Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Connection?

There's no humor here, but there might be an explanation of the mind-set that could allow one person to commit such an atrocity. The technology of broadcasting your thoughts, as illustrated by your blogger in this blog, for example, might be a reason that we are self-absorbed, that we disregard the best proven teachings of the culture.

We are so, so, "whatever".

But we are NOT faithful to the culture.

It's always "what my BFF said" or "what MC Gangstapunk rapped", but it's never "what Thomas Aquinas said" or "what John Locke said", is it?

We have shrugged off the brilliant minds who built our superior culture, and replaced them with..."Whatever".

The technology, or rather the abuse of it, did that to us.

I'm NOT going to say "reject the technology", because it is the same technology that enables us to carry the entire brilliant works of the culture on one pocket-sized device, so this same technology which gives rise to unfathomable evil can also save us from that evil.

It can only save us, though, if we choose to use it for navigation on that path. If we choose to use it to simply divert our minds from the ennui of having to live too close to one another, we have failed to realize the primary strength of the technology.

Whatever.

H/T to Country Gal, who I should probably promote to "bff"

 

There's a reason to call them "Ass Press"

Two reasons, actually:

1. They are nincompoops. Utter crap flows from their newswire in a constant stream.
2. They have their lips pressed so far into the ass of the Socialists and their agenda item of Gun Control that they can't get the brown off.

Example, current, common, one each

The AssPress article asks the question, of whether Costas overstepped his position, in it's title. The answer is a simple "Yes". The article then goes on to issue a "well, no" answer and deliver a standard lefty excuse that Costas' departure from sports to delve into social engineering and Civil Rights Denial is okay because, well, because his ideas "will keep us safe". Except they won't keep us safe, that science is settled; denying the Bill of Rights is not only unpatriotic, it's treasonable; and just because, well, a sports blatherer is supposed to stick to sports. That's why they're there, isn't it?

When I want to see ass-kissing of the serious sort, I always turn to the Ass Press.

For Maroon of the Month, I give you Bob Costas. Wotta Maroon!

On this solemn occasion (v.2.0)...

So, I just exercised my mind by writing a socio-philosophical piece, so I am not an Alzheimer's candidate (yet). But, when you're 69, you have to consider your frailty and you know that whatever is left of your life will not likely be much to write down. At 69, you've already done most of your good or bad works.

But then the gudwife mentioned one of our good friends in the yacht club who has Alzheimer's.  He's the third one to suffer from that brain-wasting disease in the last 5 years, in a group of only 50 or so families. The other two are already dead, and I watched them go from healthy, independent men to total dependence, minds shut down to their loved ones, and death. The third one is going that way.

The first one was a systems engineer in electrical control systems for industrial equipment.

The second was a retired City of Portland cop.

The third one is a retired Army Lt. Colonel.

All of them were my good friends, but I felt closest to the retired Col, because he and I shared the fighting of a war (he was an Artillery officer in 'Nam, among his other duties, and bright enough to be a Professor of Military Science at the end of his Army career).

All three of these people had a window of time to make a choice, and had they made it, there would have been much less impact on their loved ones at their end.

That choice is to accept the finality of Alzheimer's (no one recovers, once afflicted) and end their own lives while they were still in charge of those lives.

They failed to make that choice, and they condemned their loved ones to misery as a result.

How can a person do good works his/her entire life, and fail so miserably to be responsible at the end of it? Yes, I say FAIL, because any time one has a choice of paths, one path leads to a good end and one to a bad end. I challenge anyone to tell me that requiring your loved ones to put up with the personal anguish, the expense and the suffering involved in a loved one's end by Alzheimer's.

It's not right, don't do it.

The way I see it, you WILL be Judged on the avoidable suffering you inflicted on others, when it was your choice to end your life and cut off that suffering.

In our religions and in our philosophy of life, we have put far too much importance on our personal survival as an organism, and far too little importance on the impact of our lives on others. Our society can never be considered perfect or even good as long as we insist on inflicting years of misery on our loved ones just so some coroner or priest can write down that we died of "natural causes" instead of by our own hand.

We are fools, and uncaring fools at that. It should say so on our headstones.

Bill O'Reilly, Eastern Liberal

Tonight, the CINO O'Reilly showed his liberal colors, again. This time, it was an anti-gun rant, in which he first lamented that "heavy weapons, howitzers, mortars and machine guns" weren't registered with the FBI. Sorry Billy, those first two are "destructive devices" and are banned unless de-milled. Machine guns MAY be kept, but only after registration and taxing and permissions down to the local level.

