Well, if the Gang of 8 get their way, I’m not sure what there would be to prevent it

Update II and bumped to top: Here's the Levin bit I referenced below, in which he talks about McConnell's deviousness (and also about a bogus "conservative" group that is lobbying for the immigration bill).

“About six-in-ten Mexicans (61%) say they would not move to the U.S. even if they had the means and opportunity to do so. However, a sizable minority (35%) say they would move to the U.S. if they could, including 20% who say they would emigrate without authorization.”

Update: Sigh...Marco, Marco, Marco....

BTW, I was listening to Mark Levin while driving home tonight, and he said that Senator Mitch McConnell insisted that Rubio be included in the Gang of Eight in order to help corral conservative votes for the immigration bill. McConnell - who hasn't had much, if anything, to say about the bill - might look like a gaffed frog, but he's a crafty devil, pushing the bill by proxy so (he hopes) his fingerprints don't turn up on it. Very slippery, indeed.


"Gaffed frog? Hey, I resemble that remark!"

Imbecilia

I was somewhat surprised to find this article at MarketWatch, a popular online stock market site.

Entitled “Capitalism is killing our morals, our future”, it is written by one Paul Farrell, and is essentially a paen to Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, who thinks that the thing that is killing our society is the market economy. It is an article that is positively besotted with polyunsaturated stupid, not only in what it affirmatively claims, without any scientific evidence at all, but in what it omits, which, principally, includes any reference to the great shortcomings of alternative forms of economic organization. Perhaps the most enormous howler in the article is the total failure to see how the nefarious alliances between big corporations, banks and government represent, not the epitome, but the death, of genuine free enterprise.

Farrell is a peddler of psychobabble dressed up as financial and economic analysis (check out this very pointed critique), and Sandel (a tenured Harvard professor) is an advocate of communitarianism, perpetually in search of a non-secular basis for morality which, somehow, always seems neatly to coincide with garden variety progressivism and its insistence on collective (read “statist”) control (David Gordon deals with Sandel handily, in this article).

Submitted here as further evidence that high-priced university instruction is increasingly an exercise in fraud (why isn’t Sandel, who is critical of the market economy’s tendency to put a price on everything, dispensing his wisdom, free of charge, from a bench in some public park?)

“Progressive”

The word is practically an abbreviated algorithm for the assault on individual freedom. Pat Condell very clearly gets it.

Interesting poll

A Fox News poll recently revealed that a majority of respondents have a greater fear of the government abuse of their liberties than of terrorism.

I know: it’s just a poll conducted by the eeeeviilll Fox News. But it provides a tiny measure of hope.

Only a tiny measure, though. The question is framed to solicit a response to the government abuse of liberty in conjunction with its approach to dealing with terrorist threats. There’s already a substantial move underway by the national government to undermine our freedoms, and the rule of law, on numerous other fronts, as well: health care, second amendment rights, economic regulation, civil rights enforcement, and on and on. I don’t know to what extent the increasing domestic use of drones, plus the images of a city being shut down, its streets patrolled by armored personnel carriers brimming with SWAT teams, led to a collective gasp and some sober second thoughts about security and its tradeoffs; I think these images were not insignificant in stimulating a national conversation on the subject of how much security is too much. I worry, however, about those other fronts. Will we have to see – and experience for ourselves – the shutting down of hospitals and a severe, life-threatening decline in the availability and quality of medical care before we decide to seriously reactivate the debate on ObamaCare? Will we have to stand by and watch as policemen carry our firearms out of our homes before we finally see the danger of a national gun registry? Will we have to substantially alter, or cancel, our retirement plans because we ignored the evidence that the government has been criminally profligate for decades and that, as a result, our reward for a lifetime of hard work is national bankruptcy and a worthless currency?

I can’t say that I know the answers to those questions, but I confess that my stomach churns a bit when I contemplate the likelihood that far too few people know enough to be aware of the significance of the issues at all.

Monday movie

Joseph Cotton, a jaded serial killer, almost gives the game away in this dinner scene from Shadow of a Doubt.

Sunday funnies

It's a jungle out in there.

Hey, let's hide a real diamond in a glass of champagne at a charity fundraiser. What could go wrong?

This is the kind of marketing we value at Paco Enterprises:

Priceless is how Kent Pfrimmer describes the publicity he has received since surveillance video of a burglar trying, and failing, to break into his Redding store went viral last month.

