They’re burning books in the UK

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Phil Kadath

For heat.

Because coal is too expensive.

Volunteers have reported that ‘a large number’ of elderly customers are snapping up hardbacks as cheap fuel for their fires and stoves.

Temperatures this week are forecast to plummet as low as -13ºC in the Scottish Highlands, with the mercury falling to -6ºC in London, -5ºC in Birmingham and -7ºC in Manchester as one of the coldest winters in years continues to bite.
Workers at one charity shop in Swansea, in south Wales, described how the most vulnerable shoppers were seeking out thick books such as encyclopaedias for a few pence because they were cheaper than coal.

One assistant said: ‘Book burning seems terribly wrong but we have to get rid of unsold stock for pennies and some of the pensioners say the books make ideal slow-burning fuel for fires and stoves.
A lot of them buy up large hardback volumes so they can stick them in the fire to last all night.’

A 500g book can sell for as little as 5p, while a 20kg bag of coal costs £5.

A smoldering plot, indeed.

I’m not talking about what is between the book covers, I’m talking about the eco-socialist plot to make fossil fuels too expensive for people to use so they don’t freeze to death with all the glowball warmening.

Posted in Rampant Eco Socialism | 2 Comments

Can we finally be rid of these freaks?

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Phil Kadath

The well read should spread the word throughout the conservative/libertarian politics. Like fire.

Science fiction takes the reader into a strange world without God. Oh, there might be “a god,” a “force,” but it is definitely not the God of the Bible, and the prominent names in this field are atheists.

…..

Science fiction is intimately associated with Darwinian evolution. Sagan and Asimov, for example, were prominent evolutionary scientists. Sci-fi arose in the late 19th and early 20th century as a product of an evolutionary worldview that denies the Almighty Creator. In fact, evolution IS the pre-eminent science fiction. Beware!

In between those two paragraphs the writer, David Cloud, exhorts on the evils of reading Sagan, Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke and watching shows written by Roddenberry.

The religious right needs to be shuffled into the dustbin of history where they can just talk amongst themselves about how righteous they are for abstaining from possessing an imagination.

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | 19 Comments

The High Middle Ground

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Phil Kadath

Ding Dong Danny Westneat, columnist for the Seattle Times, introduces us to Mark Pursley

I’m not sure what people in Rainier Valley were expecting to hear from the Seattle mayor’s gun adviser, Mark Pursley. But it probably wasn’t this:

That he, Pursley, owns two guns, a Glock 9-millimeter and a pump-action shotgun.

That he’s a member of the National Rifle Association.

And that he believes there’s no way to stop Americans from continuing to buy guns so powerful and destructive, they could potentially bring down a jet from a mile and a half away.

“I’m not here to take away people’s guns,” Pursley, 48, told the Rainier Valley Rotary Club on Tuesday, in a talk on “Reducing Gun Violence in Rainier Valley.” “The Second Amendment means what it says — we have the right as Americans to bear arms.”

This is former Mayor Greg Nickels’ gun guy? The one Nickels hired so Seattle could be a leader on gun issues at a time the federal and state governments seem paralyzed?

Yes, it is.

Westneat spends his column trying to convince readers that Pursley is a “centrist” on the 2nd Amendment. I suppose that a guy hired by the bigot Nickels who thinks that kicking in doors and confiscating firearms would be a bad idea could be considered close to “in the middle” if you’re comparing him to Nickels.

But the guy also buys into the MAIG’s lies about what the Tiahrt Amendments does and doesn’t do and would like to see draconian registration of inanimate objects that go click and bang.

I believe that it is a huge step forward for firearms owners when the guy hired to be Seattle’s “gun law guy” wants to see criminals who commit crimes with firearms prosecuted to the fullest extent, and not just giving them counseling and a kiss on the way out the door. But for some reason his idea about strapping a bureaucratic Lo-Jack to the firearm tells me he hasn’t spent the proper amount of time thinking his way to “the middle”.

I can confirm that he isn’t in “the middle”, because I’m standing here and I don’t see him.

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Even Breitbart

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Phil Kadath

Can those guys find someone to write their own copy?