Then O'Reilly got his Brady on and equated civilian semi-auto rifles with "heavy weapons". He shouted down a UT congressman who tried to set him straight on his several gaffes.

O'Reilly's only conservative positions are when he is in lockstep with the Catholic Church, which is often, but Rome is conservative only rarely.

Bill O'Reilly is far more of an Eastern Liberal, and Fox News does conservatives no favors by letting him masquerade as a conservative.

Fast & Furious gets worse

....and now it's the GOP screwing the pooch. All of this weekend's talking-head blather so far has hidden behind the family of the slain Border Patrol agent. Cut this crap out, GOP, this is all about POLITICAL CORRUPTION, and now it seems, by your effort to hide behind the aggrieved family, you are trying to minimize the corruption of the political establishment.

Fast & Furious happened because of political corruption, and that particular piece of political corruption happened because there is a climate in Washintoon which supports corruption as "business as usual". Both parties are involved in that corruption.

If any true remedial action is to be taken, it must cut across political lines and address the venality present in both parties.

The GOP just showed it's colors here, and they are ugly colors. I've heard those family members speak, and they seem hesitant to put party labels on the gross errors which killed their son. That's correct. I don't think this problem is just related to the Democrats, either. It is related to a disregard of the letter AND spirit of our Constitution, a disregard that is the basic failing of our modern society.

We fail to get back to our Constitution at our own peril, and if we continue to fail, that peril will be our downfall as a nation AND as the idea that sparks democracy across the species of man all over the planet.

The June Maroon is....

...Bill O'Reilly, of Fox News.

On the O'Reilly show last night, Bill, a self-described devout Catholic, had one Fr. Pfleger of the Chicago Diocese on his show, and the subject of discussion was Chicago's horrible rate of homicide, which has exceeded our troops' rate of KIA in the 'Stan.

On background: Illinois, and Chicago in particular, has some of the most draconian gun control laws in the USA, and IIRC, the SAF is suing them over the State and City denials of Civil Rights as they are stated in the Second Amendment (and affirmed in the recent Heller decision in SCOTUS).

The priest immediately jumped on guns as the reason for the horrible rate, even though O'Reilly tried to initially steer him into a theological answer. Uncharacteristically, O'Reilly then let the priest prattle on about gun control being the answer. This priest even has some sort of (totally disconnected) new plan for gun control, "titles" for guns like cars are titled. He said that (paraphrase) 'we look at individuals who have 200 car titles listed in their names, so if guns were titled, we could look at those with 200 gun titles'. Define "look at", Father Pfleger...

"Apples and oranges" argument never won any debates when I was debating in college....

In the entire bit, which ran a full 5 minutes or so, O'Reilly never once reminded this priest of the Second Amendment, nor did he point out to him that if any kind of gun control worked, there shouldn't be any gun deaths in Chicago with it's level of 2A-denying gun rules.

Therefor, by the authority of the Devil Hisself: (I divorced my Catholic wife, so I am Condemned to Hell, according to Catholic dogma), I accuse Bill O'Reilly:

• For giving the cassocked communist cretin total carte-blanche to trash the Bill of Rights;
• For totally failing to either inject logic or 2A law into the interview;
• For failing to stand up for his own Constitution

Bill O'Reilly, you get the not-so-coveted June Maroon award. It's quite possible you might have to wear that mantle of shame for some time, because more than most righty journalists, and due to your lofty (self-proclaimed) status as King of Righty Talk, you owe more fealty to the Constitution than anyone else, and you completely failed in your duty.

Does Criticism equal Terrorism?

Seems like one government agency thinks so.

You NEED to read this post from a conservative blogger. What he experienced has all the trademarks of a government turned into a dictatorship, which means that we've gone through the first three boxes of Liberty*, and are down to the fourth box, speaking hyperbole-style, y'unnerstand.

H/T to Uncle. BTW, Uncle has another such sturmtruppen adventure listed on his blog today.

We are one short, baby-step away from the end of our Constitutional Republic, folks. I guess the only question remaining is when we get the official word it's over, the Constitution has been suspended, etc, will we fight to bring Liberty back? I'm not making any bet that we will. 

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*The boxes of Liberty are the Soap Box, the Jury Box, the Ballot Box and lastly, the Cartridge Box.

Eric Holder remembered Day One of Constitutional Law 101

...and for that, we should thank the Attorney General.

Thank you, sir.

Marbury vs. Madison, which even this poor scholar has read, was all about defining the role of the Supreme Court, and it's majority opinion was a firm statement of the enumerated power of that Court.

