Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Hooray, Hooray...

...The First of May, outdoor f**king starts today. So does outdoor city-trashing by the commie-sympathizing anarchist crowd.

Well, we have riot cops and cameras for that. Didn't used to have the cameras. In those days, we just took the 42" white riot batons and went to town on the rioters. One small move out of form with a riot baton today though, and you are sued, screwed, blued and tatooed and the Black Bloc wins.

I couldn't do that work today.

Chavez cacked contest

Contest objective:

Come up with the most cogent reason to cheer at the news of Hugo Chavez' passing.

Answer in comments.

My entry:

Barack Obama just lost one of his beloved Socialism teachers. Maybe, just maybe, Chavez didn't quite pass on all the keys to Socialism to Obama before his death.

The next American Revolution

Will go off without the revolutionaries firing a shot, but it will bring down the Socialist Government as surely as if ten million men at arms rose up to oppose the Government.

Note to Rivrsis: yes, I am aware that the Government is not officially socialist, but it's masters sincerely desire that outcome, and you can only call skunk cabbage a salad green until it's time to take a bite of the salad.

Back to the revolution. To succeed, any revolution must have popular support. Not overwhelming popular support, but enough of it to make the government fall. In the case of the USA, I estimate that no less than 30% of the citizens would have to participate in this revolution for it to succeed.

What will be the weapons of the revolutionaries?

Their checkbooks and banking programs.

The ultimate revolution, and one for which the Government can never prepare (it is actively preparing for an armed revolution), is the cut-off of it's money.

What is the biggest obstacle to an armed revolution? The taking class is the biggest obstacle. There is a huge surplus of "cannon fodder" right now. The Government pays the way for probably 40% of the folks, and part of the way for another 10-15%. If an armed revolution broke out, the Government would simply enlist all those dependent folks to help put down the revolt. It's hard for an armed revolution to succeed when the partisans are outnumbered 2-to-1 by those who would turn them in, if not actually fight them. An armed revolution cannot fight both the government and it's colossal army of government dependent citizens. If you, John Q. Partisan, loaded up your car with your S.H.T.F. gear and guns and headed for your sooper-secrit militia rendezvous, you would be reported by snitches fifteen times before you got there. You would be engaged by hostile fire before you could join up with your putative comrades, and the armed revolution would die a-borning.

Consider a different revolution. It's three or four years down the road, and the Government has borrowed so much money and issued so much fiat paper that it now takes 75% of the revenue stream to just pay interest.

The revolutionaries have prepared, they have stocked up on food and put their taxpaying cash aside in their mattresses, or in gold, or some other secure place. On April 15th of that year, when the Feds normally finish collecting the 80% of their entire revenue take for the year, that huge chunk of the Federal necessary fails to come in. The folks who aren't takers, over half of that category or about 15-20% of the citizenry , just do not pay (the takers don't pay any tax anyway). The Treasury Department plays the pea and shells game for maybe 90 days, but then the defaults start cascading, and within 30 days, the conservative opposition asks for and gets the resignation of every liberal congresscritter and Administration hack. New elections are held on short notice, and since the stock market has crashed and the Dow is at 10% of it's pre-revolt level, no one can write those big checks to support new liberal candidates, so they lose and a veto-proof conservative government is installed. It immediately cuts Federal payroll by 60% and Federal expense by 40%, balances the budget, creates a surplus, starts paying down the national Debt, and passes a Balanced Budget Amendment.

Could the Socialists counter this tax revolt in the making? They would see it coming, as millions of taxpayers adjusted their witholding level to the legal minimum and stopped making their Estimated Tax payments (quarterlies). They might even make a splash and hurriedly try to jail the leaders of the tax resistance. For every one who went to the cushy Federal pen, a thousand would rise to take that resister's place, and soon, the Feds would stop that gambit. After all, they didn't convince the illegals to stop barging into the country, did they?

Nope, anything the Feds did to counter the tax resistance would end in disaster, and the fight against the resistance would be doomed on the first day the welfare checks didn't go out. Those takers are fickle, you see. They want their FREE SHIT, and if they don't get it, then some bullets would fly. It would be the welfare class shooting up the cities in rage at their FREE SHIT being cut off. There might be some riotous skirmishes, but sorry, Three Percenters, the guns aren't going to win this war, cash will.

That is the future of Revolution in this country, and the quicker the Socialists try to ram their failed system down the throats of the taxpayers of this Nation, the sooner that Revolution will come.