Now the video of the bumbling, stumbling thief has been turned into a TV commercial for Pfrimmer’s business, Kent’s Meats and Groceries, and the 18-second clip is back in the national news.

Here's the commercial.

"12 geekiest examples of bathroom graffiti".

That's a great trick, but he can only do it once.


From the comrades at the People's Cube

Now that right there is what you call pitchin', son

Anibal Sanchez had quite a night, fanning 17 Braves in a 10-0 Detroit victory.

Picture perfect

Via the always awesome Moonbattery.

Marco Rubio, call your office

Attorney General Eric Holder has opined that citizenship for illegals is a “civil right”.

Get out while you can

First, Maryland governor Martin O’Malley initiates new restrictions on gun ownership, and now it turns out that the inmates are running the jails.

His excellency has presidential aspirations, so I’m wondering what his slogan is going to be.

O’Malley: Leveling the playing field between the law abiding and the criminal class.

Warning: If you buy an illegal gun and get caught, you, too, may wind up with a harem, a huge bankroll and a drug empire.

Well, maybe there’s an upside. Perhaps the state might be persuaded to license production of a reality show based on the events at the Baltimore jail and the state prison. I can see it all now…

Paco Productions presents Hoes with Badges!

(Or should that be Prison Guard Hoes and their Jailhouse Beaus?)

And to Gary D. Maynard, Secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services, all I can say is, “Heck of a job, Gary!”


“Hey, I’m going to work 24/7 to ensure that our jails are rid of the criminal element!”

Busted flush

President Obama’s choice for ambassador to France, investment banker and (surprise!) big Democratic fundraiser , Marc Lasry, has pulled his name from consideration:

The Manhattan billionaire President Obama wanted to appoint ambassador to France turned down the prestigious position over ties to an alleged Russian mob-run poker ring that was laundered through a Carlyle hotel art gallery, sources told The Post.

Too bad. Lasry is probably the least ethically-challenged person Obama has tried to bring into government.

Barry, the water you happen to be walking on is ice, and it’s beginning to crack.

Happy Feet Friday

Milt Buckner, best known as a pianist for Lionel Hampton’s orchestra, knocks out a little boogie here from 1949 with some assistance from Hamp and crew.

Lame. Very lame.

There was a protest against the NRA in McPherson Park today. Two of my taxpayer-funded windows overlook the park, and the protest was so laughably small that I didn’t even know about it until I read this article at The Examiner’s web site.

There were speeches? Really? I didn’t hear a thing. I guess the NRA’s special ops group cut the cables to the microphone.

I wish I had known about this in advance. I would have gladly strutted about, flashing the member’s card I have for the NRA’s indoor firing range at the national headquarters building in Fairfax, Virginia.

Short story: one of the directors of my agency is leaving to do campaign work for a Republican Senate hopeful in the south. While I was chatting with him in the hall today, a bearded, be-sweatered political appointee sauntered by. The director jokingly referred to his attire as being perfectly in keeping with his Marxist political philosophy. The political “joked” that, yes, indeedy, he’s working to bring about the socialist revolution, and hurried on his way. I told the director – not joking at all – “that guy is why I’m a member of the NRA.”

And that happens to be the truth. Thousands of these bureaucratic bees are working to construct the great Socialist Hive, mostly under the radar, and it is probably only a matter of time before we see a tyrannical government seeking to usurp the constitutional rights of the citizenry. Hell, we are seeing it already, at the national, state and local levels. And while democracy is fine as far as it goes, that system of government is not by any means a fail-safe guarantee of individual freedom. Contrary to Dr. Johnson’s asseveration, you can, indeed, argue some men into slavery, as long as you market it under the rubric of “security” and “fairness”. And if one person can be so persuaded, then it is not inconceivable that a majority might be. But my God-given rights are not up for a vote.

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in Government - Thomas Jefferson

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. – William Pitt

Never forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn't allow him to do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians. – L. Neil Smith

Update: Copies of this poster - designed by the same guy who gave us the Obama "Hope" poster - supposedly appeared during the anti-NRA protest today:



Didn't see any, myself, but, hell, yeah, I'd like to have one. It's got that cool Stalinist look to it. Reminds me what we're fighting against. I'd like to change some of the wording, though. How about, "Eat lead, you lousy red!"

A little too late...

...but still funny:



(H/T: Moonbattery)

Hopolapa!

Foreign versions of Pig Latin.

I suppose GE doesn’t want to jeopardize its prominent place at the public trough

GE is a huge beneficiary of the cozy relationship that provides for the smooth recycling of dollars back and forth between private businesses and their government pimps. Affiliate GE Capital just tossed another bone to the administration by cutting off credit to gun shops.

