Speaking of throwing people off the bus…

David Codrea links to someone who does just that. He has quite the visceral reaction to it too, which I share, but still I thought I’d elaborate.

While it may be true that many blacks and Hispanics vote for politicians who don’t support individual liberty, I still don’t think it’s smart to unilaterally dismiss those groups. It only serves the enemy to do that; it makes us look even more like the racist reactionaries we’re so often unjustly painted as, and it results in fewer people on our side. I might have said it before, but finding a poor black man like Otis McDonald to be the face of gun rights advocates in Chicago was a stroke of genius because it showed that the cause was not just the domain of old white guys. And just how chickenshit is it to say that enlisting minorities is only going to lead to the end of gun rights? I’m guessing that dipshit cop’s not willing to use that fourth box, indeed, that he’d probably be one of the people going door-to-door rounding up the guns. And it strikes me that he’d probably even relish taking them from people like Otis McDonald. So who’s really the sellout here?

The worth of the rule of law

Another letter-writer in today’s San Antonio Express-News:

We have laws for a reason: to offer an environment of safety and prosperity for all citizens of this country. Should we all begin to rationalize which laws should or should not be obeyed, based on our own beliefs, and act upon those reasonings, we would, in fact, have no laws at all.

Yep, that really puts those agitating for the breaking of the new Arizona immigration law in a whole new light. They can say what they want, but the fact remains that illegal immigrants are breaking our laws. One wonders which other laws they will break, and how they’ll rationalize that. I saw something the other day that made the comparisons to Nazi Germany look like the insanity they are — if the law is THAT bad, why are people still clamoring to get in? It was the direct opposite for Nazi Germany — most of those folks wanted to get OUT.

Quote of the YEAR here, folks…

…from my wife, in conversation, regarding the choirboy in the previous entry:

He was trying to be a hard-ass who doesn’t listen to the cops.

You can’t really do that without kevlar.

I just can’t add anything to that but, ZIIIIING! She’s all mine, yes she is…

The cops didn’t know he was unarmed…

….so I’m having a really hard time working up any sympathy for this kid here, especially when his actions are taken into account. He didn’t show his hands when the cops told him to, AND he charged them? What the hell were the cops supposed to do? He may have died for nothing, but it was his own damn fault.

And the grass-eaters speak…

…here:

“This is one time I’d be on the coyote’s side. I’m not a Rick Perry fan,” said Nancy Williams. “Whoever heard of someone jogging with a gun? It sounds off to me.”

Yeah, whoever heard of that? Nothing bad ever happens to anyone out on the trail. Perry must have been feeling particularly small that day, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

On another note, I found it quite amusing that the wildlife protection groups offered Perry the same means of protection antis say women should carry instead of a gun. I never thought their outlooks would be so similar. Maybe they are willing to go out in the woods or on the jogging trail that unprepared, but I don’t see why they have to be so smug and self-righteous about it. But then I suppose that sort of thing does get bred out to an extent when the rabid animals come down the trail. It’s just a shame it takes so long.

Random music musings

Hearing a certain band, I am reminded of this, from Texts from Last Night:

You had sex with him even after he literally described himself as a “coldplay guy”? There’s a line you just don’t cross. There is a line.

 Seriously, that band is teh suck. They make 3 Doors Down sound like Pantera (and for the record, I actually LIKE a lot of 3DD’s stuff). And as far as pretentiousness — well, I’ve heard a lot of people bash Dream Theater (another band I REALLY like in spite of their naysayers), but Coldplay makes Dream Theater look about as pretentious as, say, George Strait. The addressee of that text must have been some kind of desperate. I wonder if the nook was worth it.

And I understand what Five Finger Death Punch was trying to do with “Bad Company.” I understand they were trying to put their own stamp on the song. That does not mean, however, that I think it worked. Nobody can sing that song like Paul Rodgers.

If only the governor had given the coyote what it wanted….

everything would’ve been fine…

Perry says he needed just one shot from his laser-sighted pistol to take down a coyote that was menacing his dog during an early morning jog in an undeveloped area near Austin.
…

When the coyote came out of the brush toward his daughter’s labrador retriever puppy on a February jog, he charged it and shot it with his .380 Ruger pistol.