Now, why didn't President Obama remember Marbury vs. Madison before he opened his yap last week? I'm sure he had to have taken the same course, and by most accounts, he was a bright law student with a good memory.

Could our President have deliberately ignored Marbury vs. Madison in order to inflame his under-educated "base" to step up their ignorant screeching in support of the soon-to-be-declared-Unconstitutional Health Care Reform Act? Would a REAL Constitutional scholar have swtooped that low? Would a REAL Constitutional Scholar have put his USAG into the position of having to hold out his knuckles for the Fifth Circuit to smack them with their ruler of law?

Is this President worth re-electing with this and all his other FUBARs?

We ask the questions, you decide the answers, dear readers.

Genocide by Malaria?

Fifty years ago, Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring", the book which claimed that the widespread use of DDT was going to eliminate all the songbirds from the Earth (and eagles and all other birds). The world believed her, and followed her suggestion, which was to ban the manufacture and use of the chemical almost everywhere.

The problem was, that with the then-widespread use of DDT and long-range aircraft to spray it with, we had just about eliminated the most deadly pest in the world fifty years ago, the malaria-carrying mosquito. Once the ban went into place, the mosquito rebounded rapidly, and since then, untold millions of tropical-world residents have died of malaria, borne almost exclusively by the mosquito, with most of the victims being babies and children.

Now, if any one person, under any other circumstances at all, could be directly linked to the killing of millions of innocent babies and children, the entire civilized world (and most of the less-civilized world as well) would howl for their head.

To my knowledge, no one ever linked Rachel Carson to this form of intentional genocide.

Why not?

Answer below the fold...

The Fourth Amendment lives!

In a scant two weeks, statism has been dealt two sharp kicks to it's collective groin by the Fourth Amendment, which is apparently still alive, thanks to the SCOTUS and the US District Court in Eugene, OR.

The SCOTUS case, the Supremes ruled, unanimously, that the police may not attach a GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) tracker to a suspect's vehicle without first obtaining a warrant.

In the Eugene, OR case, the civil jury empaneled to hear the civil damages case of an arrested enviro-nut returned a verdict in favor of the enviro (but not much money damages, the lawyer got almost all of those), but more importantly, the jury found that the arresting officer had improperly seized the video camera of the protester, which the protester had used to record the initiation of the arrest sequence. The video probably didn't survive the concrete face-plant which ended the arrest sequence, but we don't get to see it, so we don't know.

There are two victories here for the Fourth Amendment, which says that no unreasonable search or seizure may be made, and that persons arrested may expect that warrants will be obtained before seizures of property.

This second case may be one of a less-then-brilliant cop underperforming the standards set by everyone, including his own Department. There IS an Oregon law on "intercepting communications", and it DOES say that both parties of a recorded conversation must agree to be recorded, but there are some exceptions. Being a cop is not, by itself, one of those exceptions.

The other thing the arresting officer could have done is make sure the prisoner's property was protected. The prisoner has a right to expect that. The video camera should have been carefully handled, and after the arrest, during the 5 hours the prisoner remained in jail prior to bailing out, it would have been easy for the officer to consult with a District Attorney, make a case to the DA that he needed a search warrant to examine the recordings of the camera for evidence of his arrest contained thereon (there should have been some such evidence), get the warrant and keep the camera when the suspect made bail, issuing a proper evidence receipt for it to the bailed-out suspect.

The arresting officer did NOT follow that extremely standard procedure which is taught at the Oregon Police Academy, and his penalty for not following it is to lose his case.

The counterculture's vast unwashed street mobs will now fire up an extra spliff or two in celebration, or drain a short dog of Maddog, but they really ought not to celebrate so much. It is the Constitution of the producers which the SCOTUS and the Judge in Eugene have protected, and in the Eugene case, the Judge was simply pointing out some sloppy police work. If I'm a Sheriff or a Chief of Police, I don't lose any sleep over this, I simply call in my Training Division people and remind them to highlight the procedures on treating evidence properly when next they give my officers an update on court decisions, and I might blast a memo to everyone on that advice in meanwhile.

I'm going to celebrate myself, because the Statists have just been told, twice now, that they must encourage their police officers to actually USE the smarts they were supposedly hired with and for. I'm not cheering for the enviro-nuts. They didn't win a thing here, and they ought to remind themselves that while MY Constitution protects their right to assemble and call for the destruction of MY society, that when they actually take STEPS to destroy that society, they WILL be opposed, and that wrapping themselves in that Constitution at that point does not make them bulletproof.