They took the feed off UPI and passed along the propaganda that went along with it like a venereal disease.

A Japanese whaling vessel rammed and sank a boat belonging to the environmental group Sea Shepherd, the group’s founder said Wednesday.

Paul Watson, who was on the group’s main vessel, the Steve Irwin, about 500 miles away, said the confrontation took place in Australian waters, The Times of London reported. He said the six men in the crew of the Ady Gil were rescued.

“This seriously escalates the whole situation,” Watson said.

Yes, his group’s actions, namely attempting to entangle the propellers of the Japanese ships by firing cables at them, has seriously escalated the situation.

And then to top it off, when the cables missed, they goosed the throttle trimaran around the large whaling ships to force them to either turn away or stop.

Except that, as our man Rivrdog will attest, boats on the open ocean don’t turn or stop all that well.

The Sea Shepherd folks know this and are foolishly willing to risk their lives for propaganda like this. They paint the boats in radar reflecting black paint and then do their pirate-like activities. They are, in fact, pirates. They attempt and sometimes even succeed in stopping legitimate commerce and shipping and if the Australian government doesn’t have them all arrested for piracy within their territorial waters they do the world a disservice.

I was watching a bit of, gag, the Rachel Maddow Show last night and she was running this story with the “Tear-Jerk-O-Vision” set on high. She then had Bob Barker on (yes, that Bob Barker) to talk about the millions of dollars he’s given the group and how mean the Japanese whalers are. Sea Shepherd has used Barker’s money and bought themselves a new boat, which bears his name.

Posted in Rampant Eco Socialism, Too Stupid to Live | 4 Comments

RNS Quote of the Day: 01/07/10

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Phil Kadath

Capitalism Strikes Again!

While we in the US seem to be heading in the wrong direction Chile, which adopted very liberal and capitalist market economics, has become the first country in South America to be invited join the ranks of the First World nations. It is being closely followed by Peru, which is now seen as the rising star. The fellow believers of our collectivists running this country from DC in such progressive bastions as Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador could not be reached for comment. Likely because they were too busy destroying their own countries and working hard to undermine those of their neighbors, in the name of social justice.

Alex in CT

We never see good news about capitalism from the so-called “Corporate Media”. How odd.

Posted in Quote of the Day | 1 Comment

Getting cut-off at the pass

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Phil Kadath

An attempt at holding back a tide or just kicking up dust?

Recent polls have shown the Tea Party movement is more popular than either the (D) or (R) parties. Drang informs us that a (D) operative in Florida has decided to borrow an idea from the folks who buy web addys in the hopes of selling them later.

There is much talk of the formation of a third political party based on the tea party movement.  In Florida, a Democratic operative with absolutely no connection to the tea party movement has filed papers to form a third party called the Florida Tea Party.  He has issued legal threats against local tea parties demanding that they cease using the name “Florida Tea Party.”

Someone needs to mock the whowhatsits out of that dudes name. I believe that this lady has some experience at doing that, and she’s already in Florida.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Ambassadors Dodd and Dorgan?

Posted on January 6, 2010 by Alaska

The ramifications of this are huge. Dodd and Dorgan, powerful senators, are taking bullets for the team. They are voting to pass health care deform, knowing that doing so will cause their defeat. So to save face and be martyred, they’ll take themselves out instead of having the voters do it. Obama will reward them not with 72 virgins, but with cushy appointments.

From here on out, I think the Democrats realize they are headed back to the minority. It may take 2012 to make it happen, but with that knowledge, they are going to go all out advancing their radical socialist agenda gambling that the GOP, back in power, will not have the guts or veto proof majorities to roll any of it back.

–Redstate

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 1 Comment

RNS Quotes of the Day: 01/06/10

Posted on January 6, 2010 by Phil Kadath

One thing leads to another

First

Of course there was “no single piece of intelligence” that spelled it out. You have to put the pieces together, genius.

Anyway, we’re not talking about a 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle here.

This was more like one of those children’s puzzles with four giant pieces that have to be laid out of the floor, and each piece gives you a pretty good idea of what you’re looking at.

