Snowflakes in Hell

Reverend Wright is the gift that just keeps on giving:

The Chicago pastor refused to apologize for suggesting black Americans should sing “God Damn America” instead of “God Bless America” and for suggesting America brought 9/11 on itself because, as he put it, “we have never apologized as a country” for slavery.

“Britain has apologized to Africans but this country’s leaders have refused to apologize,” he said. Wright also said, “You can’t do terrorism on other people and not expect it to come back on you.”

Speaking as someone who has never enslaved another human being, nor knows anyone who has, I think I can fairly tell Reverend Wright to go to hell.  One of the key concepts in American liberty is that we are not held to account for the sins of our fathers.  And speaking of our forefathers, is this not enough of an apology for you Rev. Wright?

While the Albany Times Union is busy suggesting New York State is about to mandate lasers, New South Wales is busy talking about banning them.

Christ no doubt wanted people to have great passion about their faith, but I don’t think this is what he had in mind.

US Airways is probably the crappiest airline on the planet.   Now there’s another reason that’s true.  Bitter and I are driving to Louisville in May, because of how much flying sucks.  Hopefully I won’t be flying again until Reno in October.

… but apparently respect is not one of them.  Just because someone has the constitutional right to do something, doesn’t mean it ought to be done, and doesn’t mean I won’t call you an asshole for doing it.

You have to wonder if Mr. Art Project had to watch his friends getting shot and blown up, had to kill other human beings, and endure psychological stress beyond what most people imagine, all because he thought the piece of cloth disrespectful college kids so casually walk all over was worth all that, whether he might be able to put himself in a shoes of a veteran who had.  I’m not an advocate of legally mandated flag respect, but that doesn’t mean I think these kinds of people aren’t asshats.

This week’s bonehead is Noreen O’Donnell.  How’s this for respecting the dead?

Charlton Heston once famously said, “From my cold dead hands,” and held up a rifle as a challenge to anyone who would dare take it away.

Well, now he is dead. No word yet on the rifle, but the battle over guns continues.

Classy, classy way to open up a story.

Every once in a while you’ll be reading an article, and you’ll come across something that just makes your jaw drop.  This article is about the conversion of my home county of Bucks from a Republican stronghold to a Democrat stronghold.  It’s happening all over the Philadelphia area, thanks to George W. Bush destroying the Republican coalition.  Thanks George!  People like this woman are typical:

This week was the first moment in more than a generation when the number of registered Democrats surpassed Republicans in Bucks county. “This has been a Republican stronghold for as long as I can remember,” says Marilyn Larsen, a former Republican member of the local school board in Newtown, Bucks Country, who recently registered as a Democrat. Mrs Larsen, a retired teacher, says that it was the Bush administration’s “hostility to science” and the spread of evangelical politics that helped push her across.

I can identify with this too, but it’s not enough to make me head over to ally with the socialists.  But maybe the Republicans should be happy to lose people like this woman, and here’s why:

“Let’s be honest about it, Barack Obama is culturally white – that’s why a lot of people round here are prepared to vote for him,” says Mrs Larsen, who has yet to make up her mind whether to vote for Mr Obama or Hillary Clinton, who retains a lead in the opinion polls. “But when they hear Michelle Obama speak they start wavering. She seems more African-American. People haven’t changed as much as they like to think.”

Congratulations Marilyn Larsen, you’re the bonehead of the week for that statement.  So she’ll vote for Obama because he’s white enough for her?   I could care less that Obama is white, black, green or Barney purple; his policies are the stuff nightmares are made of for advocates of smaller, limited government.

Ooops

Remember this guy?  Looks like Cam got his attention here:

Why, I know people who would put talk show hosts just below guys who sell night crawlers out of their kitchens, but I’m not one of them. No sir, I rank radio talk show hosts at least as high as telemarketers and bloggers. And if anyone ever doubted your personal sense of “classy,” I recommend they read the Manifesto feature of your blog — particularly that line about how you and your drinking buddies don’t want to talk about Lindsey Lohan anymore “until she eats something and gets her chest back.” Ah, now that’s class.

And how appropriate that Cam and his buds fashioned their blog after their Friday night boozing sessions. I have always felt that conservatives were at their wittiest when they had a few drinks under their belts — in their own minds if nowhere else.

What, what a great guy.  Read the whole thing.  If smug self-satisfaction could be transformed into matter, this guy’s would collapse into a singularity that would stand a pretty good chance of sucking the entire universe down with it.  It doesn’t really amaze me that these type of people exist, but it does amaze me that anyone pays attention to them.  I hate this crap as much when I see it on our side as I do when it comes from guys like this.

I will join Bruce in never buying Absolut.  Real Americans drink whiskey anyway :)

Apparently Alternative News Media in Idaho are run by a bunch of juvenile high school students.  At least that’s about the grade level this editorial is written on.  Actually, strike that.  That’s insulting to high school newspapers everywhere.

… Marion Barry probably wants some too.