Socialism is doomed, you see, as long as there are enough people who still believe in earning their way. For now, that's slightly over half, but that half is plenty more than enough to carry off a tax revolt. 

My pothead Congressman

Yep, you read it correctly: MY pothead Congressman. U.S. Rep Earl Blumenauer, (D) East Portland, just came all out (or was that all in?) for Federal MJ legalization. He gets Maroon of the Month for that.

Before all you Libertarians jump all over me, I'm coming around to the idea of legalizing weed by states, but not by the dot.gov. Simple, really. The government can't afford to be in the business of encouraging stoners, simply because unlike fine whisky drinkers like me, they are a motley lot.

Seriously, let's get real. NO Government has any business legalizing ANY sort of intoxicant until and unless it can detect and control intoxicated behavior where such behavior is legally and practically inappropriate. The Government can do that, more or less, with alcohol, but has NOT learned how to do it with weed. Hell, the Government can't even control intoxication by prescription drugs, which it DOES control at the front end, but does NOT control at the user end.

Now comes pot and it's millions of users.

Society is getting further and further behind the power curve on protecting itself from people doing complex, dangerous tasks while impaired by intoxication.

Earl Blumenauer wants to make it worse.

Oh, well, I'm represented by a pot puffer. It could be worse. I could be represented by an actual socialist.

Oh wait...

"Lookism", aka, Liberal Hypocrisy

Lookism is a Liberal-invented evil going back to 1978. Back then, the WaPo coined that term to invent a new class of victims, those people thought to suffer within society because of their homliness, overweight, etc. Studies were ginned up showing the plain-as-mud-fence folks at a terrible disadvantage when compared to the "beautiful people".

Here's a Wiki on Lookism. Scan it for the origins of the concept, which is now "grandfathered" in to all the evils that conservative society (read: wealthy society) foists off on the hoi-palloi according to the Liberal set.

Okay then, we're up to speed on our word-play.

We all know that one of the main building-blocks of Liberalism is the definition of victim classes. That goes without saying. The basic building blocks of Liberal recruitment involve defining a recruit into a victim class, then convincing that newly-apprised "victim" that Liberalism/collectivism can do more for them to alleviate their victimhood than self-reliance. Even this strategy was not invented by Liberals, they stole it from religious theory on recruiting converts. To be fair, it's not all bad, this victim business. There ARE real victims, there IS real discrimination, and for us to have a fair and open society, something has to be done, some advocacy has to be made on behalf of the victims. Prejudice dies hard. Aristocracy dies harder.

So, in came "lookism". It came in at the same time that popular celebrity worship really started to take off, as the Hollywood moguls expanded mightily into the small screen. The small screen, when used judiciously to sell things and ideas, worked far better than the Silver Screen. As the fan-base of popular small-screen icons exploded in popularity, the practice we see now of total fan-worship became first a goal, then a reason-for-being of all entertainment. Now, of course, TV is being supplanted by various forms of the Internet such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkdIn, etc. Suffice it to say, the Entertainment media, in all their versions, are very good at spreading the victim-hood classism of the parent political belief, in this case, Liberalism.

Over the past 35 years, the entertainment media have both fostered AND fought against Lookism. They fostered it by promoting the boy-bands, the singers, the rising actors, etc. They fought against it by giving a ton of time before the cameras to the Liberal moguls who then decried the victim-status of Lookism victims.

Now we come to the latest Liberal political victim class, Potential Mass-shooting Victims. If you think about it, we are ALL such potential victims, which of course, MAKES us into victims. Pay no mind that just a moments' reflection will lead you to the obvious conclusion that the way to NOT be a shooting victim is clear: arm yourself with training and a weapon with which to defend yourself. This is Liberalism, and we shouldn't be bothered with logic or reason when there's emotion available to replace it, should we?

Now we come full circle.

"Lookism in guns"

WTF, Over, you cry in unison. Who in Hell cares what a gun looks like, as long as it functions?

Liberals care. They care a lot. That's why, when they introduce Civil-Rights denying, Constitution-violating gun-control legislation, they include Gun Lookism as it's main ingredient.

Senator Dianne Feinstein's complex (gun) Control Bill is mostly Gun Lookism. At it's heart is the proposition that if the gun at question looks evil, it is evil, and must be banned, because we all must fear guns. This happened before, in 1994. That gun control bill, known as the "Assault Weapons Ban" was all about lookism, but gun-makers soon learned that they could avoid the dreaded "Assault Weapon" designation simply by cosmetic changes, such as thumb-hole stocks instead of pistol grips, or "bullet-buttons" instead of magazine-release levers, or Picatinny Rails instead of permanent fore-grips.