Not to larger retailers that sell guns, though. I mean, no need to be a fanatic, after all:

GE's ban applies only to retailers whose sole business is selling firearms, an "insignificant and immaterial" part of GE Capital's business, Mr. Wilkerson said. The lender is still doing business with merchants with more diverse lines of business, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation's largest seller of guns and ammunition, and Dick's Sporting Goods Inc., he said.

Assortment

Ace presents a mind-blowing summary of the contortions which “journalists” are performing in order to deflect the public’s attention from the primary motivation for the Boston Marathon bombings.

Related: Chris Matthews is now strangely uninterested in the terrorists’ motives.

Jeff Goldstein files for (cultural) divorce.

La trahison des RINOS (Sorry, Marco, but if this thing passes, you’re dead to me).

An Australian intelligence officer gets into trouble for telling an inconvenient truth.

Tired of the myopic sentimentality represented by those Coexist bumper stickers? So is Adam Carolla.

Hey, when it comes to productive investment, the government can really pick ‘em!

Today’s history lesson: how Jerusalem came to be a Muslim holy site (H/T: Jill J).

Ok, remind me again, why is Hillary Clinton the odds-on favorite to become the next Democratic presidential nominee?

There’s no tyranny like petty tyranny (unless it’s petty tyranny that aspires to something bigger).

Is Thomas Perez Obama's worst cabinet-level nominee yet?

Given the number of radicals and intellectual lightweights he's appointed thus far, it's a matter for some debate; however, Perez is certainly near the top. Moreover, in view of his far-left ideology, in conjunction with his contempt for the law, he bears a stronger resemblance to the president than anyone else at that level of government.

We’re CRAZY for Obama!

No stress relief in sight.

Let’s see now…

It’s ok to use the actions of one demented killer to restrict the second-amendment rights of millions of law-abiding citizens, but it’s not ok to use the actions of two foreign-born terrorists as a basis for reconsidering the headlong push for immigration liberalization sans border security. Got it.

Happy Earth Day!

From the American Spectator.

Liberals employ an interesting rhetorical device to deflect public musings on the nexus between Islam and terror

I believe linguistic technicians refer to it as “gobbledygook”.

Nice work if you can get it

Louis Farrakhan’s son, Mustapha, is a part-time cop for the town of Harvey, Illinois. Interestingly, the fact that he hasn’t worked a shift in four years hasn’t deprived him of access to a concealed-carry permit and a squad car.

Officer Farrakhan does, though, appear to do “police work” off-duty, more than a dozen miles outside Harvey city limits, in Chicago, where he uses his Harvey squad car’s lights to stop traffic and escorts his father’s unofficial motorcade, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.

The unusual arrangement that allows him to carry a concealed gun into places where regular citizens can’t, and to drive a police car, despite apparently failing to do regular police work for the suburb that employs him, may be especially useful to the man who leads the Nation of Islam’s “Fruit of Islam” security detail.

Abracadabra!

A country’s GDP growth is typically a function of a host of factors: internal and global market conditions, the diversity of the economic base, competitive advantage, sensible fiscal and tax policies, a sound private credit system, the relative ease with which private capital can be accumulated and deployed, and so forth.

But under Obama – the most innovative American president in history! – the prescriptive powers of the dismal science have been augmented with a new tool: prestidiginomics. The Bureau of Economic Analysis has but to wave its magic wand, and – Presto! – the U.S. economy becomes 3% bigger. I believe they can also pull unicorns out of their hats, but this strikes me as an act of dubious economic utility (unless, as has been rumored, unicorn urine is effective in the treatment of rickets, hemorrhoids, lupus and the West Indian dry gripes).

On a more serious note, Monty at Ace of Spades, in one of his fine “Doom!” posts, makes a point that can’t be made too often:

The most ruinous cost of the welfare state isn't the drain on the treasury, or the burdens it puts on the productive members of society. It is the rot it generates in the civic virtue of the citizenry.

This is one way that tyrannies are born.

Monday movie

Scientist Ray Milland discovers a compound that opens up a new career for him as a professional baseball pitcher (from It Happens Every Spring, 1949).

Spring (?)

Spring has made a fitful start here in occupied Northern Virginia, as a warm week, with a couple of light rainfalls, now threatens to turn into winter again with a decline in temperature to the upper 30s tonight.