And if bad went to worse, he didn’t need to shoot that poor thing. All he needed was a pen or a rat-tail comb. Or maybe he could have just pointed and laughed at it. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

In all seriousness, I have to wonder if anti-gun people have even a glimmer of an idea how stupid they sound when they say people don’t need guns. Sure, that was a coyote, but I really don’t think a criminal deserves any more consideration just because he is allegedly human.

How many standards…

…will there be here?

An Arizona congressman urged the Obama administration not to cooperate when illegal immigrants are picked up by local police if a tough new state immigration law survives legal challenges.
U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat, and civil rights activists spoke on Sunday to thousands of people gathered at the state Capitol and called on President Barack Obama to fight the law, promising to march in the streets and invite arrest by refusing to comply.
“We’re going to overturn this unjust and racist law, and then we’re going to overturn the power structure that created this unjust, racist law,” Grijalva said.

We see Rep. Grijalva going on and on about this law and overturning it, but we see not word one from him here about coming up with a better alternative to the law that would still protect the citizens of Arizona from the depredations of illegal border-crossers. I guess the congressman doesn’t really care about them, which shows he really doesn’t care about the oath he took either. Were I a family member of Rob Krentz (the rancher killed by drug smugglers on HIS property), I would be doing everything I could to see to it that Grijalva was ousted from office. I wonder how many of those halfwits doing things like telling the tea partiers to come up with a balanced budget are going to go to the folks in the Arizona Legislature and Congress who oppose this bill and tell them to stop wasting time flinging word vomit and come up with a better alternative. I’d guess it won’t be many, considering they apparently don’t understand the jobs of elected officials.

Another couple of points to ponder: Mexican flags being sold? Exactly where do these people’s allegiances lie? If not with the United States, then what the hell are they doing here? And how about the “overturn(ing) the power structure” remark? How does Rep. Grijalva propose doing this? Imagine that comment coming out of the mouth of a tea partier. Or Mike Vanderboegh. How would that be spun in the media? And why is it not even treated as an aside here?

Protecting the privileges of whom, again?

Yes, E.J. Dionne really said this:

Let’s remember that the truly “elitist” judges are the ones who protect the privileges of the powerful over the right of Congress to legislate on behalf of workers, consumers and the environment.

However, as we have seen before, he sees no problem with “the powerful” being the only ones entitled to their choice of the means of self-protection they wish to employ. He also sees no problem when “the powerful” see fit to deny those with less power their fundamental rights. The Citizens United decision has already been covered in numerous words here; but I still must say that I found it pretty funny that Dionne would imply that the Founders would not have known what to make of larger corporations, just as he and his ilk say the Founders would not know what to make of Glocks and M16s. Yet, again, Dionne said nothing of the fact that he was typing on a computer and that his witless screed would be seen by a multitude of people, by way of an invention that the Founders probably didn’t anticipate any more than they did ExxonMobil or the 15-round pistol magazine — an invention that may be used to spread all sorts of abhorrent, deadly ideas far and wide — the Internet. And of course you remember the old Stalin quote:

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?

And of course you know that those ideas can be implemented with the most primitive of weapons, with a frightful toll even without the Internet. See: Darfur, Sudan or Saudi Arabia.

Back to the screed at hand, though, it strikes me that E.J. Dionne thinks that democratically elected officials’ decisions should ultimately be the last word; and I find that to be more than a little bit frightening. Seriously, does he not know what the function is of the judicial branch of government? Or does he think said branch is only necessary to say that certain planks of the leftists’ platform are constitutional? Whatever the case may be, it looks to me as if the Supreme Court as of late is only erring on the side of liberty — at least in the cases in which leftists lament that the Founders could not have known the impact of the issues at stake in said cases — and that E.J. Dionne thinks that erring on the side of liberty is a bad thing. And, once again, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; but I just get more and more disgusted with the American left every time one of its pundits opens his or her mouth. Is there no depth to which these creatures will not sink?

Ooooh, burn!

Maya Angelou gets absolutely pwned in today’s letters to the editor in the San Antonio Express-News:

Re: poet Maya Angelou’s visit here to raise funds for Planned Parenthood:

I wondered if she knows the background of that organization. Does she know that Margaret Sanger, its founder, created the Negro Project designed to sterilize unknowing black women and others she deemed undesirable to society?

I guess that’s another of those uncomfortable truths about the policies that many blacks support that they don’t want to face. I’d hate to think that Maya Angelou did know about that but would excuse it. Either way, though, her PP association doesn’t speak well for her.