All those tricks of the AWB-evading trade are swept away now, and Gun Lookism is more about bullet-dispensing function, although the Evil Black Rifle designations are still in there. Put a pistol-grip on a 5-shot, internal-magazine, semi-auto hunting rifle and it is banned. Put a "war-purpose" feature on a semi-auto pistol, and it is banned. We don't even know which "war-purpose" features for pistols are going to be designated (nor even how they are defined), but they are banned in the new bill, which was apparently being revised up to it's release today (and it was delayed two days).

To counter this emotion, this hysteria, we must do two things, both dealing with how YOU handle hysteria:

1. REFUSE to fear guns. You can sleep in a room full of them just as soundly as you sleep in a room without them. A gun is nothing to fear. Gun oil smell in the air works better than Ambien!
2. REFUSE to be made into a victim because you have some infinitessimal chance of being killed by bullets. All you have to do is consider all the OTHER ways you might be in danger, ways with PROVEN odds of that danger, and you won't have time to worry about gun violence.

Just do those two things. You are okay, you really are. You aren't a victim, either, and there is no need to toss out the Bill of Rights' Second Amendment because of made-up fears.

Thank you.

 

Inaugural punditry

Okay then, Obama can whip up some classic oratory. He showed us that much. Now that the Inaugural Address is done, and I WTWT, it's fairly clear to see where BHO's focus is shifting. He got just far enough off the main hook, thanks to Speaker Boehner's gift of time on the Debt Ceiling thing, to get on his battle-rattle for the Next Big Fight.

No, that fight is NOT going to be Gun Control. Yeah, there will be some shadow-boxing over a new AWB and the side issues, which should all fail, but POTUS will expend no more political capital on Gun Control.

The next, obvious biggie will be Immigration.

Don't think so? How about the Inaugural Poem, written by an Hispanic and dripping with Latin traditions and "up by the bootstraps" language? How about the Benediction, given by an Hispanic minister, with homily reflecting Latin traditions and partially spoken in Spanish? Plus the 2 or 3 references to immigration and hispanics in the main body of the speech. It all adds up, my friends.

Nope, Immigration is the thing, and the POTUS thinks that the GOPes are vulnerable, so the (D)onk sharks smell blood in the water.

Big Amnesty bill coming up very soon, likely to be opened at the State of the Union address. POTUS will try to run straight Amnesty down our throats, Amnesty leading directly to Naturalization and the Vote by the 2022 elections, when it will next make a big difference.

BTW, here is what the big Dirty Trick with Amnesty will look like. It won't kick in until right at the end of the Obama Nation four years from now. Why the delay, you ask? So the numbers of to-be-naturalized persons can be maximized by maybe 50% of present figures to give more political effect to the whole idea. If you don't think we are close to the end of the American Experience now, just envision what 15-20 million more (D)onk votes will do to this wannabe Socialist Worker's Paradise.

Think it won't happen? Take keyboard in hand and tell me why.

 

Nineteen Executive Orders

The gauntlet is down.

Today, the White House says it has "identified 19 Executive Actions" the President might take to effect more (gun) Control upon the law-abiding citizens of these United States.

All the newshounds are betting that an "Assault Weapons Ban" or magazine-capacity restrictions will NOT be among those "Executive Actions", as even the (gun) Control-happy White House seems to recognize that such lawmaking from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would be un-Constitutional.

So, what will those Actions be? Will any of them push the definition of constitutional Executive Action far enough to trigger action on Rep. Stockman's threat to offer Articles of Impeachment in the House?

There's plenty of speculation on what might be listed, but as I listened to Fox News' take on it this ayem, nothing jumped off the page of the five or six things mentioned as being much of a Constitutional stretch, but of course, the devil's in the details of how they are written.

The 900# gorilla still left in the room would be Executive Action trying to expand the current Federal purview of gun sales, currently limited to that required when purchasing either interstate or through an FFL, to ALL gun sales having to go through FFLs. That, in effect, would ban private sale or transfer, a right presumed by most to go along with the basic 2A itself. Since this perceived auxiliary right of the 2A has been somewhat eroded by State laws (New Yawk State is about to erode it further), one could speculate endlessly whether such an Executive Action is "new law" or not. This blog's take on it says that the present law requiring any Federal purview itself is un-constitutional, being a matter required to be left for the states to regulate as it falls within the definition of ordinary commerce.