Oh, well. Nice while it lasted. Anyway, it at least looks like spring today (click to enlarge and see the true beauty of my camera work)...









I was fooling around with some tools today, and I guess the guy who names them must have been in a bad mood when he came to this milling file...



Update: Er, maybe the weather here in Virginia isn't that bad after all.

Sunday funnies

You can apparently sue anybody for anything.

Out of work? Willing to seek employment overseas? Here's a well-paying job keeping an eye on a bunch of big rocks.

Before you pose for a picture next to that rattlesnake you just killed, here's an important safety tip.

Via Swampy: gun control legislation gets the Downfall treatment.

TimT condemns the slow loris (by golly, they really are slow).

Milton Merle gets heckled by Muppets.

Guilt by false association

James Taranto nails it:

What the hope-they're-white crowd really wishes for is a reason to treat their domestic political adversaries as enemies of the state.

Bagged!

Jihad Boy has been captured alive. Kudos to all responsible.

Dana Milbank breaks out the rustiest epithet in the whole arsenal of liberal insults

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank doesn't care for the outspoken conservatism of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and helpfully points out that, at 42, Cruz is the same age as - you guessed it - Joe McCarthy, when the latter "amassed power in the Senate with his allegations of communist infiltration."

Instapundit's readers have turned this observation into a hilarious new game. A taste:

“Obama is 51, the same age Joseph Stalin was when he called for the liquidation of the kulaks.”

“Dana Milbank will turn 45 next week, the same age as Walter Duranty was in 1929, when he secured an exclusive interview with Josef Stalin.”

A charge of McCarthyism is now the last refuge of the progressive scoundrel, and is the polemical equivalent of curling up in the fetal position, covering one's ears, and shouting "la,la,la,la, la...!"

Quite a week for this guy

Man survives both the Boston bombing and the explosion at the Texas fertilizer plant.

Tragedy in Texas

We offer up our prayers for those killed and injured in Texas from the terrible explosion at a fertilizer plant.

Things are now moving fast in Massachusetts

One bombing suspect is dead, and one on the run.

Oh, and they're from Chechnya. Looks like it's probably Muslim terrorism after all.

Happy Feet Friday

Ray Charles in a live performance of What’d I Say.

Open thread

I'll be offline for a day or two, so run free, commenters!

A few things to start the ball rolling.

I was watching the live stream replay this morning of the funeral ceremony for Margaret Thatcher. A military band played several funeral dirges, the Queen and Prince Philip arrived and were greeted by great applause, and then the horse-drawn caisson drew up in front of the cathedral, and Baroness Thatcher's coffin was carried on the shoulders of representatives of the different service branches inside. The occasion is a sad one, but it is always thrilling to see the spit and polish of the British military.

Later, the coffin was brought back out and put in a hearse, and the Queen and Prince Philip spoke briefly with Baroness Thatcher's children and grandchildren. All the while, the cathedral bells were ringing beautifully. The British really know how to do these things up right.

On this side of the Atlantic, it appears that both the immigration and the gun control bills are in trouble. Confusion to the enemy!

The New York Times has had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the courtroom to cover the trial of the Philadelphia Butcher, Kermit Gosnell.

Have a splendid day, and go with God.

Inevitable

I wrote yesterday that someone was bound to try to use the Boston Marathon bombing as an excuse for more gun control.

Idiot actor Jay Mohr obliges.

Upside, downside

Whenever there's an emergency in America, you will see ordinary citizens risking their own lives to help out.

And you will also see extraordinary a$$holes trying to make political hay.

Mark my word, before this is over, we'll probably see somebody try to link the bombing in Boston to the need for more gun control, or at least to the need for higher taxes and bigger government.

Update: Bingo!

The redoubtable Wes Pruden tackles Margaret Thatcher's detractors

"There’s something frightening about a tough woman with courage and conviction, when all about her the Nancy men are trembling in their Gucci loafers."

Plan ahead

Mother's Day will be at our throats again before you know it (May 12th). Instead of opting for the same old lame flowers or box of mixed cheeses, get her something unique this year, something to stimulate her mind.

Don't just sit there - you know...



...buy her a good book to read. Or mine, if you can't find a good one.

(Image via Powerline)

Glittering crash

For those concerned about the steep drop in gold and silver prices, and the dubious sustainability of the run-up in the stock market, there are alternative investment vehicles that represent a secure haven for your capital. Contact Paco Financial Services, LLC (Cayman Islands) and ask about repurchase agreements denominated in Guatemalan quetzales, and futures contracts on 18th-century porcelain chamber pots.

