare belts and hoses along for the ride. Does that fix every possible problem? No, of course not. But it has saved us a lot of extra trouble along the way.

All of this leads in to a story.

When my youngest son was 3 weeks old, my wife decided that we were going to take the baby to Maryland to see my parents and her dad. She was afraid that if we didn't go, something might happen to her dad and he wouldn't get to see his grandson. So we went. In 1989, we were driving a 1970 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser. Windows in the roof, two-tone brown, 350 CI V-8. There was me, her, an 8 year old, two 4 year olds and the baby.

We left after I got off work on a Friday and drove north. In central Virginia, somewhere north of Richmond, around 9 PM, the fan got very loud, all at once. I pulled over, opened the hood, and after a minute figured out that the fan clutch had seized so that the fan now ran at the same speed as the motor, instead of slipping to some normal speed like it was supposed to. Besides the noise, I was concerned that the clutch would fail completely, letting the fan fall off and taking out the radiator.

We drove up to the next exit at about 45 mph, about as fast as I could go and still stand the sound of the fan. At that exit, there was, and here is where chance plays into it, a real service station. He was still open, although his mechanics were gone and their toolboxes were locked. He may have looked at that car, and all those young kids and felt sorry for me, I don't know, but he opened the service bay door and let me put the nose of the car in under the lights. He told me that he had no tools to lend me, but I had the toolbox in the car.

She took the kids for a walk, and I took out the fan shroud, the radiator, and took off the fan and the attached clutch. We went around back, and there, sitting in the mud, was a line of GM 350s that had come out of wrecks. He pointed and told me to find one that would fit. One matched up, I pulled the clutch and fan, installed it in the car, put everything back together, bought a gallon of anti-freeze and filled the radiator. He charged me $15.00. Wherever he is, I wish him the best, he treated me better than I could have hoped.

We lost about 3 hours, all told, and I drank coffee and drove through the night. We got to my parents about 4 AM.

There is obviously the element of luck, there weren't many full service stations left, even then, and if we had found ourselves at a food mart with gas pumps, I would not have been able to fix anything. But there are two other elements in this, one is skill, and the other is preparedness. Those I could control, and since they were in place, I could take proper advantage of the luck that came my way.

I liked that car, it was mostly dependable, and we took a lot of great trips in it. When I think of the years that the boys were young, that is the car I remember. That fan clutch was still working fine and the car was still running when I donated the car away 5 or 6 years later.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
--Seneca

Death, Friendship, and the Internet

I lost a friend I've never met last week. There are no real social protocols yet for online friendships. How do you respond when someone you only know online dies? This post is my response. It is all I have, and essentially it is an online response, so perhaps it will be fitting.

Years ago, back in the days of 28.8 modems and Windows 3.1, I first connected to what was then called the World Wide Web. We didn't know how big this thing was going to get, and there wasn't much commercial content online. Search engines were just being written. I can remember looking at books of links, like a big telephone book. Anyway, being an old Marine, one of things I first searched for was Marine Corps websites.

I found a forum site called the TheFew.com. It's gone now. But some of the people that posted there ended up at The Few, The Proud, The Marines Forum. We would post news, old stories, jokes, like any forum, with a emphasis on the Corps.

I met Jim Barton there. He always posted under the name Dittychaser. We had both been Marines, both around the same time frame, we were both Catholic, had children, and both of us were Boy Scout leaders. He always had interesting things to share. His insights, and his tone, made him stand out among the group. We corresponded on the board, and occasionally by email. I always made a point to look for his posts.

When two of my sons were hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2005, they ran out of money. I gave them what I could, and then did something I've never done. I started a fund raising effort. Scouts, Scouters, friends from work and church, all made contributions big and small. I wrote a post about it on the forum, and some of the Marines responded. Jim was one of them. He made a significant contribution.

This man, Scout leader and Marine, whom I had never met in person, wrote a check and mailed it to me so that two young men could continue a hike. He was that sort of person.

I learned last summer that he was very ill, the last email I got from him was in September, and it was a goodbye note that he must have sent to many friends. It was, as always, heartfelt and positive. His daughter posted this note on the forum on the 29th of January.

It is my loss that I didn't have the opportunity to meet him, to take a hike, or take a Scout Troop on a campout with him.

Goodbye, Jim. Semper Fidelis.

Since every death diminishes us a little, we grieve - not so much for the death as for ourselves.
--Lynn Caine