Charles Hurt

Followed by she who linked to it

Really, do the Obami imagine that they bear no responsibility unless they get a note with the date, time, and place of the next attack, or that they only need to catch 75 percent of the plots? I suppose they can try to convince us of that, but there must be some voice of sanity cautioning against this nonsense. Right?

The Obama spinners who have descended on radio- and cable-news shows seem conflicted. They dare not defend the president’s shabby handling of the incident. The more candid of them concede he is “struggling to find the right tone,” but they plead that he’s really being treated oh so unfairly by all of these second-guessers and partisans who insist on finding out what went wrong. So the Obama supporters retreat to Napolitano-like talking points: no system is perfect, we are doing everything we can, and we have to learn to live with the inevitability of one of these bombers succeeding.

Jennifer Rubin

To which I can only add,

And in their next breath they say “But we’ll do so much better with your healthcare!”

Posted in Quote of the Day | 1 Comment

Really?

Posted on January 6, 2010 by Phil Kadath

So I woke up yesterday evening to find that the SeaTac TSA had volunteered Michael Yon for the lead in their latest production of Security Theater.

The same people who couldn’t stop the FBI from getting their MP5’s stolen by the baggage handlers (and still haven’t found the culprits, btw) handcuff a legend because he refuses to divulge how much he makes a year.

Yet another reason I’ll be driving to both Boomershoot and the Gunblogger’s Rendezvous.

To add another bit of news, anyone know how close our laws to these ones in the UK

The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.

Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to “virtual strip-searching” and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved.

Ministers now face having to exempt under 18s from the scans or face the delays of introducing new legislation to ensure airport security staff do not commit offences under child pornography laws.

The scanners wouldn’t have stopped the grannie-panty bomber or any jihadi who decided to keister the boom. So why are we doing this if it isn’t effective and we can’t protect the privacy of the citizenry?

Oh yeah, government is involved.

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 1 Comment

RNS Quote of the Day: 01/05/10

Posted on January 5, 2010 by Phil Kadath

I didn’t think I would ever quote this guy again. But he actually said something I don’t feel like mocking him for.

We have a government that cannot balance its books, defend its borders or win its wars. And what is it now doing? Drafting another entitlement program as we are informed that the Social Security and Medicare trust funds have unfunded liabilities in the trillions.

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the question is not whether we will preside over the creation of a New World Order, but whether America’s decline is irreversible.

Patrick Buchanan

Oh, it’s reversable. But only in two ways.

The first is knocking it down to start over again.

The second could take place in next year’s election.

Sebastian at SiH points out that the census is set to begin soon.Washington State is set to gain a new seat in the US House of Representatives. Likewise with Utah. Texas will very likely be getting at least three new seats (though some say four). Sebastian also says that Pennsylvania will be losing one.

The Dems won’t stand for a net gain of zero new blue state seats and a net gain of four or five red state seats and will gerrymander the whowhatsits out of these results if given even half a chance. Without a decent showing in November 2010 (and in Massachusetts three weeks from today) the Democratic Party will get to decide the borders for those new congressional districts.

As an example, even though the growth hasn’t been in Seattle proper, if the Dems are in complete control of Congress in 2011, I can guarantee you they’re going to justify squeezing a goodly portion of the new district into the city limits in an attempt to make another guaranteed (D) seat out of it. However, if we can get some decent numbers in the House, we can possibly put it where it belongs. Either one involves pulling part of the 8th CD off and combining it with the part of the 1st CD or the 9th CD to make the new 10th CD. During the housing boom both of these areas absorbed tens of thousands of new families leaving Seattle for better housing prices and more livable space.

The 8th is currently held by Republican, Dave Reichert, he beat ultra-liberal talk show host, Dave Ross, for the seat in 2004 and held onto it through two more elections against the hyper-progressive, Darcy Burner. By grabbing a little bit off one end or the other of the 8th CD and comining it with a grab out of one of the other adjoining districts, where the growth actually happened, the people will be accurately represented and Reichertwill keep his seat.

The new district will be very competitive for either party for the foreseeable future, which is how it should be.
The fed is even spending an extra $13Billion to “educate the children” on how important the census is.

If it is that important to them, it should be deathly important to you.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | 2 Comments