Paco Financial Services: Hey, money isn't everything.

Terror in Boston

We offer our prayers for the people killed and injured in the bombings that occurred today at the Boston Marathon.

May God bless the souls of the dead, comfort their families, speed the recovery of the injured, and deliver the culprits into our hands.

Update: Kudos to the responders, professional and amateur.

Well, well, well

Turns out that it’s Senator Bob Menendez (D-bag) who’s holding up the resolution honoring the late Margaret Thatcher.

Yes, that Senator Menendez, an ethically-challenged political hack whose historical significance will ultimately prove to be microscopic compared to the monumental achievements of Thatcher.

If the quality of our elected officials does, indeed, reflect our character as a people, then we are truly a sad lot. Of course, Baroness Thatcher’s own countrymen are doing rather well at disgracing themselves, too

The display of incivility has not been confined to the usual suspects — trust fund radicals, union thugs, coddled “students,” entertainment humbugs…and other divisions of the bone idle looking for a little fun. One of the most repellant proceeds from a balding, overweight, 52-year-old Scotland Yard sergeant, who tweeted that he hoped Mrs. Thatcher’s death was “painful and degrading.”

Those were the days

Ah, the era of the muscle car. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have worked like a dog after school and during summers and put every dime into buying some of these things and just put them up on blocks. Today, my retirement would have been secure.

And speaking of retirement, Florida is looking more and more like a very remote possibility.

Monday movie

Gloria Grahame faces a grim future with Broderick Crawford in Human Desire.

Sunday funnies

"10 Little-Known Facts About Your Favorite Comic Book Characters".

This is something I'd definitely like to try at work.

After a busy morning, chasing one another around their playpen, Doug and Skeeter - the official ferrets of Paco Enterprises - catch 40 winks.


Outwitting the taxman, Spanish style.

I have the satisfaction - I think - of not being this bad a writer (although describing pants as "a southern necessary" strikes me as kind of cool).

Gorilla vs. Canada goose (note the gorilla's hilariously lame chest pounding as he retreats at high speed).

How to crush your opponents at Scrabble.


(Via the outstanding People's Cube).

Priorities

The Obama administration, for all its talk about reducing gun violence through chipping away at the second amendment, has been notoriously delinquent in aggressively prosecuting gun crimes.

But steal The Man's teleprompter, and the law will fall on you like a ton of bricks.

North Korea: the problem with "mirroring"

Bill Whittle talks about the absurdity of proportional response.

Hey, preshizzle: "North Korea is not Belgium".

Jonathan Winters, RIP

Jonathan Winters, one of the greatest improvisational comedians of all time, has died at age 87.

Thanks for the many, many laughs, Mr. Winters.

(H/T: Protein Wisdom)

Here, Jack Paar hands Winters a stick as a prop; the rest is sheer improvisational genius.

Strange silence in the legacy media

For some odd reason, the case of Kermit Gosnell – the Butcher of Philadelphia – is attracting almost no attention among traditional news outlets.

I kid, of course, about the silence being odd. A ghoulish medical psychopath would normally generate quite a bit of news, but not when the grisly facts tend to clash with the standard liberal abortion narrative. So, for right now, the excuse is it’s just a “local crime” story.

My views on Marco Rubio are…

…what’s the word? Oh, yes. Evolving.

With Rubio’s curious maneuvers on the immigration bill, and the 16 Republicans (including “conservative” Pat Toomey) who voted to kill off the possibility of a filibuster on the gun control legislation, I am more convinced than ever that the GOP is on its last legs as an effective national party. I don’t know that a third party – shall we call it the Constitutional Party ? – would be very successful in the beginning; however, the Democrat model for society is going to collapse at some point, and we should start laying the groundwork for an organization that will be in a position to begin picking up the pieces. An alternative, of course, would be for grassroots organizations to do everything within their power to drive pusillanimous and/or unprincipled elected officials from the existing party; it’s conceivable, though, that establishment Republicans are so thoroughly entrenched, and promising new conservative politicians are so easily fetched by their blandishments, that the task may be well-nigh impossible.

Meanwhile, I, er, dreamed yesterday that I found an AR-15-type rifle (with a 30-rd magazine) online and purchased it. Looking forward to my next two dreams: picking it up at the store, and taking it to the range.

Father Kapaun honored

Army chaplin Emil J. Kapaun has been awarded the Medal of Honor (posthumously). Read about this Christian hero here.