This gun-blogger sees the "19 Executive Actions" press release as simple bragging by the White House, and perhaps an attempt to mollify the Left. Now that it's been announced that there are 19 items of Executive Action that the Prez is considering, the Left will begin to howl "issue all 19", and the schmoozers in the NRA will likely take the position that some are acceptable, instead of starting with the idea that there is no emergency here warranting Executive Action, and Congress must get the first shot at any new Gun Control initiatives.

With the basic White House Executive Action brag issued, the Prez will now shift his attention to the insane position he took yesterday on "pay the country's bills" as a euphemism for "let me raise my own debt ceiling", in defiance of the Constitution's Article 1, Sections 7 & 8.

Interesting that the House opened the new Congressional Session with a reading, Article by Article, of the entire Constitution on the Floor of the House. That's only the second time that's been done. Is Speaker Boehner trying to tell the President that maybe he needs some refreshing on just what the Constitution says abouut his actual powers?

An "opportune moment" ?

Yep, that's the call for more (gun) Control by the liberal press.

Just watched the Noon news, and it seems that the "opportune moment" people are doubling down:

• First, it seems that all of the parents who lost kids at the Newtown mass shooting have formed a (gun) Control group, "Sandy Hook Promise". I smell the filthy lucre of Michael Bloomberg here. I wonder how much he promised these aggrieved parents to put their "victim" names up front like this. Probably the same promises he made to Gabby Giffords. I say it's tacky, but then I come from a time when, even if you suffered the worst loss imaginable, you didn't wear it on your sleeve, you handled it privately in your own way, maybe through family, maybe through your church, perhaps through your circle of friends, etc. This politicization of personal grief SUCKS, especially when it is directly used as a blunt-force weapon to try to kill the most important Civil Right in the Bill of Rights. Shame on you, Sandy Hook parents. SHAME ON YOU. My heart went out to you a month ago with the advent of your loss, but now I feel nothing but revulsion for you. If there's ONE thing that should have been more important to you than your very children, it's the primacy of your Constitution. All of you have just shredded YOUR Constitution.
• Next up on the Noon News was Portland's new Mayor, Charlie Hales. At one point, he was THE most conservative of the Portland City Commissioners, now he's Mayor. Along the way, he seems to have lost his perspective. Since the retirement under fire of the Pedophile Mayor, several Commissioners fought for the top job (we have "strong Mayor" governance in Portland). Hales won, but now it seems he's signed on to Illegal Mayors Against Guns, and seems proud of being a joiner of Bloomie's corrupt, Constitution-hating Gang of 800. He also announced that he will assign himself, and presumably the City's paid lobbyist to the Legislature, the duty of supporting all the (gun) Control that comes up for discussion in the new Legislature, which just started today. That means he wants a State AWB, ammo-capacity limitations, bigger Gun-Free/Killing zones at or near schools, no private sales, etc. All the usual Brady apple-crapple.

Yep, the "opportune moments" abound for the (gun) Control freaks.

Will the Constitution stand up under this all-out assault on it's Second Amendment? Too soon to tell, but maybe these "opportune moment" people ought to be careful what they wish for: if and when the Bill of Rights and/or the Constitution are shredded, we are no longer a Nation of Laws, we will be a Nation of Guns, and guns will rule this Nation. Only fools want that outcome, because in one short, bloody period of time, all the mostly-patient (until Obama) work of progressives gets undone, and most of those who wanted that leftward change or fought the hardest against it get undone as well.

That's not a threat, it's not even a warning, it's simply the natural outcome of violent change, and it's Obama who brings the violence to this "conversation", at this "opportune moment". America's gun owners don't bring it and haven't brought it.

 

Defining a "crazy" person.

I just had my breakfast, a fine Seafood Medley Quiche that the gudwife whipped up. While gobbling two servings of the delicious dish, Fox News was droning in the background, and the morning show hostess Megan Kelly was blathering on about the CT shooter's mental state. Autism and Asperger's kept coming up.

Two things:

We can only infer his mental state, we can't actually test it or quantify it.

We are entering onto a slippery slope here, and one that historically has led to implementation of dictatorship.

Josef Stalin, the worst dictator the planet has ever had to suffer, developed "Mental Health" in the USSR to mean adherence to his rule. "Mental health standards" were then enforced on the population of Russia and it's immediate neighbors. According to those "Mental Health Standards", everything from going on a local watch list to death at hard labor were sanctions for not being "Mentally Healthy".