… only out oh hell, when they do that it means society is coming apart at the seams.  The British people need to stand up and take their individuality back from the state, or it’ll be over from them.

How’s this for the bureaucratic nanny state:

Michael Sheridan was stripped of his title as class vice president, barred from attending an honors student dinner and suspended for a day after buying a bag of Skittles from a classmate.

School spokeswoman Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo says the New Haven school system banned candy sales in 2003 as part of a districtwide school wellness policy.

Michael’s suspension has been reduced from three days to one, but he has not been reinstated as class vice president.

If you think it’s bad now, just wait until government bureaucrats are in charge of your health care.

Hat tip to Cam & Company

Classical Values has a pretty good post up on former domestic terrorists, who are now respected academics, and are claiming their former terrorism was just a joke.  Ha ha ha.

… or, you know, I’ll shoot ya!  It’s amazing what these people think about us.

Tempered glass, as in the kind you’d find on a sliding glass door, will most definitely not stop a projectile from a potato gun.

If you’ve always wanted to lock up all the hippies,  this could be your chance.

… aren’t going to do much to help the cause of getting shall-issue carry passed in Delaware.

The Three Little Pigs is deemed “offensive to Muslims” by a British government agency, and was disqualified from winning the agency’s award.

Scroll down to “What does L.A. mean to Lindsay” and read.  She’s from Texas, is liberal/progressive, and moved to LA to live in a blue state:

Funny thing is, I think I sort of, well, in some ways, prefer living in a Red State.

Because if I have to hear one more piece of coastal Blue State snobbery, I think I will scream. I try to explain to folks here that in Texas cities we don’t shoot each other anymore than people do in LA, that we are actually sort of nice to each other every once in a while, and we also like going to sunny places with good beaches and good food.

Come to Pennsylvania Lindsay.  We’re a blue state without all the attitude.  But yeah, the weather kind of sucks.

Libertarianism was something I flirted with in college and in my early post college life.  I decided it wasn’t a political movement, so much as a religion, and it’s why walked away from it.  I’m not interested in being pure, I’m interested in being an advocate for causes that I think enhance personal freedom and limited government meddling in private affairs, and advancing those causes politically.   Libertarians, in my experience, are not interested in seriously advancing their ideas politically, because to do so, you have to build a “tent” that’s big enough and comfortable enough for enough people to get under to win.  Libertarians, in my experience, tend to spend more time about arguing over whether someone belongs in the tent than they do trying to grow it.

I would consider Megan McArdle a fellow traveler, and someone who belongs in our tent of people interested in promoting liberty.  But Megan McArdle has spent a lot of time lately criticizing Ron Paul, and recently suggested that Ron Paul’s demise is good for libertarianism.  Read the comments.  If you want to know why I can’t abide by “movement” libertarians anymore, read her comments.   I’ll pick out some choice ones:

Don’t think that we will forget this treasoness behaviour. What you do now will be with you for ever more. ‘When the time comes Megan,… when the time comes’.

And yes, that is a thinly veiled threat.

As the ‘Revolution’ grows, You have no idea.

I guess it doesn’t matter how many dissidents they have to put down in the name of liberty.

I am an anarchist and to me a statist, even a minarchist, is much worse than a racist.

Because a rule by the strong over the weak is guaranteed to have positive outcome for individual freedoms!

I don’t think we did lose big in NH. If you look at the towns that just didn’t count Paul’s votes and consider the lop-sided contridictions of the electronic vote versus the hand re-count … Obama probably beat Hillary and Paul probably took 3rd or 4th.

It’s a conspiracy!  I point this out not to poke fun at anyone but as a warning, because we have folks in the gun rights movement who also think this way, and who would place our movement far outside the mainstream.  Gun rights must be a large tent as well, and we also have folks who are interested in driving the insufficiently pure out of the movement.  Once we become that, it’s over.  The last thing we want the gun rights movement to look like is the Libertarian Party.

Yep, seems like a stupid idea to me too.

Eric has a post about eco-loons who run around keying SUVs.

People who are moralistic about their evil are worse — far worse — than ordinary criminals. As far as I’m concerned, those who think it is right to vandalize a stranger’s car for political reasons have shown themselves to be completely lacking in conscience.

I couldn’t agree more. I wonder if Eric knows about our friend Lynn Hoffman’s book “Bang! Bang!” where the protagonist engages in an act of this kind of vandalism against members of a fictional pro-gun rights organization. Anything is justified as long as it happens to the right people I guess.

These people have seriously lost their minds.  I accept the predators will be predators, but humans have brains that allow us to fashion weapons so that we don’t have to be prey; a good thing when you don’t have sharp claws or deadly canines, and can’t run all that fast.

Defending yourself against a predator is as basic a function of being a living creature as you can get.  These people have not only lost touch with what it means to be human, but also what it means to be part of nature.  I don’t blame the tiger; it was just being a tiger, but the police officer who shot the tiger was just being a human.  It was a profound natural act these people don’t seem to understand.