Happy Feet Friday

Billie Holiday sings “Summertime”.

Maybe they think the wrong side won in the Cold War

Democrats in the Senate are apparently blocking a resolution to honor Margaret Thatcher.

Class with a capital "K".

Good news!

The sequestration won't affect the Department of Homeland Security's request for bagpipes.

Dog's breakfast

The Julia Gillard chew toy.

Shout, sister, shout!

Regular readers of this blog are familiar with my occasional rants against the Washington metro system. In freezing weather this year, several of the trains I road had cold air blowing inside. Two years ago, during a dreadful hot spell, I rode the train to and from work for five days in a row, and there was no air conditioning (the temperatures inside the cars approached a hundred degrees). There are track problems and train malfunctions (usually doors that won't close) every single day.

And then, there's the escalator problem. I have related previously that, when I purchased my second home in Richmond, I picked out a lot, had the contractor build the house, and closed on the whole thing in less time than it took the escalator crew to finish servicing one escalator at the Vienna station. Now, Mary Katherine Ham finds out that the guy who has presided over escalator maintenance has just been promoted to head of the track and engineering services unit.

It's kind of like the Peter Principle, except that, under that proposition, I believe employees are generally assumed to have at least started out with some degree of competence before ultimately being promoted beyond their ability.

Lock and load

(Image via Legal Insurrection)

A retired Navy SEAL talks about your right to self-defense.

Sarah Palin scores again

Ed Driscoll has the quote of the day.

Rush Limbaugh has a great suggestion for a title for Hillary's new book

"What Difference Did I Make?"

I mean, what in the world is there that's remarkable about her tenure as secretary of state? Benghazi? North Korea? Iran? Where is the success? Where is anything in a book that anybody would want to read about Mrs. Clinton's tenure as secretary of state? What are her monuments?

Whew! What a relief!

Slow Joe Biden says that opponents of expanded background checks – to whom Biden endearingly refers as “the black helicopter crowd” – have nothing to fear.

“No way that Uncle Sam can go find out whether you own a gun because we’re about to really take away all your rights and you’re not going to be able to defend yourself and we’re going to swoop down with Special Forces folks and gather up every gun in America,” Biden added mockingly. “It’s bizarre. But that’s what’s being sold out there.”

Once again, a member of this administration beclowns himself by asserting that proposed gun legislation isn’t about politics, then proceeding to very politically demonize people who disagree with the administration’s position.

Hey, but McCain says we can trust these people, so it’s all good.

Too good to save for a Sunday funny

Moonbattery recently had a caption contest featuring a photo showing some NK troops on maneuvers. Check out both the photo and the caption winners (particularly the hilarious 1st place entry).

As for the uniforms: I’m not sure that camouflage pattern would help you blend in anywhere, except possibly the produce section at Safeway’s.

In other commie news, John Boot has more on Robert Redford’s film valentine to the Weather Underground (typical Redford: history shorn of perspective, absurdly romanticized, pasteurized, and sanitized, slathered with earnest left-wing applesauce and served up with a heaping helping of smugness). This one ought to go straight to DVD Betamax.

Update to first item:


Kim Jong Un's generals show off their collection of taxi medallions.

Margaret Thatcher, RIP

One of the political giants of the 20th century is gone. Margaret Thatcher has died of a stroke at age 87.

Her passing brings wistful thoughts of the glorious 1980s, when people of honor, vision and determination – Thatcher, Reagan, Pope John Paul II – faced up to the communist tyranny that had destroyed so many millions of lives over the preceding 70 years and knocked the rotting props out from under it. One also recalls with admiration and pride how Thatcher and Reagan defeated the machinations of statists at home, and ushered in a period of unprecedented individual initiative and economic freedom – a time, I fear, that may well prove to have been the Indian summer of liberty. How small and ineffectual the representatives of even their own respective political parties appear to be these days, how ominously ignorant and unserious the electorates that have restored to power the contemporary peddlers of the soul-destroying ideologies that Thatcher and Reagan combatted – and combatted, not with bitterness and anger, but with élan and joy, happy warriors secure in the justness of their cause, and confident in the ultimate wisdom of a genuinely free and self-reliant people.

Some may say that the only serious thing in which they erred was in their belief that the value of individual freedom – and its corollary, individual responsibility – would always trump the false blandishments of the provider state. Others may assert that they didn’t err at all, and that a world that seems to be showing signs of spiritual and cultural exhaustion may yet undergo another renaissance as the age-old truths irresistibly reassert themselves.