We are but a short step away from Stalin's system.

Yes, we need better methods of delineating dangerous crazies, getting them help, seeing that they take the help offered, and keeping guns from them until they are well again. I think we all can accept that.

What we can't accept is any form of political control in the disguise of a "Mental Health" initiative. The Administration has already done that, defining PTSD as "crazy" after the Virginia Tech mass murder. The military, under orders of the Commander in Chief, then developed a system of assuming that everyone who has seen combat has PTSD until proven free of it. That's wrong, but after the horror of Virginia State, even the NRA was schmoozed into buying off on it. Now we prepare to do the same with various mental states, the majority of which are very minor, and which cause few problems in the perople who have these conditions. You may yell "Whoopee" as you slide your tobaggan down this slippery slope, President Obama, but those of us with historical perspective, and especially those of us with some Russian blood, are convinced that there is more likely to be dictatorship than salvation in this onrushing system.

Got that, Mister President?

I knew you would understand it. Dictatorship in any form is unacceptable in the USA, and it matters not whether the dictator's men wear soldier's coats or white coats. Ignore this, and soon we will be pining for the relatively-peaceful days of Columbine, Virginia Tech and Newtown.

Oh, by the way, Mister President, Scotland had a school massacre a while back, resulting in even stronger gun regulation in that already disarmed part of England. Gun crime has shot up since then, It has likewise shot up in Australia, Mister President.

As I said right after Newtown, this isn't going to be about gun control unless it's just a pretext for that. The discussion needs to be about Crazy control, but there is just as much danger to the USA's freedom there. We tread very carefully now, or we lose it all.

The "Fiscal Cliff", and why we'll go over it

Easy answer, because it's now been fleshed out by our President as a "Cloward-Piven" strategy. In other words, it will be a manufactured crisis, the mother of all such actually, during which, the President will "take charge", thereby demonstrating his "leadership" and (probably) creating an un-Constitutional power grab of the economic (appropriation) reins from Congress.

The Holy Grail for Obama is not taxing the rich, a simple smokescreen for the present, it is to be able to bust the debt-ceiling at will. If he creates a fiscal disaster, he will then tell us that only more "stimulus" spending will see us safely out of the disaster, and so he will order the Treasury to print that money, he will order it spent (likely added to present stimulus law), and we will add another few trillion to the debt.

If the House of Congress finds it's spine, and I'm NOT betting on that, all it can really do is start impeachment proceedings, but the while the (GOP) House might impeach, the (D) Senate won't convict, so that's a stalemate. Bill Clinton was impeached, and it hasn't stopped the (D)emocratic Party from calling him the "elder statesman".

After some time has passed, and with as much delay as can be arranged, Obama will have to face the Supreme Court, which will probably declare that part of the National Debt he created by fiat to be illegal.

Okay, what then?

Nothing, then. Unlike FDR, who actually stopped his stimulus programs when the SCOTUS ordered him to cease and desist, Obama won't stop. Is the SCOTUS going to hold Obama personally responsible? No. Is the SCOTUS going to hold him in contempt and order the US Marshals to arrest him and put him in jail? No, you and I would get that treatment, but Obama won't.

Obama will have ignored the Constitution and the SCOTUS and gotten away with it.

What other part of the Constitution might he ignore next? Hard to say, but all the anti-gun filk would beg him to give similar treatment to the Second Amendment. There's a physical threat to his tyranny there, after all. He might try to muzzle Internet dissent and trash the First Amendment while he's at it. Along the way to trashing those pesky First and Second Amendments in the Bill of Rights, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments will probably go away, too.

Bottom line, by the time 2016 rolls around, there will be NO doubt that Obamalamadingdong intends to stay in office as long as he wants to (read: until he can groom a "Manchurian" candidate who will take his orders), so the (D)emocratic Party will just ignore the election and not even nominate a candidate to replace him.

Blue sky theory? You bet, but it's how some of his advisers think, and Obama himself has never had or expressed an original idea, he IS the product of his advising staff.

Yep, these are Valerie Jarrett's ideas as well as mine, I'd bet on that. We know, to a moral certainty, that what Valerie Jarrett wants, Valerie Jarrett gets. What Valerie Jarrett advises, Obama acts upon.

By this time next month, it will be unlikely that this Nation will be able to be rescued from total tyranny without resort to arms, and that uprising, when and if it occurs, will be a mere blip in history, a "beer-hall putsch", a short interruption in the Greater Glory of Our Glorious Leader.

All Hail, etc.