I think the real truth is that Thatcher and Reagan understood both the value, and the fragility, of freedom, and that the battle to secure this greatest of social goods is generational and permanent. They did not shrink from doing their duty in the time allotted to them. It is an epitaph we all should aspire to earn.

Chavista presidential candidate Nicolas Maduro employing time-honored campaign techniques

Like putting a curse on unsympathetic voters.

I suppose the next steps will be voo-doo dolls and chicken blood. Or perhaps the very un-supernatural measure of inviting in a few thousand Cuban military "advisers"

Monday movie

Kirk Douglas plays an emotionally scarred survivor of the Nazi death camps who has settled in Israel in The Juggler.

Glad you finally admit it, John

Senator McCain "doesn't understand".

Sunday funnies

How not to market ladies’ plus sizes.

April fools jokes: in this age of ignorance, it’s probably better to err on the side of caution.

For you people in New York and Colorado and Connecticut who have seen your ability to use guns for self-defense restricted due to new legislation, you might want to consider this option.

When all else fails…

Save a fortune on Rogaine with these thrifty alternatives.

Things I learned while standing in the check-out line at the supermarket

1) The pregnant Kim Kardashian is now as big as a Port-O-Potty (200 pounds and counting). Her increasing heft is being exacerbated by engorgement on ice cream and candy.

2) John Travolta's wife Kelly Preston is allegedly angry at John over an alleged gay episode between John and an alleged "hunk on a train". Allegedly. (There. That ought to be libel-proof).

3) Obama told Hillary Clinton that if she writes a tell-all book, she'll never be president. To which I respond: call his bluff, Hillary. Write that book (Please write that book).

Sweet!

It's official: the U.S. Army considers me, a Roman Catholic, to be a religious extremist.

Allah akbar! No, wait, that's not right. Oh, I've got it: Bingo!

(H/T: Captain Heinrichs)

“The main difference between headaches and Bill Moyers is that headaches, even the worst of them, eventually go away”

One of the most repugnant hypocrites in America is at it again - on the public dime, of course.

Moyers has spent the better part of his adult life trying to live down the ignominy of having been one of Lyndon Johnson’s most pliable stooges, a craven hack who fully lived up to Johnson’s vision of the loyal assistant (“I want him to kiss my ass in Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses”). But even though he’d like to bury public memory of his sordid operations as a Johnson hit man, he did completely embrace the Johnsonian ideal of big government, and his imposture in subsequent decades as an American philosopher, cloaking a desire for the endless expansion of the Great Society hokum in a fog of pseudo-intellectual grandiosity, is one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on television, public or private.


“Hey, quick, before I go on the air: is there any slop clinging to my snout bristles?”

Related: Ace ponders another group of execrable, and far more dangerous, hypocrites.

Assortment

Washington, D.C.: where good government goes to die.

Hey, GOP, see what a little pluck and determination can do?

Actually, there is accounting for taste; and when it comes to Michelle Obama, the cost is definitely on the high side.

Now, here’s some fashion, via Pat Austin, that looks good and didn’t cost the taxpayers a dime.

CNN talking air head Piers Morgan opposes gun ownership by citizens, unless they happen to be citizens paid to protect his property.

“We don’t want to take your guns away from you. Really and for true, we don’t.”

What’s the benchmark for financial incompetence (or worse) that you have to hit before you’re either run out of town on a rail, or thrown in the jug? If you’re one of Obama’s top donation bundlers, I believe the answer is “infinity”.

Bob Belvedere lauds a heretofore unheralded group of British resistance fighters.

Have you ever wondered what Barbie would look like without makeup? Well, no, probably not, but Lance Burri has, and the speculation is rather interesting.

Meanwhile, Rev. Steve Burri reads today’s gospel passage.

First politician: “Well, we’ve taxed just about everything there is. What’s left?”

Second politician: “Say, I know! How about rain?”

Boy on a Bike looks way back in time, sees something strangely familiar (scroll down to "Xenophon").

Speaking of looking back, U.S. workforce participation has fallen to 1979 levels.

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy (or maybe not).

A good cartoon roundup by Walla Walla Tea Party Patriots.

Chivalry, if not dead, is at least comatose.

The next voice you hear...

If you've wondered what Tim Blair sounds like, here's your chance to satisfy your curiosity. Friend, commenter and volunteer research assistant, Jill J, sent this audio recording of Tim appearing on the Steve Price radio program. Jill, herself, can be heard at approximately 32:30 as a call-in.

Happy Feet Friday

Claude Thornhill and his orchestra knock out Buster’s Last Stand.

Mysterious disappearance of newspapers

No, I’m not talking about the decline of print media. I’m talking about newspapers vanishing from people’s driveways in our neighborhood. A vigilant local seems to have identified the problem: a family of foxes has established a burrow under her utility shed.



What the foxes plan on doing with the things, though, beats me.

Second Amendment poetry

She may be an Obama supporter, but, like most liberals (I suspect), she's not above bending her political views when it's a matter affecting her own personal life: "Poet Maya Angelou Blasts Gun at Home Intruder".

Big hat tip to Jonah.

A little bird told me

Heh. Hugo Chávez wannabe Nicolas Maduro claims his late mentor recently appeared to him in the form of a bird.

I believe it. I bet he sees the bird everywhere he goes…



The phenomenon is not as rare as you might think. For example, Joe Biden has been intruding upon my dreams in the form of a bird for years, now…


”And another thing: did you know that ObamaCare is not only free, but that it also gets rid of wrinkles and hemorrhoids?”

I’m withholding judgment for the time being

According to a recent poll, 4% of voters believe that our society is controlled by lizard people.

Ok, seems a little weird at first glance, but can you really blame them?





H/T: Hot Air.

All aboard the freedom train!

"Saudi religious police lift ban on women on bikes".

Of course, there are a few rules:

[W]omen must be accompanied by male relative and dressed in head-to-toe robe to ride bikes in parks, recreational areas.

Arab spring, baby!

Right, Benghazi was just like D-Day

Chris "Tingle Pins" Matthews has a new political squeeze, and her name is Hillary Clinton:

Matthews began his April 1 broadcast pushing hard for a Hillary 2016 campaign, and his latest comments were aimed at building Hillary up to the level of smartest-woman-in-the-world status. Matthews also likened Mrs. Clinton to WWII hero Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower.

Hey, why not start with Joe Biden?

And save $99,999,999?

Actually, I believe his thought box has already been mapped...



So we can save the whole hundred million.

You're welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer!

Update: The People's Cube has already mapped the liberal brain.

That toddling teetering town

How many years before Chicago starts looking like Detroit?

H/T: Doug Ross.

For that matter, how long before the rest of the country starts to look like Mexico?

An outstanding April fool’s post from Zero Hedge

What if Ben Bernanke, in a fit of guilt and self-loathing, just came clean?

Update: An even better April Fool's joke from Lucky Gunner.

Your local skid row public library

Daniel Flynn at The American Spectator laments the conversion of public libraries into homeless shelters.

I began to notice the trend, myself, when I lived in Richmond. I’d go to the main library downtown every so often to look at the sales rack of books, or do job research (the bank I worked for was being purchased by a much larger institution and the odds of near-term unemployment were looking ominous). The homeless were numerous: lounging on couches, lolling on the front steps. I remember one occasion when I was sitting at a small table reading, and a few feet away, on the other side of a bookshelf, I heard a seriously mentally-ill person delivering a monologue (to himself) about some very ugly sexual fantasies, tinged with homicidal urges. There was another fellow I’d see there all the time, looked kind of like the late ex-Surgeon General, C. Everett Coop (if he’d been very much down on his luck). He’d take books and magazines down from the shelves, and sit at a table scribbling page after page of notes on a yellowing pad of lined paper. Once he got up and placed a phone call to the office of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond and commenced a pro-abortion rant at whoever answered (I imagine it was probably an office secretary; the person apparently hung up on him after a minute or two).

These days, I believe the library maintains a policeman or two on the premises during business hours. Not as bad as the library described by Flynn in the linked article, but I still wouldn’t go in there now unless I was packing.

You gotta be quick!

I recently purchased a Ruger 22/45 with the idea of saving some money at the range by using .22LR ammo. Of course, now .22LR is almost impossible to find.

Almost, but not quite. Lucky Gunner had something like 195 boxes in stock as of yesterday, so I ordered a few. This morning, they're all gone. If you buy ammo online, you've just got to keep constantly checking.

Incidentally, I highly recommend Lucky Gunner. They don't backorder; if it's on the web site, they've not only got it in stock, they tell you exactly how much they have on hand. I've ordered from them several times, and the service is excellent.

There's a word to describe people like that

Women who want to disarm other women.

Monday movie

In The Next Voice You Hear, God interrupts regularly-scheduled programming.